he exam is on wednesday. I am barreling full speed ahead towards it. Today I am at work (8 hours of distraction intended to save my sanity.) Tommorrow I'm home studying all day.

Overthe weekend, I spent each morning taking a 4 hour timed practice exam (Last May's test saturday morning, and last November's on sunday) Then the afternoons/evenings were spent working problems in areas I was weak on. Tonight, I will be doing more of the same. Tommorrow is the last all-day push to make sure I have firmly memorized everything that needs memorization. No theory, just drilling myself over and over on all of the equations.

So yeah, I am barreling headlong towards burnout. It's a race against the clock at this point. I am already looking up chiropracters to make an apointment for next week to try and undo some of the damage from spending 2 months hunched over a desk. This morning, I woke up with such a pain in my neck that I had to pick my perfume this morning that wouldn't conflict with the smell of the IcyHot I had rubbed into the entier back of my neck and shoulders. I went with Lick It. It definately smoother out the sharpness of the menthol in the IcyHot. There's a layering combination you don't hear about often.

And my parents are coming into town on Friday. The apartment is in shambles, so wednesday after the exam, I will be cleaning like *mad*. Actually, I suspect it won't be that bad. I'm planning on getting a handful of big rubbermaid containers to pack up with winter clothing, spare bedding, etc. and put on the top shelves in the closets. I don't think the problem is so much mess as this apartment has kinda crappy closets, so storage has been a problem. Once I organize that, I think the rest of it will just be vacuuming, laundry and a little thoughtful aranging. Which isn't nothing, but it's not insurmountable.

Rusty was supposed to be cleaning house this weekend, but #1) his standards of what constitutes "clean" are a lot lower than mine, and #2) he hasn't developed that skill of breaking down big tasks into smaller, manageable components, so to him it *does* seem insurmountable. It's irritating, but I've pretty much given up on the idea that he will ever wake up in the morning with a burning desire to keep the house clean and organized.

I'll be putting off planting the balcony garden until the weekend, since there won't be time for both cleaning and planting on wednesday.

So this is what burnout looks like : mild panic, physical pain, and distracting myself in daydreams of cleaning house. Wow - so miserable, yet so banal.