"Well...what if I already did?"

My sister comes tomorrow!

In less than 12 hours, she'll be here in Madison. Though I've been too stressed and busy lately to be as excited as I should be by her visit, that doesn't mean I'm any less pumped about her coming. Now it's like a nice surprise, almost - I had forgotten how great it would make me feel to have her coming, and now I remember. We've never had time together like this. We've bonded a lot on family vacations, through email and phone and during holidays. But this is the first time we'll be together without any other members of the Tarsa clan, with our own base of operations and our own time. And I'm really excited. I miss my sister a lot. I get too preoccupied with my own anxieties and such about life here, and I have been forgetting how much comfort and support (and amusemen) my siblings can give me. Having Kitten (Kat to...well, everyone who's not me) here in my home and my city lets us catch up and fool around without the pressure we've always had before of other family around. Now, it's just me and her.

And I'm excited. We'll see the Farmer's Market, go biking, eat at some good restaurants, do karaoke, stay up late, bake things, bicker about family drama, maybe see a movie together, and rock out to the melodious sound of the Decemberists. I love Kat so much, am so proud of all she's done in the past few years, and I can't wait to spend this time with her. It's gonna be friggin' sweet.

I know all blood is thicker than water, but I can't help but feel that Tarsa blood is even thicker than that - like cold molasses. Not because we're such an upright, ancient and proper family, but the opposite - we're eccentric and dwindling and loud and passionate, and I feel lucky to be bonded to this crazy group of family members by such alternately practical and outlandish traits.

And these next five days should be *sweet*.

(Also, then I go to Florida with Andy. And that will also be incredibly sweet. The forecast for the next two weeks look great.)

(Until we come back, and then there's The Move. Which will be less than sweet. My books, my clothes and accessories, my furniture and kitchen, plus Andy's clothes, furniture, accessories, few kitchen things...and like, 1500 books. (This is a conservative estimate.) We're gonna have a busy week before the move. But I'm still completely excited to be in a new place - big enough not only for both our things, but so that we can be in the same apartment but being separate doing our own thing. It will have doors! An office that can be closed off from the house - but that also has a good set of windows to let the light in. A bedroom that is not also the living room and the study. A stove that is not the same width as my Ancient Rhetoric textbook. It's a good deal.

Common wisdom says summer is almosr over. I'm not buying it. I don't start teaching or taking classes for more than a month; that's as long from now as Rhythm and Booms was from now. Awhile. Sure I have training and Caroline's paper and Welcome Week shit and all, but...summer's not over. It's just time to begin thinking about the semester, and...really, I'm ready. Provided I finished my accursed incomplete, I'm ready. I'm happy to be beginning my last year of classes with three that I am so excited about.

So...though there's been a lot of stress, and anxiety, and various other negative feelings, overall things are going pretty well for me, and I think that, even though I'm booked solid from tomorrow through the 16th, they will continue like so. After that...well, despite an inevitably stressful move I'll have just taken a nice vacation, and I'll be living in a new place with better light and enough space for all our things. I'll get two wonderful cats, I'll be able to play decorater, and I'll love being at home. This should help me finish my paper, since I'll be reveling in being home and be pleased to make it a place of work as well as leisure. And then the semester whirl begins, and hopefully all will go well.

I don't always feel great about my life of late, but that doesn't change the fact that is *is* great. I have a real summer, a superlative boyfriend, lots of fun friends to relax with, a bike that works like new, and so many other advantages.

It's different from last summer, but it's really just as wonderful, though in different ways.

Which is good, because two good summers of fun will help balance out next summer, when I will have to fight off freakouts and meltdowns and all kinds of panic. I just hope the perspective I've gained through these summers will last into the next.

Or that I get a grant that allows me to move somewhere tropical while I study. That works too.

From my 8-month-old notes for this paper:

"Much criticism focuses on these gender issues, and not this abolition, the role of the actual subject. It’s about slaves! And she doesn’t even know there aren’t mangoes in America! What the fuck."

I like the abrupt turn from scholarly into rambling madness.

My kingdom for a thesis

You know you're fucked when you have more than 15 pages of notes for a paper and still don't have a clue how to formulate a good thesis.

Oh, hey. Yes, it's been forever. Not having internet in my apartment has that effect. Summer's going well; though I haven't had as many adventures as last summer, it's been very relaxing. I'm trying to enjoy this last bit too, not feel like it's the end too soon. After all, it's more than a month before I go back to class or start teaching, so I've got time. Time to see my sister, bike around, go to Florida, be trained in the fine art of being a Lit TA, etc.

And move. Can't forget moving. Though at times I wish I could.

But more to the point...my EBB paper. Not going well. Granted, today is my first serious day of working on it (if three hours of rereading notes and articles while catching up with friends can be called "serious"), but...ugh. I'm reminded why I took an Incomplete in the first place. Which, by the way, I will NEVER do again. Hideous. I'm determined to finish it before summer ends though, even if that means going with a central idea that's not very good. Which it seems likely will happen. Sigh.

Still, it's kind of nice to be working, however halfheartedly, on something academic again. Somehow I still have the ability to be excited by the beginning of the year, and I can't wait to put this shriveled husk of a nightmare paper behind me and work on something fresh.

Well, "can't wait" might be a bit of a stretch, but as with last summer, I'm ready to go back to being a grad student.