It's 10:00am on Sunday morning. I slept in until almost 9:00 and then went out back and did some work for an hour. For those of you who aren't familiar with what my 'out back' is like, it's a fenced in area with about 50% sidewalk and 50% red lava rocks. The lava rock area was full of weeds when I moved in and there were many trees growing from the cracks in the sidewalk. My neighbors have been giving me a hard time about working back there. I think it is mostly in fun but there is probably a little bit of a serious side too. Right now, all of the trees in the sidewalk are gone and I've made good progress in the lava rock. The most challenging thing is going to be working around the rose bush that is covered with choke vine and is located it the corner impossible to get to. The choke vines have been there long enough to have big pods and to have traveled over my privacy fence (thank goodness for the privacy fence). I got a big weed there today but I am sure there are others that are farther back and harder to get to. I figure it I can only get to the root of it and chop it there, it'll die, right? Gardening is starting to feel like anatomy lab. I actually thought that while I was back there working. I had a funny surprise, though, as I was working. I looked over and saw that one of the weeds was in fact a tomato plant. Now, you may all be impressed that I can tell a sapling tomato plant within the mess of weeds, but really, it was easy. You see, there is a nice green tomato on this plant. I laughed.

I started really working on my notecards yesterday. All said and done, there are just over 100 I believe. 91 of which are related to the muscles. I got through 41 yesterday. I have two cards for each muscle so, using college math we figure out that I learned 20 muscles yesterday with one card left over. I learned the shoulder, the pectoral region, and the arm. I have the forearm and hand left over for today. It's going to take me a while because I am learning these regions from nothing, where I at least had an idea on the upper three regions. If I can get these learned today, that will take care of a big chunk of the information and leave me the rest of the week to worry about the rest of the stuff, which is still plenty, trust me.

I went for a long walk yesterday. I'll try and do the same today.

I'm noticing that the stress is trying a little bit on my emotions, I'm still not really used to the anatomy lab. No matter how you look at it, it is a room full of medical and PA/PT students (not at the same time) cutting up 43 dead people. These people have names and families, and we just throw them away bit by bit. I think we'll leave the core (all the bones and muscles) but the skin and fat and whatever gets cut off goes in the trash. Just like that. I overheard one of the other girls saying that she cut off a woman's breast, a breast that she probably feed her children with, and threw it in the trash. Most of these people donated their bodies to us specifically so that we can do what we are doing. The bodies that weren't willed to the anatomy department at UMNC are unclaimed. I have the bad feeling that my cadaver was unclaimed. Part of the information we get on the cadaver is to where the remains go at the end of the term. Most indicate family. Ours indicates morgue. The head of the lab said, "almost without exception, these bodies were donated." Almost. Emotions aside, I have to go back today and work. We are getting less and less afraid to manipulate her to get to what we need. I was avoiding touching her hand, and now I find myself not wierded out when I tie string around her hand and tie it to the table so that I can work where I need to work. Just like it's nothing. I have learned my limits and I know when I've had enough and when I need to leave. I'll be happy in nine weeks when it's all over and I walk out that door for the last time.