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Drinking hot chocolate has become an afternoon work ritual, something I can rely on to help order my day. It’s warm outside but chilly in the office. I decided I’d really like some long fingerless mittens (like leg warmers for your arms), something akin to this, though I’m pretty sure we don’t have money to spend on something so superfluous. Perhaps it could be a Christmas gift.
At Barnes & Noble last night, over a decaf coffee, I thumbed through Lotta Jansdotter’s Lotta Prints and found plenty of inspiration to swirl through my mind. Even as I lay down to sleep I was putting together a plan, something I feel I can accomplish in the next few months without much expense.
After tonight, I have two more meetings with my class. I will miss teaching next semester, but I’m ready for a break.
I’m trying to be a bit more intentional about slowing down and keeping things simple. Especially with the baby on the way, it’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy. Being undercommitted this spring will certainly help — in the domestic sphere as well as the spiritual one.
Bye, Bye, Autumn, 2. Autumn’s Bounty, 3. Missing Autumn, 4. No, I want no autumn!, 5. pumpkins, 6. AUTUMN IN IRELAND
I know I said this before, but I am just absolutely itching for autumn. Today, I even wore a light sweater (which is fine in the cold, office airconditioning, but not great in the 85 degree heat outside). I can’t wait for October for cooler weather and my birthday, and November because my dad is coming for a visit. He just bought tickets today, so it’s official. He’ll be here for two weeks.
By the time my dad gets here, the fall semester will almost be over. I’m really enjoying my class and the university where I teach this semester. Teaching for an hour and 15 minutes is not as draining as those marathon five-hour sessions over the summer. Also, I really enjoy my class and look forward to seeing them Tuesday and Thursday nights. Their first essays are due next week — should be interesting to see what kind of writers they really are.
The kitty is growing so fast, and Penny is increasingly jealous of Adam or me giving her any attention. I keep telling Adam this is what it’ll be like when our second child is born, though I’m thinking it might be this way with our first if Penny behaves anything like this.
Tonight, we’re going out to dinner for either burgers or barbeque — we haven’t decided yet, but I’m already starving. Adam is working all weekend, so I’ll be busy cleaning the house, preparing for next week’s classes, and doing various odds and ends. Have a lovely weekend, and may visions of autumn dance in your heads.
Last night, I walked out of class and the sky had darkened already. Perhaps, in spite of the hurricanes and tropical storms, autumn really is upon us. Of course, it’s still 85 degrees or more every day and the humidity is enough to make your hair curl, but there is light at the end of the tunnel and it’s name is autumn.
It turns out Adam isn’t leaving. He received notice yesterday, just before getting ready to leave, that the deployment was canceled. I had left work early to spend some extra time with him, which certainly wasn’t wasted, but turned out to be unnecessary. And even though we could use the extra money he would have made, I’m glad he’s staying home. His class even ended early last night, so he was home at 8 o’clock. We got in our jammies, pulled the bed out of the guest room into the living room, and fell asleep watching Friends. I wish every night was like that.
I have a quite a bit to accomplish before class tomorrow, including grading paragraphs and figuring out turnitin.com, a website that supposedly knows when a paper (or parts of it) is plaigarized. I’m planning on doing most of this while I watch the season premier of America’s Next Top Model (my guilty, guilty pleasure).
Thankfully, this short week is close to being finished. I’ve reread Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” which I have in plain view at my desk, several times today. Some days, it helps keep everything in perspective. I highly recommend it to anyone who sits a desk all day.
I’ve decided I’m going to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves out loud to my class this semester. It’s a slim volume on punctuation, and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. My plan is to read it for 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class most nights, to give everyone a chance to settle down–and for fun, of course. I had a professor in college who read us Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in a semester, taking up large chunks of class to do so. I loved it (though I remember often having a hard time following at 8 a.m.), so as an homage to Dr. Stewart, I present Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
Tonight, however, I won’t be reading anything aloud except for homework and a prompt for the diagnostic essay. I’ll pass out the syllabus and most likely spend the rest of the time doing crossword puzzles while the students write. Then I’ll have to madly read all the essays before Thursday in addition to preparing for class. Let the madness begin.
