eagle one, fox two...direct hit! confirm target destroyed...the week from hell is down. repeat, target is down.

i started this post as a way to describe in words the scope of the horror that has been the last seven days. i'm not sure if i can compass it, but i'll try.

so i started getting a bit sick just before my friend tonie's wedding last saturday, but i toughed it out and had a good time that night, though i ended up going home early feeling quite a bit like shit. sleeping was done that night. for the last time.

sunday was a day of struggling mightily through my work for the week, making little to no progress, and questioning my place on the earth (for various reasons romantic, existential, and professional). this night ran until about 5am. i got up at 7am to teach. taught monday and spent all night reading a book for 510. spent a cumulative 22 hours in avery, and short of sleeping for 30 minutes at one point on the lounge couch, i just went home and showered and came back for my 9 hours of class on tuesday. after class, i went out to rico's with some classmates and my professor to discuss research projects. ended up staying up afterwards until about 3am, slept till 7am, back in to teach on wednesday. this is where i started to have to rely on cold medicine, sugar, and diet coke to literally keep my conscious and functional. i fumbled through my class (ask my students; i ran into a TV. three times.) and then spent most of the night in the library with toria and lauren, and then in avery and then at home, trying to write fifteen pages of a seminar paper that was due in the morning. i slept for one hour. back in at 7am on thursday for 521, during which we workshopped. at this point i was insanely sick, but stuck out class, then went home and took a nap, to prolong death. but then it was back to avery all night to tie up all the loose ends i had had to let hang all week...until about 5am. back up at 7am to go to class all day friday. after class was over on friday, i wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. so i stayed at work until about 11pm, then came home and actually went to bed at 1am...slept until 2pm the next day and since then tylenol sinus and i have had my illness on the run. though i don't have a voice anymore.

so...we have in the final score over five nights...three all-nighters (unless you count an hour or so of sleep, which if anyone in the audience has ever pulled an all-nighter you know sleeping for an hour actually just makes it worse), and two short nights of sleep for a total of 9 hours over about 120 hours, on top of having a crazy fever and sinus issues, and being super-crazy emo over this one girl that i shouldn't have been super-crazy emo about but couldn't help myself. wow.

right now, i'm just glad it's over. nevermind the fact that i still haven't finished the first draft of my paper in all honesty, and i have to somehow read an 800 page book tomorrow and i'm sliding out of my chair at the moment because it's too hard to sit up.

how people in other programs get into grad school just to "keep going to school" because they like it is beyond me. in english, as a TA and a grad student, this job just fucking eats you alive. i'm glad i'm doing it, i'm glad i got my foot in the door instead of trying to pick things up when i'm 30 or 35 again like i did when i started the MA...because it won't be any easier then than it is now. it only would have gotten harder had i waited. but it's hard enough already. egads.

enough whining for now. i'm going to go do something else. dexter season 3 is good so far. not as good as 2...but then, what is?