I began the week with several lovely ideas to entertain and amuse everyone (including myself, of course) in blog posts this week, but obviously that didn’t happen. I’m blaming the cold I’ve been fighting off, and the fact that I hurt my back and it’s still unreliable, which means I’ve been doing rather a lot of lying on the couch with a heating pad and not much of anything else, including paying bills and blogging.

It’s going to be tight, but I’m sticking with my goal of finishing my latest revisions so that I can submit the manuscript starting in the beginning of February. Just have to keep moving. Speaking of which, I should get to work.

No, Shiloh has not taken over the household (though we have been making jokes to that effect). She would want belly rubs all the time instead of just every hour, and I have a feeling she’d require turkey for dinner every day, with bacon. We can’t afford that.

I am ashamed to say that in the last two–okay, three–months, any semblance of a normal daily routine has pretty much gone the way of the buffalo. In the frenzy of the last few weeks, especially, I’ve felt more and more drained because of strange sleep schedules and the lack of any unifying element to my days. Those of you who have spoken with me know how scattered I’ve been.

So I’ve been thinking for a while that as soon as I could (read: immediately after residency), I would make some changes. As it happens, it lines up well with a transitional point in Matt’s schedule since his spring classes start next week, so we’re both straightening up together.

Under The New Regime (henceforth, TNR), I will wake up no later than 6:10, do my 20 minutes of WiiFit exercise, eat, and do morning devotions by 7am. I will, five days of the week, write a minimum of 500 words–but I will aim for 1,000 a day. If I don’t hit the minimum, I’m not allowed to join our friends for lunch on Sundays after church. I’ll continue to read–at least one book a week. Matt and I will take the dog for a walk every evening that we’re both home, and we’ll sit down together at the dinner table and eat at least three meals together each week. I’ll be in bed, lights out (no reading!) by 10:30 if at all possible.

That’s deliberate time every week spent taking care of myself, my faith, my marriage, and my writing. Matt’s version is slightly different, except on the points that involve both of us, and we’ve agreed to hold each other accountable to our goals instead of just turning a blind eye.

The New Regime.

So far, things are looking very good. Day One of TNR is a wild success.

I finished residency, graduated without problems (no slipping and falling onstage for me!), had a lovely dinner with family, and was terribly glad to get to sleep Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, because of a freak traffic jam (no apparent cause for the holdup OR the return to normal driving speeds), we were an hour late getting to the airport. Actually, once we realized we were going to be late we called the airline and sorted things out so that we didn’t even go to the airport at all. They were going to make us pay $400 apiece, but since we’re such fabulous people (by which I mean we were willing to stay in Pittsburgh another night and there was a weather advisory for the airport) they switched us to a crazy early morning flight for free.

So we camped out in a hotel near the airport for the day, which was lovely. Naps were had by all. Television was watched, books were read, and pizza was eaten.

This morning, we almost didn’t get a ride on the airport shuttle because nobody told us yesterday that we had to reserve a spot. Silly hotel people. We asked specifically about the hours the shuttle runs, so they knew we needed to know. But it wasn’t too big a deal, and everything went well until we got onto the plane, where they hadn’t turned on the heat in the cabin yet. Freakin’ frigid. And then some maintenance holdup made us an hour late taking off. Our layover in Minneapolis was schedule to be just about an hour. . . we walked off the plane there four minutes before our connecting flight was supposed to leave the gate.

There was sprinting. There was asking for directions (stupid signs that direct you to trains that are OUT OF ORDER). There was more sprinting. There was asthmatic wheezing. There were missed opportunities to go to the bathroom. But there was also plane-catching.

And then, once the doors were closed and the plane backed away from the gate, we sat out on the tarmac. For another hour. We started to worry that we would make our friend, who was coming to the airport and we had no way of contacting, late for his afternoon class. As it turned out, we had time to hit up the McDonalds drive-thru and got him to class five minutes early, but it was a close thing. Bad traffic would have sunk us.

When we left Pittsburgh this morning, it was about 3 degrees (Fahrenheit). In Minneapolis? Negative 20. BRRRR. I wish they heated the jetways. And in Denver? Almost 60. *blissful sigh* I was made for mild winters. Not for non-winters. Mild ones.

Anyway, we’re back home, we have the dog, I bought some books with some of my Barnes and Noble gift cards, and we restocked the most essential foods. Now, Matt’s making dinner and we’re going to watch a movie and go to bed and, tomorrow, start The New Regime. More on that tomorrow.

Yay! I’m a Master!

I have, as usual, completely failed in my goal to take more pictures at this residency. 

But I presented my thesis Saturday night and did my teaching module this morning, and both went very well.  Tonight my two critique partners defend their theses (Matt has already done his; Sherry still to come) and then we’ll all have two more modules, one more workshop session, and the graduation ceremony.  Yay! 

I need to burn my thesis onto a cd and turn it in to the library, and at some point I need to swing by the campus bookstore and pick up my graduation robe, but that’s about all. 

My brain has been set to “coast”, at least until the end of this week, when I’ll start up on revisions again. 

Yes, still moderately panicked, but I got three hours of sleep and now it’s off to the airport. I’ll try to update again, at least a little bit, before Wednesday, but we all know I’m bad at blogging during residency.

Time to go!

(p.s. I sound so cheery because if I wasn’t artificially cheerful, I would immediately fall back asleep, and then I would miss my plane, and it would all go downhill from there. whee!)

