It's Crunch Time

Tina Bausinger

Hey, are you feeling it? Crunch time?  I felt it last week when I randomly wandered into the guy’s bathroom.  First clue: the ladies’ room does not have urinals.  Second clue:  The ladies’ room does not have men.

That’s why they call it the ladies room.  Just so you know.  But you did know that, didn’t you? It was me who was confused.  I swear it’s not Alzheimer’s, or what my mother calls Old Timer’s.  At least not yet.

This is the time of the semester I hate the most.  There’s only a few weeks of class left, so all the papers, tests, etc, are piling up and I feel as if I’m drowning.

If I was only a student, with no job or family, this alone is enough to drive me bonkers.  But, I do have a full time job, three kids, a husband, two parakeets, two dogs and the hamster that I told my son “ran away.”

Don’t laugh.  He really did.  Furball always had a love of the great outdoors, by that I mean outside his cage.  After three days of Nathan’s moping around the house, I told him Furball probably just had a wild side we never knew.

He was happier exploring the great beyond.  My real fear is the last thing he saw was the jaws of my German shepherd. But I digress.

Each semester when I get to this point I feel the Great Panic.  My stomach tightens, I wake up with my heart beating and my brow covered in a cold sweat as I try to remember the imperfect tense of some word in Latin or the year David Walker wrote his “Appeal.”

Who am I kidding? I’m never gonna remember that stuff.  I have dreams about sitting in Latin taking my final in my nightgown when I look around and realize everybody is gone and I’ve blown it.

The upside of the dream is that I noticed that the janitor looks remarkably like Jack Sparrow. Oh well. But I always seem to make it.  If I can just hang in there.  If you can just hang in there, you will make it too.

I get through this time with a lot of coffee, a lot less sleep, and a lot less housework.  I can clean the house after Christmas.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find Furball behind the fridge.