Today sort of feels like the last day of freedom. Tomorrow I’ve got a day-long TA orientation, followed Tuesday by a day of more orientation, then a day off, and then my first day of class! Egad! So I woke up this morning in a bit of a panic. Sometimes I just burst awake in the wee hours, really feeling like I need more sleep, but completely unable to justify staying in bed any longer. So instead I snuck off to the study and spent a few hours getting some pretty non-essential computer work done before Lewis got up and very sweetly made us breakfast.
I was a bit afraid to crash like yesterday, so instead I jumped right in to organizing the garage. I’ve been wanting to set up a work area for myself out of the old kitchen prep table, and yesterday we got the last component – a bar stool so I can sit at my new “desk”. Anyway, it was just about the last thing on my list to do before school starts, and today was finally the day for it. I must say, after Lewis got his side together and we got all the various remaining furniture items assembled and put away the rest of the clutter.. it looks way better in there than I anticipated! I’m really excited to have an excuse to hang out in there. As an added bonus, I finally learned how to put together and use our socket wrench! I’m never going anywhere without that thing again. I should build some kind of holster. Anyway, here’s our final product pictures of Lewis’ space and my space:
Laur side, with table and storage!
Lewis side, complete with desk and chair!
Still feeling a bit like I was being hounded by the Ghost of School Work Future, I tidied most of the rest of the house. There are a few straggling boxes to be put away in the guest room, and our study seems to be in a perpetual state of near-disaster, but otherwise I got everything squared away. When I think about these sort of chores I can just feel all my muscles tense up, but I need to remind myself that school is only so many hours in a day, and if Lewis and I could manage to have a fairly tidy and satisfying existence while both working 40 hours a week, graduate school is not going to destroy everything I love about life.
Now I just have to master this getting-up-before-8 thing again. In a perfect world, I’d even get up so early I had time to go to the gym before class… phew. Baby steps. I only have to be on campus at 8:50 tomorrow. The other thing I need to figure out is how not to carry stress in my teeth. When I woke up this morning I felt like I needed a crowbar to unhinge my jaw, and at lunch today my teeth were so sensitive I could barely eat. Everything was fine by dinner, which is great, but I definitely need to figure out some kind of strategy. Arg.