Got my final paper into my professor's box, and finished my last semester at Cal.

I have been bouncing back and forth between the thesis and that lil' ole 5 page final paper for the last 3 days. I.Am.Tired! And still not finished with the thesis. I'm about 8 pages into it, so me and it will be spending a lot of time together tomorrow so I can make another trip up to campus on Friday to hand it in. But its all good, because I wont be returning to Cal, and that makes me happy. I still have two more papers to write before January 12th, but its all good, because I wont be returning to Cal, and that makes me happy. I have that math class to tackle, but... say it with me... Its all good, because I WONT BE RETURNING TO CAL, and THAT makes me HAPPY!!!!

Seriously. I does.

Its National Blog Posting Month again, and again, I'm all in. Ready to take the challenge. It will do both myself and my readers some good. I'll discipline myself to write everyday, which I will need since the thesis needs to be nearly completed this month, and you will have the opportunity to stop by for everyday rants and raves. What fun.

Seems like the month of October flew by. One minute the semester was starting and I was trying to find an available class, that might be enjoyable, and now I have 5 more weeks until its all over. I'll get all of my papers in next month and then start the task of packing up a household that I have been settled into for the last 6 years. At the moment, I have no idea where we will be heading, but I'm sure I will figure it all out by the time we must be moving on. Miss J is a little sad about our move. Its the only home that she's known. We've been in the same neighborhood and apartment since she was 5 months old. All of her friends are in this neighborhood. But as all good things do, our time hear must come to an end. I am taking the time to explain to her that just because we wont be in the same neighborhood anymore, it doesn't mean that she wont be able to see and spend time with her friends anymore. Its gonna be a process.

How's your Monday?

That would be the fate of the thesis. Its not a sad moment, nor one of defeat... more like a moment of relief. On the advice of my professor I have decided to continue to work at my own pace and deliver a completed, hopefully well-written, insightful, thought provoking, body of work to her next Fall. After spending the last 2-3 weeks drowning in sources, harvesting notes, re-viewing videos, dissecting a 200+ page dissertation, staring blindly into my computer screen, beginning an introduction, deleting work that was probably worth saving, opening new documents, organizing materials and reorganizing my sanity, I accomplished a promising outline and a fantastic first page.

Although the professor was optimistic, at least in front of me, that I could complete 19 more fantastic pages before December 15th, she was secretly hoping that I would stop torturing myself and just move on. "Its not like you haven't been trying. Its not like you will never do it. Its an exciting project and when you are not stressed out you will enjoy doing it", she said. "Its ok. What's one more semester? Its not the end of the world. I'm not telling you what to do, just laying the option out there. Think about it and let me know... SOONER than later because, remember, decisions move things forward."

Yes, it is true. Decisions do move things forward, so I made the decision to accept an incomplete, in which I will use the remaining two weeks to study for my Swahili final and complete a final paper for another class. Then it will all be over for 30+ days. I will be able to regroup, then start the process of insanity all over again.

The Punany Poets will be back on tour next month and that's when I will pull out my inner anthropologist and get to work. The goal is to have a completed thesis before I have to work that cap and gown. I am NOT trying to put in a summer AND "one more semester". Uh uh, nope, hell to the naw. Must be able to say that I have completed my undergraduate career by July/August (which is the end of the summer term, although I will be walking the stage with my fellow majors and friends in May). Piece of cake, right?

I have succeeded in getting sick. It always happens when there is a sudden change in the weather. Rain one week, hot summer like days the next, then humid sunless days the next... Now I am sneezing all over the place and battling sinus pressure, along with a stuffy, runny nose. I need to result to some holistic healing because I can't even afford to think about trying to get hold of any OTC meds. All of this couldn't have come at a better time, as I have a 20 PAGE DRAFT DUE THIS FRIDAY!

So, yeah, that's really what I came here to tell you. I am gonna have to take a short vacation from you this week because I have until 3pm Friday to get this mock thesis completed and I have to really buckle down and crank it out. Then on top of that I think we are gonna have to do peer reviews next week. As if I really wanna spend a bunch of time reviewing TWO 20 page papers in addition to fine tuning my own next week. This whole thing can't be over fast enough for me. I'd much rather produce mindless banter any day than have to be all academic. My brain just doesn't wanna go there, but this week I must force it.

I will be back Friday evening to participate in Friday Fill-ins, catch up on all that you have been up to this week, AND to share those photoshoot photos with you. Yep, Wildboy emailed me today and told me that he had them ready for me.

Wish me luck!

Yeah, but what's the time limit on temporary?

I have a confession to make. I am not ok today. I haven't been ok for at least a few weeks and counting. I am not ok academically. I am not ok financially. I am not ok personally. I am not ok mentally. And from what I read today over at My Brown Baby, not being ok has gone national.

