brit time

so brit time changes on a different day than american time does. and for this i did not get to go to church for an easter sunday service. which just annoys the crap out of me. i mean jesse and i go to church exceptionally sporadically...but...blah i'm annoyed.

also i think i have decided which schools i want to apply for. eEp!

one in mass, one in penn, and (no really i'm serious) one in jersey. the one in mass i think is the only school in the country that offers a doctorate in this. but i could be wrong. how's that for competition. the other two are obviously MAs. so..i requested info from them yesterday and i'm frigtened. very.

and in general just lousy and annoyed. i hate clocks that think they're better than me. think they know more.

yes yes went to the doctor. she told me i am fine. and wasn't surprised to see me. said i'm at an increased risk and it's normal to be a little hyper-concious of symptoms. so... that's over.

i am painting my chessboard table right now and just generally hanging out. tried to buy train tickets today..which meant a long walk down to the station to find out they won't be selling tickets for may until april. but on an upside we swung by the asian market on the way back and scored some more supplies. different types of curry and more coconut milk (which is much cheaper than the c. milk at sainsburys). also picked up random asian sodas because they're always a stitch and a half.

tomorrow...really, sarah....you have more laundry to do. i don't care that it's sunny outside. no, no it doesn't matter. you *points* to the laundrymat! go!

yeah...but it's sunny and there are men driving around selling ice cream and maybe i should put on a tank top and wander looking for said ice cream trucks. because that sounds better than laundry.

a bit batty

april is at home. which is good she was starting to go a bit batty in their. when i called her last she was alright but walking a line (it seemed) between being ok and needing to scream. now she has to go to the doctor a few times a week and try to rest. pregnancy sounds icky and i think i'll pass. i have enough things getting in my way as is.

speaking of things in my way. looks like i'll be going back to the doctor this week sometime. i don't want to, but jesse is ultra-logical. and he wants me to go. i was having hardly any pain at all for a while (i don't know how long...one doesn't really record the absence of pain) but wednesday it started hurting again. and fairly poignently. so...looks like i'll go see dr. webb and let her listen to my chest and see what she says. i'm in no hurry to go or get results. so i'm going to make a point of seeing her instead of one of the other doctors. blah blah. this is spring break! i have a month once this demon paper is turned in to do nothing. and i don't plan on letting my lung get in my way.

i have a table to paint damnit! i do i do...when i'm done i'll put up a pic.

this was yanked from my LJ because i'm tired.

alright so april is still in the hosptial and the words are getting technical. this is what i know. they have not done an amnio-whatsit yet. the baby's heart is doing something where it drops in BPM to about the same rate as an adult BPM and then speeds up really fast to compensate. this can happen when april has contractions. and april is having those mini-pre-labour contractions. which means the baby couldn't handle labour. the doctors want to wait until the baby will go 24 hours without doing that again. then they'll make some decisions. doctors are oh so non-commital about anything so april really doesn't know what their plan is. but she thinks it might be a C-section. and so...the poor thing is still stuck in a hopsital. going on day 4 now. and charlie my super-sensitive, massively-geeky brother is about at the end of his rope. poor guy. does not cope well with stress. when i called last night he was eating hospital french fries and about the only thing i could get him to say was, 'yeah, well, uh-huh' he needs more sleep.and that's my update.

end theft from LJ.

so now i am officially beginning to worry. the doctors are being all evil and cryptic. april has never been in the hospital before. she had no idea that you have to treat them like they have brain damage. doctors are great and nessesary...i know. they are also busy and there are lots of people and they want to make rounds and have a cup of coffee...like any normal person probably would. but this means you have to pratically hold them by the wrist to keep them from leaving and ask them pointed yes/no questions. otherwise you get, "you have symptom X we'll keep an eye on that and see what happens" and nothing else. not why you have symptom X, what are the options for getting rid of symptom X, how you should expect to feel now that you have symptom X just a short blip which translates to "it's 6 30 in the morning i need coffee"

anyway. bitch, rant, worry, bitch, rant, worry...

amnio-whatsit

briefly...

april is getting an amniosentesis to see if they baby's lungs have developed. if so they will induce labor. they thought of her getting that needle jammed in there reminds me if the air extractions they did on my chest and makes me all whimpery and such. yuck!

april

april (that's my sister-in-law, folks) is in the hospital. she's fine. well....mostly... long and short of it is that she's mostly alright but they may induce labor tomorrow or some other soonish time. high blood pressure and such things.

