Emma

Well, my Uni year is apparently in full swing but I have missed about half of it.  My usually healthy wee man has had a bad time of it so there's been a lot of time home from centre this year.  Two weeks consecutively he managed to get vomiting bugs, then had one week of good health, and now he is in his second week of chickenpox!

I'm getting quite stressed, I have assignments that need to be done, but I have to work on them AT uni, as they use software only available there.  (Oracle stuff).  I have an extension on one, over the weekend, but I'm not sure that's enough, and then this Wed we get a group assignment.  If Dev is still off I can't do it at all. I will email the lecturer if that happens, but it's still piling up. :/  I'm trying to get it into perspective, if I do badly this semester it's not the end of the world!

Today is the last day I can pull out of my papers and get a full refund.  As tempting as it is right now, I'm not going to.  I've fought too hard to even go to Uni this year.  And extricating myself financially from my student loan etc would be too difficult now.  (I've already spent my course related costs - finally got some glasses that are the right prescription and my textbooks).  Devon starts school in month, as well, and I would have liked to take some time to get him a school visit or two before the holidays arrive and it's too late!  (His birthday is the day before term 2 begins).

If I had known all this was going to happen I probably wouldn't have returned to Uni this semester after all.  :/

(Stolen from dragontdc)

IF YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I want to know 36 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine...You're on my list, so I want to know you better!

BE HONEST! COPY FROM HERE, THEN SEND DIRECTLY TO ME IN A COMMENT, THEN REPOST THE EMPTY QUESTIONS.

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?

2) What was your dream growing up?

3) What talent do you wish you had?

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?

5) Favorite vegetable?

6) What was the last book you read?

7) What zodiac sign are you?

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.

9) Worst Habit?

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?

11) What is your favorite sport?

12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.

16) Do you have any pets?

17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?

18) What was your first impression of me?

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?

22) What color eyes do you have?

23) Ever been arrested?

24) Bottle or can soda?

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?

26) THERE IS NO 26. WHO STOLE MY 26? OUTRAGE!

27) What's your favorite place to hang at?

28) Do you believe in ghosts?

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

30) Do you swear a lot?

31) Biggest pet peeve?

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?

35) Do you believe in God?

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

I had a bit of a panic today when I realised that my car's Warrant of Fitness and Registration was due in a few days! Eep! So I actually took a step towards doing something about the terrible state of my car! I took it down to the tyre shop, got the puncture fixed in the usual tyre and swapped it back from the spare that was on, because I was worried the spare might not pass the WOF. I also made an appointment to take it in on Monday - it will also need the brakes fixed and probably a tune up since I've never had one. I shudder to think how much all of that is going to cost. I also bought some car wash liquid that said it even gets tree sap off (the top of the car is covered in it from when I had it parked up in the old house). I'm going to have to wait a while to afford to fix the rusty dent in the front where I turned too sharply into a pole in a parking building. :( But it's a start. I hope the washing stuff works, otherwise I'll have to cut and polish.

We also visited Devon's great-Nana (Matt's nana) this morning, Devon had a lovely time and enjoyed being treated to biscuits, chocolate and ice cream.

I'm rather stressed about money at the moment. :/ I will explain why later, I'm funny about talking about things in my journal in advance.

Today is my grandma's 91st birthday. I think it's pretty amazing to get to that age. She has alzeihmer's so visiting her can be a difficult time. She didn't seem with it at all today. Unfortunately, I couldn't go near her because of my cold. I went to drop off a present with the nurses but they said as long as I washed her hands and stayed back from her it should be okay. Devon sung Happy Birthday to her, but she thought he didn't know who she was (he does, of course). He's been trying very hard with Grandma lately, which I appreciate because he doesn't like elderly people at all. I don't think he understands about people getting old. We couldn't stay for long, which I guess was good because we were both sick, because we arrived just at lunchtime.

We would have gone earlier, except we had to take Zephyr to the Vet. I've been in bed the last couple of days, so I hadn't realised Zephyr hadn't been turning up to meals for a day or two. The food had been eaten, but that was probably the neighbourhood cats coming in the cat door. Grr. Anyway, Brad and I went looking for Zephyr last night and found him lying under a bush not looking too great. When I carried him up I realised he couldn't put any weight on his paw, he wasn't touching his food and he was pretty lethargic. As always, we find all this out just after the vet shuts! We set him up in the kitchen for the night, so I rang the vet to make an appointment the minute they opened. It turns out he's got a high temperature and a badly swollen paw/lower leg. The vet thinks he's had a small bite which has infected quite badly. No doubt, he's been fighting a lot lately - I'm not sure who with, and I'm not sure if it's the cat we thought was his friend or one of the other ones around. He's got to stop fighting, it's costing me a fortune in vet bills!

