Change Is Hard

It’s after midnight and my grant proposal is done.  Well, almost done.  All the sections have been written and rewritten.  Charts have been added, budget numbers fudged and refudged.  It is good enough to turn in the way it is, but I will print it all out tomorrow and read it from paper.  Why is it that you can find more errors and inconsistencies when you’re reading from paper rather than trying to read it on a computer screen?  Plus, it IS after midnight.  And I don’t want to read 30+ pages again tonight.  And printing would wake up the dog who is sleeping upside down on her princess pillow near my chair.  Waking up the dog would be a bad idea.

So…I shake the kinks out of my neck and shoulders, try to clear my headache and the tiredness in my eyes.  I try to remember what is due for other classes and am grateful I stayed up till 2 a.m. (or later?) last week getting that other paper done that is due Wednesday.   A smart student would print that one up as well tomorrow and read it.  Maybe I will.

Tomorrow husband and I will attend a play in Detroit, “Twelve Angry Men” and then he is going into work.  I’ll look at all of this plus do the online search prep work when I get home.  I just might have things under control.  At least I’ll go to bed thinking that.  Ignorance is truly bliss.

Tuesday night as I was hanging out in the library lobby, waiting for my guest speaker to arrive I wandered by a display of poetry books.  I don’t generally read poetry, but as my speaker was a poet and I was just hanging around I thought I’d scan a few pages.  So I randomly picked a volume up and arbitrarily opened it. 

The poem was about the last moments of a family’s life as they were driving in a car, rounding a curve on a freeway while a truck carrying a load of oil was going up over the median wall coming toward them.  The poem was focused on what each member in the family was doing, all the while unsuspecting that these were their last moments.

What are the odds I would pick up a book of poetry at all, much less open it to this poem.  I read it.  Gasped. Put the book back, and turned around with a smile to shake the hand of my speaker as she came through the door. 

Bibliography:  Fanning, Robert, “One and a Half Miles Away from Dying.” The Seed Thieves, Marick Press, 2006. pg 11.

Yesterday was a very stressful day.  I started working at the library early, 9:00 a.m. and in the Youth department, then had class, three hours of a lecture with the professor speaking so fast you’d can’t let your guard down, then back to the library where I hosted a program, which lasted till 9:00 p.m.

During the class I realized that a very big project was due next week rather than at the end of the semester like I had convinced myself was true.  The beginnings of fear ran through me and distracted me from the lecture.  Back at the library hosting the program I had issues to attend to that were out of the ordinary; people protesting, in effect, the speaker and her views about the US military and the middle east.

Getting home at 11:00pm I sat in the car in my driveway, too tired to go inside and handle Katie the dog.  Once I forced myself inside I found on my answering machine a message from my brother that there was a glaring error in the fundraising letter I had mailed out the day before.

My response?  I went to bed.

Today I am near tears about everything, trying to convince myself I will get everything done (and in some cases redone).  I am thinking about my parents too much.  There is Christmas music on the radio which makes me cry.  I don’t understand why I am so emotional other than I am tired, and the holidays are upon us.  Or maybe it was just having such a bad day yesterday and it all sort of piled up on me.

Today I am working till 9 again.  I’m going to concentrate on one thing at a time and just get through it.  I keep reminding myself that it will all work out.

I’m just really sad.

Tonight I spent about 2 hours addressing envelopes, signing and folding and inserting the fundraising letter for Truck Safety.  I sent it to 48 of Dad’s friends and family.  My siblings are sending it to another 60 of his friends.  He had a lot of friends!  During the two hours I listened to the local and  national news but was pretty oblivious to everything. 

After I finished and put the last stamp on the last letter I glanced at the dog who was sleeping out in the foyer.  Then I realized that around my feet were almost all of her toys.  She had brought them, one by one trying to tempt me into play.  I hadn’t even noticed, and she had given up and gone to sleep.  Poor neglected puppy!

Speaking of puppies, there was a  story on the local news about a puppy burned in a house fire.  They were asking for donations to help with medical costs for her.  I don’t begrudge the puppy her medical care, and in fact I feel very badly for her, but I know that thousands of dollars will pour in for her.  It made me wish I had a cute fuzzy image for my cause, to help in fundraising.  Truck crashes  just aren’t that pretty!

