Seriously. Or at least the walls of our apartment are very thin. I am home for most of the day and night, so I hear just how often this grown man shouts into a phone or yells at his xbox. He also swears a lot. And why isn't he at work during the day? I've never met the guy but I feel like I know him really well and I don't care for him much. It makes me miss our old apartment with the brick walls because almost no sound could ever get through that. I was on a school group phone call this afternoon and my neighbor decided to play some very loud grunge rock--who even listens to that anymore?!--so I had to go hide out in Scarlet's room in order to hear my team members discuss our schoolwork.
Speaking of schoolwork, this past week was just exhausting. I spoke with a course mentor twice before resubmitting four tasks. Two of them have since been returned to me. Guess I'll be talking to him a third time. *sigh* I also submitted three tasks of another class, one of which was passed, one that is still being evaluated, and one I resubmitted when it was returned to me this afternoon. I'm used to resubmissions--I often don't understand the level of detail the evaluator is looking for, so I expect at least half of my tasks to be returned to me before I get it right. I no longer see it as an embarrassment, frustration, or weakness--I just misinterpret what the prompt asks me to do. It's more a fault of my picking apart a question than anything else. So that was fun today. I also talked on the phone with my team for four hours and had to call back in because my phone battery died. Then I worked on an assignment for my team for another hour and a half.
I don't love doing schoolwork on my one day off and I certainly don't love having Josh play with my baby all day while I'm cooped up in the back room, but I love the idea of getting things accomplished. It gives me so much satisfaction that I can't stop thinking about all the other things I can accomplish to the point that I sit up in bed at midnight to type out my mundane thoughts rather than sleep after such a stressful day. This week I'm hoping to complete two tasks, a debriefing, four simulation rounds, and some of the work for my capstone project. I'm getting close to the end. Even my mentor has started to believe in me. She has never had confidence before because I don't work well on a regular basis--I go a couple months without doing anything, then I blitz through a ton of stuff, and then I fizzle out again. It took me two months to even start working on my first class. But now my mentor agrees with me when I say I'll get everything done this term. She may even have more faith in me than I do at the moment. But that's only because I sometimes panic at how much I have left to do and how nobody starts their capstone with so many classes left to work on...My mentor doesn't witness these freak-out sessions; she just hears my confidence when I assure her each week that I'm working hard.
Today after my group call, Josh and I bought Scarlet some warmer winter clothes and a larger car seat. She's bursting out of her other one. We weighed her and she's two pounds shy of the cutoff, so I guess it makes sense that she no longer fits in it. She's just grown so big in the last couple of weeks. I think it's the formula. My little fatty. She also has a bit of a runny nose and has been a little irritable, which isn't like her. I think she might actually be teething at last. That, or she has a slight cold from the changing seasons. I gave her two teething tablets before bed just in case. She's just so cute. Today at the store I called her my little Smeagol because her hair grows at different rates all over her head and she looked especially Gollum-like at the time. It's an affectionate term, I swear. I wish we could dress her up like Smeagol for Halloween, but that would probably take like a ton of costume makeup and I don't want to smear that stuff all over her. But I'll think of something fun. Josh and I are toying with the idea of doing a family costume theme this year. Josh NEVER dresses up for Halloween, but somehow having a baby to match you makes it more fun so he's game. His vote is to do a Dr. Who theme and dress her as some sort of cyberborg alien thing. They're like the bad men in the show. He'd go as Dr. Who, of course, which leaves me to go as...the Tardis.
Yeah, that's not happening.
