Haircut Day!

I finally go to see Holly and dispense with keeping my grey undercover. It grew out during quarantine and I’ve just decided to roll with it and cut off the dark as much as I can and let it be grey with a beautiful short cut. I’ll need to change all my profile pictures on social media. 🙂  But that’s fine. I always said I’d let it go sometime in my fifties–it just came a little earlier than I planned.

I’ve also decided to just roll with it on my thesis. Work with what I have, keep up with all the notes I get, and split it out later after I graduate.  I think I’m going to go ahead and keep notes myself of what I think of to write about and expand upon as I go and get to work on that as soon as I graduate. I can be self-motivated and work without external deadlines when I’m doing well. The sticking point will be if I get really depressed again. I feel so well right now it’s hard to imagine that but I will just have to pray against it and keep my eyes on the prize of doing this and putting it out in the world.

Well, I need to run wash my hair and get ready for the day. We will see how it goes. Hope everyone is being careful and staying careful of the virus. Everyone have a good day.

 

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Computer fixed AGAIN!

THis time Geek Squad showed me how to disable the touch screen myself if it ever gets activated again by a Microsoft update.  I have been so frustrated with it the past two days.

My oldest got to Florida safely. Took her a long time due to bad weather but made it around 9 p.m. her time.  Hope she got a lot of sleep last night.

Tomorrow I get my hair cut! I am so looking forward to it.  I’m fairly sure I will keep it short because all the women I have seen with long grey hair just look sad. I wish mine was fully white like my Papaw’Dell’s or Aunt FLoy’s was but it’s not–just streaky grey. But maybe it will lighten with the years.

I’ve got to do some more work on my drug story. Jerry had more questions so I am trying to find out what I can to answer his further questions. They will make the story better if I can dig up the answers.  But it takes time.

Now i am at a quandary with my thesis again. I have a first sections, which is before my diagnosis about   100 pages, a central section on being diagnosed which is 94 pages, then the rest which is longer than either on the aftermath and where I am now.  I don’t know if I need to just pick one section for my thesis and focus on making that as descriptive and interesting as I can, or keep it the way it is and try to tell the whole story. I’m just kind of torn.

I need to start laundry for Bob and get dessert.  Hope everyone is staying safe from coronavirus.  Godspeed.

 

 

Shipped Out

My oldest is on her way back to Florida. I wasn’t weepy I think because she left so early I wasn’t awake enough to be weepy. But Bob and I gave her a big hug and sent her on her way.

(NOW I’m weepy.)

I don’t have much of a schedule today. I need to take my youngest’s computer from the school and have it looked at or switched out–it can’t keep a charge. So we will see what happens there.

I need to get ready and face the day, such as it is. I wish I had planned something to keep my mind occupied, but I didn’t. So we will see how things go. Hope everyone has a good day and stays safe.

 

 

 

Path Through Thesis

So my advisor and I talked about thesis yesterday morning. She wants what I’ve already got on August 17th, not a moment before so that is the way that is going down.  Then we are going to do a chapter-by-chapter revision from what I understand, then the next semester to polish and format, then turn it in to my committee. Along the way I’ll send annotations of my bibliography works in to her.  And work on my craft essay as I go along.  SOunds reasonable.

I told her I already had 350 pages and she advised me to cut whatever needed to be cut before I sent it to her and keep the cuts in a separate folder called “orphans”.  THat way I could get back to them if I wanted to.  So I did last night.  I cut five essays. Turned out I cut it down by only a few pages.  Most essays I cut were less than a page long.  I don’t know what she’s going to ask me to cut, but we will see.

We had a good visit with everybody yesterday. Daddy was in a good mood since my nephew was there so that made it all easier. I’m really worried about Mom.  She fell asleep in her chair while we were there talking our heads off.  I really don’t think they need to be keeping another baby for my sister. I knew Daddy fell asleep whenever he got still; he’s been doing that for years.  But not Mom. Her short-term memory is starting to slip, too. She repeats the same things to me every time I call like they’re brand new information.

SO I need to to go get dressed and get ready for the day.  Hope everyone is doing well.

 

Traveling Early

We’re going up to see my parents with my oldest today after I get through with my phone call with my advisor. So I am up early to get other things done like blogging and whatnot.

I am so frustrated. I downloaded an update from Microsoft, and it restored the touch screen function AS WELL as all the bugs that were in it that I had just had fixed THursday.  So now I have ANOTHER appointment with Geek Squad to get it fixed again. I don’t mind the touch screen in and of itself–it’s just mine is messed up.

The others aren’t up yet-I will get them up at eight so I can do my phone call and then they can get ready during it. So that is what I will do. Bob made sure I was up before he left so that was good. Got to hug him goodbye and wish him a good day at work. We will get back before he comes home tonight so that will be good as well.

i am so sleepy. I don’t think I will be driving. I think I will let my oldest drive if she wants to. It’s only two hours. But it’s going to be wet most of the way, it looks like.

My mood is holding pretty good right now. I hope this visit goes well and we don’t catch Daddy in a grumpy mood. But we will do the best we can.

I guess that’s all I have to say this morning. I will go and start waking the others up. Hope everyone has a good start to their week and stays away from the coronavirus.

 

 

 

 

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Good Morning

We are certainly enjoying our oldest’s visit, and she is too, She went over last night to the house of a girl she knew in culinary school and watched a movie with her. The girl was in the middle of an internship with Jeff Good at Broad Street Bakery in Jackson when the pandemic came down and she has been in limbo ever since. She has to work so many hours at the restaurant to get credit for the internship and she plans to finish them this fall along with two other classes Yet another casualty among the young of this economic dislocation.

