Spring semester: day forty-six
It is 5:15 AM, and I don't want to be awake.
Mind you, I went to bed before 7PM last night. I've been awake for approximately thirty minutes this morning, and am attempting to caffeinate and nicotine myself so that I can be awake and alert for my long day today.
Returning to campus after any long stretch of time of being off feels strange; it's like looking at it from an outside perspective. You actually do this? All the time? My body and brain asks me when I'm driving to campus, when I'm standing outside the building in the cold, smoking a cigarette, or when I'm sitting in my office in front of my laptop when no one else in the department is around. I must remind myself now that the semester is only, really, a little more than half over, and I've still got a lot of stuff to do ahead of me between now and its end.
It is nineteen degrees outside right now, one of the coldest mornings we've had here in Kansas in a long time. Yesterday afternoon, I cleaned the rest of the remaining snow off my car, which wasn't too hard to do (just time-consuming) and scraped the windows, especially the back glass, so I can see to make my drive down to campus this morning. I normally don't let the car sit outside during snow or really cold weather, so here's hoping she'll fire up and get warm quickly this morning. She does have a full tank of gas in her, though, which I got last week when I went out to do some shopping. Today's supposed to be the only really cold-ish day/morning for the rest of the week; the highs by Friday are supposed to be around 70, and I hope that's a trend that continues -- it's the end of March, and therefore it shouldn't be this cold anymore, it shouldn't be snowing and below freezing in the mornings anymore. We also had a warm streak about a week and a half ago when it was 83-84 for high temperatures in the afternoons, and I really want that weather back -- it's that weather which made me shave off the beard, because apparently spring had arrived for good. Not so fast -- I should've known we'd get a snowstorm and ripping cold winds as soon as I shaved.
As an aside, Daisy didn't like it when I first shaved it off, but as it's now had the chance to grow back in a bit over break, she likes me with the scruff that's coming back in. I told her it'll take a bit more time for the full beard to come back -- I can usually have a decent beard again about a month to six weeks after I shave, which would put it shortly before finals week before it's going to look like the old me again. I myself have gotten used to the scruff as well, and no longer surprise myself or think I look goofy or odd when I look in the mirror. My friends in the department will more than likely be surprised when they see me with less facial hair today, and I will remind them, as well, that it was eighty degrees every day when I shaved it off.
Daisy isn't feeling much better than she was before; she has a sinus/throat infection that's moving down into her lungs, so the doctors gave her antibiotics and steroids to fight it off, and took four vials of blood for bloodwork -- at her insistence -- to check for anything and everything that could be messing with her and/or making her immune system bail on her once a month or so. She was, however, feeling good enough to go to the Sprint store after her appointment and get a new phone, as her old one stopped working correctly (when it wanted to work at all). She spent an hour on Skype with me last night playing with it and oohing-and-ahhing at it. I really hope her meds help her feel better quickly, before she has to go to work later this week and this weekend on the night shift.
Yesterday I didn't do a damned thing, and it was wonderful. I needed the break, the breathing space, and I was exhausted -- both mentally and physically drained. I didn't even look at my notes or studies, I didn't attempt to do any chores, I didn't attempt to draft out my taxes. I did nothing, because I was too burnt-out to do anything. The most work I did on anything all day was cleaning off my car and taking twenty minutes or so to draft out a lesson plan for my students this morning, refreshing myself on the reading I'm going to cover in class today. Other than that I decided that there was nothing else too pressing to where it couldn't wait another day or two before I worked on it again. I waited for Daisy to get home, talked to her for a good hour or longer, and then went to bed. I woke up this morning fifteen minutes before my alarm went off. My parents' box didn't arrive yesterday either, which tells me that anytime they mail me something, they might as well add a day or two to the estimated arrival date, as that's what tends to happen.
I can't tell you what the rest of the day holds for me other than donuts from Parker this morning; I'll be on campus until around 5PM, probably, unless I decide to work my writing center hour early to get out of there earlier (I usually do). I no longer have to stick around for the visiting writer meetings, as those ended the week before spring break (and I'm sad they did, actually; she was a fantastic critic and a wonderful poet to work with). After I come home, I will likely repeat what I did yesterday -- talk to Daisy for a little while and go to bed. I need to go out to Walmart to get some essentials sometime in the next 36 hours or so, and might just stop there on the way home tonight. I'm almost out of cigarettes, just opened my last can of coffee, and would like to get some vegetables to throw in the freezer and/or cook with over the course of the next several days -- I'm getting sick of eating the same stuff over and over every day. What really suffers when I've got my head buried in books and notes is my diet; I barely eat, and when I do make time to eat, I tend to eat something I can make quickly and/or don't have to cook -- i.e., crap. Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in if I can, and then review my notes (as well as read through the Crane book if it finally goddamned arrives today). I received an email from my director that said the four poems/poets I picked for inclusion on my comps was perfectly fine, so I'll drop those off this morning, as well.
On that note, I'm going to bundle myself up in layers (again) to make the cold trek to campus...
No comments:
Post a Comment