The German tutor was quite specific - "Do NOT" she said "leave your assignment until the last minute. It'll take quite a few hours to make a good job of it." So here I am, with barely 48 hours to hand-in, staring at an unwritten commentary (if you can stare at something that doesn't exist). *sigh*It's quite worrying, the way that time telescopes in on itself, like a piece of tissue paper self-crumpling before my eyes. It's all a question of priorities: I spent much of last week dividing my time on writing up a draft chapter for my next supervisory meeting, and parsing Greek verbs to form my own corpus of the Pauline verbs (don't ask - it's a long story!). I need to make steady progress with that to keep on track. Somehow, I kept back-staging the German project, although we'd had two weeks to complete it. I have done the translations (last weekend, after spending all Saturday at a conference that wasn't really relevant, as it transpired), but life just keeps getting in the way. I feel compelled to remain polite and sociable, but having a morning (actually, a couple of mornings) monopolised by someone that has no idea of the pressure I'm under or what I have to do, is making me increasingly twitchy.
Today, the Husband and daughter #3 are competing at the British Indoor Rowing Championships down in Birmingham, so a lot of yesterday was taken up by preparation for that, culminating in taxi-ing them to catch their train. Today, I had to mobilise the in-laws to take the Bright-Eyed Boy to his junior league football match as I was reading in church first thing. So I zoomed off to the pitch after delivering a section of John's Apocalypse (one of my favourite books of the Bible: super-weird!) and stood watching his team getting trounced in the biting wind. Then home again in time to catch a webcam deliver a garbled and halting coverage of the d#3's race. Then a number of phone calls to the Husband, who had recovered from his magnificent race earlier this morning (SEVEN seconds faster than his all-time PB! What a star!!), a trip to the shop to stock up on fruit, veg and bread for the week, home again to chop and cover the veg with olive-oil to slowly oven-roast with sliced pork, apples and thyme. And now it's 2.45pm and I've only just had lunch and a sit-down. No wonder I'm feeling shaky and weak. Before long they'll be on their way home, so another trip to the station will be in order, then dinner and sharing the excitement and then I'll probably keel over with a glass of wine.
Ah me! Where will I fit the German in? Tomorrow, I guess. But it's the father-in-law's birthday this week and no present's been bought yet (I know, I know). Tuesday IS German Reading Skills Day (you see, at least I remember that now), Wednesday, I have to email my portion of work in to uni for next week. Thursday, I'm actually going down to uni to do a 'presentation skills' workshop (ugh!). Then Friday, which is when my dear old Mum and Dad will probably land squarely at 10.30 and raise their eyebrows that I haven't been keeping up with current political events or even housework*. And I was up at 5.15 this morning, which doesn't help. I did manage to do some 'serious' reading on Pauline metaphors, but I'm feeling a bit stale now. I think I'll have a look at one of the poems in a few minutes and make some notes about the more obvious features. It's Lit. Crit. - you can say pretty much anything you like as long as you back it up with evidence! So I will.
* they don't understand that it ranks pretty low on this house's agendum: my Mum is still fussing around with a duster and Dad's tea on a tray at 80, and makes constant reference to cooking, gardening and busying about as having to do with woman's sense self-worth . O pur-lease!!! Rod? Own back?
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