Just Breathe

My sister asked me, upon finding out that I managed not to fail out this semester, if it meant that I could breathe now.  And I don't think that there is a more apt question that could have been asked.  It seems that I have been in a state of breathlessness since the semester began and when I look back on it, it is a miracle that I managed to do as well as I did (even with the medication...).

Somehow, between the end of last semester and the end of this semester I managed to get married, sit at my mom's bedside in her final days, start class days after her death, deal with K jumping from a moving car to escape going to school, find and close on a house, move, put a house together, handle E's severely damaged knee and subsequent wheelchair, try to deal with the holidays and actually pass the semester.  Not extremely well, but not horribly, either. I DID manage to kill my 4.0, but hey, everyone is entitled to one bum semester, aren't they?

In the last weeks of the semester, I found something curious happening to me.  I had this overwhelming urge to create.  Something.  Anything.  (Please do not mistake this for PROcreate... I've had my fair share of THAT, thanks.  There will be no making of live things in THIS household.)  I think that my brain has been so immersed in left-sided thinking that the right side of my brain has been feeling a bit neglected.  I have this overwhelming desire to learn how to paint with watercolors (oils were always my thing... always did want to learn how to do watercolors successfully), set up my jewelry bench, seriously get creative with my new camera, write, anything that feeds my poor, depleted right side.  But oddly, the things that inspire most of those activities (with the exception of the jewelry), are the things feeding my left brain - the beauty of the cells and neurons that fill my head.  Is that slightly weird?  Of course, we all know that I'm slightly weird anyway.

So now I'm sitting here, trying to ignore the cool neuroscience book that I got for my class next semester to do some light reading as I head off down to Florida over the holidays, and trying to sort out what I need to do first: the mountains of laundry that managed to pile up over dead week and finals week, clean, grocery shop, christmas shop, or bathe.  After the blogging, of course.  And the deep breath.  Strangely enough, that is the thing that comes the hardest.  Remembering how to do that.