I love Halloween!! When I was a kid my mom ran a daycare in our home and every year the Halloween parties were awesome! Everyone showed up, even the kids that weren’t active on her roster. There was bobbing for apples (usually from a string, rather than head in a bucket), a piñata, tons of candy and treats.  Then, at night, there was homemade chili and handed out candy.  Since then, Halloween has always held a special place in my heart.

Nowadays, Matt and I live in a community where we don’t get trick-or-treaters.  It’s not something new for us, when we lived in Waco we never lived in a place where we got them.  Here in Stephenville, the town holds a safe trick-or-treat on the square and everyone takes their kids.  So, we’re offered a reprieve from the mob of macabre munchkins.  Our neighborhood, on the edge of town, is particularly dark and quiet.  We’ll just turn off our porch light and spend the evening together watching some horror movies and maybe carving a pumpkin… of course, we’ll have to get one first, but I’m going to send Matt to Wal-Mart later for some candy, just in case we get one or two (you believe that, don’t you?), and see if he can pick me out a nice, round, nearly blemish-less pumpkin to carve!

Then, of course, there’s NaNoWriMo!  It’s the very last Halloween activity of the day, which technically happens after midnight.  But, like every other day of the year, if you’re still awake at midnight it’s really just an extension of the day, if that makes any sense at all?  So, NaNoWriMo is very much an event shared between Halloween & November 1st, which happens to be the first day of Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  NaNoWriMo kicks off with a ghoulish bang!!  I’m really looking forward to it this year.  If you’ve not signed up yet, it’s not too late, and if you’re looking for a writing buddy, you can find me by a click on the NaNoWriMo badge on the right-hand sidebar.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing today, have a safe and happy Halloween!

I had an absolutely terrible day yesterday, but today seems to be starting off much better!  I decided not to answer the calls from the evil people if they call today, which they haven’t yet, but I’m sure they will.  I opened my school email box to find something awesome!  Check this out (click the image to see it larger):

I got in!!  The blank spaces are places where I took out things like student ID and password information.  Otherwise, the letter is as I received it!  The admissions is “conditional” because I’ve not graduated yet (fingers crossed!), and because they still need GRE scores.  I have a fee waver, which makes the test only $75, but I don’t have it right now, so I’ll be taking the test later, rather than sooner.  Luckily, I can attend one full semester as a grad student without them, which gives me ample time to take the test.  I’ll have to wait for the forms after sending the fee waver and the testing fee, and then make an appointment to go to Waco to take the computerized GRE.  For now, all I have left to do is get a hold of Dr. Tanter and get her to remove my admissions hold so that I can register for the spring session when registration opens on November 2!

Wish me luck!

I’m having a seriously bad morning, so far.  I thought yesterday was bad, ha!  At least yesterday, I could sit and hold a conversation without bursting into tears every two minutes.  Today, that’s not at all the case.  I’ve been crying all morning, and where I’d normally say I had no idea what was wrong with me (which is normally at least a partial lie, but it’s one I have to tell myself), today I have no such luxury.  I know exactly what’s wrong with me, but that doesn’t help me fix it.

I woke up to the phone ringing and thought I didn’t get it in time, I called the person back.  Over the last two days, I’ve been dealing with a bit of business with someone who is utterly rude.  Yesterday, she threatened me.  Today, she threatened me, lectured me, and told me I was a bad person.  I know I’m having issues with this particular thing, and if there was something that could be done about it, I would do it, but there’s nothing that can be done about it right now and telling me I’m a horrible person isn’t going to make things better.  What’s next, a gun to my head tomorrow?  I’m so angry and unsettled about this thing and I know that’s the point of them calling, to upset me and make me afraid.  What bothers me the most is, it’s working.

Then, once I got off the phone with that women and settled down a little bit, I called FAFSA to see what could be done about my financial aid issues.  Earlier in the week, I tried to file a new FAFSA for grad school and their system wouldn’t allow it because I already have one on file.  My school told me to call FAFSA.  So, FAFSA tells me that nothing can be done, that I can’t amend my FAFSA for this school year because I wouldn’t have received my bachelor’s degree by July 2009.  They said that I can wait until January and file a FAFSA for the next school year (2010-2011), but that won’t help me at all with the spring semester.  Fan-fucking-tastic.  I admit it, I cried, again… and not just a little.  I’m such a basketcase today.

When I got done crying, I checked my grad school application on Tarleton’s system and I’ve been granted a “Conditional Admissions” as a graduate candidate.  My understanding was that undergrads seeking to enter graduate school could be given full admissions, but I’m pretty sure the condition is the conferral of my bachelor’s degree.  As long as I pass everything between now and mid-December, that shouldn’t be a problem.  Of course, that’s the trick, isn’t it?  I’m really very worried about my ability to pull through Geology.  I have to take the make up for test #2, as I was on a field trip for my grad class that day, and the make-up is an essay.  I’ve never written an essay for a science class, but I figure I’ll be okay if I study; I’ve written a hell of a lot of essays in my day.  I’m also pretty concerned about passing Ren & Reformation, Dr. C gives pop quizzes.  There’ve been four so far, I missed two of them, got a B on one, and failed the other.  Those quizzes are 30% of my grade, so I could make an A on everything else and still make a C or a D in the class.  It could be that I’m worried for nothing, there’re more quizzes to come, as long as I take them and do okay, I should pass.  Fingers crossed all around.

After checking my application and finding that I had been admitted to the graduate program, I decided to give financial aid one final go.  I summoned up all the good feelings I could about having been admitted, that way I was less likely to cry, and I called the financial aid department at my school, which is always a little tricky, especially since they were terribly rude to me a few days ago.  They actually hung up on me earlier this week.  Ugh. Anyway, the guy I talked to was really nice, I couldn’t talk to my counselor as she’s out with the flu, but he asked another counselor about my issue and she said that when I got my acceptance letter, I could take it to Financial Aid and they could repackage me.  That means that I should be about to get financial aid for the spring!  I wasted all those tears on FAFSA for nothing.  Of course, it’s yet to be seen, I never fully trust what they say until it’s said and done.  They’re not completely reliable.

So now, my biggest concern is that if I don’t pass everything and graduate, than my financial aid is going to be messed up.  If I graduate, then them having repackaged my financial aid will be awesome because I’ll have student loans to pay for my tuition.  However, if I don’t graduate, then what’s left of my financial aid for the year will be gone in a puff of smoke and I won’t be able to pay for classes in the spring.  I suppose the only really good way to make sure that everything turns out okay is to graduate.  I’m really feeling nervous right about now, but by the end of this week, I’ll only have about 6 weeks of school left and I’m hoping to make them awesome… but the truth is, I’m not feeling terribly awesome right now.  Depression is back, in full force, and worse than it has been in years.  I just keep telling myself that I need to get through this and everything will be okay.

I sure hope that when mid-December comes, I’m able to look at myself and know that it wasn’t all a lie.  I want to be able to say that I gave it my all and pulled through and graduated.  I don’t think I’ve ever wanted December so badly in my entire life.