I was supposed to present at lab meeting tomorrow morning with my presentation that I will give to my committee meeting on March 12th. Obviously I'm nowhere near ready with all the house stuff going on.

I got my boss to push it to Friday... and then it ended up getting rescheduled to Monday, the day before my committee meeting. This is GOOD. This gives me time to devote to that, plus I will have my final version by then *hopefully -- and then the rest of Monday to retool it for my committee meeting on Tuesday.

I feel like a weight has been lifted and I no longer feel like puking from the stress. Regardless of this I have still done at least 10 minutes of exercise each day. I am determined to streak into spring with Spark. My arm is healing! I can actually tell every day how much my skin is closing. I've got about 1" wide and 4" long now instead of over 3" wide and 6" long. Its a big improvement. It still bugs me when I try to reach over my head, so I'm trying not to do that.

On the house front, the realtor comes tomorrow to make the youtube video and take photos. My mom is stressing. There's still a lot of little things to be done. So my goal for today is to stay here until three and make some real progress on my powerpoint presentation, even if it is a rough draft, and then go home and help her finish up and try to keep her panic down.

I swear I get all of my anxiety issues from her, but both her and my dad are on anti-anxiety meds. I just borrow them for times like this where I make myself sick with worry. The realtor popped by yesterday and was impressed at what had been done -- so he was really positive. Its just a lot of little projects that my mom think are essential, but in reality won't show up in pictures. (she wants to pull the washer and dryer out and clean behind them?!)

So that's pretty much it. I did another 50 squats last night while watching the Biggest Loser and got in around 250-300 crunches. I'm taking it slow... slowly building my muscles back up. Seeing what doesn't hurt my arm... I'm telling you though, once this sucker closes, I'm needing to get some cardio endurance back. And I will get back up to 2000 crunches before the end of April. I am just glad that at least I know that I can stay at a maintenance level. Not counting calories but trying to eat better, and not exercising and I still have only gained less than 10 pounds through this whole surgery debacle. I can only use this as fuel to get moving again once I'm able.

Hopefully the house will sell quickly.

Hopefully my committee makes no fuss next Tuesday and quickly agrees to let me defend on April 26th.

Hopefully I get the job interview in April in St. Louis.

My mindset is better than it has been the last few days. My mom is even taking my dogs back with her tomorrow to live at her house so that I can focus on keeping the house show ready and I can stay at work longer focusing on writing my dissertation. Its going to suck but at least I know its only for the short term.

Okay everyone -- if I can keep myself positive through all of this stress and get in more than 10 minutes of exercise every day -- you can too!