This weekend was unexpectedly harried for a long, relaxing weekend. Saturday morning, Adam and I had Krispy Kreme donuts with our coffee before going grocery shopping. We did our usual rounds at Fresh Market and Jimmy Lowe’s. After getting the groceries home, we went to the park to play tennis for about an hour and sweated our butts off. As we left, we were approached by a tennis pro trying to sell lessons. He talked to us for a good half-hour before I finally said we had to get out of the sun (which turned out to be too late, since I now have a sunburn on my shoulders and back). Driving home, we saw a kitten running through the streets and stopped to pick it up. Its eye was cut and bleeding and, reluctantly, we took the cat home. We gave it a flea bath, fed it, and it slept most of the day, so we were able to do some major housecleaning before Daniel and Adrienne came over for dinner. We drank a few beers, ate chicken and a gemolli, red pepper, spinach, and mozzarella salad (a recipe I got from the current Real Simple), and had lovely conversation.
The next morning, the kitten had us up at 4:30, so we skipped church and spent the day lounging around and sleeping. The cat was a little more lively and poor Penny is having a hard time adjusting. Sunday night, we ate leftovers and watched Charlie Bartlett, which was not nearly as funny as we hoped.
Yesterday, we went to Waterville USA and it was a lot of fun, but expensive. When we got home, Adam and I were both exhausted. Thankfully, the animals were well-behaved. I read a bit and we watched some baseball on TV.
Today, it’s back to the grind. I’m trying to find someone who wants to adopt the kitty, and one person said her neighbor might be able to connect us with some pet adoption organization. I also got an email tell me I’ll be teaching ENG 101, not 102 like they thought. Now I have to go pick up a different textbook and start working on a brand new syllabus. Also, I’m supposed to run a 5K with a friend from work tonight, and I’m hoping so somehow muster the energy since I already feel ready for a nap and it’s not even noon.
Today my brain feels all mushy. Sometimes I feel like I take in so much information in a day that my brain gets lazy and forgets how to process it all. That a coworker gave me a riddle/puzzle to solve around midday didn’t help matters. I spent over an hour trying to decipher it and when I finally did thought, well, that was obvious. But, today especially, I have had to remind myself to back off and not get too crazy thinking about things like what I’m going to teach my students tomorrow [and if I’ve taught them anything so far this semester–I’m constantly revising but getting better, I swear], what creative writing PhD programs I might ever be interested in applying to [UIC has an interesting program, so does UGA], which journals I should send my poems [sent out three yesterday–keep your fingers crossed], and what really is the fate of the sentence. I know, I know–I’m nuts.
I think I might go home and enjoy a glass of wine. Maybe two.
I hate to say it, but I’m a total whiner today. This week I’ve been sucked into the sleepless vortex and struggling to function like a normal human being. Every day this week has been slightly worse, so tomorrow should be a killer.
I had another class last night, and things went along quite swimmingly. I already have most everything in order for next week’s class and only have about 10 papers to grade, so it looks like I’ll have the entire weekend to relax. We might get to sailing on a friend’s boat Saturday. And, hopefully, I’ll have time for large doses of recreational reading.
One of my students gave me a copy of the novel she wrote and asked me to read it. It’s only 120 pages, so I should be able to finish it quickly. I’m nervous about reading it, though I don’t really know what to expect. I just really hope I like it.
Yesterday, Adam officially enrolled in his first class for paramedic school. It’s an online class through the rest of the summer. His advisor recommended that he do the fast track program, which means he’d be done in December 2009. It also means he’ll have class Monday through Thursday, from 6-9, this fall and spring. So, he’s going to give it a shot and see if he can handle that much work and school. And, I guess, I will be a paramedic-student widow for a year [is there such a thing?–there is now].
My decision to teach this summer was based on several things:
- I miss the interaction in the classroom, the dynamic that’s created once the class settles into a groove and everyone [including me] is comfortable.
- I felt guilty about having been unemployed for a month, bringing home nothing more than a tiny, little bit of unemployment money.
- I see several of my peers doing multiple projects and having several jobs, and I thought, I can do that too.
But since I took this teaching job, I’ve been wrestling with whether it was the right decision. This weekend was spent preparing for class and, simultaneously, doing a lot soul-searching. The thing is, teaching is really tough. It’s not something that I can just wing together and feel OK about. I agonize over what I’m going to do with my students, how best I can meet their needs so they really learn, and what I can do to motivate them. And it’s even worse, like now, when I haven’t taught a class before and I’m having to figure everything out as I go. This job has changed from being a part-time job to a full-time, all-consuming force in my life. And what I came to this weekend is it’s not worth it.