i called her (she was very surprised to hear from england via her dinky hosiptal phone) and she said she was alright. the doctors don't seem to be worried about the baby (rachel). so they will do some more tests tomorrow and either induce labor or send her back on home. she's got an IV in her hand...and she doesn't like it one bit. poor thing. i tried to remember about how long it takes for it to calm down and stop feeling...well like there is a small metal rod jammed in your vein because there is...and couldn't rememeber. so i just told her it would stop bothering her in a few hours.

all in all doctors aren't worried, she's not worried, so i'm not (eh...too) worried. mostly i just feel bad she's stuck in there.

why we're on this subject my grandmother is out of the hospital. and doing well and glad to be home where she can email people again. she loves email. she's got WebTV so she didn't actually have to deal with buying a computer or learning how to use one. just an email program hooked up to her telly.

me? the cloud of my paper has begun to descend over me and the reality of if this isn't fantastic i will get kicked out of my program. so i'm nervous and weepy and other such things that don't become me. on one hand i wish my lung hadn't collapsed here when i was in the middle of my MA in britain. but on the other hand, since i've decided i don't want to do this anymore anyway, it's better it happened in the middle of this disgree than the next one. which i hope to actually make a living off of...eh...somehow.

but that sort of logic isn't really helping. and i'm still just bemoaning my inability to make up the points i lost when sick. feeling like i should be better and more intelligent than this. annoyed when i realize i'm not. i really was hopeful for awhile. *sigh* i'm sure i'll feel better when i turn it in and can't fiddle with it anymore.

expecting a package from my mom soon. that should cheer me up a bit. also expecting one from jesse's mom within the next week. which should be good as well. she always puts the most random things in there.

asian market

today jesse and i finally made our way down to the asian market here. so many things to choose from, jesse and i are really excited.

also i have seven pages on my paper which seems to make sense and be (from what i can tell )what they want. i feel more 'with it' less like i need to jump out a window. which wouldn't be very helpful right now anyway because i live on the first floor.

anyone hear about bill clinton's collapsed lungs? i feel for you bill...hang in there.

off to eat yummyness that was dragged home from said asian market.

-sarah

more ranting

So had a meeting with one of my profs about my paper. As nicely as can be said he told me to start over that my idea wasn’t concrete enough. Why can’t I do this? Is it because I don’t care anymore? Maybe I’m just tired of it all. The problem is I can’t just dither around. I’ve turned in two crap essays and one decent one. The decent one being the one I wrote at the beginning and the crap ones being the two I wrote when I was sick. I can’t afford to turn in a mediocre essay at this point. This one has to make up for the points I lost. Maybe I’m too nervous at this point. I know how much is riding on this one, and it just makes me sick. I’m just annoyed and frustrated I don’t like feeling like this. I don’t like feeling like I have no control. There are lots of problems with this university. Or at least with the English department. Especially since we don’t get our papers back in a timely manner so we can’t use the comments to improve our next essay. I was writing my fourth paper before I got my second one back. What sort of help is that going to be to me? I just feel like giving up. I don’t want to do this, to be here, to be writing papers on this subject…when it comes down to it I don’t know if I want to be writing papers at all. Thank God Jesse still has some focus. One of us needs to do something… I’ll just…I don’t know…paint tables and chairs. And I know it doesn’t matter about getting sick I should have produced better papers regardless of the circumstances but damnit I didn’t. And now I’m just stuck.

What a dismal post…the next one will be about squirrels and pansies…

red wine

alright then...it's almost 10 in the evening and i have just about recovered from a nasty, violent hangover. but it's not my fault...really.

jesse and i were at a party, drinking out of the same glass, had no idea how much i was drinking.

but now i am recovered. *bows* and working on my paper which is not progressing quite as quickly as it was last post. if it were would i be writing this? so..i'm stuck on page 4. i hope to rememdy this tomorrow.

read de quincey's 'suspiria de profundis' excellent chapter in there called 'levana and our ladies of sorrow' reminded me of gaiman's American Gods the bits about the sisters. fun stuff.

class tomorrow on drugs and the romantics. should be better than theater and the romantics.

april (my sister-in-law) has been ordered in bedrest for her high blood pressure. silly girl. they want her to carry the baby for another 3 weeks at least. i just called her she's lying on the couch watching opraha. if only i could save her. except she was enjoying opraha so i guess she doesn't want saving.

my grandmother is back in the hospital with another staff (or is that staph?) infection. feel bad that she is stuck in there. she'll probably be home tomorrow though and a nurse will come to her house and give her an injection for 4 days. or give her an injection once every 4 days not give her an injection that will last for 4 days. ouch.... she is 92 now. or is it 93? hmmm...

and such is the state of things.

