Puzzle

Suppose you have a goat, a wolf, and two cabbages on one side of the river. You have one boat, and of course, there's only one of you. And you need to get all these items across the water, whole and happy. How do you do it?

Now suppose the wolf insists that you take the GREs. The wolf also needs you to take Microbiology, which requires either Chemistry, Biology, or Chemistry and Biology, depending on which version of the course catalog you're looking at. Oh, and the wolf doesn't want you to forget about Anatomy and Physiology, Developmental Psych, or Nutrition, all of which have their own prerequisites. The goat is two and a half years old and prone to napless days, and you feel bad about letting the goat watch so much television because really the goat is a little TV junkie, with "shows" being the first request of the day and the last of the evening (although you're pretty good about keeping it to one in the morning, one in the afternoon). The goat wants "uppy." The goat wants a candy cane.

The cabbages are metaphors: one for you not even getting into nursing school because you flunk your grad-level statistics class, the other for you not getting in because somehow you fail to find the magical combination of prereqs and required classes that guarantee you acceptance into, let's face it, a pretty lofty target of a school. A target, most likely, that's out of your reach.

The boat has holes in it. The boat also wants to remind you of your commitment to a certain breastfeeding organization which you have sorely neglected. The boat is telling you you'd better get on the stick about it, because you'll be answering hotline phone calls pretty soon, and you don't want to end up swamped and foundering the next time somebody asks about normal pumping output and how to store breastmilk.

People, people. What the fuck was I thinking? When I decided I would be able to go back to school? If one class is kicking my ass with steel-toed boots, what exactly do I expect from full-time year-round nursing school, huh? Just because I'm full of opinions and have memorized both Sears' The Baby Book and Major's Physical Diagnosis* doesn't qualify me to enter an accelerated nursing program, let alone actually -- eventually -- treat human beings who are capable of becoming sick and dying. On my watch.

Oh, internets. I am not feeling so good about all this right now. I feel like a fool for even thinking I should try.

*You want to ensure your teenage daughter is careful about STD prevention, you leave that book lying around the house. It's two inches thick with full-color photographs of syphilitic penises and ulcerated vaginas.