Well, it wasn't looking promising for a while, but I've survived the first month of my 40's. Equally amazing is the fact that I have not wrapped my hands around anyone's throat and squeezed their last breath out of them (tempted as I have been lately). There's still a lot of stuff I'm sorting out. Some of it is going OK and some of it has been very painful. But I've made it this far and that's a Good Thing. Isn't it?

I've been amazingly sick this weekend. I felt a nasty headache coming on Thursday afternoon and when I was in the parking lot of the local grocery store, a full-on migraine took over my entire body. I wasn't even sure I could make the rest of the drive home, I was so sick. The last two days it's felt like I've had a ND +3 filter over my eyes, everything had that grey-ish cast to it. Today I was finally able to move around a bit without becoming totally nauseated. I made a trip to Trader Joe's...never a good idea to try to deal with the Saturday afternoon crowds when you have no patience to begin with and you feel like utter crap. But I got through it, though I was completely exhausted when I got home and ended up taking a 2-hour nap. I'm not sure if I'll go to the photography class in the morning; will have to see if I'm feeling a lot better, otherwise I'll bag it this week.

Oh yeah...school. I'm pulling a solid A in the computer class, even if it is driving me batty. I can't read through one chapter in the text book where the authors don't pimp Microsoft. And the lab class is all MS Office. Ugh! As for photography, I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed. The grades on my assignments are all over the place. I got a C- (edit: I looked at the print again and see that I actually got a C on it, so it's not quite as bad as I thought) on a photo that was supposed to be shot and processed for artistic achievement rather than technical, but his criticisms of the photo are technical. He keeps saying it's not sharp (I fixed the "flat" complaint by printing with a higher contrast filter and switching from the Ilford Pearl paper to the Kodak Pro Glossy). I had to explain to him that the foreground is supposed to be fuzzy. It's a DOF study as well as an architecture study. He finally got it, but I'm not sure I'll resubmit the new print because I think he's made up his mind that the shot sucks. My classmates all seem to love the shot, as do other photography friends (and I do too, so THERE!). But I'm considering petitioning to have this be a pass/no-pass rather than a graded class because I'll be damned if I'll have my GPA tank even more over yet another subjectively-graded class (should have learned that lesson with the drawing class last term...DUH!).

And, just to add spice to my life, I'm on POOP WATCH with Simon. Yesterday, he grabbed a piece of string and I let him play with it because he is really good about not eating things like string and twist-ties (he much prefers tease games and fetch with them). He was chewing away at the string, which he usually does, so I didn't think much of it. Until a couple minutes later when I looked over and discovered that HE ATE THE DAMN STRING! He seems to be OK so far, but I'm worried about blockage (it's not a big piece of string...but it doesn't have to be). I gave him a big blob of Petromalt last night, his appetite is normal and he hasn't horked up any food. But I keep encouraging him to use his litter box and watching him expectantly whenever he approaches it. He already rues the day I ever read "The New Natural Cat" because that's when I started obsessing over the amount and size of his poops. The thing with that book is, the author is so specific about how many poops are normal (and the length they should be) that I freaked out and phoned the vet when they weren't 1 long one and 2 or 3 short. Actually, after reading that book, I phoned the vet's office a lot because my cats weren't like the cats in her book and I was afraid of being rumbled as The Worst Kitty-Mom EVER and having the SPCA remove my furbabies because of my incompetence. The nice vet tech said my furkid was fine and please stop phoning every other day. So I've calmed down a lot...But right now, Simon is looking at me like there's no frickin' way he's going near that litterbox until after I'm in bed and sound asleep.

And right now that whole "in bed and sound asleep" thing sounds like a good idea. That migraine is still lingering and I have no energy. But I will hear Simon when he starts scratching in the box and I'll be out of bed and down the hall like I was shot out of a cannon so I can get a gander at his output! For such is the life of a fretful mother.