Pre-tournament stress

SOON.

THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR.

THE FINAL TOURNAMENT BEFORE NATIONALS.

IS TOMORROW.

...wait... 

TOMORROW!?

*internal screams* *flails arms* *goes into hyper-freak-out-ation* 

*calmly and peacefully completes math lesson*

Last week, I planned out what I was going to do today. 

FREAK OUT

1. Take deep breaths- check

2. Drink tea- check (also had some coffee)

3. Listen to music- check

4. Read- does a blogpost count?

5. Go to bed early- well, I am quite obviously awake at the moment, however, I shall endeavor to go to bed at a reasonable hour

6. Laugh hysterically at nothing- I've snorted a couple times

7. Try not to cry- Lydia and I went to go see God's Not Dead 2, but a couple tears slipped out. I haven't cried about the tournament yet though

Normal things:

1. Complete math lesson- check

2. Grade Christian's math- check

3. Put the chickens up for the night- check

4. Kitchen clean-up- check

5. Tourney prep (i.e. pack bag, set alarm for insanely early hour, stress, check for new evidence, etc)- not yet

6. Straighten hair- not yet. It always looks best after I've slept on it, hence the reason I'm doing it today instead of tomorrow

7. Make lunch- check

8. Clean the chicken coop- oh yes, and it was about a month over-due too

It's a two day tournament, so both Friday and Saturday. It'll be debate only this time, so Christian and I will be able to watch at least some of the other types of debate (fingers crossed, I may just read or listen to music). We'll have four rounds tomorrow, and two on Saturday. We probably won't make it to church on time, as finals will be announced at or just after 6 in the evening, and church starts at 6. We would really hate to be on the highway going to church, then be called back to finals (an unlikely occurrence, but such things have happened before). 

It will also be a smaller tourney. I heard that there were going to be either 16 or 18 team policy teams- much smaller than Irving, where there were at least 30 teams, not including speech only competitors and Lincoln-Douglas debaters.

The most daunting thing to me is debating four rounds in one day. I've only ever done three at the most, and even that was difficult. Also, there's this one team who has a case that we were only able to find this much evidence against. And that was our entire TP club researching for over an hour. We could run logical arguments against them, as what they are proposing is already set in place, and they would only be indirectly affecting trade with Asia, which is supposed to be the main focus.

I really should be getting ready for tomorrow. But what am I doing? 

Procrastinating.

WHY IN THE WORLD AM I PROCRASTINATING?

Because I'm stressed.

And when I get stressed, I am prone to do crazy/weird/silly things.

If I remember correctly, the day before we competed in Irving, I drank 24 cups of tea. 

On the drive to the ill-fated Tyler tourney, I sat in the very back of our truck, which only has maybe 6 inches of legroom, for no reason besides the fact that I wanted to nap on the way there.

That is why Lydia and I asked Mom if we could go see God's Not Dead 2 to distract me from stressing out. It was a good idea, however, I am now stressing out. 

Eventually, I'll just get so stressed that I'll essentially forget that I'm stressing and behave as if I know exactly what I'm doing. Whiiiiiiicccchhh I'm really hoping happens soon, because I need sleep tonight, and I really need to at least act calm, cool, and collected while competing. 

The end.