Three hundred and thirty one

That's the number of pages at which my Monster weighed in. The bulk is truly impressive. Like my husband said after he saw the whole mamotreto: "You certainly had a lot to say!"

My Monster is fat and my Monster is beautiful. And I'm not just saying that because I birthed it.

This week, I worked every day to format it according to Grad School requirements (all 20 pages of sometimes contradictory requirements!), and finalized that process with the help of a friend and fellow dissertator, who's actually defending tomorrow.

Today, I took the Monster to the Grad School so the draft could be approved. There, every single page was injected, inspected, detected, neglected and selected by a Graduation Services official, and after he made some large red markings on several pages to signal the few changes I still have to make, and after he told me all the 20 things I need to remember to do before I graduate, he took the form that officially sets in motion the process to assign a fourth reader and to have June 10 officially declared my Dissertation Defense Day.

The countdown has begun.

Thus, my husband and I have started planning the most important thing that will happen after the much awaited Defense: a very small party. Now, my husband and I are the least party people you'll ever meet. But defending the Monster merits a little gathering of friends and professors to share in the glee that I'll finally be Dr. G.

We also decided that we'll have a larger party in late August, after I'm hooded at summer graduation, at the small college on the hill (by then, I pray to God, we'll be in our own apartment near the woods), so that everyone there who's been fabulous to me shares in that celebration, too.

With those major decisions made, and with the Monster draft approved, and a nice lunch shared with my beautiful pregnant bestest-of-friends, I returned home with the determination to tackle those final exams that are awaiting grading. Instead, I decided to take a nap, something I haven't done in months. And I napped happily for almost 1.5 hours!

Since today was a another one of those mini dissertation-related celebration days (I've even started considering the splurge of a Blackberry for graduation!), because the light at the end of the tunnel is clearly visible and it's not a train, grading exams can wait until tonight. Sometimes procrastination is a right.