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What an unusual week this has been. A real rollercoaster of emotions, basically because I am only as happy as my unhappiest child. There is only one, you know, and Thank God, because I am too old to manage the mood swings of any more. I thought I was doing it right to wait until I was almost 31 to start (and stop with) the baby thing. Whoo.

The osteology class is "really, really hard".

The Art History instructor is an "art nazi" who allows no interpretations besides her own. Also a "femi-nazi" who sees disdain for women in all things.

It is too late to drop either of these courses and add anything else and she cannot drop them because she would go below full-time and lose her scholarship. Both are required for her major so she is stuck, stuck, stuck.

There is no sense trying to form a study group for osteology because everyone is dazed and petrified. (See, here I tried to offer a "solution" - note to self - please be quiet!)

Jenny was sick all week, coughing and hacking and unable to sleep.

She lost her school ID card which has on it her meal plan, her school store & laundry account and her "key" to her dorm. (It was found at the library book store, the last place she used it. It was just necessary to wail about it for a while, I guess.)

The air conditioner on her car is broken.

The Hall Director came to her room unannounced with a photographer to take a picture for a newspaper article on the remodeling of dorm rooms at UT. Jenny was (sick) in her PJs, hair in a ponytail, no make up, studying, her room a mess, her trash overflowing and "they wouldn't give (her) 5 minutes to throw everything in the closet!!!" (Photo appeared on the front page of the News-Sentinel and it wasn't so bad really. I've seen way worse.)

Her father elected this week, amid her big tests and papers and a cold, to rag her about "duty to family", meaning the wife and new baby of her much older stepbrother, meaning I guess that she is supposed to be over there helping out and buying baby presents.

Add this to all that:

Last Sunday, Jenny found two kittens on the back road to our house, put-outs, of course and brought them home, what else!? They are the cutest, friendliest, very young cats (almost in-heat, both girls). We put them in the barn and fed them and they were so appealing that I brought them in the house the next day. BIG MISTAKE.

I kept them in the carrier to introduce them to the two house princesses. Uh Oh. Riley was only sort of mad, but Bailey went off the deep end, hissing, spitting, me-owling, running in circles, after a one-second look through the carrier bars. Good Lord! It was scary! I took the kittens back out to the barn right away.

Bailey had so much panic-adrenaline in her system that for three days, she hissed constantly at her sister and me, making the house quite unpleasant. The phone would ring with one or more of Jenny's above-mentioned complaints and the cats would set to fighting. In the middle of the night, one would surprise the other at the litter box or the food dish and all hell would break loose. The sleep-stage interruption put Terry into high snore mode.

I would sleep no more afterward.

I put vanilla extract on their heads and faces to equalize the smell between them. I put vanilla extract on a couple of towels in the chairs in which they like to sleep. I put vanilla on my shirt and hands and petted them and held them. I don't know if this helped, but everybody smells good now and finally they have calmed down.

Yesterday, bless Terry, he came in from work early and took me for a surprise ride to Sevierville to Smokey Mountain Knife Works so I could pick out my birthday present. I chose a 7" Henckels Santoku knife, the new heavier-handled Twin Cuisine design. The escape, the ride on a beautiful, cool, early autumn day was as good a present as the knife.