a funny thing happened on the way to now
Between Friday and this afternoon, I got a lot of work done. All of it, in fact. Every damn bit of it. I am now
on schedule with regards to work, writing and classes. I even took the time to do some silly things like I went to donate blood (but had low iron and had to reschedule), I cleaned the fishtank, checked out the new Wal-Mart, and horror of horrors,
I read a book. A whole book! Not even for school!
But let's back up. Not one bit of this euphoric feeling would be possible if it weren't for my boss leaving me alone on Friday...I don't think it was purposeful (I think maybe we just didn't have anything specific to do) but if it was (and you're reading this), I am grateful. So I fixed up a few chapters for the
PMA AiO 2e book, turned in one of my two remaining lessons for the class I'm developing, and asked my boss what the plan was for the weekend (the typical plan for the weekend consists of having a bunch of stuff to get done before Monday's deluge). I was shocked to discover there was no plan. No plan? Could it be....I could do my own stuff? I had high hopes, then I took a nap.
The thing is, I don't really sleep. I have a bedroom with a bed in it, but I'm never in there. I think that bed's been slept on maybe 10 times since I bought it three or four years ago. I sleep on the couch. It's a nice, cushy couch. But I don't really sleep. I doze, often with the TV on, then I just get up and start my day at 2am or 4am or whenever I'm bored enough with dozing. My mom says I wasn't always like this, she says she used to never be able to wake me up in the morning. I don't remember that, I just remember college and life after, and just not sleeping. You can get a lot done when the rest of the world is still sleeping.
Anyway, I didn't do a lot of dozing these last few days. I just worked...and worked and worked and worked. It was very strange, because I didn't even have the TV on, or even music. Just the fishtank (it's sort of like a waterfall sound) and the artificial pond, the ducks, and a really annoying, territorial squirrel who likes to sit the tree outside my door and chitter his little heart out. I had a plan: Saturday = schoolwork, Sunday = writing work.
Saturday was also blood donation day, but my iron was two-tenths below the cutoff so I had to reschedule for next Saturday. So I came home, and sat down with my very exciting textbook for my Business Systems and Policy class, read my chapter and wrote my reading notes. Then I sat down with my Organizational Change and Design textbook, read my chapter and wrote my reading notes. I was on a roll! Next on the list was Philosophy of Science, which consisted of reading a few essays, some stuff in the text, and then participating in discussion via WebCT. I will write a separate post about this, because the utilization of WebCT is fascinating. But moving on...
I felt that I deserved a reward for all this work, so I started to read
Middlesex (plus, it was due back to the library in two days and there were 12 people on the waiting list, so I
had to read it or give it back and get on the waiting list again). I read the first 136 pages and I did
not want to put it down. Set the backstory in Italy, make the siblings first cousins, and you'd have my great-grandparents. Two sets of them in fact (that's a story for another time). So, now I was obsessed with finishing the book, but I still had Sunday's work to do.
I made myself a deal: finish a chapter, read 50 pages. I had several chapters to edit, so this worked out. It also worked well with my short attention span. So, on Sunday I finished the edits that were due, and half of my final lesson. It was getting late, nothing was on TV, but I needed to clear my mind. So I finished the book. Boy howdy, was that ever a good book. I honestly don't remember a time that I laughed
out loud in a piece of fiction. Not only did I laugh out loud several times while reading it, I cried
real tears in several places as well. What can I say, I'm an emotional girl.
Anyway, with that out of my system, I went back to my writing. I finished my final lesson and submitted it for testing and editing. I turned in all the chapters that were due. I AR'd the first batch that had come back to me. My schoolwork is done for M/T/W...and I only have eight more chapters to update and edit, for Wednesday. Oh yeah, I have thirteen chapters of
Bleak House to read for Thu night, but even
that isn't dulling the high right now.
