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More oddments
Jun. 17th, 2005 09:00 pmI'm having a stupid day. It began before I'd even gone to bed last night; I was sitting here perched in my chair idly clicking when my mother came in. "Iona, could you come here for a moment?"
"What?" I said guardedly. Usually at half twelve she comes in to ask why the hell I haven't gone to bed yet.
"Just come."
She'd blown up the television. There was smoke, scary electrical fizzing and the distinct smell of burnt plastic. I resisted the urge to shriek with laughter and merely inquired how she'd done it. She says she just aimed the remote at it, and, well, boom.
"Like Gallifrey," I said sotto voce and ambled back to bed. The general consensus is we need a new television. Or maybe not - the reasons we have more than one are complicated and involve random locums, moving round Merseyside and a raffle I won when I was eleven - but she's a little peeved. I shouldn't laugh, really.
So I went to bed, and got up again an hour later because I was wide awake. I went back online, and was still scarily conscious. I tried to plan a Susan fic of my own (I posted a Susan fic challenge a while ago, which a few people have picked up, but I want to write what I had in mind myself) and wrote a couple of paragraphs, deleted them instantly and felt much better, but I was still wide awake.
Then I started revising Ecology and the Environment. Fell asleep in five minutes.
I despair.
Today has been spent categorically not revising. I've given up on the pretence of even trying, but I'm not happy about it. No, I'm serious. That's what I hate about revision and study leave and summer - everything I like has the joy taken out of it. I sit down and revise and I'm bored. The subjects I chose myself to take and not drop, the organic mechanisms I'm proud of having mastered, the English texts I've thoroughly enjoyed reading, the as-it-happens editing throughout my Politics notes - they no longer hold any interest for me. Revising them and memorising them over and over means I don't enjoy my own subjects any more. Even manganate(VII) loses its charms once I've done its oxidation states to distraction.
And then there's the other things - I can't sit down and read a book or watch something on telly or buy a trashy magazine or go to the beach, because of the all-pervading guilt that I should be revising. And it doesn't help that most of my friends are much more motivated than me. Last year Fidan was telling me about the extent of her revision and it bothers me how much work I do not do.
Then come the moments of wondering why me? why now? why four A-levels?, which quickly segue into self-loathing of the worst kind, the type where actually getting out of bed is an effort because it will mean another day where I haven't revised.
I'm probably not painting myself as the sanest girl in the box, here. (I'm strangely reminded of the last time tiredness drove me to tinnitus - I sat in the lab listening to the constant ringing sound, and finally asked, "Can anyone else hear that?"
"What?"
"The ringing."
"What ringing?"
"Shush a minute." And there is silence. The chemgeeks look at me, then each other, then at Rice-Oxley, then at me again.
Panic dawns. Rice-Oxley peers at me, and says in her talking-to-lunatics-and-first-years voice, "Iona... have you been under a lot of stress lately?")
Chemgeeks! I miss them all. They know I'm a queer leftie obsessively fannish lunatic, and they still love me. I call that friendship.
Actually, I'm going to do the meme. Five things I enjoy doing to relax and will return to doing with a vengeance after exams are over:
1. Watching whatever's on Sky One at six, with a cup of coffee and a flapjack. It's usually Stargate, TNG or Buffy, all of which I watch with pleasure because I already know the plot.
2. Going to the beach with my iPod. I did this today - just wandered out of the house, walked through the trees and found myself by the shoreline without my really thinking about it. The tide was out today, but it's so horribly humid and muggy that it was nice just to be somewhere with breezes.
3. Ringing Hannah and talking about rubbish for an hour, especially when I haven't seen her in weeks.
4. Wednesday nights, when Clare, Colleen and Ron arrive and we do something - either gossiping on my bedroom floor, or we go out - and it's so comfortable and familiar and nice.
5. Teaching. I seriously do find it relaxing; you just forget about all your own problems, and focus on something simple, mathematical, that can be explained clearly with examples and answers in the back of the book. And I get paid for it, something which I still find amazing.
Mmm, moving on. Tomorrow, I have to go to work at some obscene hour because Tony's hosting a book-signing. Also, I asked for next week off for revision purposes, and not only did he agree, he's actually paying me for it. Apparently there's a loophole - if I work into September, even if it's only one week into September, I'm due another day's paid holiday. Which means I now have sixteen pounds I didn't have before.