I have officially hit the panic threshold.

No time for details.

There have been too many things happening for me to properly focus on the fact that I leave in the middle of the night between Thursday and Friday for my last residency. Now, with nothing but three days at my day job desk between me and that flight, I find myself rather overwhelmed with things that need to be done. Not that I didn’t expect this. Because I did. It’s just that then, I had a very fuzzy idea of what I’d be behind in doing, while now I know in exact, excruciating detail how very much I have to get done in the next 67 hours.

And it’s a lot.

I mean, it’s not so much that I can’t get it done. I found a letter from a friend the other day that I got ten years ago, and she mentions that I was always ragging on her for getting things done way in advance, and then pulling all-nighters to finish a paper or a project, and getting grades just as good as hers in the end. It’s pretty clear in the letter that it was a long-standing habit even then. This is the way I operate. God only knows how or why, but it seems to work for me.

So now, since writing a blog entry is (surprisingly enough) not helping me read my workshop critique pieces a second time or flesh out my lesson plan or time how long it will take to read the pages I’ve dog-eared for potential thesis reading sections, I think the responsible thing would be to stop typing now.

Oh, but I can’t go without saying how very happy I was when Matt told me that when he was reading my manuscript, he kept forgetting that I had written it, that it wasn’t a “real” book, just a manuscript. I don’t let him read unfinished work (by which I mean incomplete story arcs, since I don’t quite consider this manuscript “finished”), because he usually just says “it’s good, where’s the rest?” which is really frustrating when I’m still writing the rest. But he’s really good with a finished manuscript. He pointed out a few things I hadn’t noticed, and had some ideas to help with places where I haven’t fully fleshed out a solution to a problem with the text. And he confirmed a few of my gut feelings. It’s always nice to know my gut feelings are on track.

So yeah. Need to work now. Ciao.

My cousin’s wedding today was beautiful. Really lovely. We had a great time. The family also helped a lot with the party afterward, which means we’re all pretty darn tired, too, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

I’m working on packing my bag again, except that this time I don’t have the wedding gift in it, so I think I might have to get creative about fluffing things up. Not that that’s bad, really, just a little inconvenient.

And I’m really tired.

But I was fiddling around online this evening and, to make a very long story short, I have reclaimed eawhitt.com! It now leads here! Woohoo! I have won the battle!

So I’m excited about that. I’m going to pack my bag up and go to bed, despite the fact that it’s way early. I’m really tired. Really really.

And my nephew is CUTE.

So I’m in Houston; no problems with my flight. I was moderately concerned as we took off, which was very odd, since normally I’m very comfortable and happy when flying. But a few weeks ago, a plane crashed on takeoff at the Denver airport, and though I didn’t think of it until the moments right before liftoff, I breathed a sigh of relief when we were safely in the air.

The guy next to me tried to flirt with me, but didn’t do a very good job. I wasn’t rude or anything, he just never did anything other than make comments he thought were witty and ask why I was flying to Houston. Honest. Then, in his last real effort, he told me that if he fell asleep and started snoring, I could just elbow him and wake him up. That was just under halfway through the trip, as drinks were passed out, and since he’d already been asleep and showed absolutely no tendency toward snoring, I just thanked him and refrained from further comment.

Then he noticed my wedding and engagement rings (it’s not like I was hiding them, and he was even sitting on my left), and he said, “Oh, it looks like you’re already married.”

“Yep, I am.”

Silence.

He slept most of the rest of the flight. His sister was sitting on my other side, and I think she was mildly amused. When it comes down to it, I was a little more than mildly amused, but I managed not to show it.

So now I’m waiting at the gate where the rest of my immediately family will allegedly appear in four hours. And I have four hours to fritter away. There are no out-of-the-way seats that also have a power outlet nearby, so I’m camped out in the middle of everything with my feet propped on my new carry-on suitcase, and I’m starting to lose circulation in my legs. I have two books with me, but neither seems terribly, immediately appealing right now. But I could read them and maintain feeling in my legs. It’s possible that they don’t seem appealing because I’ve seen copies of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s new release, Glitter Baby, all over the place in the airport stores, and I’d really like to read it. So tempting to just go ahead and buy a copy. Luckily for my wallet, it’s a fair hike back to any of the booksellers’ from the gate area here. On the other hand, I do have four hours to fritter away.

Decisions, decisions.

Oh, I uploaded the final update of my 2008 reading list – follow the links at the top o’ the page to find the list of 167 books I finished this year.

Okay, putting away the laptop now to save my circulation. Toodles!

Happy New Year, everyone. I’m starting 2009 before dawn, after less than 4 hours of sleep. I’ll spend at least 9 hours in airports and on airplanes today, but I get to see my family at the end of it (including sections of family that I don’t get to see very often), so I’m very happy. Happy in a sleep-deprived, anticipating the joys of the Denver and Houston airports and knowing I won’t catch up on sleep for at least three weeks happy. You know. Exhausted happy.

At any rate, I might be scarce between now and Sunday*, as my cousin is getting married and, as I mentioned, I’ll be visiting with extended family.

So.

Kick 2009 off right, and I’ll see you in a few.  

*Please note that I might post a lot today, since I’ll be sitting around in airports for a lot of it. So either I’ll be here a lot or I won’t be here at all. 50/50 chance. Just call me Two-Face.