Texty

Last post reminded me of all the major stressors I've dealt with in the last 1-2 years:

-Job/career stagnation
-Two pets dying
-Two surgeries (and two more upcoming--part 2 & 3 of the dental surgery)
-Adoption prep and related somewhat-tight finances and partial house re-orging.
-Ongoing health issues of various sorts, including discovering that my hearing is going
-Major disappointment with the chorus thing
-Family drama
-Shitty politics (seriously: seeing how openly racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist/etc. people can be is unbelievably awful)
-Helping M manage his own job ick

There's been good stuff, too, of course: travel (though that has stress of its own), finishing my novels, etc. And I've kept myself together by diving into fandom/gaming stuff. Still ... no wonder I'm so fucking exhausted and burned out. Maybe it makes sense that all I want to do this weekend is hole up in bed and sleep. Maybe read a little. I don't think I've really given myself enough free time to just heal from all this.

Because I would spend the entire weekend pasted off my ass.

It's been good to be so busy (aka distracted) this week, but I can feel a weekend of stress-induced exhaustion and maudlin navel-gazing coming on.

Maybe I'll just park in my tub instead.

End of day 2, and still no Otter.

On the one hand, the other roaming cats around the complex are still roaming and still plenty healthy, so if he's sticking somewhat close to home, he's probably OK.

On the other hand, if he hasn't come back at all in this time, I'm not sure he recognizes this place as home.

I'm holding out some hope that he's just being the crazy teenager he is, and running around like mad getting some jones out of his system, and he'll come back eventually. And it could be that he's been by during the day when neither of us have been here to let him in. But... If he doesn't come back by the end of the week, I'm going to have to accept that he's gone.

I am most definitely not ready to face that, though.

The draft (and the research log, and the weekly participation summary) es fini! 12 pages of the damned thing, too. Well, OK, so it was really only about 8, if you shave off the biblio and the weird opening pages that APA style requires. It was about 2100 words total--a little less than half of the final size. However, all that's left for me to do on it is just amass and analyze (according to criteria I've set) several more stories. This should take a fair amount of time, but next to no effort.

With all that's left for this class being that, a final essay on my class participation and a presentation, this means I'm officially on the downhill side of this class. Unless he finds something horribly wrong with my draft, it's smooth sailing from here out, and I should have no trouble passing. Yes, I was actually worried about that.

My advanced reporting project, now that's a different story. I'm glad I can kind of sleep through the next two weeks of seminar, because I need to throw a metric fuckton of effort into getting that project in better shape. I'm worried about doing the map (which reminds me: n8dagr801, are you a GIS guru and can help me with that?) but I'm more worried about getting the last interviews I need. You know me and sourcing. Bleh. I think I'll manage, especially with the wonderful efforts of the lovely miztiy involved, but I'm still stressing anyway.

For the moment, however, I'm going to take a well-earned break. I am going to do absolutely nothing of academic value tomorrow. Instead, I'll probably spend the day starting to pack up my apartment, since I now have only three weeks left of actually living here (I'll be sleeping in SnoCo during finals week.) M is going to meet me for dinner, which will also be nice.

Early next week, I'll probably do the advanced reporting project stuff, plus herd my kittens to get decent coverage of the GAP nonsense going on. Then I get FOUR WHOLE DAYS at home. More like 4 1/2, if I get out of production early next Thursday and don't have anything other than class to occupy the following Tuesday. I'll probably spend almost that entire time sleeping--resting up before I do my final push to finish my two projects, which are due at the end of dead week. And I may also try to get my LOTRO characters to a level at which they're actually useful for group play. I could use the whole blasting orcs thing to calm me down after all this chaos.

I also, however, do plan to celebrate my birthday a bit early in some way that weekend. Not sure how or when or what, but something other than the usual.

And now, bed--and a few chapters in the latest Redwall book I'm devouring--awaits. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.....