hell month

If I write it out like that, do you think that I'll really have a month of hell? Or that I'll forestall the 'hell' part by being aware of its evil intentions?

I wasn't really sure, either. Anyway, I don't think I can do myself much harm, here, by acknowledging that this is going to be a fricking tough month no matter which way you look at it. For one, my mother's birthday is either tomorrow or Thursday, and her anniversary is whichever of those two days her birthday isn't. She's gonna be expecting something. Hope that a quick note and a card will cover it this year. sigh. She's already ready to shoot Magda.

And then there's the looming October 31st deadline: "strictly by 4 pm." Which really means earlier - as I have to arrange to get it across the ocean to be turned in - and. . . .

OK - deep breath. . . . no. . . . it will all be ok. [sorry - had a moment of panic there, not about mi madre's birthday and Magda's ultimate fate, but about how do incorporate all these books that surround me into one 'little' paper. . . . and recognizing that I am just not going to have enough 'secondary' sources: I have too many primary ones.

Nothing I can do about that now.

For today: chapter 5. I think I still need to think small so I can finish it. Otherwise I'll be overwhelmed again by what I haven't done. All I can do is think about what I can do - right now. Today. Like an ant. One sentence after another. If I look at the big picture, I think it'll crush me.

You know it's bad when I can't even think of a song to cheer me up.

All right then: a shower will have to do the trick. The king is just about ready to leave to go do battle with the county bureaucrats and try to convince them that the 'recalculations' they extorted out of us don't constitute a "revision" such that they get an automatic 4 weeks in which to process the whole thing all over again as an "amendment". It doesn't help that he's irritable about this at the same time that I'm freaking over the dissertation.

Then again: maybe it does. We seem to have an unwritten understanding that only one of us is freaked at a time. If he's freaked, that means I have to be level-headed. Maybe not such a bad start for the day, eh?

I feel better already.