10 steps to a perfect Christmas

1. Wake up to sounds of three-year-old singing Christmas songs in her bed. Look at clock and realize it's after 8:00, and feel even happier.
2. Watch three-year-old in awe of her presents from Santa, presents from Mommy and Daddy, and presents from wonderful friends - well, in awe of everything but the boring old clothes... :)
3. Go outside and watch three-year-old and her daddy try out the new purple sled that Santa brought. Laugh when she says, "I wanna do it again!" every time the sled comes to a stop.
4. Do not bother taking a shower, changing out of pajamas (except for the brief jaunt outside) or putting on makeup.
5. Watch Wall-E (one of top 5 great movies ever) on new HDTV.
6. Play with three-year-old's new toys, including Play-doh (which smells weird and feels weird, but she likes it so it's still fun, I guess).
7. Make a very simple but delicious dinner of ham, broccoli casserole and "Mimi mashed potatoes" (potatoes with cream cheese, butter and sour cream).
8. Relax while husband does dishes.
9. Watch Frosty the Snowman for the 8 zillionth time, but that's okay. Smile when kid sings along with the theme song at the end.
10. Feel very lucky to spend the whole day hanging out with my little family.

Merry Christmas!

The school debrief

So, I haven't mentioned on here that I am officially done with classes for the semester. I had kind of an anticlimactic end to the semester because on my last day of Saturday class, I didn't have to do anything but hand in my take-home final, and my last Thursday class got canceled because of the weather so all we had to do was email the take-home final to the instructor.

I do not enjoy studying or test-taking, generally, but it does make for sort of a sputtering end to the term when you can't do the brain dump onto your exam paper, drop the thing on the instructor's desk and emerge, triumphant, from the hallowed halls of learning that have sapped all your energy and free time for the preceding 15 weeks. But I am almost certain I got an A in both my classes, which makes me happy, because I like getting A's very much. :)

With this term, I am halfway done with grad school. This is AWESOME! I can totally see the end from here...it's like being at the top of the mountain, and while there's still a long walk down, at least from here on out I'm going down and not up anymore! Six more classes to go (two this spring, one over the summer, two in the fall and the big finish the following spring).

I'm planning to enjoy my nice, long break. I have to cram in some business travel in January since I'm not that available for business trips during the semester, but otherwise, I'll be happy to be home more. School only takes me from home two days a week, and I do almost all of my homework after Hannah goes to bed, but I still feel a little guilty that I'm not always here when she needs or wants me to be. Luckily, I have a great husband who totally picks up the slack for me, and keeps me sane.

I still love school, though. I'm kind of wondering what I'll do when I'm done. I like learning! I'm a nerd. :)

On turning 30

Today I am 30 years old.

I spent most of the last year being freaked out about the looming three-oh. I'm not sure why. I'm quite pleased with where I am in my life. For some reason, though, when I turned 29, it hit me that I hadn't done anything crazy in my twenties and now they were almost over. I got married when I was 22 and one week, moved to a new state when I was 22 1/2, got a good job and bought a house at 24 and had a baby at 26. All of those are wonderful things, but it didn't leave a lot of time for being crazy. So I never did one crazy thing, ever - nothing to tell Hannah about when she gets older and I try to "relate" to her while she rolls her eyes and says I'm lame. *chuckle* And I think that's why I was having anxiety about 30. Because who does crazy stuff in their thirties?

I'm not even a "do crazy stuff" kind of person, which I suppose is why I never have. But I'd like to do one wacky thing, just once, that's fun but doesn't involve any kind of trouble. I've decided I will work on this in my "year of being 30."

The funny thing is, the closer my birthday got, the less I freaked out about it. I think the freaking out hit a fever pitch a couple of months ago, and it's been on this slow decline ever since then. It just seemed inevitable, and then it started to seem like any other birthday, and then it seemed like not a big deal at all. So I'm actually feeling quite happy today. :)

This is helped along by the fact that my family got me Rock Band 2, so I've been playing video games all day. And if you can still play video games when you're 30, there's still time to do something memorable and wacky, too! :)

Almost done

So...I have one take-home final left, and that's it. I have zero motivation to even start it. (I've had it since Thursday night, and it has remained firmly in my pile of school books ever since.) My rationale for this is that, if I were to take the final IN CLASS, it would take an hour, so since I have three nights left in which to do it, certainly I can get it done in plenty of time. I know that fundamentally this is right. However, I really should've started the thing already. I mean, I haven't even LOOKED at it. I have no idea what's on it.

