A Short List of Recent Accomplishments

AKA, why my updates have been sporadic, late, and generally short these days:

1. I have finally, finally, finally finished my applications for graduate school. It took several weeks of stressing out to finish the personal statement, because I hate writing those with a passion. Every time I sit down to compose one, I start having flashbacks to when I was in high school applying to undergrad and start to feel crushed by my anxiety-fueled Fear of Failure and Ruining My Life Forever. But I did it! It's done! And odds are good I'm never going to have to write another one ever again. (Now I get to spend the next month or two freaking out and worrying about whether or not I'll get accepted.)
2. I am even more finally over the incredible cold/sinus infection that knocked me out flat for about three weeks. Proof that there's irony in the universe: my head want from kind of stuffy to full-throttle sick the day after I got kicked off my dad's health insurance. 
3. I am also finished applying for the CASA program here. I got my manual and the training starts in February. That's probably the first and last I'm going to be able to write about it here, mainly because of the super-strict confidentiality rules that go with the territory of anything involving children, crimes involving children, and the courts. I also don't want to jeopardize any case I'm working on or my credibility as a guardian by blogging about it publicly. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to it!

I don't have as much free time this month as I thought I was going to, though, which is also affecting my ability to churn out entries. When you live in a tourist town, you get used to being semi-unemployed between January and Whenever the Flowers Start Blooming in March or April. You save as much as you can during the busy season (by working an insane number of hours) and procrastinate all of the stuff that you should be doing (applying to grad school, writing that novel, making a dent in your enormous yarn stash, reading all of those books) by promising to do it in the off-season. I was planning on doing all of those things and blogging quite regularly, but I'm working a lot more than I thought I would be so all of the stuff I put off and my ongoing obligations (like not living in squalor, which is an uphill battle when you live with anywhere from 2-4 dudes) are putting the squeeze on my blogging time. 

I'm very thankful that I am able to work, of course. I had enough in savings to where I wouldn't have to work at all between January and mid-March, but it would have sucked my accounts dry. Now that I have some extra cash, I can put it towards useful things like getting my car a few steps closer to paid off and taking a beginner Spanish class this summer. And possibly more yarn. And books. And kitchen gadgets!