Hmmm. What can I buy for £16?
"What?" I said guardedly. Usually at half twelve she comes in to ask why the hell I haven't gone to bed yet.
"Just come."
She'd blown up the television. There was smoke, scary electrical fizzing and the distinct smell of burnt plastic. I resisted the urge to shriek with laughter and merely inquired how she'd done it. She says she just aimed the remote at it, and, well, boom.
"Like Gallifrey," I said sotto voce and ambled back to bed. The general consensus is we need a new television. Or maybe not - the reasons we have more than one are complicated and involve random locums, moving round Merseyside and a raffle I won when I was eleven - but she's a little peeved. I shouldn't laugh, really.
So I went to bed, and got up again an hour later because I was wide awake. I went back online, and was still scarily conscious. I tried to plan a Susan fic of my own (I posted a Susan fic challenge a while ago, which a few people have picked up, but I want to write what I had in mind myself) and wrote a couple of paragraphs, deleted them instantly and felt much better, but I was still wide awake.
Then I started revising Ecology and the Environment. Fell asleep in five minutes.
I despair.
Today has been spent categorically not revising. I've given up on the pretence of even trying, but I'm not happy about it. No, I'm serious. That's what I hate about revision and study leave and summer - everything I like has the joy taken out of it. I sit down and revise and I'm bored. The subjects I chose myself to take and not drop, the organic mechanisms I'm proud of having mastered, the English texts I've thoroughly enjoyed reading, the as-it-happens editing throughout my Politics notes - they no longer hold any interest for me. Revising them and memorising them over and over means I don't enjoy my own subjects any more. Even manganate(VII) loses its charms once I've done its oxidation states to distraction.
And then there's the other things - I can't sit down and read a book or watch something on telly or buy a trashy magazine or go to the beach, because of the all-pervading guilt that I should be revising. And it doesn't help that most of my friends are much more motivated than me. Last year Fidan was telling me about the extent of her revision and it bothers me how much work I do not do.
Then come the moments of wondering why me? why now? why four A-levels?, which quickly segue into self-loathing of the worst kind, the type where actually getting out of bed is an effort because it will mean another day where I haven't revised.
I'm probably not painting myself as the sanest girl in the box, here. (I'm strangely reminded of the last time tiredness drove me to tinnitus - I sat in the lab listening to the constant ringing sound, and finally asked, "Can anyone else hear that?"
"What?"
"The ringing."
"What ringing?"
"Shush a minute." And there is silence. The chemgeeks look at me, then each other, then at Rice-Oxley, then at me again.
Panic dawns. Rice-Oxley peers at me, and says in her talking-to-lunatics-and-first-years voice, "Iona... have you been under a lot of stress lately?")
Chemgeeks! I miss them all. They know I'm a queer leftie obsessively fannish lunatic, and they still love me. I call that friendship.
Actually, I'm going to do the meme. Five things I enjoy doing to relax and will return to doing with a vengeance after exams are over:
1. Watching whatever's on Sky One at six, with a cup of coffee and a flapjack. It's usually Stargate, TNG or Buffy, all of which I watch with pleasure because I already know the plot.
2. Going to the beach with my iPod. I did this today - just wandered out of the house, walked through the trees and found myself by the shoreline without my really thinking about it. The tide was out today, but it's so horribly humid and muggy that it was nice just to be somewhere with breezes.
3. Ringing Hannah and talking about rubbish for an hour, especially when I haven't seen her in weeks.
4. Wednesday nights, when Clare, Colleen and Ron arrive and we do something - either gossiping on my bedroom floor, or we go out - and it's so comfortable and familiar and nice.
5. Teaching. I seriously do find it relaxing; you just forget about all your own problems, and focus on something simple, mathematical, that can be explained clearly with examples and answers in the back of the book. And I get paid for it, something which I still find amazing.
Mmm, moving on. Tomorrow, I have to go to work at some obscene hour because Tony's hosting a book-signing. Also, I asked for next week off for revision purposes, and not only did he agree, he's actually paying me for it. Apparently there's a loophole - if I work into September, even if it's only one week into September, I'm due another day's paid holiday. Which means I now have sixteen pounds I didn't have before.
Hmmm. What can I buy for £16?
