What's a couple of years?

Okay, here's the thing. Today is the day I start my dissertation. Yes, today. I know that most of you have been under the impression that I've been doing that very thing since September 2003, but you couldn't be more wrong. It's time to put ya into the loop. What HAVE I been doing for the past 18 months, instead? Well...

a) planning my wedding b) planning my other wedding c) solving a family in-law crisis d) setting up a quasi-adult apartment complete with things like egg separators e) hosting dinners, brunches, and game nights f) planning James's two surprise 30th birthdays g) watching the Red Sox win the world series (that seriously set me back a couple of months) h) evicting a crazy roommate and cleaning up her graffiti when she left i) taking acting classes j) going to Dublin for Bloomsday k) dying my hair black l) collecting every journal article ever written on Eavan Boland m) watching All My Children n) fund-raising for Kerry o) taking an essay-writing class p) giving up dairy, caffeine, and trans-fats q) staying up-to-date with my friends & family around the country r) reading the New Yorker s) working on my abs t) tutoring Newton high school students u) writing witty emails to Joyce scholars v) going to Michigan, California, Reno, Miami, London, Chicago, and New York w) being a housewife (full fucking time job, go ask your mothers) x) writing a Worcester high school accreditation essay y) learning how to make Aloo Gobi and z) this blog.

But that's all over now. Well, except the blog and some of the other stuff. Today is the day it really begins, and you are lucky enough to be here. I sat down at my desk this afternoon and found that I have NOTHING left to research on my dissertation topic. Nothing. I have read and summarized and collated every article ever written on my author. There is now nothing left to do except face the blank page and try to put something down on it that will get me out of this delightfully entertaining interlude and into the rest of my life. Only it's more like 250 blank pages.

And you know that question that all of you have been asking me for the last year and a half? You know: "How's the dissertation coming?" You can ask it freely now, without me secretly hating you for not realizing how long it takes to make 101 pearlized fleur-de-lis invitations and matching namecards. It's okay now! Ask away!

And by tomorrow, maybe it will be 249 blank pages.