I still haven't made a decision about next year. I had better get on to it!

I spent the day in bed today, and was grateful that I could - being that it's holidays. Every year around this time I get a nasty horrible cold to usher in my hayfever. Thankfully Devon was good, it helped that he got to get far more screen time than I usually allow him and he made the most of it. He watched DVDs and played Blue Dragon for most of the day, but he was a good boy and let me alone to rest, which I really appreciated.

I feel awful, hopefully confining myself to bed (although I feel too groggy/dizzy/useless to get up anyway) will help get rid of this thing. My appetite is completely gone too, which is a weird feeling.

On a positive note, I finished the book I was reading!

Well, today I cleverly messed up the creation of a facebook group, by pressing the back button too many times and facebook telling me I'd locked into a setting where half the people I'd invited to the group wouldn't be allowed to join. I didn't panic, just set up a second group and sent out a second apologetic invite, to discover that facebook had 'magically' changed my group back to the setting I wanted. So then, I had to go back to the original group and put notes all over it telling people to leave it and join the second one.

Then I sent an email out to some people who weren't on facebook, and I cleverly managed to CC instead of BCC it. So putting myself in the "To" section made absolutely no sense, and I managed to share around a few email addresses that I didn't intend to. I don't think there is anyone in the list who would care too much, but it's good ettiquette to keep it private.

Smooth, Emma... smooth.

Yesterday was my first day of freedom, and it was weird, I just didn't know what to do with myself! It was the day I had been waiting for, and suddenly with all this time on my hands it was uncomfortable. I think you get accustomed to stress, and so used to living with it that when it's gone you suddenly feel at a loose end.

I expect this feeling to change very rapidly though, but I'm completely surprised that I didn't completely enjoy my first day off.

Actually, these two days are the most valuable, as today is Devon's last day at fulltime centre for the year. Then he'll be home with me for at least 3 months, so my busy life will return. It will be nice to be able to put some time into being a mum, but I remember that it's also very tiring. It's good though, I didn't get enough time with him last holidays, since I started summer school on January 8th (I think) this year. I don't think the teachers actually realise it's his last day, I handed in the form that said he was finishing today, but I believe that probably went straight to the office. Hopefully he will be back next year, but if I don't go back to Uni (even if I just try and find a part time job or something) he may not be eligible to go to his daycare anymore... I have no idea.

Chances are that I will be back at uni next year, that's the way I'm leaning.

So anyway, yesterday was spent wasting time on the internet (damn you facebook and your time-wasting abilities!), and I spent a wee bit of time on Guitar Hero 2, which I haven't played for months. I don't seem to have got worse over that time, but I'm still stuck at the same point. Then I picked Dev up and took him to a park we hadn't been to, which has a long slide down a hill, but it turned out to be nowhere near as long as the one up in Corstorphine. Dev still had a great time, but I was SO unimpressed by the smashed bottles and broken glass by the bottom of the slide. Some people are just so inconsiderate.

Today I plan to do a whole lot of not much and enjoy it. :)

I'm sorry I've been so quiet. I have just finished exams, hanging in at uni only by using all the strength and willpower I have. This semester was a real wake-up call. I shouldn't have even been at uni, I should have stopped and got some rest, because I knew after my last holiday that I hadn't recovered.

But I couldn't withdraw again, people were getting the opinion that I was withdrawing to save face and get only good marks, rather than accept C's. I find this really upsetting, as it's absolutely untrue. I withdraw because I begin to spiral into illness and pushing myself makes recovery harder and harder for me. I know if I push myself too hard I'll lose all of next year, not just the rest of the semester. This semester has been so hard, I only did 2 papers, but one was 70% internally assessed, and the other was 50%, and divided into continual tests and assignments, so I couldn't even get on top of my workload. By the time exams came, I had written down a list of my symptoms, which are exactly the same as when I became extremely sick in high school. But I had no choice but to just complete the semester and stick at it, my doctor continuously lecturing me "C's get degrees" - she didn't understand that it wasn't the marks I was concerned about either.

My doctor thinks I have had two severe flus, the second of which I haven't recovered from, which have then caused worsening of my M.E. symptoms, as well as my pain medication making me drowsy and not helping my concentration problems

BUT that's enough of the negative. The positive is that IT'S OVER. I don't know if I can return to Uni next year, my doctor wants me to take first semester off and rest. I will see how I feel in about a month and make a decision whether to re-enrol then. I'm hoping that I'll be okay, and that I am more resiliant than I was 10 years ago, that I've learned something and that I will recover over the holidays.

I will have to make some kind of decision about my future, where I'm going... and that I can't be superwoman and magically change reality.

These are so cute!! I've never heard of them before: tiny houses.

I don't think I could ever handle living in one though. :p After my last flat!