The End of My Rope

I think I have finally reached the end of my rope :-) Today I had to meet with Mr. Riccio, Dan, and this university technology guys who is going to set up a website for us to use in archiving the Dudley collection next semester. The meeting kind of pushed me over the edge, and now I am really grouchy, agitated, annoyed, irritated, frustrated, etc., etc. I have SOOOOO much to do today, but Mr. Riccio was insistent that we have this meeting today--and then he didn't even know what to talk about at the meeting. Mr. Riccio doesn't know what he wants for the Dudley website, and he and Dan expected me to know, but I have no idea! How am I supposed to know what we'll be doing in our digital archives class next year?? I thought Mr. Riccio wanted the website to go along with next semester's course, but I don't think that even he knows what we'll be doing in the class yet, or how to do it, so it's going to turn into us figuring out what to do--but I don't have time for that today!!!!! Sigh. Then Dr. Barnhart wants a Dudley website up on the EIU History Localities website, which Mr. Riccio also wanted to discuss today. He wondered what Dr. Barnhart was wanting done, and I was thinking to myself, "I don't know!!! WHY DON'T YOU ASK DR. BARNHART? AND WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE ONE TILFORD DUDLEY WEBSITE INSTEAD OF 73,000 OF THEM???" Sorry that I'm so upset. It's just a stressful time and my patience is running thin. I could tell that the university website guy was getting a little frustrated too because of Mr. Riccio's vague instructions, so the web guy doesn't really know what we're wanting either. I don't want to think about websites until next semester, but Dr. Barnhart has insisted that we get all of our Dudley presentations online before the break. Why it HAS TO be done before the break, I have no idea, but since it does and since nobody knows anything about what they want, I'm going to do it MY WAY, and they'd better be happy with it. :-)

Anyway, to make things worse, the weather here is terrible. It's not as cold out today, but there is this really dense fog that kind of freezes to your glasses and your windshield when you're walking or driving outside. It's cold, wet, gray, and dreary out there. Over 400 flights got cancelled in Chicago today, and they're supposed to get more freezing rain up there tonight. I am just hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping that it will clear up by Thursday. I want nothing more than to just go home to Utah and be with my family and sleep in my comfy bed there in my room.

I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in during the next two days. This afternoon I have to go work with Dr. Hardeman, then sometime tonight I have to finish my Tilford Dudley paper, but all of the compadres want to study for our two tests tomorrow and finish some house surveys, but I don't think I'll be able to go to the study session because I have to finish the paper and do a whole bunch of other stuff (including the freaking website stuff!!). Then, tomorrow I have two finals--which probably won't end until 3:30, but Dr. Hardeman requested that I come in to work for him at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon because he needs help grading finals. But I can't leave my final early, so he's going to have to wait. But then Aly and I have to take our textbooks back to the book rental place together (we can't take them back until after our last final because we need them for the final) because somehow in the craziness of our moving from Dr. Small's house to our apartment at the very first of the semester, our books all got switched, and we have been driving the textbook rental people crazy. So we need to sort that out tomorrow, but I'm supposed to be working with Dr. Hardeman, and Dr. Reid has invited all of us over for dinner where we planned to do a white elephant gift exchange. THEN, we need to finish the house surveys, and I'll have to pack sometime!!!! Maybe I just won't plan on sleeping at all until Thursday on the train. :-) Sorry to complain and rant and rave about everything, but it is definitely CRUNCH TIME here, and I feel like I'm about to be crunched.

One good thing did happen today--Mom sent me the nicest "Care Package" ever!! It has my favorite hot chocolates and cornbread mix in it--thank you Mom for providing the one thing that made me happy today!