Anxiety Dreams

Its less than a week before I defend my proposal and attend orientation for teaching upward bound students. I'm already having anxiety dreams that are pretty obvious. I'm in a car with my boyfriend. He's in the passenger seat and I'm in the backseat. Nobody is in the driver's seat, but the car is going. I'm frantically trying to grab the wheel from the backseat to keep the car from careening off the road. But, my boyfriend won't help me drive the car; he's sitting there like a lump on a log. Then as we approach the bridge, we discover the road has caved in and there's no way to get to the other side. I somehow manage to stop the car and venture out alone. I climb down one ladder and up another to this unusual place where people are trying to get where they are going. I feel lost, but then I spot my research advisor and follow him. I feel immensely relieved and then I wake up. That dream is so obvious I'm not even going to bother describing the interpretation. Yeesh! I'm so ready for this dissertation phase to be over with and I've barely even started.

Oh well...

I'm in limbo. School is over, but my next teaching stint hasn't started yet. For awhile I was filling the time by being sick and vegging with my boyfriend. But, he got better and he's back at work while I'm still sick at home. I'm certain that there are many things I should be working on, but I can't seem to make myself start working on them. I used to occupy my spare time by reading news articles on the Internet. But, that has bored me. I'm just restless and discontented. I suppose I can blame it on being sick, but I think it may be because I'm tired of school. Or I'm just tired. Or I'm just waiting for this to be over because I'm starting to reach the end and I don't know what's coming next. Sigh....oh, well.

Pink Eye...Sigh

I've been sick for almost a week now. My boyfriend came over last Monday and brought germs with him. Neither of us new he was sick until he developed a fever later that evening. Sigh, it was too late for me..within a couple days, I was just as sick as he was. But, the strange thing was that his rapid strep test was positive for strep but mine was negative. He had an ear infection, but I developed pink eye.

Pink eye has got to be one of the most unpleasant common maladies you can experience. It usually takes about three days before symptoms show up, but your strep or cold or flu has begun to run its course. Just as soon as it seems the worst of it is over, you get hit with pink eye and it starts all over again. Both my eyes are infected now...sigh...when will it end?

I need to be well enough to go back to work and get school-related stuff done. Sigh...

Parting

A very good friend of mine, Kelly, has been staying with me for the last two weeks before she, her husband, and one-year-old child move to Kansas. I will greatly miss her and our frequent chats over coffee. But, I was so glad that she and her son could stay with me before they all moved so that I could spend more time with her before she left. I can defininetly say my house feels so empty now. Kelly has been such a stabilizing force in my life for the last two weeks. From her, I learned what it really meant to be selfless and to lay one's life aside for others. She became for me a model to emulate because she is such an incredible mother and wife. Each day when I got home, she had prepared a wonderful meal and she kept everything so clean. I never realized what a difference it made to have a tidy house and good food on the table. Kelly is such a good steward, teaching me through example how to maintain a budget and find the greatest deals on food. She is such a conscientious mother, too. Her child is so happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. She and her husband are teaching their child baby sign and infant potty training (which works!). But, they are also training their child appropriate behaviors with so much patience. What I found most amazing was that she wanted to leave all of my things the way they were in the house so that she could teach her child what was acceptable to touch and play with and what was not. If it were up to me, I would have baby-proofed the house so that I wouldn't have to deal with telling the child "No." But, then the child never gets the chance to learn to obey the adult.

I am really going to miss Kelly. Our brains were on the same wavelength and we enjoyed analyzing things to a pulp. Our conversations were lively, interesting, and illuminating. It was as if we sustained each other through conversing about life, concepts, ourselves, and the people in our lives. I wish Kelly great success as she steps onto the K-state campus to touch other peoples' lives the way she has touched mine. And I hope that she will be a lifetime friend.

Ego

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education couldn't have come at a better time.

I passed my comps defense

And it was not very pleasant at all. I didn't expect it to be pleasant anyways and I suppose it could have been A LOT worse, but I've had to fight back tears at work all afternoon since the comps presentation since this morning. My two major advisers congratulated me on passing and thought I did fine. But, I don't think so. All I can think of is that I could have done a lot better. There's no joy in passing because I feel like it is undeserved.