What T. of Tea N Honey Bread has labled "the taupes" is now upon me. As I said, it has been present for a while, I have just been trying to ignore it. Trying to channel my inner strength and work around it. Today, I am no longer in denial. There is no "working around it". You don't happen to "the taupes", they happen to you, which means that no matter how hard you try, the feelings and situation is not under your control. Thinking of putting that last line on a business card to hand out to everyone who is currently expecting me to be performing at my best.

I have been dealing with depression since before I had a clinical term to place on feelings that I thought were normal. Not diagnosed until my pregnancy, I had been dealing with many things by tucking them away in my subconscious. All of that ended once therapy began. The shrinks failed to mention that once they opened up the memory levies that they weren't gonna actually provide me the tools to put it all back together again. They just left my ass out in the flood waters knowing that I can't swim. Luckily I found a piece of drift wood and drifted on into the blogosphere.

I sooo don't have time to be in this state of being right now. There is sooo much to do. Miss J.'s hair needs to be combed out. The majority of it is a nest of tiny little spiral curls that have been pulled up into her famous puff and a small fraction lies in three plait that have been semi prepped for the blow dryer. The laundry is sitting here haunting me. The week isn't gonna wait for me to get my shit together; the baby needs clothes in order to head back to school on Wednesday and I could use some too. Then there is the thesis. I gotta tell you, its not looking too good. The professor asked for a 10 page draft this Friday and so far I haven't produced anything. 10 pages wasn't even a set number, she just wants us to write so that the ball is continously in motion on our projects. For this reason, the draft was not going to be graded, just critiqued. I have sources and information that have been read and some that have not. Ideas that are trapped in my mind. A brain that is currently dysfunctional.

I am being asked to speak with a voice that is foreign to me. I somehow feel like I haven't been trained to do this even though I know I have. Its pretty hard to make a clear argument when you are unable to organize your thoughts, or simply when you don't have any thoughts to organize. I am hoping that my brain will get the relief it needs soon because I need to have a completed project by December 15th. Not to mention all of the other areas in my life that really need me right now.

I wanna thank all of you who gave me such wonderful words of encouragement on my most recent rant about my thesis topic... or lack there of. Yesterday, I went to go have a chat with my professor about other possibilities and I am glad to report that I will not be needing a visit to the nut house any time soon... well, at least not until I start doing some actual research anyways. Since I refused to spend the weekend obsessing over my inability to wow my professor with my bright ideas, by Monday I still had no idea what I would even want to suggest to her in office hours. I got to her office an hour before she was set to see anybody because I wanted to make sure I was the first one in the chair. There was no way that I was gonna spend half of my day away from campus NOT away from campus. To my surprise, the sign up sheet was blank, so I whipped out my pen and claimed the #1 spot.

What to do for an hour in a hallway? Think of other possible topics of course. In our last class, you know, the one where she told me in so many worlds that my ideas sucked, I also remembered something else that she said, "if you had nothing else to do for a day or weekend, what would you be doing? This would be one of the things that means a lot to you." In other words, focus in on something that you enjoy and think about how you can make that into a research project... that will last an entire semester. So, I sat on the bench outside the door of the Gender & Women's Studies Department, put my backpack down and put my thinking cap on. What are the things that are closest to me? What is it that effects me deeply? Two things immediately popped into my mind: Mental Illness and Rape/Domestic Abuse/Statute of Limitations. Surprised are we?? I have to admit, I didn't want to go down either of these roads, not because they are not worth talking about and definitely not because there isn't research to be done, but because they are pretty depressing subjects. I wanted to work on something that would excite me, make me happy about the things that I uncovered about it, the possible questions that I'd be able to answer, but quite honestly, besides my daughter, nothing like that is really bold in my life right now. I really am more focused on deeper, darker issues at this point.

So, some questions that I had regarding this issue were, 1. What level of importance does mental illness hold in our culture? 2. How is mental illness represented in our culture (film, news, advertisements)? And 3. How do these representations directly affect those who are dealing with mental illness? And don't even get me started on the affects of having wear the labels of these mental illnesses, as if being branded with a permanent defect sticker.

As you can see, there are many things that I could do here, but then there is the other issue, which is as equally important. You can see from yesterday's post that the issue of domestic violence and abuse is freshly in my mind. There are plenty of directions that I could take these topics in, but the thing that interests me the most are the laws around the protection of women (and children). What the hell is really up with this Statute of Limitations law that basically slaps victims of rape and sexual abuse in the fact with a big old bat with injustice engraved on it? I mean, why is it that people can be prosecuted for murder 50 years after the offense, but rapist have a window of 5 or 7 years to be convicted? And this law isn't even in effect in all states, in fact, a woman who was attacked in the 70's helped to change this law in NY. So, I am interested in knowing when this law came into effect and what was the thinking behind it? What led up to the creation of this law and also, what stakes and influences does the medical community have in the creation of these kinds of laws?

I pitched these ideas to my professor and she got out her pen and paper and got right to work zeroing in on the Statute of Limitations as a focus. She liked it, so much that she started pulling out law journals for me to look at and giving me some advice on how I can get started in my search of California law around this issue. I think its safe to say that my security in writing has been restored.