Braindead wordcount

I'm at the point where I can't even watch dvds I haven't seen before -- tracking who all the characters are in Rome or season 1 of Buffy -- which I've never watched and had season 1 sitting on my shelf for a year now, since Renee sent it to me for my birthday last year -- seems like Too Much Effort. Still striving to get something that is ALMOST a draft of this bloody dissertation to bp by the end of this weekend. Will still be short the lit review chapter that I have to spend a couple of days on and the discussion chapter, but the bulk of the writing and christmas pudding of an analysis will be done.

Current wordcount:

chap 1: 2940
chap 2: (lit review)
chap 3: 5300
chap 4: 10907
chap 5: 16337
chap 6: 18301
chap 7: 1205
chap 8: (discussion)
chap 9: (conclusion)

seems like a lot of bloody words. Have to finish chapter 7 tomorrow, review the bits all done with feedback to date, and send it off to my chair. Then write the other bits.

Yeah, that's it.

You know, when I was in the library this morning I had all these brilliant blogging thoughts, but can't begin to remember now what I was even thinking about. This is very draining and I'm a complete and utter klutz -- I cut my knuckle opening a bottle of cheap merlot, and my ass still hurts where I slipped on my clean floor on wednesday night. But I took a few hours off yesterday afternoon and went here:

http://www.bodyblitzspa.com/

It was BLISSFUL. I did the water circuit thing for more than an hour, and steamed and soaked and salted and sweated and showered and steamed, then I had a "body bake" where a nice quiet compliant woman covered me in "glacial seaweed mud" (such bullshit -- um, where is this seaweed-ridden glacier?) and baked me under hot lights and hosed me off like a beached fish. It was amazing.

I'm usually not great at completely giving myself up to this sort of thing, but I just let my brain drain away yesterday -- it was completely, utterly worth it.

Levity

I said to Matt yesterday that I have zero capacity to respond with humour to something I think is Deadly Serious. I am totally irreverent and flippant with my friends, and danny and I regularly fall apart laughing when we're doing work together -- but I'm missing some critical gene that allows me to laugh at myself when I'm Upset. I think cultivating a sense of frivolity in the face of Earnestness would be a very good thing to aim at, if I were to ever have a Resolution time.

So... today, feeling much better -- cleaned my entire flat, changed sheets, flipped futon, etc, felt orderly and managed to write a few good pages with some more pending after dinner. And, trying to be much less Serious about it all.

Ali sent me this link about a crazy bride who had a life-sized wedding cake version of herself. Pure excess. (For some reason I can't copy a shot of the photo). Reminded me of something I was reading a couple of years ago -- I think it was the book by Anne Kingston called The Meaning of Wife. She theorized that weddings have got bigger and bigger because we have a shared cultural story about the idea of "bride" but not so much about what a "wife" is -- so there is this blowout fantasy of the wedding to counterbalance the more contested idea of what comes after. Interesting angle.

(It might have been a different book -- have read a lot of social theory about marriage in the past few years -- maybe CInderella Dreams?>.

Sensory deprivation

I appreciated Kat's comments on my post last night, so much. I do have good and wise friends, and it's reassuring to know that this process isn't mine alone. Less crazy making.

I was talking to Pamela, who's two years out on this, and remember her going through something similar. She's very wise, and she gave me the perfect metaphor. This part, she said, is like being in a sensory deprivation tank with no reference points for who you are and where this fits. Sensory deprivation of identity. It fit, and was comforting.

Then we talked a lot about how to get through it, and she was talking about listening to something about taking care of yourself, and how to comfort yourself, and then sort of had this moment of recognition of what she was saying, and blurted, "I hate inner child stuff so I hate inner mother stuff, but this was actually helpful."

It made me laugh. And now trying to find the thread again. Stress all around, for F as well as me, and we're not fitting together well in this. Makes it all so much more raw.

dropped long ago

This really is the hardest thing I've ever done. I have a magnet on my fridge that has a little stick figure turning the corner and the caption "clyde was about to come face to face with the ball he had dropped long ago." This dissertation right now feels like that ball, like I've dropped a bucket of marbles on the floor and they're rolling around, fitting themselves into corners I'll never locate, sticking themselves into grooves in the wood I'll never fit my fingers into.

I didn't expect the sense of emotional overwroughtness that comes with the kind of paralysis I'm feeling right now. Writing and writing and feeling like I've completely lost the plot, and being so completely on edge that I can barely fight my way through the panic. No idea what I'm trying to say, and a level above that, no idea why I'm doing this at ALL in the first place. WTF has this process been about, where is it taking me?

And through it all, awareness that this level of emotionalism is totally out of proportion with the "real" stuff people are dealing with in their lives, that this is just me with a very first world problem, and that the caterwauling, squalling and sense of panic about it are completely unseemly. I feel simultaneously like a clichéd drama queen and some kind of sea creature with no muscle, no bone, nothing but a raw and exposed nervous system.

It's really just a chapter, among several chapters, in a long paper that a dozen people at the most will read. The ultimate demonstration of student prowess, of capability worthy of admission to some realm I'm not actually that interested in. I wanted it to mean more, and finding this void here is... overwhelming. And so lonely.

Stickiness

So last night we went out for dinner, and we were getting ready for bed and I went into the kitchen, wearing only underpants, to get a glass of water. I opened the fridge and felt... something... on my foot. I looked down, and this SHRIEK just escaped me. There was a sticky trap WITH A DEAD MOUSE ON IT stuck to my FOOT.

I flailed about trying to get it off and I kicked my foot up and hit the bottom of the refrigerator door... and nearly broke my toe. It's all mangled and blue. And the mouse was still STUCK to me. It was very primal.

After much palaver, I got it off and scrubbed my foot madly, and we went to bed, all giggling about it. Then this morning I woke up and we were cuddling and talking and suddenly I remembered and shrieked again. I basically broke my toe on a dead mouse. I am such a klutz.