Monday Morning.

It started out innocently enough…at least I thought it did. I had a new preceptor to find—presumably on the back roads of West Virginia. I planned my morning well in advance, which likely contributed to my disrupted sleep Sunday night…leaving me feeling groggy & not entirely prepared to face a new week at 6:05 on Monday morning.

Actually, my alarm went off at 5:15am. I had hopes of going to the gym…but after a night of restless tossing & turning, I decided against it when the music started blasting my ears only a few hours after I had shut off my light.

My preparations went smoothly enough, and aside from spilling soup all over the counter, watching my bottle of hair gel slide into the toilet and dropping my socks in the sink, I was ready to walk out the door in about 20 minutes. With car keys, purse, Nalgene, lunch box, gym bag, and books in hand, I reached for the door knob & realized that I had to pee one last time before my who-knows-how-long drive into the boonies.

As I stood washing my hands, basking in the glorious feeling of warm water in a freezing cold apartment, I realized that my almost-white-khaki pants were quite thin. And I thought about how cold I might be in the office. …which is when it dawned on me that my polka dotted turquoise underwear were completely visible on the rump view of my rather thin pants.

An extra few minutes to change my underwear.

And then I was off. Not entirely sure where I was headed, I drove along a two-lane road that curved & twisted around rock formations & cow pastures like switch-backs on a hiking trail. One thing was for certain: I WAS in the middle of no where.

About 15 minutes into my who-knows-how-long drive, I slowed down from 55mph to about 30 mph…you know, to enjoy the scenery....which in all honesty, was actually quite breathtaking. The river was foggy & I imagined Pocahontas canoeing down the river with her raccoon & birdy friends…oh wait, that was a Disney movie.

In truth, though, the trees were firey orange, the rolling hills were a faint blue color, and I passed red barns whose paint had chipped & roof slats had worn…I passed tilting shanty’s that, once loved, had been neglected for years. And I passed a slew of trailors & makeshift remodeling projects with little smoke trails sneaking out the chimney’s—a sure fire (haha) indication of the warmth that was burning inside (again…haha).

I noticed a field of horses on my left…and at the corner of the lot an avacado green trailer. And although I was driving, I slowed down enough to watch the horses for just a few seconds. Afterall, I was the only one on the road at o-dark-thirty in the morning.

Their coats were shiny, their manes were…flow-y…and really, they were so pretty enjoying their morning meal of West Virginia grasses with the Blue Ridge mountains as God’s painted backdrop. And just when I made a mental comment about just how awesome it must be to run free in a field like that, the brown horse took the liberty to give me a bit of a show by jumping on the black horses back and…….well, I’ll let you fill in the details. Lets just say they might have made more pretty horses yesterday!

And so the drive continued. After about 25 minutes of fields and cows and…ehheemmm…pretty horses, I found myself driving through a “town”. My directions told me I was supposed to turn….and turn I did….which is when I found myself face to face with a market on the corner, aptly named “The Corner Market”. I passed “Nance’s Diner” & “Matt’s Furniture” & “Trudy’s Flowers”, all reminders of small town America at its best.

I realized soon after my turn that my only further directions were to “drive” & look for the “Health Center on the left”. GREAT, I thought. At this point, it was well before 8 o’clock…and already I’d seen hills and trailer and cows and mating horses and turquoise underwear and in-the-middle-of-nowhere stores…

And so, since the office didn’t open until 8, I drove back & forth between two “towns”, looking for the “Health Center”. At one point I was driving alongside a little deer who had found himself a nice path along the white line alongside the two lane road.

It took me another 25 minutes, 1/4 tank of gas & 3 phone calls to the nurses at the clinic to find this infamous “Health Center”, which was actually another 5 miles down this road-to-nowhere…

When I walked in the door I was greeted with smiles and the announcement that no, in fact my preceptor was NOT in the Health Center he had given me directions to; the same Health Center I had just spent over 45 minutes driving to find….

He was at the “Senior Center” just a “few miles” down the road…