Tears on my pillow

Two weeks ago we went to a hugely expensive restaurant for dinner with our coupon for a "nearly" free meal. The dinner bill -- without any drinks -- came to over $100. I had brought the wrong coupon with me, which luckily Hubby discovered before I embarrassed us both by presenting it for the dinner tab.

I sat at the table and cried.

A friend in the Chicago area sent Hubby a beautifully crafted hand decorated box to keep his prayers and worries in. Hubby loves the box and has it sitting beside his bed on the night stand.

When I opened the package I filled the box with my own tears before handing it over to him.

I was bored out of my mind in a department meeting on Wednesday and since we had been requested to bring out computers to the meetings, I sneakily decided to open my personal email account and read up on the day's news. There I found that a dog I had never met and who lived at least 1000 miles from me and was very, very old had died. The dog was one of my last living links to Wolfie, the dog of my heart.

I immediately broke into tears right during the meeting. I had to quickly gather up my junk, my computer, and my office chair and noisily exit the room, still trying to conquer my sobs.

Since January I have been crying myself to sleep over the grad school situation. I hate the last three classes. I will never teach functional students -- and six hours of the nine is in functional education. Three hours are in elementary education -- and I'll retire before I ever enter an elementary classroom. But my provisional license cannot be renewed again and was up in November so I was trying to convince myself to struggle on through. Six hours this semester and then three in the summer -- which would involve working 150 hours with a group of functional students. Pretty soon I was crying almost all night long, what with the worry and the stress and the misery. Finally, this week I gathered up enough courage to call my advisor and ask for a meeting, which she arranged for that very evening. Before I had even arrived, she had met with both my instructors this semester. I laid out my misery and tales of woe and she offered several different options -- and pointed out a HUGE error on my part. Yes, my provisional license was up in November -- but November of 2012 -- and that's still two years away. In my misery I had simply seen November -- and thought it was the upcoming fall month. I have plenty of time. I do not need to teach summer school with functional students. Plus, my advisor is teaching the fall semester of the last course and will make sure I end up in her section and help me through. And -- she had already gotten permission for me to take incompletes in both courses this semester -- meaning I could finish up the huge papers due in each during the summer (the summer in which I will NOT be going to grad school working 150 hours with functional students).

I started crying the minute my advisor said "we can work this out." By the time she called in both instructors to insure me I could take incompletes in the class without penalty, I was nearly hysterical.

Now I've got a mid-term to take this weekend (to be finished by Thursday). I've accessed it already and I don't know the answers to over half the questions. The tears are dripping down my face as I type.

And here's the crazy thing:

• Because we paid for the $100 dinner ourselves, we still had the coupon available and tonight we're having our second $100 dinner -- but this time using the coupon. I didn't choose very well for the first dinner -- I only really liked the salad. Tonight I'm having the lobster tail, the lobster bisque, and the fancy Caesar salad, a meal I'll like much better. We could afford the first $100 -- not that I wanted to spend it -- but it didn't hurt the budget all that much.


• The gift from the Chicago friend was meant to bring joy -- and it has. The box is lovely and delicate and is already filled with tears to wiped away.


• The dog who died was very old and the owner did him a huge favor. The staff who saw my melt down all came to my rescue to see how they could help.


• If I had only gone to see my advisor in January -- or December -- when I began to be so distraught over the final nine hours I could have saved myself a lot of misery. And I would have learned that I had plenty of time to fill my final SPED requirements.


• I should have started my mid-term this afternoon. At least I could have begun the research to find the answers to the questions. But I couldn't bring myself to start the process. Instead, after I got Hubby breakfast, I crawled back in bed and watch DVR recordings of The Defenders. And it really doesn't matter that I blow my 4.0 -- as long as I pass the darned course.

I've got to get things under better control, find my equilibrium, and dig myself out of the hole I'm in. And I've got to stop the crying -- somehow.