Nurse Aimee (leaving the accent off the first “e” for the rest of this post for ease of typing, etc.) aka Uber Kayak Woman, that is! That’s her on the left in the sandals (yay for sandals), receiving her Bachelor of Nursing diploma. She graduated in August and passed her national board exam on Thursday.

I have told a couple of people about my cousin who went back to school at an “advanced” age. That is, some people think it’s an advanced age. I am the same age and I am just revving up, thank you veddy much. So I am not sure what some people are thinking. Anyway, back in May of 2007, she left her home and her family and drove across the country to enroll in an accelerated program that allows people who already have a bachelor’s degree to obtain a degree as a registered nurse. And I do mean “across the country”! Lopez, WA to Portland, ME? That, my friends, is *across* the country. In a Subaru with a sea kayak on top and I dunno what else. A Canadian customs guy asked her, “Dooya have anything *weird* in there?” and then let her go, scratching his head and figgering his time would be better spent on someone else.

I know a bit about what it’s like to decide to retrain yourself at half a century. But my college courses pretty much stopped at reading, writing, and critical thinking. Oh, yeah, coding and programming. There was a bit of practical experience that involved actual human beings but for the most part I was just beating up on computers, as usual. Aimee did all of that except for maybe the coding and programming *and* interacted with actual patients *and* had to do stuff like give injections and I dunno what else. Yikes! Anyway, when I told friends of mine that my cousin was becoming a nurse at our age, they immediately questioned, “Does she know how hard nursing work is?” I was tongue-tied. There is no way I could ever describe Uber Kayak Woman to someone who doesn’t know her. She is who she is and she manages to figger out how to do whatever she needs or wants to do.

I am rambling. The GG randomly decided to tear apart the Blue and ONLY (repeat, ONLY) Bathroom today in order to install a fan and replace light switches and other lucky-shucky stuff. I knew nothing about this plan until I returned from an early morning uber grokkery run to find that my nicely cleaned tub had a whole bunch of plaster and crap in it. Sigh.

Wish Uber Kayak Woman aka Aimee (with an accent over the first e) your warmest congratulations! Three cheers for the red, white, and sand. And the maple leaf across the-eh riiiiiver. You go girl!!

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