-sarah

german

argh....no german class for me. *sigh* time i get self-motivated anyway i suppose.

out the door for class armed with pen, notebook and a pocketful of cherry vitamin C drops.

pigtails

well my paper is coming together...somehow...i am way over-researched and have oh so too much to say than 4000 words. my intro is done. i don't know if i'll get to work on it anymore tonight or not. because i have class today and then poker tonight. and i'm not sure if i want to start on it for an hour and then have to quit. wednesday is huge though...really...bigger than most other days i think. and aside from reading peter's paper and probably showing him where the graveyard is in clifton (which i was suppose to do the week i went into the hospital) which can't take more than 2 hours i have nothing to do. i can chain myself to the computer and poke randomly at its keys.

now i have to eat a lunch-type-thing. and be off to class. sporting my pigtails off to either side of my head. what ever age i normally look i am certainly looking about 5 years younger today. oh well. it's not my fault...my hair refused to conform into any other shape.

ok....now for some sanity

ok. so the last post was creepy and so very whiney. and it's kept me from posting anything else for awhile because i didn't want to read it again. but i posted on rich's blog this morning and so there's a chance someone might actually read this and so i thought i'd post something that sounded more like a stessed MA student and less like a 5 year old.

things are really going fine now. i'm working on my last paper. i think it's coming together nicely and i've called in favours from all four corners and there will be a quite army reading this thing before i hand it in. it should be fine.

talking to val was great. and i read one of my classmates essays and everything she said is true. so now that i know what i am suppose to be doing i can get on with writing it and stop freaking out.

saw the life aquatic last night. i enjoy wes anderson flicks he's a neat director.

hard to concentrate on classes now that i have decided i don't want to deal with this subject anymore. next class is on romantic theater...blah...but the one after is on DeQuincey which should be interesting. registering for a german class as well. by the time it starts i will have already handed this paper in and won't be doing anything other than preparing for class and beginning the research on my thesis. and i wanted something applicable to the rest of my life. anyway.

there..this sounds normal. i have a good mind to erase the other one but i should probably keep it about just to prove to myself how ridiculous i am when i freak out and to remind myself not to do it.

-sarah

wordsworth sucks

have to put this up here. this last paper is on felicia hemans. you probably won't have heard of her. she was quite a major poet at the time though. but anyway...this was between her and wordworth...it was lifted from notes for my paper so really choppy.

In the same headnote Wordsworth writes, ‘ “Her education has been so unfortunate” as to leave her “totally ignorant for housewifery,” as his headnote puts it: this “spoilt child of the world…could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle.” His droll distress about Heman’s refusal of “her” needle, the usual instrument of women’s “work,” may seem to contain as a comedy at her expense his unease with her intellectual power, projected as a spear-bearing deity of wisdom. But even the warrior Minerva had a domestic role as the proud Olympian weaver for the gods” ’ (Wolfson 1994: 138).

‘ “It was from observing these deficiencies,” the headnote continues, “that, one day while she was under my roof, I purposefully directed her attention to household economy, and told her I had purchased Scales, which I intended to present to a young lady as a wedding present; pointed out their utility (for her especial benefit)…Mrs. Hemans, not in the least suspecting my drift, reported this…to a friend…as a proof of my simplicity” (Wolfson 1994: 138).

‘Heman’s own report of this scene is amusingly tuned to the ideological contest: the palpable simplicity of Wordsworth’s design to point a wayward poetess into a proper female sphere of attention and her deftly polite resistance to his obvious “drift” by recourse to a wittily blinkered aestheticizing of his object of instruction: Imagine,…a bridal present made by Mr. Wordsworth, to a young lady in whom he is much interested – a poet’s daughter, too! You will be thinking of a brooch in the shape of a lyre, or a butterfly-shaped aigrette, or a forget-me-not ring, or some such “small gear” – nothing of the sort, but a good, handsome, substantial, useful-looking pair of scales, to hang up in her storeroom! “For you must be aware, my dear Mrs. Hemans,” said he to me gravely, “how necessary it is occasionally for every lady to see things weighed herself.” “Poveretta me!” I looked as good as I could, and, happily for me, the poetic eyes are not very clear-sighted, so that I believe no suspicion derogatory to my notability of character, has yet flashed upon the mighty master’s mind: indeed I told him that I looked upon scales as particularly graceful things, and had great thought of having my picture taken with a pair in my hand’ (Wolfson 1994: 138).

so sick of wordsworth. he was such a pompous old fool. wrote some great stuff when he got started but towards the end when he really got full of himself it was just dribble. anyway...back to my paper.