Off day...

As in "day off". Whew! I just love the sound of that.

I woke up early with a migraine. I think that all the excess emotion last night surrounding having finally finished my semester set off some sort of weird chemical reaction in my brain that churned around and eventually came out pain.

As a side topic, Michael said to me about a month ago, "I'm glad I'm not the type to get headaches."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I'm glad I don't get headaches," he clarified.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I mean I'm glad I don't get headaches."

I've been with this boy nearly a decade. At that moment, I realized that I could not remember a single instance of him complaining of, or even mentioning in an off-handed sort of way, ever having a headache. In all honesty, the concept of 'never getting headaches' is so foreign to me that it had never occurred to me that people existed who didn't get headaches. And so, I stared at him, blinking, and allowed seconds to pass while I contemplated this new idea.

"You don't get headaches?" I said.

Here, even still, I was thinking the phrase "not that often" would be included in his response. I thought I was stating the extreme and that he would laugh and concede a more reasonable line.

"Well," he said, "I think I might have had one or two, like while I was sick or something."

He thinks he might have had a headache sometime while he was sick. Or something. He thinks. What?! How is this possible? We clarified this many times. Michael doesn't get headaches. In reality, he doesn't get headaches. Lucky bastard.

Anyway, I got up early today, took some naproxin, went back to bed. Got up a little bit later, took some more naproxin, and grumbled about my headache. But you know, even with a budding migraine, I still couldn't help but be giddy with the idea that this was the first of many days to come in which I am not in the Fall 2008 semester. So happy.

Michael made me grits. It turned out that this is a miracle cure. That, plus naproxin.

Now, deadening migraine pain (for those of you that don't get them) opens you up to some peculiar sensations. Because while the pain itself dulls, all the migrainey things that go along with the pain remain. Light sensitivity. Sound sensitivity. Well, heightened sensitivity in general. Intermittent nausea. Lightning flashes inside my eyelids. The feeling that someone put a little extra stuff inside certain parts of my head and there's just not enough room to accommodate. Fun stuff like that. It's actually kind of interesting to experience all that but without all the pain. It's certainly way better than when there is pain involved.

Today, being my first day of freedom from the hectic craziness that was the Fall 2008 semester, was going to be a good day. And it was. I took two very long walks. During the first, I went to the public library and checked out three novels that guarantee fun without all that tedious "thinking" business. It was morning still and acting out some pre-storm weather in which a pleasantly cool wind flows about your highly sensitized skin, and rainclouds have gathered but it's still too bright for your light sensitive eyes for you to take off your sunglasses. Really, it felt awesome. I felt... free.

Later in the afternoon, I took a long, slightly less well-timed walk to a guitar shop about a mile and half? two miles? from my place. In the rain. Storm hit about halfway there. I watched it coming up the street, heading right for me. I got soaked through, even with my umbrella, and even catching a bit of shelter beside a tree when the rains really came down. I also got my guitar strings.

Walking in rain is fun stuff. It is not, however, as fun as it was when I was three. Earlier, while I was home, a downpour erupted and so Michael and I went to watch from the front door. The kids in the neighboring building shrieked and ran off the street to some shelter. But they quickly grew bored of the shelter and ran back into the street to splash around in the huge puddles that were forming, dancing around and shrieking and jumping up and down and kicking water.

"Man," I said, "Puddles were so much fun!"

"Yeah, I know," said Michael. "They were awesome."

Those kids knew how to have a day off. But so did I. I've got a newly strung guitar. I've got a book halfway finished. I've got two long walks under my belt--the first and second long walk I've taken in I don't know how long. Maybe tomorrow, if the weather's not entirely crappy I'll go down to the beach and reacquaint myself with the ocean. Maybe tomorrow, even if the weather's crappy, I'll go down to the beach anyway. Ooh. And maybe I can find someone to have a beer with me.

Yeah, I definitely like this part.

I have never...

I have never before cried with relief when I finished a semester. Just now, not ten minutes ago, I finished my Statistics final. Earlier today I finished my Qualitative paper. Earlier this week, I successfully proposed my thesis. Ten minutes ago, I flipped off my stats book and exam, declaring with great joy various anatomically impossible (seeing as how they have no anatomy) things they could go do with themselves and each other. And then I laughed. And then I cried.

I made it. I FUCKING MADE IT!!!

This semester has actually been a really great semester in a whole lot of ways. I loved my Qualitative Methods class. I learned so much. I got to practice things I've been dying to learn how to do. And despite how much I now hate statistics, I did learn a lot in that class as well. I learned to hate statistics in that class. I used to enjoy it. But I learned other, more useful things too.

I proposed, was accepted, and presented at my very first professional conference. I got partially funded to go to the mainland to do this. I got to visit my family, meet my nephew, speak at a high school, and then present at a conference. I started a new job that I love. It's a busy job a lot of times but I get to do cool stuff, and this job, over the next two and a half years, will train me in every step of culturally responsive school intervention. That may not mean anything to you, but I'm still thrilled about it. I had an opportunity to go to Thailand fall into my lap. I got to attend a workshop of smart people sitting around trying to figure out how to solve the roadside air pollution problem. I got a bonus trek into Japan. I made new friends. I wrote 4/5ths of a nano novel. I got my thesis proposal together. I got my thesis committee together. I got my thesis committee to approve my thesis proposal. I did oogabs of IRB paperwork stuffs, and got my IRB proposal in as well (coming soon: how that went). This has been a great semester.

But that's a whole hell of a lot of stuff to cram into four months. I feel triumphant. I feel relieved. I feel beat. Absolutely beat. But damn it, I made it. Four days early, I made it. Oh man. I think I'm going to cry again.

The Halfway Point

I am halfway through a two-week-long period of massive insanity. Two weeks. That's nothin'. I've been telling myself this several times a day for the last week. And as I x my way through my To Do List From Hell, I've been feeling more and more confident of my ability to do even this, for only two weeks. I will stand triumphant over these weeks. They will be spent, strewn across a half-month of my past. I will conquer.

This next week was looking pretty good yesterday, because I was focused on a to-do list that included a paper and a thesis proposal. Huge friggin' things, but heck, they're only two things. I can do two things in a week. I was, of course, ignoring my stats exam. Because I wanted to ignore my stats exam. I'm not going to start on it until Wednesday, so I figured I need not worry about it until then. Best to focus on the paper and the proposal.

The paper is near done. First draft, check. Now comes the nail-biting period of review by my interviewee. God, I hope I got it right.

So that leaves thesis proposal. And oh yeah, the stats exam I'll be getting tomorrow. Gah! The fear comes. Sure, those are only two things, but they're two huge friggin' things!

Nonetheless, I shall conquer. I shall make proclamations that make me sound like a violent emperor even though I'm a pacifist socialist. I shall... whatever, take the rest of the night off. I'm beat.

So, seen any good movies lately?