breather

I'm so thankful for this holiday.

I was so far behind in my grad school work that I despaired of ever catching up.   I started clearing the deck over the weekend when I put together my reference list, but it wasn't until last night when I hammered out my updates to my annotated bibliography that I finally felt "unstuck."

Sometimes, there's work to be done, but for whatever reason, I get hung up and can't do it.  This past month and a half, there have been a lot of reasons, some to do with my brain just giving up, some with the kids needing my time, some to do with absolutely necessary teaching work coming first.  I did despair from time to time that I wouldn't come unstuck in time to actually do the work, and then what?

But today, with the luxury of a day off, I completed two smaller assignments and one rather substantial one, a big chunk of my final paper.

It helped that I was able to work in pieces.  I brought my laptop with me to the kids' orthodontist appointment, and I even worked while we waited for our table for brunch at Snooze.  Then when we got home I put the beef stew on... and got back to work.

It really helped the writing that I had printed my articles and highlighted my quotes.  The thing that surprised me was how a narrative suggested itself more or less organically from the articles themselves.  I really like it, it felt easy to write. It makes sense to me, there's a progression to it.  I hope my professor agrees!

I have no expectations as to when she'll be able to grade all of these assignments of mine.  When you turn in stuff late, you're at the mercy of the instructor, so she'll get to it when she gets to it.  I can be patient.

In spite of having that weight lifted, I'm still struggling with my acid reflux, which I suspect is caused by a return of the mild gastroparesis I had several years ago.  I did a blog crawl and found my old posts and was surprised to read that treating my cervical radiculitis cleared it up -- specifically when I was taking a therapeutic dose of ibuprofen, but also doing my neck physical therapy.  I think it is not a coincidence that my stomach started acting up after about two weeks (maybe three) of slacking on my exercises, as in, not doing them at all.  My exercise set is not very long but it's enough to keep me limber, so I'm back to trying to be consistent with that.  And I'm back to doing my neck exercises at least twice a day, in case there's nerve impingement that's causing the problem.

We'll see how it goes.  I'll continue eating smaller meals and abstaining from alcohol until I'm back to 100%.  I hope I can fix this myself.