A General State of Weariness and Confusion

My head is confused, partially because of good old Topamax, partially because of end-of-semester stress, and partially because of a strange situation in which I suddenly find myself. The situation is one of those things I keep telling myself to simply put on the shelf and watch from a distance to see what develops, but I've never been very good at that kind of thing. No patience, you see....

I keep mentally grabbing it up again and again and toying with it in my head, turning it over and over until the corners are wearing off it, but nothing about the situation is really getting resolved. I find myself sitting at my desk when I should be grading papers, and I'm suddenly aware that the situation has thrust vine-like tentacles into every part of my consciousness and that I haven't really processed a word of the paper in front of me for the last paragraph. It's a huge effort of will to beat it back into a corner of my mind and make it stay there for any length of time. About the time I get my mental discipline together, the source of whole problem shakes everything up again by adding some little tidbit to the puzzle, and then off I go, trying to sort all the pieces out again. This may just drive me crazy before I figure it out or before it goes away on its own.

Mercifully, the holidays are a mere three days away, and then I can hide out here at home, see my far-flung friends, and generally recharge batteries that are running dangerously low. Perhaps with some rest and distance the puzzle will actually turn out to be like one of those little word finds from grade school instead of a translation exercise involving Latin, Sanskrit, and hieroglyphics.....