Your Flight from Absurdity Is Delayed

Here I sit at the airport, my flight to Urban Home City delayed. I'm grateful because there was an accident on the interstate from Grad City to Nearest Urban City and we got rerouted onto a highway. But I'm also exhausted. What happened to all that manic energy I had yesterday?

So I met with Peppy Advisor. I have to admit, much as I look at her askance right now because she is my diss advisor and therefore The Enemy, she is a lovely person who I just enjoy talking with. But I simply MUST remember to not make commitments about little things like due dates when I feel so full of energy that I can conquer the world. I have to remember I may not always feel that way. Why can't I remember that there are those days when it takes so much effort just to do normal things -- and that they will come again? (I didn't think they'd come this soon. Waaaa. Yes, I do realize that there is probably some medical term for this like ultra rapid cycling. I stopped seeing the therapist who suggested I get tested for bi-polar. I like my mania and my denial very much, thank you. Besides, what's better for a dissertation crunch like mine than a bit of mania? But I think running late so I couldn't get coffee and a bagel is now taking its toll. Also, icky acid reflux from, perhaps, taking my morning pills without a chaser of food? Whine, whine, whine.)

Anyway, what I'm saying is that now that tiny speedbump of a writing project I've been working on is now scheduled, with due dates for those little dashed-off notes that they insist such projects be written with. Whole draft of Big D is due to PA between May 1 and May 7. WHAT??????????

Yes, you heard me. Chapters 3 and 4 are due in three weeks, then revisions on what she's looking at now, PLUS those chapters that ARE NOT YET COMPLETELY WRITTEN are due in, basically, a month. Where's the bar?

So last weekend and this week when I thought working 12-hour days was so I could have a nice relaxing weekend with The Fam and SO was totally wrong. I was working 12-hour days so I could graduate in August and go to Adventure U. Maybe this is why I'm grumpy and so was a bit pissy when SO wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise when I was trying to tell him that I would be delayed getting into Favorite Airport and instead he had to tell me about how it took him an hour to get from the garage into the terminal. Maybe I'm just a bitch. Maybe I'm just a totally normal dissertator who can't deal with all this shit.

I'm so grumpy I can't tell whether this is significant: I heard a little girl saying to her mother that she "left spiderman bag there, left spiderman bag there" and so her mother left the other toddler and the stroller with Child #3 with Dad and went back wherever "there" was. I looked at the father and the two children. He seemed happy enough -- clearly one of those dads who are into being with their kids. And I looked at the mother being dragged off and considered how every trip must be an event for this little family of five -- and I probably had in my head my Sweet Friend (one of my favorite people in the world) with two children who totally understands being totally crazy busy because she is crazy busy with her own kids -- and I thought not me. I just don't want my life to be that.

I know there are people who manage to have kids and also have a dynamic career. But I'm a tunnel vision person. I'm not sure I could balance it. Maybe that's the lack of caffeine talking. Maybe that's the blinded-with-work dissertator talking? Why think about such things now dammit? I just hate everything anyway. Hate-Filled Dissertating Friend totally pleased me yesterday because she was in fact incredibly hate-filled. Fairly oozing with it. Misanthropes unite!

I should probably check about getting on a plane soon. Considering the lunacy of The Fam, I can't decide whether I'm going to or coming from absurdity. Course I don't know if I'm coming or going anyway. I know one thing: I'm working. And that's all there is to know.