I don't know if I am becoming increasingly unable to juggle things as I get older, or if I've just recently used up all my reserves of personal fortitude, or what, but I'm just distressed this morning.

Can't get into the mode of prepping to teach. Am still worried about the arrangements for getting my car to the repair-place, getting back to campus in time to teach, and then getting back out there to pick it up. I'd walk, but it's like five miles through heavy traffic (sidewalks don't exist in the town where I live), and it's been freakishly cold here. (Update: I twisted the arm of Colleague! On! Sabbatical! into offering to drive me out there to pick it up. I don't know why I have such a hard time asking people to do stuff - even little stuff - for me, when I generally willingly do the same for them. And even now, I'm half-expecting him to forget about it, or to have some kind of meeting come up he must be at, or something. I'm bad at trusting people that way.)

I find it almost HARDER to deal with the mundane life-stuff than to deal with job-stuff. I think part of that is, with most of the life-stuff, most folks around here have a spouse or a grown kid or someone to help them sort it out. The one time I hate being single is when I have some kind of car problem or house problem, where it would help to have another person to drive, wait by the phone, and so on. (yes, I know, that's an idealized view of marriage, but it would be NICE to have someone THERE that I could rely on.)

And my building is freakishly cold, as well. One of my colleagues informs me that all the fish she had are now dead, thanks to the cold temperature of the room. I'm dreading lab this afternoon. (I moved the class to a marginally warmer room).

And on top of it, I received an e-mail back from my co-author on this paper. More work is needed. I just want to be done. I just want to hear him say it's good enough. (I think that's one of the problems with adulthood; you never hear enough that what you're doing is good enough. You only hear, generally, how you're doing when you screw up.). Tomorrow, back on it, hammer and tongs, at least as much as I can do with my limited journal resources. It's frustrating to do research when your university library's budget is so low that they can only subscribe to a few journals in your area. And as journal subs are $100 a year each (if you're lucky; a lot are a lot more), there's a limit to how many I can personally pay for.

(edited the above section after re-reading his comments. I often mistake the terseness/brusqueness of someone in a hurry for a personal slam at me. I think it's just that he wanted more work done on it and didn't have a whole lot of time for details.)

Yeah, I know, I'm being over-sensitive. And I know my problems pale in comparison to some of the problems in the world, but you know, I don't find that all that comforting right now.

Three things I'd like right now?

To be done with both the damn rewrites.
To have my car running properly.
To go home and go back to bed for a couple hours.