“One Bite at a Time”

You know that stupid question, “How do you eat an elephant?” (The title is the answer, in case you’ve never heard it.) I keep reminding myself of that. That I don’t have to do anything completely RIGHT NOW. Basically I have two weeks to do a bunch of stuff that I have no time to do. So many projects with the same due date. Statistics is the kicker because it could take hours and hours and hours longer than it should if I have trouble with the math.

But there’s hope! I’ve made a detailed schedule for the days I’ll be here (which include till Thursday this week, Wednesday and Thursday of next week, and Tuesday and Wednesday before the paper is due at midnight). And I finished one paper today that I thought would take longer. I also finished a statistics homework yesterday that took the shortest of all the homeworks so far. (By the way, since blogging is reinforcement for me, I’ve scheduled little blogging breaks – like a normal person would schedule tv breaks. Plus I can’t do much right now because I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of teachers about questions.)

Yesterday I helped put on a parents’ night out at our clinic. I don’t enjoy doing those, except then I see how grateful the parents are. Mothers of children with autism have levels of PTSD similar to that of combat veterans. If that doesn’t make you want to watch their kids for three hours so they can take a nap in the car (we’ve had parents do that), I don’t know what will.

The timing wasn’t great, but I’d committed. Sarah was planning to help out (she does a ton of volunteer work and came to our last one) but she got delayed. We had plans to go to a late movie afterward. She wanted to see “I Can Only Imagine,” and even though I hadn’t a clue what it was, I figured since I’d be too exhausted for school work afterward anyway (example of why: one kid had pushed in the fire alarm and was about to pull down when I grabbed her little arm away), I might as well do that. So she ended up coming to get my key and going to take Dempster for a walk, since otherwise he’d be crated for 8 hours (which has only happened once in his life). When I got there, she had cleaned my kitchen! It wasn’t horribly dirty. I stay on top of dishes and stuff. But she did the few that were in the sink and wiped down counters and other awesome stuff I’d needed to do all week. What an unexpected blessing in an extremely busy time.

We went to get food and then to the movie, which turned out not to be showing. Ironically, at another theatre I had happened to call because it wouldn’t let me buy tickets online, and that one had been a mistaken listing too. So we went to see “A Quiet Place” instead. I didn’t know anything about it, but Sarah said it was scary. She answered “yes” to my question if, “If I call you in the middle of the night will you comfort me?” I hadn’t really wanted to see the other one anyway. Also, this one was in a recliner theatre, so I considered it a win-win. I figured a moving with “quiet” in the title might be good for an introvert, and if it was boring I could sleep. It turned out to be the most suspenseful movie I think I’ve ever seen. Not scary, but a constant edge-of-your-recliner kinda thing. And it had Jim from The Office so you know. I really liked it actually.

Dempster was not amused that I stayed out past midnight for the first time in his life. I came home, let him out of his crate, and he started whimpering to get in my room. I let him in but he kept whimpering and eventually barking until I went in to see what he wanted. Then he walked behind me and escorted (not quite herded) me to bed, where he quickly joined me and happily lay on my pillow for a while.

This morning I was so tempted to skip meeting. Except it was the only time I’ve been in town that meeting hasn’t been canceled in months. So not only did I go, I watched the Chapel’s Sunday school online before.

I did take some stress off myself by wearing jeans and a sweatshirt (it was summer last week but winter this weekend). I’m glad I went. I’m also going to the night meeting later. I wasn’t planning to, but I know I will need a break after such a hard weekend. Plus, my back is hurting from running so I don’t plan to run today. So Dempster will get his exercise there, running around with Stuart and Sarah’s dogs, who they bring with them. I put him in the bathroom for a nap earlier because he was being so puppy-ish. He will enjoy the visit.

I’m so thankful for leftover pizza from the parents’ night out, and that I planned ahead and made a bunch of dog food last weekend. I can add veggies to the pizza, and have at least 4 meals that I don’t have to think about the next couple of days.

Asking for help is hard sometimes. But I emailed my professor and told her I’m feeling overwhelmed with the final project. I asked if she had an example paper I can look at. It never hurts to ask. I may have to ask my advisor if I can decline a couple of “opportunities” she’s given me for helping with research. One of them has a deadline of exactly the same day my paper is due. And on top of that I’ve got an article to write for a magazine and it needs to be done about the same time. On top of all this, I was out of underwear so I had to do laundry. Laundry! Ugh! Oh the humanity.

Okay, time to check my email and see if any professors have answered questions. And then I’m going to start mathing. One bite at a time.