Good news: My car is now fixed, and doesn’t make that rattling sound anymore. One less thing to stress out about.
Bad news: I am sick of school, and its only midterm.
I have had so much work in the last few weeks, and now I have to start studying for my midterm exams on top of all of that. This coming weekend is my fall break and I shall have two whole days without classes or work, but even that isn’t enough incentive anymore to haul my butt to campus and make it through all my homework. And the irritating thing about my homework is that its mostly research and preparation for papers that are due at the end of the semester, so I don’t feel like I’m getting anything finished after I’ve sat for hours reading and taking notes. The good part about this is that I will not be stressing at the last minute of the semester to get things done, but the bad part is that all the the semester beforehand sucks.
My head feels like it just wants to fall off, and I’m pretty sure that my brain has shrunk up into a raisin. I swear, when I get the chance, I am going to spend all day in bed doing nothing but reading stupid books that I will learn nothing from, and I will not even get up to eat or brush my teeth – other people will have to do it for me! (I will use the bathroom on my own though, I guess…)
This last week, though, I’ve decided to lessen up on my homework load and take more time to relax in the evenings, so I’ve taken up knitting. I’ve never been much for knitting, but lately I find it so mind-numbingly relaxing, that its the perfect remedy for my stress. Imagine – an activity where you just sit down in one place for hours at a time and mindlessly twist colorful string around sticks (which is basically all knitting is…).
I’m making this blanket that’s inspired by a blanket a friend made – basically all she did was take different-colored skeins of the same brand of yarn, and knit long scarf-like swatches, and then sewed them up together. I’m doing this, and I picked some of the most vibrant and almost gaudy colors that I could find; the brand of yarn I picked it mixes all sorts of colors in the wool, so that it creates this weird stripy effect. Maybe I’ll take pictures once I’ve gotten more of the knitting done. But this blanket is going to be tacky as hell – it’ll probably end up looking like a schizophrenic gypsy attacked a yarn cart and made a blanket in the process.
It'll look something like this, except with more tasteful colors and not like it came out of the '70s
So, yeah. That’s one thing I’ve been doing. And today I made a peach pie that I’m taking over to a cookout thing with friends later. I never realized how distracting cooking could be, and how relaxing that distraction is. I actually summoned up the courage to do a lattice top to the pie (you know, so that the crust gets that woven look), and it turned out fabulously, if I must say so myself.
OK, so mine doesn't look THIS nice, but it still looks pretty darn good.
The bad thing about the pie is that I had to smell it as it baked and as it sat on the counter until I went to work, so I watched an episode of “Pushing Daisies” to distract me. Big mistake – made me want to eat it even more!
So, yes, these last couple of weeks have been a bit much in the stress department, but I think the problem with stress is that when you start to feel a little stressed, you stress out about not stressing out, and then that stress starts to snowball until you, well, explode. And since I don’t particularly want to explode right now (I would prefer to wait until a more convenient time after final exams), I think taking these steps is essential to my happiness and health. And, after all, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are part of my unalienable rights as defined in the Constitution, so by knitting and baking pie, I am in fact enacting my patriotism.
I wonder if I could get out of paper-writing by telling my professors that research papers infringe upon my Constitutional rights? At this point, I think its worth a shot.
