stormdog | Nov. 3rd, 2013

After spending $500 on my car last week, it's now misfiring and probably undrivable. And Lisa was borrowing it on Wednesday to get she and another person to Windycon. And I have so many school things to deal with already, and I have no lunch stuff to take to school, and was already feeling super stressed before the new car stuff.

I called Super-mechanic Juan just to ask whether he'd looked at the state of plugs and wires when I bought the car and see if he thought I should start with replacing them. He offered to come over tonight to look himself, and even to lend me his truck. It was such a relief that I started crying on the phone and am really embarrassed.

And now I'm going to work on getting ready for the test review session I'm running tomorrow.

I should also note that my parents took my brothers and I out for dinner tonight as a celebration of various good things that have been going on for us. James passing the bar exam, Timothy starting school and it going really well so far, me having had a great 2-plus years and presenting a paper at the primary national conference in my discipline this month. My parents are wonderful and thoughtful and I love them greatly. I wish I hadn't been so preoccupied with other worries through much of the meal.

Juan came over and fixed my car. How awesome is that? He determined that my ignition control module was dead, and he replaced it with one that he already had at his house on a same model engine. I feel so fortunate to have friends like that.

I'm so inclined to feel like a bad person lately. Not keeping up with family and friends, in person and online. I feel closed-off and isolated, and like not reading and keeping up with social media makes me a bad person too. My grandmother decided a week ago that she shouldn't be driving anymore and gave my family her car. I was going to go with my mother to pick it up from her and drive it home, but I haven't managed to do it. She and a family friend went out to pick it up tonight and I feel terrible about not having gone and seen her even though I was with Juan as he worked on my car.

I talked to her recently and she knows I'm busy. It's just more of the irrational anxiety I wrote about earlier. Downstairs tonight, I talked a little bit about feeling this way and my dad pointed out that my parents had just taken me out for dinner and given me a nice card because I'm *not* a bad person and I have been doing really good things.

Being as busy and anxious as I have been is making me emotionally vulnerable and unstable.

On Thanksgiving weekend, school ends on Wednesday, and I'll be done with the conference and presentation. One day of that break will be a family thing, I'm sure, but I'd like to use the other time to visit people. I want to spend extra time with my grandmother,