My new best friend.

These days my computer (these days? Ha- M would say I have had my nose buried in my power book since we set up the network) has been my constant companion, my new best friend. Ok... no my life is not so pathetically empty that I am having delusions that computer interaction is the only kind possible... in fact I have been doing very little interacting with anything but my highlighted and scribbled on texts and my keyboard.

Side note, Isabella at dinner: "What does 'pathetic' mean?... well... something that you feel sorry for. Hmmm. Pa-the-tic -in her best Brittish accent. Also funny, this whole week she has been waking me up in French. "Bon jour maman!" Bon jour ma petite... So what if she is limited to, Je parle le francais, and Je t'aime... it's the intention that counts. She's going to be my language learning buddy... In fact, I am astounded by how much French I understand, we sat in on a translating class and I had no problem following the whole conversation... but ask me to speak or (horrors) write... and I will cringe in a corner...

So back to me and Lucy (I named her several months ago) we go everywhere together. It's like the my buddy doll, only it's not a doll and I am not a toddler. Indeed. Ilana, you really are a freak. I know. No really. It's this whole birthing process, it has me all in a tizzy.

Writing academic papers is akin to giving birth. It takes several months to gestate before it is fully formed. By the end all you want to do is get the damn thing out of you, it sucks all of your energy and attention away from other endeavors, and it is extremely, unbearably painful as it is being excised from your darkest cavities. And last of all, you have no idea what the fuck is going to come out at the end, and you only hope it is healthy and functional.

Maybe that is just me. I mean, I have taken several classes between now and the last time I had a monstrosity to write, but I feel so mentally atrophied, and all those papers were in English for education classes (which I hate to say it, but were more or less a joke, not because studying education is inherently an unworthy endeavor but, my god, you can only cover the same material in so many ways before you want to drill your eyeballs out, or take a hacksaw to the students next to you who, despite the fact that they are going to be teaching the next generation, can't formulate a gramatically correct sentence structure in their native language if their lives depended on it.) Arrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhh.

Think panting breath and dilation (of course this didn't work for me but the mental preparation might help). Breath in, breath out. Wax on, wax off. I can do this, I can, I can. And then I can forget him... I mean Rubén... and move on with my life, having birthed something that, once the mucous has been sucked from its nasal cavities, might be able to breath on its own.