Yesterday I was in Ann Arbor to attend a staff meeting for work.  Then I spent the rest of the day in the library writing a paper.  Toward the end of the afternoon I wandered down South University in search of food.

I ended up at New York Pizza with a slize of chicken and pesto pizza and a drink.  The TVs were blaring.  On one set was a live feed from the US House, where members of the House were giving one minute speeches.  They were talking to an empty room, the only people present besides the Speaker were the Representatives that wanted to talk.  They spoke  about children’s health insurance, clean water,  the war and more.  Members of the house were zealous about their causes, but the overall feeling was chaotic as each speech was one minute or less and the next one was on a different topic.  With no one listening I wondered what the point was.

Across the room the other TV was blaring at a similar level.  This one had a cartoon on it, with small childish super heros zooming around and saving the world. 

I sat in the middle of the room, half way between the two televisions and wondered which were the real super powers.  Both trying to save the world.  Who would be more effective?

With the threat of frost hanging over me I pick pink tomatos hanging heavy on the vine.  As I move quickly through the dark and rain in my small garden I crush tomato leaves under my feet and brush against the basil gone to seed.  The aroma is faint, delicate, wistful, as if the air is already reminiscing about the summer past. 

I finally finished the paper that has dogged me for a week.  It’s almost midnight, the night before the paper is due.  I haven’t worked on something this late at night and this close to the deadline since my undergrad days (and nights) back in the 70’s.  Back then I couldn’t seem to get my focus until the sun went down the night before some big project was due.  I did my best work in the middle of the last possible night. 

Today, with the paper due tomorrow I still put the majority of it off.  I thought about it a lot, tinkered with a few pages on occassion, but didn’t really sit down to work until after the sun went down.  I wonder if I’m regressing?

I did, however, put together two packages of information to go out to two libraries in answer to potential employment.  That took some time and reminded me how stressful looking for work can be.  Even fun work.

And speaking of work, this weekend I worked till 9 Friday night, for 5 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday.  That’s a lot of work hours shoved into one weekend.  Makes me realize that I haven’t worked anything like full time in a long time, and I’m enjoying that aspect of school!  I got a bit bent out of shape to have so many hours scheduled together this weekend.  Have to remember that real life is often like that. 

For now I’ll revert back to the protected life of an undergrad.  Late night, deadllines met, no real responsibilities.

I still haven’t worked on that darn paper that is due Tuesday!  Katie is outside in her pen.  I have one more hour before I have to leave for work, and therefore could be working on the paper.  Should be working on the paper.  But instead I have been editing a brochure on grief that will be used by the Truck Safety Coalition to help survivors recognize that whatever they are feeling is normal.

I initially tried to read this brochure and begin the edit while I was at school.  This was an unfortunate thing to do, as I soon found myself surreptitously wiping away tears.  I only got a page into the brochure and realized I would need to do this at home.  Curiously at home, once given over to the task, I seemed perfectly capable of editing with dry eyes. 

So that is done, the results emailed away, the fund raising letter has been reviewed for perhaps the last time.  Now…with 40 minutes left and a shower still to be taken I can start on that paper!

This morning before dawn Katie and I are up and out the front door.  I’m looking for the newspaper, Katie is looking for the perfect spot.  We come back inside reluctantly, it is so warm out, and the moon and Venus in the eastern sky are beautiful.  But I must tackle that paper before I head for work this morning.

I sit down resolutely.  I think I can finish the draft before I leave for work at 10:30.  Something catches my eye and, glancing over, I see Katie standing there silently, one of her favorite toys held in her mouth.  She isn’t crying or jumping, or bumping me with her nose.  Just standing there, ears drooping, tail hanging down.  She seems to know that there won’t be any playing this morning. 

My heart contracts and I reach for the toy.  Sitting on the floor in the living room I toss it across the room and she joyfully bounces after it.  As she prances back to me, tail up, ears forward, eyes bright I reflect that there are priorities in life, and life is the first priority.

We play like this for perhaps ten minutes until she is tired of the game.  She sets the toy over in the corner and comes to climb on my lap, pushing her nose into my neck.  I rock her there for a moment and then she bounds off, looking for a new adventure.

I go back to work on that paper.  We are both content.

Today I worked 7 hours on the public desks of the library and attended a 3 hour lecture with a professor that talks so fast I can’t keep up.  Tonight during a lull in work I typed up the notes from that class.  Five pages of typed notes.  Toward the end of the lecture I was getting confused and started not listening;  it was as if the mind shut down, and any further information was just going to push something else, equally vital, out of my brain.

Tonight between patrons I am trying to read the text and make some sense, but my eyes are watering from exhaustion, and the phone keeps ringing.

I STILL have to finish that darn paper that is due Tuesday, I’m working Saturday and Sunday, I need to figure this class out and I think I have two other classes to worry about!

OK.  Enough.  No more stressing.  Why do you do this to yourself (I ask myself!) every semester!  You will be fine.  You will be fine…you will..really…be fine.

I’m sitting at the library on campus.  Though I don’t have class today until 2, and no reason to be here prior to then, Katie was in rare form and I had to get away.  I drove down to Ann Arbor this morning and have been working on a paper (the same one I was supposed to be working on yesterday morning) that is due next Tuesday.

The paper is for my archives class; we are to review three archive websites and critique them.  I chose university special collections, and I have been spending some time be-bopping around the three sites, Auburn, Michigan State and Rutgers.  Why those three you ask?  Because I was curious what three land grant universities might have in common in their special collections.  Turns out nothing!

So I’m writing this paper, and for some reason I start thinking about the whole special collections theme as sort of your kitchen junk drawer.  You know, the drawer you dump stuff into when you don’t know where else to put it?  That’s the feeling I had about special collections.  And I expressed it that way in the paper….also described the collections as an “ecclectic (thanks Paul for that word) group of valuable and more dubious materials, sort of like a crazy aunt’s memory institutionalized by universities.” 

I have a few days to edit…the paper is far from done.  In fact after I got to the crazy aunt part I sort of stopped to ponder. 

Do you think professors have a sense of humor?  

This must be what being a grad student is really like.  Total exhaustion.  With a seemingly never ending list of things still to be done.  Whatever made me think that working 19 hours a week while attending classes wouldn’t really change how this school experiement will go?

I worked yesterday prior to my class and again after.  I worked till 9 p.m. and worse (for me) till 9 p.m. in the youth department.  Alone.  On an evening when there were 50+ adults and kids and their tutors working in the library, many of them in the youth department.  On top of the usual number of parents and kids looking for stuff there.  My.

Well, at least that shift is finished!  I’m now trying to write a paper that is due next week.  Sounds like I’m ahead doesn’t it?  Well I would be except that the reason I’m writing it now is that I am so totally booked for the rest of the week that I don’t know when between now and next Tuesday I’ll have four hours of uninterrupted time.  So here I am, Wednesday morning. It’s still dark out, and I’m trying to wake up my mind to write a paper.  I haven’t read the material that is supposed to make this easier, hoping that writing skill alone will get me through.  No time to read any supporting documents!  Of course not!

And puppy Katie wants something.  Just to play I think, because we’ve already been outside two times and it’s barely 7:00.  We built a pen outside for her, and when she’s in that I get a lot more work done, but it’s dark out and somehow I can’t quite put her out there in the dark.  I know.  Spoiled puppy.  Silly puppy mom.