The End is Near

Hello my friends!  It has been forever since I last posted.  Need I say more than life has just been crazy.  The holidays were super busy, but great… well, with the exception of Jeff and I both being sick over the New Year holiday.  As far as my thesis writing goes… ugh… I have been alternately freaking out, crying, freaking out some more  and procrastinating terribly.  In the midst of freaking out, I have been getting other aspects of my life in order.  Jeff and I started getting healthy just after Thanksgiving.  We started working with a Herbalife wellness coach… thank you Matt!!  So far, in the last eight weeks, Jeff has lost ten pounds and I have lost nearly twenty.  I have also dropped my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers by forty points each.  Those of you who have interacted closely with me for the last three years know just how much pain I have been in between my knee problems and my fibromyalgia.  Since beginning the Herbalife program, my pain is almost non-existent.  This in itself is miraculous.  So, now with the health aspect of my life taken firmly in hand, I have been able to focus on writing a little more in the last week.  I attended the first session of Dr. B’s Southern History Colloquium this last Thursday night and had a chance to sit down and talk with her beforehand.  I was more than a little upset with myself that I did not have a completed draft ready for her before now and nervous about seeing her.  She, as usual, was nothing but supportive and helpful.  I made a deal with her that by February 14th, when the class meets again, I will have a completed draft ready to hand to her.  With about three weeks to finish up, I finally feel like the end is near.  I sat on Wednesday last week and cranked out about twelve pages of Chapter 5, which has been troubling me for some time.  I am not sure it is the most beautiful text I have ever written, but I have a start on it.  To have the draft completed in the next three weeks I have to finish up Chapter 5, write Chapter 2 and craft an introduction and conclusion to the thesis as a whole.  I think this is certainly attainable.  I just have to manage my time wisely.  Tomorrow will be spent finishing up chapter 5.  The rest of the week will be spent on Chapter 2.  That will give me more than a week to write my intro and conclusion and then spend some time checking over my footnotes to make sure they are all in good shape.  The end, dear readers, can not come too soon.  This project has outworn its welcome in my head.  I need to finish and move on to other exciting projects.  More on that to come!  Thank you for sticking with me through this long process!  Onward to Chapter 5!