This just in: pregnancy hormones and DMA hormones are a bad combination.

I'm trying to get my document finished this week for my DMA. I still have a lot of work to do, but it really needs to be done by Sunday. I teach this evening, I drive to Cedar Rapids tomorrow evening for a rehearsal, stay over on Friday night and have a concert Saturday morning, drive back, and I have a student recital at my house on Sunday at noon. In between all this, I need to finish talking about all the exercises, give brief synopses of about four more books for my introduction, write a brief biography of Ray Still, and watch my 2.5 hour lesson with him on DVD, transcribing it for my document.

I just found out last night that I missed a deadline for graduation by three days. My committee still hasn't set a date for my lecture or my defense in May, and I'm running up against more deadlines, made more difficult by the fact that I don't have my dates finalized.

Did I mention that I'm pregnant? Dave said, "just get up at 6am with me tomorrow morning." I'd like to, but, and this is NOT AN EXCUSE, I really do have to be more careful with my body now. I can't just push myself to the brink of exhaustion. I'm trying to eat regularly (12:40pm and I haven't had lunch yet...oops), and I'm especially trying not to let the mental stresses in my life affect me physically. I have a prenatal yoga dvd (which I accidentally left on my coffee table the other day, and a student's mom may have seen it...she didn't say anything though), and I've gone through it once. It was very helpful. The problem is trying to squeeze in the time to relax, to do these beneficial things for my mind, my body and my belly.

Writing it all out helps me vent, even if nobody is reading this yet. Expect more of that.