Hmm

I "finished" my manuscript. I thought I would feel happier about it. There is this book and I've been working on it for every waking and unwaking moment for the past three years and now I have printed it and stuffed it into a binder. There it is. On my desk. The fruit of my labors.

So why does it feel sad? Not even relief. Now I just have more panic about it than ever before. What if my committee doesn't sign off on it? What if I don't graduate? Worse, what happens when I do and I have to sit in my office all day and be a writer for a living??? What if my brain dries up and I run out of things to say?

I have decided the best solution to this feeling is to make some mac n cheese, eat chocolate, and watch South Park until my brain disengages from the state it is in. I will emerge when I can form a coherent thought.

Strugglin

I forgot that Barack Obama was in Pittsburgh this morning speaking at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. I needed to go into campus to scan some images for my manuscript and decided at the last minute that I was too good for the 71A. Screw nature, I thought. I found four quarters for the parking meter and hopped in the Nissan.

My plan was perfect: I would slip into the meter lot next to University Place, where there is usually one space because the meters there are one quarter for fifteen minutes. I only needed an hour max to use the scanner and go to the bank. It would all be beautiful and painless and I'd be back home hard at work before lunch.

But of course my plans were foiled. The street teemed with reporters and security. Flashing police lights were EVERYWHERE and the Oakland streets had a snarl unlike any I'd ever seen, including when the Rolling Stones concert was on campus. I just banged my head against the steering wheel and put the car in neutral as people honked and nothing moved.

I get so flustered about parallel parking, but all the pay lots were full with angry attendants guarding the entryways. Once the cars finally moved, I tried to find a space on the other side of Bates, but there was just nothing. Obama really drew a crowd, I guess. The only vehicles that moved freely were the darn buses I scorned. I was just about to give up hope, drive home, and get in a bus to go back to Oakland, when I spotted a group of my students. They were piling into an SUV, getting ready to leave for a football meeting. God was smiling at me! They were leaving a spot! An end spot!

I rolled down my window and waved at them. They said, "Hey Miss Katy, you want this spot?"

"Yes! Very badly!" And they vacated it for me. I wanted to hug each of them repeatedly, but I needed to move quickly and park the car. It was a 1-hour meter that took only two quarters. I was so filled with joy, I actually gave the two spare quarters to a pan handler.

I got my work done as planned. But instead of heading home to keep working, I went to Trader Joes to buy a chocolate bar. I spent $104 dollars, because once I bought the chocolate bar I couldn't stop buying delicious things like apple rings and corn salsa. I finally got home around three, angry that so much of my day had slipped away without permission.

But you know what? That chain of events coupled with the 72% dark Swiss chocolate really fueled my fire to keep writing. I can see the end. Everything is going to be ok! I feel it.

Schedule Changes

Corey has been on a new regimen. Never in our relationship has he been on a regimen at all, so to even have one is a new thing. This regimen involves discipline, homework, and lots of bike riding. A typical day looks like this: he gets up by 7 at the latest. He does homework a bit, reads the New York Times, and is out the door by 8:30 (approximately when I wake up). Many days he rides his bike to and from work, which means he gets up at 6 to leave around 730.

He works all day, then either goes to class or comes right home to do homework. Tired, full of knowledge, he goes to bed around 930 (approximately when I get home from work/class). We haven't swept our hardwood floors, dusted, mopped, or otherwise taken care of our home since February. The laundry piles spew down the stairs and we are running out of Ziploc bags to pack lunches. I'll tell him to stop and get some Friday night when I see him next.

I have mentioned before how lonely and difficult it is to not see my husband awake. Some evenings I stare at him while he sleeps until he starts in with the sleep talking. Then I just roll over and repeat: This all ends in five weeks. How is it that I feel so separated from the man who uprooted his life and moved out here with me? The man who left behind New York City bagels in exchange for Tram's Kitchen? What is he thinking about while he dreams as I do homework?

My distance from him is really the hardest part of graduate school, and these last few months, when Corey has been in a groove, have been the hardest of all. What happened to the man who stayed up until 5am the night before a project? Who is this person with study skills who does his homework gradually throughout the week? I don't know if I like this new person, because I haven't gotten to spend any time with him.

I don't understand how couples operate in long distance relationships. I also don't understand why people go back and do more graduate school after they finish the first time around. When I got home tonight at 11, he had been in bed for a long time. This time he forgot to leave the porch light on for me and the door was locked, too. I had to fumble my way indoors in the dark.

Hard Times

I don't think it's possible to understand how difficult graduate school is unless you are in or have been in graduate school. I feel so completely overwhelmed that I have learned to go outside my own body and watch with fascination as it sits and worries about things.

I mean, in three years, I have written a book. A book! While working and taking classes full time. That is not an easy thing to do.

Now that the book is due on Tuesday, I am trying to "finish" it. This has been the singular most excruciating and rewarding task of my life. When I was seven, I wrote a two-page book beginning ,"I have led such a terrible life. My little sister won't eat enyfing..." Now, twenty years later, I have written a much longer book that my mother will probably also stuff in a Rubbermaid container under her bed.

It feels very strange to say I wanted something my entire life and then to do it. I am at this challenging cross-roads where I know I have six weeks of torture left, but I also see the glowing diploma at the end and then, beyond that, I have this scary space where I have to go about the business of doing what I wanted. I have to stop dreaming of being a writer and actually deal with being one.

I'm not sure it will get easier. Now I have to actually take my book and send it to people called "agents" who will ultimately control whether my book remains a pile of computer paper or gets a bar code and an ISBN.

Peas Out

The package of my pea seeds says to plant them as soon as the soil can be worked. I took that to mean today. It was so therapeutic to go outside and dig around in the dirt. I decided to plant the climbing peas in the front of the house where we have a trellis on the porch. I can just picture the pea vines climbing the red lattice!

To get ready, I had to hoe out the flower bed and scrape out the old crap the former owners had planted there. I got beside myself because I saw tulips growing under the smootz from last year. Tulips! Almost ready to bloom! I didn't even have to do anything, which was the best part.

After I planted the peas, I went out back and did the same with the spinach because the package had the same instructions. A few weeks from now, I hope I have some hearty, cold weather vegetables. I could just have a big mess...but it felt amazing to give it a whirl and that was exactly what I needed this afternoon: Hope of life.