Hesitant, Hopeful

I'm back and it hasn't been a month... it hasn't even been a whole week.  This has to be some kind of record!!  Might be that I'll be able to write more over the Christmas break, but I'm not going to push it.  I'm really happy to have a break and I'm trying to enjoy it without stress and pressure.  I told Matt we're having a "stress-free break" which he seems to like, but is a little skeptical about. I think he's waiting for the other shoe to drop... silly boy! When I said I wanted to have a nice break, I mean that.  I think he's starting to see that I actually meant it because he's beginning to relax.  Poor guy, living with me must be a nightmare -- I know he's recently expected a house to fall on me at any moment, it's been really tense around here.  I'm tired of tension, I want my break to be a break!

And, on that note, I've gotten all of my grades back for the Fall semester and I made straight A's!! I knew last week that I had gotten an A in British History to 1603, but I learned today that I also got A's in British Lit: Early Modern & Restoration Drama and in Studies in Classical Rhetoric.  I am elated, to say the very least.  This last month and a half or so, since about the beginning of November, has been a rush of un-ending work, both school work and work work.  Papers to write, test to take, presentations to give, labs to conduct, students to tutor, it was amazingly crazy and I was immensely happy when, last week, it was all over.  I was also fairly concerned about my British Lit grade because it was teetering on the edge of an A, but I wasn't certain I had done well enough on the final to actually pull the A out.  It turns out that, in fact, I did!

Since school's been out, I've actually been pretty busy, but not with work or school.  Rather, I've been cleaning my house.  I worked on it on Thursday, Friday (with help from Melanie), and Saturday and I still don't feel like it's really clean.  I still have laundry to do, but the biggest problem is the clutter.  It's everywhere.  I'd love to have a clutter-free house, but I don't see that happening without getting rid of a LOT of stuff.  I'm trying to tell myself that it just looks lived in, but the truth is, I've got a lot of things and things produce clutter.  Mostly, I spent so much time cleaning up because I want to spend my stress-free break in a nice clean house.  It's been a mess for months, since during the semester I can't seem to find much time to clean it up and Matt's not much of a helper when it comes to cleaning.  So, it was a top priority and I got it mostly done, thank goodness.  I may try to do something with some of this clutter, but I'm not sure what yet, so for now things are as good as they're going to get and that's okay!

I also wanted to have a clean house because Christmas is coming and I wanted my decorations to stand out and look nice, rather than just being more a part of the mess.  I think we'll have a really good holiday this year, I hope so anyway, even though I miss my family.  The only problem with the holiday this year is, despite the pretty tree in my living room, the unseasonably warm weather is making it difficult to feel festive.  I want to feel like it's Christmas, but at 80 degrees (yes, that's what it was here today), it's almost impossible to fool my brain into believing it's winter.  The funny thing about that is, it actually is winter, but Texas has me thoroughly tricked.  It just doesn't feel like Christmas!

Ah well, c'est la vie, can't help the weather!  Believe me, if I could, it would be snowing here like it was this time last year.  As it stands, we can't even get rain.  It's been months since it's so much as clouded up, let alone rained, and there's no rain in our immediate future.  This is a terrible way to ring in the new year, especially since I'm hoping that we'll have a cooler, wetter 2011!  2010 has been such a dud!

 I hope you're having as good a week as I am. To those who aren't, I hope things look up soon. Good night, my friends, sleep tight!