Writing, Tests, Illness and all that Jazz

14 days till the comps and I am a ball of nervous confusion. They say that there is “never” a good time to quit smoking. And indeed “they” are right. There is never a “good” time for tests as well. I have been working for five days on the concept of rhetoric versus dialectic and although I know the material, I can’t seem to organize the material enough write on it. Damn you Plato. Damn you Aristotle. Damn you Kenneth Burke. Damn you Richard Weaver. I have started over, now, four times. Pathetic. Especially when I am considering going back to the first draft, which, Christ, I did not save. The week has been stressful. There was the tenting, of course, plus my baby nephew is still sick which really bothers me. I haven’t written much about my family members but when one, or in our case, two are not doing well . . . well . . . crapola. No one knows what’s up with our nephew which is why everyone is up in arms. At first it was thought he had mono, but then, and now, no. He was in the hospital for several days while his white blood cell count had plummeted. I got phone updates from my sister. But when he got home, he didn’t really get better and now there are . . CAT scans and other tests. The CAT scan came out clean but the fact that doctors are doing cat scans scares my sister, her partner and, well hell, all of us. My father-in-law is sick as well. A blood clot in his neck and, we found out, a bad heart. Which operation do you do first? The blood clot one, which then runs the high risk of him having a heart attack during the operation? Or the heart operation which runs the risk of the blood clot getting free and causing a stroke during the operation? “Heads I win, Tails you lose” And there we are. Right there. Right here. And right back to where we started. And now, it is time for the fiber. – A booga booga