Change Is Hard

Well, I turned in that final exam, felt a moment of exhilaration and promptly got sicker than a dog.  Except I don’t really know how sick a dog can get, so I was a mere approximation of a sick dog.  I made it through the King Christmas, with multiple families complete with tiny little kids at my house for dinner and was grateful for the approaching blizzard which sent them all home earlier than usual.  Sunday I never got out of bed except to take the dog out when she demanded.  Monday I worked from 6-9 p.m. but was barely functional.  Today I am hoping to get more done, though I won’t go far without my bottle of water and box of tissue.

Appears I am a typical student, waiting till break to let the stress of the semester manifest itself in a common cold.

I am finished with my last (and only) final of the semester!  I wrote both essays for my archives course yesterday while the dog was at the groomer.  It took me about 7 hours, and would have taken me at least 10 if Katie had been in residence.  I still have to email them to the professor, but I am waiting.  I don’t want him to think I didn’t take care with them because I turn them in early.  I will send them in tonight, they are due tomorrow at noon.

Interestingly enough as I was writing one essay I thought about an article I had read for a different class during my first semester.  I went into the online UM library catalog and found the article , but couldn’t get an electronic copy of it.  Frustrated I went back to my paper file from that course and the very first document at the front of the file was the article that I needed!  Archives save the day!

So the semester is over, time to get down to the business of Christmas.  I’m off to the grocery store next to pick up all the fresh ingredients of the dishes I will cook tomorrow.  I also have much cleaning to do, and straightening up and throwing away.  Katie, back from her day at the doggie spa, is beautiful but under my feet all the time.  Things will move more slowly today, but that’s OK; it’s the first day of my holiday break!

Happy holidays to all of you!

I’m sitting at my computer with a blank brain.  I have just two questions to answer for my archive final and then I am free until next semester.  The professor gave us six questions to choose from, which turns out to be a good thing as I don’t have even the faintest clue how to answer four of them.  I am having a hard time getting started.  I read through some notes last night for the first question I will address and thought I would get it written then, but went to bed instead.

This morning Katie the dog got me up early as usual.  She was scheduled for the groomer today, and if she had known that she would have let me sleep in!  So, since we were up, we went to the groomer and arrived prior to 7:00 a.m.  She was shaking the entire trip, but once there began to play with the groomer’s big dog.  I told them I was writing an exam, so they’re going to keep her all day. 

My window of opportunity to write a really fantastic final exam is today.  I know I just need to start writing  and the good stuff will eventually come, so this morning I am using the blog to get those writing juices flowing.  So.  Enough procrastination.  The sun is up, Katie is getting a bath, I have Christmas music playing in the background.  There are no excuses not to write these essays and get on with the business of Christmas.  I have twenty-seven people arriving at my house Saturday for dinner, so this last minor irritant needs to be finished today so that I can concentrate on getting ready for that family gathering.

Wish me well!

I just ordered flowers for a funeral to be held Wednesday.  A friend’s father died unexpectedly last night and we’re just hearing the news.  The funeral is far away and we won’t be able to go, so I send flowers in our stead.  Yet I know that in the chaos of the moment she won’t remember that there were flowers or who sent them.  She won’t remember the faces of all the people who hug her and murmer their sympanthies.  She probably won’t even feel the pain of loss till much later.  And later is when we need to be there for her.  So I send flowers to the funeral because that’s what you do, and I mark my calendar for later, when she will need to talk. 

Christmas and the death of fathers.  They just don’t mix.

Between school and the beginning of my shift at work tonight I stopped by a local pub in Ann Arbor for supper.  Sitting at a table by the window I watched the world go by.  I noted the Christmas lights in store windows, and the wreaths and greens attached to the some car grills, the people walking by, some with Christmas packages, some with  holiday red Starbucks coffee cups.  I saw people walking alone and in pairs, talking animatedly on phones or staring at their feet.  I felt very seperate, as if I were watching a movie.  A sense of not belonging, of just being an observer.

