Week 5--WARNING! Pity party ahead

Second Life is so cool--but I think for the first time I experienced what it must be like on the WRONG side of the digital divide. Having to pack up all my crew--food, homework and all--and try to manage their needs while in class is really tough. My machine at home just cannot do SL, and my work machine will not allow it.

In addition, the night before (while I was in Collection Development class) my neighbor called and needed me to keep her kids RIGHT NOW since she had to go to the ER with her infant who had a fever of 107! I was happy to do it, but it trashed my class session (I apologized to my group and to my professor) and kept the kids out really really late, which made them hard to manage. The baby is much better now, though he had to have 3 massive antibiotic shots.

I have said it before--if my professors knew what my study environment was like, I would get an automatic A! Some days the kids are insane, they fight nonstop and its very disruptive. Other days I get spaces of time to work--as much a 20 minutes in a stretch--for a couple of hours. Seems like most of the bad times are around finals though, when the pressure to produce is REALLY on!

I remind myself daily (hourly) that I am in the home stretch and only have about 9 week to go. The pressure of balancing work, kids, other people's kids (I do not have full time day care; we trade our kids around the neighborhood to make it work for all the different schedules), other activities (soccer and scouts) and school is often overwhelming. Always overwhelming. I do not do anything nearly as well as I want to do it. I miss just playing with the kids, but most spare moments are dedicated to school or life maintenance--you know, things like laundry, cooking, things that have to be completed for life to continue (cleaning is not in that category!) FavoriteSpouse does a lot--he cooks all 4 nights I am in school or at work--but he works 60+ hours himself, and has little open time himself.

It will all be worth it one day, right?

PITY PART OVER!

Our projects have been approved and I am beginning work on them. I have a good idea for a handful of knitting/fiber sites, and will do searches for the rest. The knitting/craft blog section will be really really fun as well--I will save that for last, like dessert.

Helen (the head librarian at work) has started helping me with the Say Hello project. She knows lots of people and has some connections. We are hoping that through the college network we can fill in some collection gaps in that.

My In-laws are coming from Ireland on the 18th for 2 weeks; I am trying to complete as many projects as possible before then. I am nearly done with my big CD paper; I will start working on the VR wiki this week. After CD, the wiki will be really, really fun. I need to have those done by next week so I can start on the next CD paper, which is due while my in-laws are here. I do not want to be studying nonstop while they are around--they are fun and we need to do fun stuff together.