Dispatches from St. Louis

Well, here I am in St. Louis. Sans baby blanket.....

I've knit about 13 inches so far. Nearly halfway there! Let me just note, however, that the last few weeks have been horrendously stressful. I'm moving in a month....and nearly less than that since we will leave the last weekend in June (hopefully) for Montana. Have I packed a thing? No....and I still need to sell the dining room set (a.k.a. vintage wrought iron patio set masquerading as a dining room set) and the glass and metal L-shaped desk (a monstrosity I somehow thought would be sleek and modern....it's not). In addition to a few other pieces. The rest needs to be packed and either shipped out here to DB's family, or brought up to CT to mine. I'm regretting having set up the apartment so much.....pictures and curtains, other objets d'art.....so much! Fortunately, DB has declared himself the moving czar and will be handling most of it. I do have delegated responsibilities of course...but he is manning that ship. That helps tremendously, especially given how much stress I tend to put myself under when I am in charge of things.

I am also, somehow, supposed to complete my dissertation by August or September. I have three participants so far that I will be interviewing in June. I still need at least 7 others....and I will be away the entire month of July and part of August. So, I'm not sure how this will be possible, and I sort of understand, but not really, why I must be done so soon if I actually plan to graduate far, far away in May 2011!

And, it is the end of internship...I've got 4 psychological evaluations to complete, a school visit to make, cases to close, paperwork to do....treatment plans galore and so on. Plus termination...is termination....and difficult.

Things feel extremely compressed and I am just overwhelmed. I look at my calendar and basically every weekend here on out to July when we leave is blocked out with events and such. Nice things....but stuff to do, places to go. I am stressed! This past weekend, I had a headache nearly every day, all day, that no medication or rest, cold compresses, etc. could touch....and by Monday I had a sore throat and developed a cold that kept me home half the day on Tuesday and all day Wednesday. Probably I shouldn't have gone in on Thursday, but I hate missing sessions this close to termination and I have a lot to do! Ugh!!!

This brings us to the baby blanket. I got home Thursday night (stayed late at work until almost 8) and made an executive decision. (I am the knitting czar, of course.) It would not be worth the extreme stress of trying to finish the blanket between 8 on Thursday evening and noon on Friday when we would leave....in addition to still having to pack and all that. I did not knit on Thursday or today at all. I decided that I would finish the blanket in good time, do a good job with it, not stress myself out even more, and ship it off upon completion with a nice note. There! That simple piece of self-care I think did me extremely well.

Thus, here I am in St. Louis with DB, no baby blanket...and two very clogged ears from the flight/cold recovery....but semi-relaxed, at least. Hopefully my hearing will return to normal by tomorrow, but if not we will stop at the clinic....anyway, no pictures of the blanket, as it is far away right now. It is coming along nicely and aside from not being able to finish it in time, I am very happy with it. I love the stitch pattern and the yarn and colorway are working out well. It's soft, with good stitch definition and just a pretty, warm color. ...will post pictures when I return and finish it! Until then....buona notte!