It’s the same feeling I’ve had this year as Christmas approaches, that I’m an observer, and not a very happy one at that.  That Christmas is sneaking up in an obvious sort of way and that I’d rather it didn’t.  Even though I’m going through the motions, planning a big meal for the in-laws, even doing Christmas shopping, I feel a seperateness.  I’d so much rather it didn’t come, Christmas.  I think I’d rather pretend it wasn’t on the way and then just sleep through the day.  But Christmas is hard to ignore.

So another year has gone by, and for whatever reason this year feels like it might be tougher than last year.  It’s harder to ignore Christmas.  But I still feel like an observer in the wings rather than a particpant on the stage. 

I’m sitting quietly at my computer here at home, trying to get ready for a presentation that is happening later today.  For many reasons I haven’t spent enough time preparing for this presentation and this morning is my last chance to go over my portion and figure out what I can say that isn’t already on the slides.  Katie was not cooperating, wanting to play, and it’s too cold to put her outside so early this morning. 

So I picked her up and told her I had to go, gave her a cuddle and put her into her crate in the bedroom, closing the door behind me.  I pretended to go to work and then crept quietly back out to my computer.  She howled for a bit but now she’s quiet.  I don’t want her to hear me and start barking.  So I am very quietly studying my slides and typing speaking notes.  Darn keyboard seems overly noisy this morning.

I stayed up last night, dug the offensive one page paper out of the backpack and began the edit.  Katie snuggled up next to me in bed as I mashed words around until it resembled something that wasn’t half bad.  I left it on the dresser to marinate overnight and today tidied it up a bit.  So.  The last paper of the semester is officially complete.  All that is left to face is tomorrow’s presentation in government docs and the final exam next week in archives.  Both are somewhat intimidating, but previous experience tells me they will turn out fine.  If I prepare.

I don’t have much to say tonight.  Lots of feelings and snippets of thoughts rolling around at the back of my mind.  All cohesive thought is interupted either by Katie or a hot flash.  Sometimes both.  Not a good night for inspiration I guess, which doesn’t bode well for my last one page paper due Thursday.  I wrote it while at work last week and I think it is garbage, so much so that I haven’t even dug it out of my backpack to review it.  I couldn’t get it saved to my thumbdrive that night, so I just printed it out the old fashioned way.  I guess I should hope it’s actually in my backpack somewhere.   In reality I think it is so much a piece of garbage that not much would be lost if I can’t find it and I have to start over.  But starting over on it tonight in my uninspired mood would probably mean I’d generate more garbage.   On the other hand I’ve written some of my best stuff late at night when I was tired.  So maybe I should just stay up and work on it.  You never know what will inspire you.  Or when you’ll be inspired.  I just hope inspiration hits prior to Thursday.

Darn.  I turn around tonight to check on the dog in preparation for going to bed and she is SO CUTE!  She is sleeping upside down, head curled around, on her pillow by the window.  It almost makes me want to find something else to do (which wouldn’t be that hard) rather than wake her up to go to bed!

The long  paper is done and I am feeling relieved.  It’s 21 pages plus a 2 page bibliography.  Actually I think it’s pretty good, except for one paragraph that doesn’t make sense to me any longer and I am not sure why it’s in there.  I may take it out when I reread it tomorrow.  Or it might be brilliant and I’m just too tired to see the connection at the moment.   Hard to say.

I’d be feeling even better than pretty good if I hadn’t just read the instructions for the paper, making sure I got it all covered, and realized that I forgot I have to write a one page summary for this thing.  DRATS.  I am definitely too tired to do that tonight.  It will probably go easier if I do it right after I reread the paper tomorrow.  Right now I’m not for real sure what the paper is about!  (KIDDING!)

It’s sleeting outside my window, sometimes the sound of it startles me as I work.  Katie has finally settled down on her pillow to sleep.  She has been extra antsy tonight and asked to go outside a whole lot more than I wanted to be out there.  Which is to say she wanted to go out more than once.  We went out three times, it was miserable out there each time.  There were moments that I considered putting her out in her kennel in the sleet because that’s where she appeared to want to be, but I’m not that bad a mother, so I just told her NO about a hundred times and now she has given up.

So, time to get some sleep myself, though I hate to wake up the dog to go to sleep.  The odds are that once up she won’t go back to sleep so easy.  Sort of a parental dilema I guess.  At least I don’t have to get her into her pj’s!

Night all…