I think I might be turning into a "normal" student. And it only took nearly 30 years, a husband, a full-time job and a preschooler to get me here. *chuckle*

But speaking of "nearly 30 years," I went out for my "nearly 30th birthday" on Saturday and had a delightful time. (Probably saying it was "delightful" sounds old...like high tea or something. It was not like high tea, unless they have margaritas, tequila shots and vodka tonics at high tea...which, I believe, they do not.) Anyway, I went to The Baton in Chicago with some friends, which provides "the best in female impersonation" according to their website. (I'm not linking to the website because there's not much there, and you'd just be disappointed. Google it if you really care.) Anyway, the show was fantastic and we all had a great time. Two of the performers completely confused me with their flawless makeup and flawless other things. And two were totally making eyes at one of my friends, who happens to be a very cute gay man...partially because he's very cute and partially, I think, that they know they get tips if they stare at people in the audience.

And, remarkably, I was in "okay" shape the next day. I won't say I didn't need extra sleep, and I won't claim to have gotten through the day without Tylenol...and I did actually go outside the house without makeup for approximately the first time since giving birth because I just didn't have the energy to deal with concealer...but I was "okay." :)

So yeah, I'm NOT 30 YET!

And now, I must put my kid to bed and sort of think about maybe starting that final, I guess, perhaps...

Papers and presentations and tests, oh my!

Sometimes, I wonder what my undergraduate career would have been like, had there been blogs and Twitter and the general internet environment we find ourselves in today. Because I think I procrastinated a lot then, anyway, and I can't for the life of me figure out how I was doing it. I think maybe I just watched a lot of Dawson's Creek and had deep, philosophical discussions with my roommate about why we liked Pacey SO MUCH BETTER than Dawson. Anyway.

So, I was reading Vic's 3:30 a.m. post about not being able to sleep during finals, and I thought, "Yeah, why is it so annoying? Was I this annoyed as an undergrad?" I think I probably was, but I also had a lot less going on.

So this week, for example, I have a paper and presentation due tomorrow. Paper is done. Presentation is not. And it's not done because I had stomach flu yesterday. Not a terribly bad case, but bad enough that I couldn't eat any food, which meant that by about 3:30 yesterday afternoon (after TWO two-hour meetings, plus other meetings, plus three presentations on various things having to do with my job), I was just about done. And the weather was crap. And then I came down with a fever. So, meaning to only sleep for a couple of hours before getting up to try to at least draft the presentation, I actually fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up till 11:30. At which point, I just went to bed, because you can't START homework at 11:30.

So today I am better, but I have no presentation, and I have two things I need to do for work tonight AFTER I finish and practice the presentation, and here I am blogging.

Because it's a lot more fun to complain about stuff than it is to actually do it.

Although I suppose I should just go do it anyway.

It is so hard to focus!

You know, Christmastime is very distracting. Especially when you have a little kid who loves Christmas lights and Christmas trees and Christmas everything else. And super-especially if you happen to work with a bunch of wonderful people who get way into the holiday spirit and plan no less than six holiday activities for your department. And really-especially if your birthday and your anniversary all happen around Christmas. It's fun, but I am having a hard time getting anything done at work or at home!

Like right now, I should be working on the second question of my take-home essay final exam for one of my classes, but I just kind of don't feel like it. So I'm procrastinating. But I said I wasn't going to bed till it was finished, and I meant it.

I will just have to put the following thoughts out of my head:
1) I have not started Christmas shopping.
2) I haven't even made the list of people we need to shop for.
3) I haven't begun to think about sending Christmas cards.
4) I would really rather be thinking about any of these things than multicultural marketing.

And so...back to my regularly scheduled essays. But this was a nice break. :)