Also, tomorrow I have to submit a close-to-complete draft of my thesis. That means today I am working in a state of bristling tension without drinking wine to calm the spiralling craziness! I have alternated between writing and editing--still some left, but I am getting there, I think--and acting like a giant uncomfortable baby. Seriously. I have bounced out of my chair a hundred times, forty before I could even open the cursed document and just get started. I made a second coffee and had it with some chocolate, because everyone knows that helps calm a person, right? You know, have a little caffeine, plus some more with sugar! Feel better now? No?
What else? I walked around the block, only to race home and write a paragraph that seemed more urgent when I was outdoors than it did when I was seated and writing again. I drank seven glasses of sparking water. I went to the loo, a necessary distraction after all that coffee and water. I tried knitting--that calmed me when I was on a plane, for god's sake--but I kept dropping stitches, so then I was shouting bitterly at a skein of silk that did not deserve such disrespect. (On the bright side, I did not yell at my silken skein last week when I was locked in an airless chamber with a few hundred strangers at 30,000 feet altitude, and for that I'm grateful.) Earlier, I was so frustrated with trying to do this project that I stood up, shook my fists in the air, and started yelling, "AAAARGH!!!" as loud as I could, but I have neighbours I like, so I quit that action pretty quick. At one point this afternoon, I went into the kitchen and started what might best be called mainlining a jar of honey. I ate a spoonful, then just poured the jar onto a spoon, bit by bit, and licked the spoon clean. After six or eight spoonfuls, I could hear Julie Andrews singing briskly, "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!" and, though I knew the cheery singing was only in my mind, I quietly backed away from the spoon and jar.
In short, I am something of a lunatic. But I am not drinking, and I am getting closer to sending my professor a draft of the project. It won't be perfect, but it doesn't have to be. I will get comments and suggestions, and I can make changes based on those. And I will make it to seventy days without booze!
Don't get me wrong: It's not that I want to drink here. I really really really really don't. And I won't. I'm just used to using the booze to calm myself when I get worked up, and it's really something to see how uncomfortable I can get without that. I won't drink. I won't go completely barking mad for too much longer. And I will finish the project. So there!
Peace and joy to you all. I'll get back to that later myself, I hope!
