Like every Monday for the past three weeks, I scrambled to get my laptop stuffed in it’s bag, my purse out of my cabinet, and my phone on make busy so I could rush out the door. Like every day of my life, I was running late.

I don’t get off work until 5:30. I have class at 6pm. And it’s a 45 minute drive from work to school. So every Monday (and Wednesday) I either leave work early or get to class late. This is the struggle I’ve faced many days over the last several years as I balance family, work, and school.

Today I was running out the door at 5:30. Today I was going to be late for school.

I flew down the interstate trying to stay sort of within the speed limit and yet speeding at the same time. It’s an art I’ve learned well.

I pulled in to the parkade, spiraled around to the 6th floor (I have no idea why it was so busy today), and finally found a spot. I rushed out of my truck and down the path on the way to my building.

The cold air inside Sheaffer Hall hit me square in the face as I ran through the door. I shuffled across the hall to my classroom. Swung open the door. And stopped dead in my tracks.

The room was completely empty. WTF?!?

I walked back in to the courtyard and called Lee. “Check my email. Is there an email from my teacher?” I asked. Nothing.

I checked our class website to see if he’d left some kind of message there. Nothing.

I was pissed. Dude, I drive 45 minutes to get to this stupid class. With gas prices teetering at just under $3.00 a gallon, driving 45 miles there and back for NOTHING makes me a little hot under the collar.

I huffed it back to my car, spiraled back down to the main floor to pay, and headed back home. Pissed.

As I exited the interstate near my house, I stopped behind a car at the red light. The light turned green but the car didn’t move. After a couple seconds I looked in the back window and saw the driver staring off to the right looking at the car next to him. So I honked my horn.

The driver was not pleased that I honked my horn. He looked in his rear view mirror at me. And I think I even saw him snear at me. Then he started moving forward. Slowly.

Seriously?!? Today?!? When I’m already pissed off. You want to play a game of chicken?!? Really?!?

He’s driving a little Chevy Lumina. I’m driving a big Chevy Tahoe. I give serious thought to throwing it in 4WD and driving up over the back of his trunk like a monster truck. But I remained calm.

He continued to drive slow all the way to the next light. I don’t normally have road rage. I gave up road rage for Lent several years ago when my kids were all young and it scared them when mommy was yelling out the window like a crazy person. But that rage? It was coming back today.

When we got near the light I slipped in to the turning lane on the right, leaned out my window and flipped that asshole off. I gave him the death stare, daring him to follow me. He chose not to. A wise choice my man.

When I got home I slipped out of my work clothes (jeans and a t-shirt…it’s a casual work environment), put on my tankini, and climbed in to the hot tub. The hot tub my husband just bought on Craiglist for $150. Dude, Craigslist rocks. That hot tub was so worth $150 and much more. ‘Cause the stress of the day has already been washed off.

Only four and a half more weeks of school.

Is it just me or has Tuesday become the new Monday? Or maybe it’s just because I have class at 8am on Tuesdays. You know how excited I am about 8am classes.

Summer classes are always tough. Professors have to cram 16 weeks of material in to an 8 week summer course. That usually means you spend just about every night studying when what you really want to do is enjoy a glass of wine (or 6) by the pool while having good conversation with awesome friends. I was up pretty late last night studying, trying to catch up from choosing to spend the weekend with the family rather than the books. Finally at 2am I couldn’t take it anymore and went to bed.

As I was crawling in to bed Lee remembered neither his van nor my truck had any gas in them. This time it really would be Lee’s fault because he was the last person to drive my truck. And was fully aware of it’s gas deficiency. I grumbled about having to get up even early now to stop and get gas…as if getting us at 6:30 wasn’t bad enough. Being a wonderful husband (or so I thought) he agreed to get up when I did to take the truck up to get gas while I was in the shower. So I rolled over and went to sleep.

Fast forward (although you don’t have to fast forward to far since it was only 4 hours later) to this morning. I jumped in the shower. Lee drove up and got gas. All was good. Or was it.

About 15 minutes in to my trip, as I’m flying down the interstate at 75 mph, I noticed the hood of my truck was shaking a little bit. “That’s odd,” I thought.

A few minutes later I realized it was not only shaking, but it was partially open. Wholly open hood Batman. My immediate thought was it was going to fly up, smash in to my windshield and I’d be dead. Not even making it to this stupid 8am class.