This weekend I am concentrating on large final projects for all four of my classes.  I’m writing sections of big papers, considering how to approach a poster for a final presentation, looking for art resources to support a database project, worrying how to figure out a budget for an imaginary nonprofit that I created for my grant-writing class.  Plus I need to learn how to blog on my job’s website.  That’s a requirement of my position, and it’s not that I don’t know how to blog…it’s that I haven’t figured out how to do it on their site. Or what to blog about for work.

I worked on these projects until after 2:00 this morning or so I thought.  Turns out it was until after 3:00 a.m.  I hadn’t noticed that the clock in my computer had “fallen back” to signify the end of daylight savings time sometime during my six hour writing marathon.  When my back ached and my head ached and my eyes would no longer stay open I thought it was a little after 2:00.  But when I looked at my watch it was after 3!  Katie the dog had long since given up and gone to bed herself.  She was up this morning at 6:00 sheltie time, wanting her breakfast.

This morning I am heading out the door, back to Ann Arbor to do a free lab, practice some stuff for my online searching class that confuses me.  Then I will find a quiet spot and begin writing again, either the grantwriting project or the beginning of the 20 page archival final paper.  

It’s all good.  I’m working on the final pieces of each of the classes in my next to last semester.  I have mapped out some course options for my last semester that starts in January.  I have an advising appointment to review that schedule next week.  Everything seems to be charging toward graduation in April.  I don’t think I could stop this train if I wanted to.  And I don’t want to stop it.  What a ride!

Last night as I waited in the dark out on North University for my bus I noticed how the street lamps on campus were shining amid the deeply colored leaves of fall.  The trees looked beautiful lit up that way, leaves turning in the cool autumn wind.  And then I noticed a flag attached to the nearest light pole, hanging just above my head.  It said “150 years of Chemistry at Michigan.”  I smiled as it reminded me that Dad had graduated from Michigan with a degree in chemical engineering just over 50 years ago, and the sign over his head might have said “100 years of Chemistry at Michigan.”  But they probably didn’t have such things in those days. 

As I’m thinking about this I realize that I’m across the street from the bell tower where Mom went to music school, standing under a sign and near the old chemistry building where Dad went to school.  Sometimes it feels overwhelming, but I was startled to find my cheek wet.  Tears?  I didn’t feel sad so tears would have surprised me.  No, not tears.  It had just begun to spit a cold October rain. 

I’m sitting in the stacks of the graduate library again.  Got into some research and didn’t realize the time was slipping away.  Also didn’t realize tonight is Halloween.  By the time I get home it will be too late to pass out goodies.  Which is just as well as I didn’t have time to buy any goodies, and we live in the country and don’t get many kids anway.  Still.  I should be home.  I’m hoping the house avoids getting egged or toilet papered by little (or large) disappointed costumed persons.

Plus I’m really hungry.  It’s time to pack up and catch that bus back to the car for the journey home.  Some research is done, some is not.  Tomorrow is another day.

Last night I got off work at 9 and took the bus back out to my car.  I got to ride in one of the new hybrid buses.  And guess what?  It has a “new car” smell!

Today I spent a bit of time eating a salad while sitting at the base of the UM bell tower as someone played the carillon.  I couldn’t put my finger on what the piece of music was, but it was relaxing to sit in the sun and listen to it float down from the top of the tower.  I let the stress of an overloaded study weekend seep away from my neck and shoulders.

Mom got her music education degree from UM in the 50’s.  She had classes in the bell tower, so inevitably I thought about her as I listened and ate.  Seems strange that she might have sat right where I was sitting, listening to the bells as I was listening.  More likely she’d have been up there watching, wishing she were playing.

I finished my salad about the time that the concert ended.  The last wisps of music floated away, leaving only the sounds of dry leaves blowing along the sidewalk and the squeak of bus brakes out on the road.

If you are busily vacuuming up dirt and leaves tracked in by your puppy, mumbling about the extra work a puppy creates, and as much as you vacuum, there appears more bits of dirt, and you remember that puppy is outside….you should check the bottoms of your own shoes.