The imac is still dead.    I tried leaving it unplugged and plugging it back in, using a different power cord, and resetting the PMU.  The next step is to take it to the computer doctor.  I’m a little worried about taking it someplace to be fixed.  Right now, I feel like the data is still there, just inaccessable.  Who knows what the computer doctors will do to it, though, and I am scared that whatever it is, whatever data was left on the computer will be gone.  The actual paper data is all backed up and everything, but there were programs on the imac that I don’t have on my laptop, and can’t run on my laptop, that I may need before I am done writing.  I am hoping that if the computer can’t be fixed, at least the computer docs can find a way to remove the hard drive and make it so I can access it.

To everyone celebrating Thanksgiving today, I hope you have a happy one filled with good food and good company.  Husband and I have decided to forego the usual holiday feast in favor of going to a nice restaurant this year.  Didn’t seem worth it to make a turkey and trimmings for just two of us!

I have been writing my thesis on my old imac desktop (the kind with the dome base, a stem, and a flat screen). I never turn it off, but the power went out in the apt. very briefly yesterday and so the computer was abruptly turned off.  In protest, it now will not turn back on.  This happened once before a few months ago when I accidentally turned off the switch that went to the outlet that the power strip was plugged into.  What worked in that instance was plugging the computer into a different spot on the power strip.  No such luck this time.  I even tried plugging it directly into the wall, sans power strip, but it stubbornly remains off.

In case you were wondering, I did back up my thesis onto a usb drive.  But, I hadn’t backed up my most recent, very detailed outline of the lit review chapter.  I’ve got an old version of it on a portable hard drive, but I will have to reconstruct some of it.  For awhile, I thought I was going to have to do more than that because I couldn’t get my laptop to recognize my usb drive or the portable hard drive causing me to panic and dig through my sent email folder to get an email to my advisor that had an old draft attached to it (also, I have an old hard copy in a file drawer and was contemplating retyping Chapter 2 which is the only thing that I have written out at this point).  But, then I reset the PRAM on my computer (a trick I learned at the Apple Genius bar when I had this problem in the past) and, considering how this day was going, it miraculously worked.  Now I have a recent draft of Chapter 2 and an old version of my outline and I’m happy I didn’t have to break out the ativan to deal with this little crisis.

I’m worried, though.  The fact that my laptop frequently forgets it has usb ports does not fill me with confidence.  I’m taking the imac to the Genius bar tonight to see if the problem is the power cable.  If that’s the problem then, fine, we get a new cable and I go on using the imac.  If it isn’t, then we have to decide if it’s worth it to send the computer in to get fixed, whatever that would entail.  It’s an old computer, I’m not sure it would be worth it.

*sigh*

The bottom line is I might be looking at getting a new laptop.  That’s not an expense that we are really looking forward to, especially since it turns out that I will have to pay my tuition for the quarter I graduate in (right now, I’m on leave, so no tuition is being paid).  Tuition is $3800/qtr so it’s a significant expense.  And, I had wanted to go to the blogging conference but given all of these other expenses, it might not be feasible financially speaking.

So, it’s kind of been a bummer of a day so far.  Cross your fingers for me that the imac just needs a new power cord.

Also, thank God for backups!

You might think that I haven’t been posting because I have been too busy writing my thesis or that maybe I went on vacation or some other, positive reason.  You would be wrong.

Inevitably, when I fall off the face of the earth it is because my mood has taken a dive and I’m either in the midst of a serious depression or I am trying to recover from said depression.  This recent disappearance from the blog is no exception.  Fortunately,  I am now on the mend.

I can trace this most recent relapse into depression to a very specific cause:  decreasing my medication.  As you know, I have been wanting to get pregnant.  So, with my doctor’s approval, I started tapering down on my medications in preparation for that.  I peeled back one medication after the other until, suddenly, I went a little too far and I collapsed.  This collapse was somewhat different from my previous breakdowns because instead of being confined to bed and sleeping all day and all night because I couldn’t face getting up , I was consumed by anxiety and paranoia and couldn’t sleep at all (mostly due to a horrible, horrible attack of restless legs syndrome which limited my ability to sleep to about two hours at a time which probably contributed to the crazy).  Which then made me depressed because I was scared to leave the house and I know this is not a normal state of being.

In fact, I was in the middle of writing a post to the blog describing the anxiety I was feeling and what went through my mind everytime I tried to leave the house and how I was feeling like I had accomplished something pretty major since I had managed to go to the pharmacy to pick up the one medication I was still taking when I realized how absolutely off my rocker I sounded and I contacted my doctor and said, “We’ve got to fix this.  NOW.”