Then I had to put my statistics thinking cap on and start figuring the probability of (1) getting hit by a car AND DYING if I pulled over on the side of the road to shut it, (2) making it to the next exit before it got enough air under the hood to fly open and KILL ME, or (3) having a heart attack from the stress of not having a chance to tell my kids good-bye before my untimely DEMISE on the interstate.

Way too much math for 7:30am on a Monday Tuesday.

I decided to slow down, get behind a semi so he could block some of the wind, and get off on the next exit. And I called Lee to bitch him out for not shutting my hood.

He doesn’t even remember opening my hood. He thinks he may have subconsciously popped the hood to check the oil and then forgot he popped the hood before he walked the long distance from the driver’s side to the front of the truck.

But it was 7am. And we didn’t go to bed until 2am. So I’ll let him off with his defense of exhaustion. This time.

Two years ago I was terrified of public speaking. I honestly would have rather been in a car accident, flown to the nearest hospital, and spend a few days in the ICU then give a speech. And I hate hospitals. My doctor even gave me a prescription for Valium in case I needed it (although I never did fill it).

Today I gave a speech about my research paper. And it went just fine.

Two years ago I would toss and turn and get no sleep the night before the speech. I would spend the whole day in a cold sweat worried about falling face first, or spitting when I talk, or forgetting what I was going to talk about. I would literally shake in my chair waiting for my turn to get up and speak.

This time I didn’t have any of that.

I got a good night’s sleep last night. I didn’t think about my speech at all during the day today. And I really wasn’t that nervous as I sat in my chair at school waiting for my turn.

I’m cured.

Ok, maybe not cured. I was still a little nervous. But it was nothing like what I used to feel when I gave a speech. I’m a girl who had to take speech three times before finally passed it. I kept dropping the class because I was too scared to stand in front of the class and give a speech.

How did I get here? I don’t really know. At some point last term I watched these 20-year-old kids give their speeches and I realized, “They all suck.” Well maybe not suck, but they were all nervous. They all said, “um” every other word. They all lost their place in their notes. They all forgot their words at one point or another. They all struggled with their Powerpoint. None of us were that great so why was I stressing about it.

And that was it. I wasn’t really worried about my speeches. I just made sure I was prepared – going over my material a few times before hand – and then did my best. It feels so good to finally be brave.

Have I mentioned what a procrastinator I am? I was always one of those people who had to pull an all-nighter to finish that big paper or study for finals. Every term I would say “I will not wait until the last minute this time” and then? I would late until the last minute.

This term I’m taking Graphic Design and Mass Media in America. I have Graphic Design at 8am and Mass Media in the late afternoons on Monday and Wednesdays. Our Graphic Design assignments are typically due on Monday morning. I’m usually finishing them up around 1am Sunday night/Monday morning. We usually have a couple of reading assignments for my Mass Media class. I am often found reading those assignments on my lunch break at work just before class.

I can’t help it. It’s just who I am. A procrastinator.

The very first day of class our Mass Media instructor handed us a syllabus that talked about a big research paper we would be working on throughout the term. There were several checkpoints in the last few months. We had to come up with a topic within the first several weeks. Then turn in an annotated bibliography. Followed by our coding sheets. And finally a progress report. I turned in all of these assignments, but never put forth a lot of effort in them. Because, of course, I like to wait until the last minute to work on big research papers so I can have the satisfaction of worrying and pulling my hair out and getting no sleep for days.

This research paper was supposed to be due this Wednesday (tomorrow). Last week we talked our instructor in to giving us another weekend to work on it and now it’s not due until Monday. Thank goodness. Because, of course, I was totally behind.

My research paper is on tween shows and how they portray school, teachers, and homework. All I’ve been doing for the last several days is watching mind-numbing tween shows on Disney and Nickelodeon. Shows like Hannah Montana, iCarly, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Some of these shows are tolerable (Hannah Montana) and others are nauseating (The Suite Life). I definitely should have spread this TV watching out over several weeks to give my brain some time to recuperate.

So in other words, this is why I’ve been neglecting my blog. Because I’ve been too busy embracing my inner tween and watching way too much “oh. my. God. that cute boy like me” TV. I need some vodka.