I read Mary Karr and I despair of ever rewriting my thesis like it needs to be rewritten.  She is all into descriptive details and scenes and mine is sometimes like that and sometimes not. THe first part has hardly any dialogue–it has some descriptive scenes but I’m working with very far-off memory there. That’s where I’m wondering if I’m telling it in the right order or not.  So,  We will see.

Me and the youngest are going to church this morning. Bob and my oldest are going to stay home and watch the livestream on TV. So we will see how that goes. I think we’re going out to eat for lunch; that was the plan last time we talked.  I think the oldest is going to pick where.

WEll, it’s almost time for us to leave. Hope everyone is taking care today to stay safe. Godspeed

 

 

Visiting

My oldest has gone up to Columbus to visit a friend up there who wanted to see her–it’s one of her culinary professors who took a real interest in her and her career. So they are going to have lunch and chat for a while.

Not sure what all we are going to do. We may just hang out at home or jaunt about a bit–my youngest isn’t up yet so we are relaxing eating breakfast and whatnot. I think Bob and my youngest are going to go driving in a bit once she wakes up. Depending on how long that takes whether we go out to lunch as soon as they get back or wait a while. So we will see what happens.

I’m supposed to have a chat with my advisor at eight a.m. Monday morning before we head out to see my parents upstate. I want to get the lowdown on what the semester will look like in August and what I need to be doing to prepare for it. I feel I’ve done everything I can to get ready–now it’s just a question of how it’s going to work out. The semester is cut short because of Covid-19–it ends at Thanksgiving. SO I want to do as much as I can before I hand it back in during March for my committee to review. Then I will probably revise it more during the summer after my defense, and try to start sending it out during early August next year and see how it fares in the market place.

I love that I finally got my computer fixed. It should last until I finish my thesis or maybe even longer. I thought I might buy myself a new one for graduation, but we will see if I do or not.

My mood is holding so far even if I did get nervy last night. I think it was just because my youngest had band practice and I’m so out of the habit of driving her around on deadline to get somewhere. I’m going to be doing that all year during school until she gets her license in February. I am looking forward to that. Hopefully she will have learned as well as the others and will do good driving by herself.

SO I will wind up and see about getting ready for the day. I am still somewhat sleepy but should wake up soon enough. Hope everyone has a good day and can stay safe from the virus.

 

Friday

So there is one local school district that is putting off opening school until after Labor Day.  The rumor is that the other local school districts, including ours who had already announced plans to start August 10, might announce the same delayed start to give the medical community a chance to catch up to coronavirus. I would be glad of that.  But right now it’s just a rumor.

We had fun yesterday with my oldest. We went out to lunch and then went grocery shopping to get stuff for her to cook with and to snack on while she’s here. So that went well. She went to visit Bob’s parents for a while, my youngest went to work with her dad, and late in the afternoon I went and got my computer fixed!

They disabled the touch screen and made it where I use the keyboard for everything–which is how I usually use the computer anyway. So no more disappearing cursor, no more ghost circles appearing randomly and clicking on things I don’t want the computer to do, no more menus popping up at random. No charge and I am so happy.

Got another very nice note from a press rejecting my chapbook. They said it just wasn’t quite ready and the writer of the note seemed very disappointed they couldn’t work with me on a revision because of time constraints this year. He said nice things about my work anyway. I really need to scare someone up who can give me some focused direction on how to revise it–I did get that piece of advice to lengthen my endings but not a lot of direction on how to do that.

So I will guess I will start back reading my thesis this morning then I will go into a polling software and see how to set up a survey for my MCIR work.  Wish me luck!

 

Finally

I can let the cat out of the bag–my oldest has come up to spend a week with us here in Mississippi! We didn’t mention it because there was always the hope that Disney would call her back to work sooner rather than later–but she feels comfortable that it’s not going to be until August so she decided to take a chance and come up for a while. She got here yesterday and will leave next Wednesday if all goes as planned.

She’s going to see Bob’s parents today and call my parents and see when would be the best time to see them. Other than that she is going back to the W for a day and make a talk with one of the chefs that trained her if the chef can have permission to have an in-person session with her.  So she has lots of plans.

Right now it is very quiet–I think I am the only one up. I struggled with the computer this morning and finally got it to behave.

I watched “Hamilton” for the first time last night.  Stunning. Breathtaking. and Funny! It was amazing to see it acted out just as Lin-Manuel Miranda had visualized it, with the original cast, etc.  I had already heard it; I treated myself to the soundtrack once the kids told me how great it was. But seeing it was something else. Watching “Aaron Burr” go slightly ever more the madman throughout it was really really spooky. And the “King George” character was great comic relief. I just loved the whole thing.

Well. I suppose I will wind up here.  My mood is really really good right now and I seem to be n an even keel–no mania or depression in sight right now. We will see what happens once the oldest goes back home–I will do my best to hold it together after that. Hope everyone is doing well and safe from the coronavirus.  Godpseed.

 

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Shock

Just found out that my editor, Debbie, had surgery for colon cancer. She’s going to be off for a while and I will work with the big dog, the founder of MCIR. Hope that goes well.

Hopefully the rest of the day will go better after that bad news.

There’s been a bunch of bad news. Four couples out of my Sunday School class have tested positive  for coronavirus.  That’s eight people we know.  Very sad.

The clock is counting down until school starts. I hope we have some kind of handle on coronavirus before that because I fear it will jump up again after that.

I need to get to work writing.  Looking at my thesis with an ever more critical eye. I want it as polished as I can get it by myself before I send it off to my advisor. Hope everyone is staying safe and well.