belly full of turkey

I can see the end, and it is near. But not in a depressing way, not at all.

Two weeks left until winter break. I have planned out every hour of the next 16 days. I have color coded my schedule, and made sure I included breaks for eating. This order is soothing and has made me realize that I can do all the things I need to, because I clearly have the time to do them. Ahhhhh. Like a glass of iced tea on a hot day.

Thanksgiving was amusing, like any other extended time with my extended family.  Topics at dinner included "is it poop or chocolate?", grandparents' newly purchased burial plots, Streetwalker BarbieTM, my aunt's drug habits in high school (she swears she just held other people's "stuff"), coozie in purse + key chain bottle opener = heavy drinkin college student (not true), and "so... Taxes."

I also got to catch up on Mythbusters, start knitting again, and marvel at my little brother's ability to grow a whole effing beard.

Some things will not soon be forgotten.

the NESP wasp

I am freaking out. Just a bit.

Tomorrow is D-Day. It should be happy and exciting, because I really only have two classes standing between me and Thanksgiving, but actually- OH WAIT there is another HUGE thing standing in the way, and that is this damned scholarship.

I have a meeting with my adviser for the NESP (Nastily Exhausting Scholarship Process) tomorrow at 12:30, right before I am allowed to leave for break. It's like seeing a lovely cake on the kitchen table and running toward it in excitement only to find a gigantic deadly wasp sitting in front of it, so that you are so freaked out about the wasp and how to maneuver yourself around it that you forget the cake is even there until the wasp decides to fly away by itself. Tomorrow is kinda like that.

I have a few more essays to write and I have convinced myself that everything I can get on paper (or a word document) is progress. Except it's NOT. Everything I have written is bullshit and that wasp is going to tear me down until all I am is a small weeping child.

Maybe I should have used pie as an example. It's more appropriate for the season.

you didn't have a name before, so now it's gonna be Poopface McAwfultiming

I need an update, and what better timing than the morning I am supposed to be at the middle school doing my independent study.

Why am I not there, you ask?

Well, because some stupid alarm clock had his time changed this weekend and has been finicky ever since. I checked my alarm before I went to sleep, like I always do. It was set for 7:30 so I would have plenty of time to get dressed and mentally prepared for talking to kids about popularity vs true friendship.

Somehow I always wake up before my alarm. This is nice because I look over at my clock, often with a mild sense of panic expecting to find that I have overslept (usually unfounded), and go back to sleep for 14 or 47 minutes. So this morning, when I woke up at 8:34, I assumed the same thing was happening. I blearily looked around the room, peeked my head over the covers and calmly checked the time, ready to plop my head back on my pillow and return to peaceful sleep.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I overslept. I overslept on middle school day. I made my professor wait in the parking lot of my dorm for who knows how long!

Quickly, I checked my phone to see if she had called me, expecting to see "7 missed calls- check log?"  But I didn't. There was nothing. I got on my email and found her phone number, called her, and spent the next few minutes on the phone with her pacing around my living room- just like they do in the movies. I didn't think that was something people actually did, but I did it this morning. And because she is a great person, she told me it wasn't a big deal and she had called the school and told them there was a miscommunication and that I was probably sick.

Well, I certainly feel sick now.

Anyway. What's done is done and there is nothing I can do now. Even though I still feel crummy about it.

In other news:

• my second meeting about the scholarship went much better. I was prepared, in control, confident, and ready for criticism and/or deeply probing questions I didn't know the answer to.
• I started watching Dexter. This is a problem.
• I am participating in an academic competition day for Psychology tomorrow. In Lander, SC. Which is 3ish hours away, which means I will be in front of the main psych building at 6 AM. I don't even want to think about having to set my alarm to a time that starts with 5. Unless its a nap alarm- but even then I would set it to right before 6 just so I could wake up to eat dinner.
• I chaperoned for the Jr High Rally trip on Saturday. Four total hours on a bus, 30 kids, and a 20 degree drop in temperature. But I did get a recommendation letter out of it. And was also mistaken for an eighth grader...
• I am AWESOME and I need to remember that.