Still Alive...

On Being a DoctorMy first two and a half weeks as Dr. Howell has been quite interesting. First of all, it took me a while to get used to people introducing me as Dr. Howell. I would always expect someone else to extend their hand and give a firm hand shake. "Oh, yeah! that's ME!" I still answer my pages with "This is Tamieka, I mean, Uh, Dr. Howell." And to say, "MY nurse..." How weird is that? Actually my nurse is great! Her name is Michelle. She has been wonderful. Clues me in when I have the completely blank, I've been here for 2 weeks look on my face. She even makes sure that I have a place to be for holidays, weekends and happy hour. She even gave me my first ever tomatoe plants from her garden which I have planted. I am up to 3 tomatoes and 3 more should be ready for picking tomorrow. Back to doctor stuff. It's quite weird to think that people trust me to make decisions that could affect their lives forever. I prescribe medications (even have my own prescriptions pads with my name printed on them), I get to check out some pretty intimate parts of people, and they share with me things that they may not share with their husbands, wives, mothers or best friend. Quite a job I have. I think I am going to really love it.

On Being a Home Owner
My car know the way to Home Depot and Lowes all by itself. I am suprised they haven't given me my own parking space yet. I have mowed the lawn 3 times now, cut some tree branches, planted flowers around the mailbox (apparently thats what people do in NC), planted my tomato plants and, my most recent endeavor...Beginning to take down the crazy wallpapered rooms that I bought. I began with the foyer. About 20 minutes into it, I realized that I have taken on quite a task. For anyone that knows anything about wallpapering, the wall paper is stuck directly to the dry wall. Yep. It sucks! The good thing about being a homeowner is that I have had several neighbors stop by to introduce themselves and say welcome to the neighborhood. I even got a welcome to the neighboorhood zucchini bread from someone. Its been a nice month of homeownership! Now if only that wall paper would peel itself off the wall.

On Being Me
I've been dating a guy that some of you have met. His name is Dwayne. He has made my transition to NC great. It's weird for me to include someone new in my life. Being that I am the independent, mostly self sufficient, used to being by myself, only child type person, you can imagine the adjustment. It's still all about me, but I come out of my world everyone in while to play in everyone else's world with Dwayne (and his cute dog, Lexus. Lexi for short). While being with Dwayne is good, I think it is keeping me from getting out as much and meeting people. I have put some of my hobbies on hold cause we spend so much time together. I haven't been flying since I moved here. Although, we have been able to enjoy some things like golf, wine and live music together. Not necessarily at the same time.

On Being Fat
I checked out this interesting site today about a guy who weighs 400 pounds and is walking from CA to NY. talk about adventurous (or crazy). His site is www.thefatmanwalking.com. Check it out! And, btw, I started Weight Watchers again. This time at 210 pounds. I am down 5.6 pounds my first week. I have also been swimming and walking to get in shape. I would say I am training for sprint distance triathlon, but a friend of mine is already doing that so I feel like I need to find some other goal. She's always a few steps ahead of me in terms of what I want to do to get in shape. Kind of takes the fun out of doing what I want since, well, someone's already done it. I know, its my own weird way of thinking, but that is how my brain works. I like to be the originator of an idea, not a copy cat. With that said, I am looking for my first NC 5K to get involved in. I'm looking at doing it in about 2 months. We shall see.

Well, thats all for now. I will be posting pics of the house and the updates on the site soon. Until then...

Dr. T