The real problem is I want to teach. Especially something I can be passionate about like creative writing or literature. But I want to do it on my terms, in way that’s beneficial to my students, where I can devote myself to all they need. I don’t know where or when that might occur, but I don’t think it will be at the college where I currently teach [for more reasons than I should get into here]. I know that I definitely do not want to teach composition again. It’s too much paper-grading, and it seems like most students didn’t learn a lick in high school.
As I’ve been reading The Cloister Walk, I’ve been impressed by so much of what Kathleen Norris says, particularly that she feels she does not belong in the academy or as a professor. She’s a writer. So, she writes. I can’t really articulate the gravity of that statement for me, except that I feel like because I have a Master’s degree and can teach at the college level, that I should. That somehow I’ll lose my place in line if I step away from teaching to focus instead on what I think is my true vocation, as a poet. But I’m realizing that when I write, I am at my most authentic. So, who cares if I lose my spot as a college instructor? I’m teaching composition, for pete’s sake, not contemporary American poetry, not creative writing, not cultural criticism. And there will always be time later on to teach again.
For now, I have committed to teaching for the next nine weeks, so I have to go forward and do the best I can. In the meantime, I’m getting my butt in the chair, writing new poems and revising old ones, sending poems to literary journals, and waiting to see what happens next.
The week is dwindling down to nothing, which is good. I made it through week one of Comp I, though it was a rough go last night. Now I have drafts to read and lessons to plan, though I’ve been using some slow time at work to put my thoughts together. And Google Docs is a godsend, especially because we’re getting internet installed at our house today [yay!].
I put down Savage Beauty for a while and got Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk from the library. I’ve been reading it very slowly, sometimes mulling over passages time and again, and enjoying it immensely. The book seems to be fitting with quite a few I’ve already read this year–namely Eat This Book and Girl Meets God. I’ve never been one for liturgy–mostly confusing it with legalism, I think–but I’m learning there’s a very real place for it in my walk with God. I’m very seriously contemplating purchasing a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. Also, particularly because Norris is a poet, I feel drawn into the language she uses and the care she puts into her words. I need to get my hands on some of her poetry–and soon!
My dad also sent me a big box of books from New York, just a handful of the books that he’s housed for me, and they arrived on my doorstep Tuesday afternoon. Tucked within was a box of jewelry I thought I’d lost, including a diamond necklace my dad bought me for my 21st birthday. Unfortunately the chain is tangled, and I may have to get a new one before I can wear it. But I’m glad to know that it’s not lost.
And, of course, the news of the day: tonight is the season finale of Lost, baby! I’ll be watching alone since Adam has to work this evening, which I fussed at him about because I’ll want to talk to him about what happens but won’t be able to until he watches it.
I just returned from a very short lunch. I sat there, madly scribbling away notes for tomorrow’s class, still trying to figure out exactly how the 4 hours and 45 minutes will play out. I barely tasted my food, but since I have to leave work early on Wednesdays in order to make it to my class, I had to cut my lunchtime down. I thought about coming in a half-hour early, but I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I couldn’t muster the thought of having to stay at work longer than necessary today. I’m exhausted and didn’t get much sleep the night before either.
I do think I have things in order for class tomorrow. My concern is mostly from feeling like there won’t be enough time to do everything I wanted (I know this is weird since we have almost five hours). It’s a composition class, so they must write, and it’s hard to gauge how long that might take with a new class. Between now and then, I’ll probably go over my notes and outline a million times and try not to question myself or worry myself into a tizzy, as I often do.
Besides preparing for class, I had a decent long weekend. I felt awful all day Saturday and did little else than type my syllabus and go to the grocery store. I did watch an odd movie called Wristcutters: A Love Story, about the fictional afterlife of people who committed suicide, and I actually enjoyed it. Sunday was spent going to church, working, cleaning, and going to a friend’s house for a cookout. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of new people. Unfortunately, Adam was working and wasn’t able to go. Yesterday, we saw Indiana Jones (it was a typical “Indy” film–lots of action, cheesy lines) and I had my first Whataburger (not everything I’d hoped for). The rest of the day I napped, read, ran, and found myself reluctantly watching So You Think You Can Dance, too exhausted to turn it off.
Musings 