Go-nali-pu?

It was a long, intense finals period. I am, how should I put this, mentally mushy. I'd been holding up perfectly well through the paper, paper, paper, final, paper, but started to lose it just at the last moment - at 10:30pm last night, when my last deadline was midnight.

I hadn't left the house for days, hadn't showered in longer than that, and had spent about 12 hours a day (and two long nights all in a row) sitting and standing at the helm we built me in our new kitchen.

(We call it the helm because it seems like the center of the house, and exactly where you'd put the steering wheel if houses had steering wheels.)

So, as I said, all was going smoothly (well, as smoothly as possible considering I'd spent all of Sunday watching clips from the Daily Show and not writing the paper due at midnight the following day, and when I say all day Sunday, I mean all day Sunday...it's incredible how much time can pass in five-minute increments), and I was gearing up to write the very last section and the conclusion when Alexis asked me a question.

My response?

Something along the lines of go-nali-pu*.

(*This is not an accurate recollection, but suffice it to say that I spoke parts of each of the words I hoped to speak in sentence, though not the beginnings of the words (which might make sense), or even the words in order. Or, perhaps I spoke none of these things, and instead was riffing on my response...)

I was so shocked at what came out of my mouth that I started to laugh, then laugh harder, then I sank to the floor and peed on myself. Yes, folks, right in the corner of the kitchen rug, all in my lucky green cords that I've been wearing non-stop for days.

Then I cried, and I have to tell you - my tears weren't right, they stung and stung.

So - to recap:
I thought I was doing alright, but then I spoke gibberish for no reason, peed on myself and cried acid. Ah, finals.