I’m feeling a little panic-stricken at the thought of all the things I have to do in the coming weeks. I’ve been away from home for three days and won’t pull into my own driveway until close to bedtime tonight. In the next few days, I’ve got at least three moderately time-consuming assignments to complete and nearly no time free to work on them. The weekend will be largely taken up with Thanksgiving preparations and festivities, not to mention out-of-school kids, and Monday the most pressing of the assignments is due. Tuesday I’ve got to leave for Umeå at the ungodly hour of 5:45 for some sort of appointment before my ear operation on December 11, and I expect that will take up most of the day, leaving me little opportunity to work on the two other assignments, which are due that day. In theory, I could turn one of the assignments in on Wednesday morning, but I’ll be traveling back down to Uppsala then, and really won’t have time to mess with it before my meeting that afternoon.

The following week isn’t looking any easier, with a four-day joint workshop between my master research class and a visiting group from London added to my regular schedule. I know it will be both fun and valuable to my work, but those will be some hectic days. After that’s done I won’t have to go to Uppsala until mid-January, but I will have to be in Umeå at least two or three days — with a trip home in between — the second week of December, for more ear stuff. My surgery is the 11th, as I said, and there will be at least a short period of recovery time until I’m ready to jump back into everything with both feet.

As if all this weren’t enough (don’t dare even mention Christmas to me), the kids have concerts and dance recitals and arts-and-crafts days and holiday bazaars and all manner of things going on that I can hardly bear to think about. I fear I’m going to miss most of their events, for one reason or another, and that’s only adding to the stress. As much as I love being back in school and having something of my very own again, I sometimes can’t help thinking back wistfully to my at-home mom days. Things were so much simpler then.