So, back on the medications I went.  And, here I am–mostly stable, frustrated with my brain chemistry, and with very little progress on my thesis since last I wrote because the funny thing is, when you are feeling like you lack the wherewithal to make it five minutes in the world outside your apt., you don’t spend much time writing your thesis because it is simply a given in your head that you will never pass your defense.  So, why bother?

Now that I’m stable, I’ve been working on my thesis about three hours a day on the weekdays.  Which is pretty damn impressive considering I was only managing about a half an hour a day prior to this most recent breakdown.  Which also indicates that I wasn’t doing so hot before the breakdown anyway.

So, what does this mean in terms of getting pregnant?  It means the baby-making is on hold.  If you’ve never tried to get pregnant, you might not realize this but trying to get pregnant is stressful.  You’d think it would be fun, at least in the beginning, if it doesn’t take you too long to get pregnant.  And, maybe it is for some people.  I’m just not one of them.  I’ve wanted a baby for too long, and, at 35, I’m worried that my window of opportunity is narrowing (please don’t tell me that 35 is still young, the fact is that the older you are, the harder it is to get pregnant and the greater chance there is of something going wrong).  So, right off the bat we were planning sex according to when I might be ovulating and getting my period seemed like the end of the world.*  Finishing my degree is stressful enough without the pregnancy stress on top of it.  And, while I won’t be going off my meds in preparation for pregancy the next time, I might try going off of them for the first trimester and that really will not be conducive to writing, as I have already discovered.  So, we are waiting for a few more months.

As for thesis writing, I’ve set a deadline for myself.  The thesis has to be done by mid-Feb. at the latest.  By done I mean ready to hand to my committee.  To do this, I think I need to have a first draft to my advisor by mid- to late Jan.  I think I need to make this deadline in order to push myself to have a hope of ever being finished.  Without a deadline in my head, I haven’t felt the need to push myself to work more and harder.  Consequently, I have just been floating along.  The reward structure I set up helped me a little, but it wasn’t getting me in front of the computer enough.  I find I’m much more productive now that I have a deadline for myself.

So, that’s where I’m at.  Now that I’m feeling better, I suspect I will be posting to the blog more frequently (probably bemoaning how I hate writing my thesis).

*I may have said this before, but, I really, really wish we had started trying to get pregnant earlier in our lives because then we could simply stop using birth control and not try to plan so much and maybe be a little more relaxed about getting pregnant.

I’ve hit the 15 hour mark, so my reward is something Paper Source.  I looove stationery, so I can’t wait to pick something up.

In other news, Nephew the 4th has been born!  Yay!

Husband and I have a laundry hamper that has three separate compartments in it.  These compartments have been designated white/beige, all colors except red and red.  Why, then, did I find a navy blue plaid shirt in the white/beige compartment and a red plaid shirt in the all colors except red compartment?  Why?  Is he trying to tell me that laundry sorting is more difficult than rocket science?

ETA:  Just found some white socks and underwear in the reds.  Would serve him right if I left them in there and he had to go around in pink socks and underwear!  ARGH!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Clip art from here.

So, I kinda need to work on the discussion section of my paper.  And, by that I mean that I need to put some words–any words at all–after the discussion heading in the draft.  I’m letting the thing intimidate me and I shouldn’t, really.  I know my research was important.  I know it contributed to the field.  I even know why it was important and how it contributes to my field.  And yet, there are currently no words after “Discussion.”

The problem, mostly, is the same problem I had with every other section, I don’t know how to say what I want to say.  See, I am most comfortable with an informal style of writing (you don’t say?) and a paper is really not informal.  If I had to write a series of informal blog posts about my research, the whole thing would be done and I could go defend and pick up my doctorate.  So, what happens is that I sit in front of the computer and wait to feel inspired.  I write a sentence.  I delete the sentence.  I write a new sentence.  I delete it.  It’s really quite painful.

Well, this approach is getting me nowhere fast so I’ve decided to try something different.  I opened a new document and am writing the discussion as though it was for the blog.  I figure, at least I get something written down and I can clean up the language and make it sound all professional and smart later.  So far, it is working.  We’ll see how it goes when I try to translate it into professional-speak.

My thesis goal for the week was simply to make space in the office* to actually do work and to find my thesis stuff in The Land of Unpacked Boxes.  Instead, I’ve done both of those things, plus actually worked on my thesis for an hour, bringing me up to 10 hours!  And there’s still another day left in the week!  My reward for 10 hours: new hardcover book or two trade paperbacks or four regular paperbacks.  I’ve had my eye on the new Tasha Alexander book….

*Office sounds so sterile.   Let’s call it the study instead. Makes you think of wood paneling and leather chairs, doesn’t it, instead of cubicles and institutional furniture.
P.S.  Thanks for all of the sentiments regarding my mother’s divorce.  I particularly like what CPP said.

This has been stuck in my head since watching a Muppets DVD a few nights ago.