Back to School/This Cowgirl Bleeds Orange

Chiropractor visit 1 was OK. She told me something about facets of my vertebrae being locked, that my range of motion is good, but definitely she can feel the tightness in my muscles, etc. SO, I have two appointments next week, Wed. and Thurs. and she seems confident that a few sessions will fix me right up. So that is good news.

She's been practicing for over 20 years, which is also promising. She's British, and my stupid insurance web site was also out-dated on her, although in a different way than the no-longer-accepting-UHC-insurance-one - her office used to be on my street (which was why she came up so high on my search by location) ... but of course it's now a subway ride and three cross-town block walk. Walking really does seem to help my back, but it adds $4 to the $30 copay each time. Hrm. Maybe I can make the long walk from 28th street sometime ... work calls me back though. Blurgh.

So, my neighborhood has been more crowded than normal, mainly because of the back-to-school crowds. Tons of freshmen, their parents and their belongings and cars have flooded the streets. I can't walk to the park or to the drug store or anywhere without seeing an "NYU Class of 2012" T-shirt.

In my day, we hid our freshman-ness with all our might. We were warned against wearing our hard-earned letter jackets from high school, from wearing high school graduation rings or hanging our graduation tassels from the rear view mirror. So the idea of broadcasting the fact that I'm new strikes me as beyond odd. But what do I know? I am a country bumpkin...

...who cried. in public. when her parents dropped her off at college. i can't say that i wasn't sobbing inconsolably, but i think it was a little less than that, a whimper and thinly veiled tears rolling, rolling down my young, 18-yr-old face. i remember eating at Braum's on 6th St. (wow, my Stillwater geography fails me, but I mean the one just as you got to the edge of town) and feeling as bad as i could possibly feel.

and it was GOOD for me.

so in times of crisis or just general down-and-outness, I have to remind myself that i HAVE felt worse, and that it did turn out for the best.

Stillwater gave me good and bad, and thinking back, I know that this cowgirl bleeds orange. So maybe I should join the alumni association?

My first step toward reconciliation (?) with Stillwater is to take Shawn to the town that beheld my transformation from naive, crying 18-yr-old freshman to empowered, graduate school-bound 23-yr-old woman who still cried, but now for a reason.

~mari...

Photo via Flickr; 207/365 by ladybugbkt