When I am in a funk, restless, or depressed, as you may already know, I tend to find things to occupy my time to keep my mind working on other things. Sometimes this can be something as simple as taking care of household chores or reading through a long chain of Wikipedia (or, on particularly nerdy nights, Memory Alpha or Wookieepedia) articles. Other times it can be something peaceful or necessary to do, such as going shopping at 4AM or spending a few hours grading through student papers or making new handouts/lesson plans to follow in class -- the latter of which, of course, I won't be able to do anymore after next week.
This weekend, as you know, I've been in a funk. I tried to be social (well, I really tried to get others to be social with me) and failed; Daisy works all weekend, so I can barely get any time with her when we're both awake; I've already done the shopping I need to do for a while -- etc. It's a low-grade depression mixed with boredom and restlessness, which is what creates the "funk." And, of course, in the background (read: all the stuff I can't write about here) everything is still going on, and I've been stressed about that, so eh. Yeah, I get restless and feeling very blahhhh. Yesterday, I spent several hours grading through the rest of my students' rewritten papers, which kept me occupied for a while, and I updated all of their grades on Blackboard.
Last night, I went out onto the Ubuntu Software Center and got myself a no-frills video DVD burning program so that I can start transferring my old archived videos (some of which I've had, on CD-R, for over ten years) to DVD and watch them downstairs in the bedroom on the new TV. That takes time and excites me; it keeps me occupied because I have to dig through my collections and decide what I want to put on DVD and what I don't, and see what I have that I've either not watched in many years or have never watched (because there's a ton of that). Let's just say that I had a group of friends who were very active in downloading things at WVU in the unregulated internet days of 2002-2004 or so, and I bought many a spindle of CD-Rs for copies. I still have all of them. I used to have a VHS-to-digital-video VCR, but it was a long-ago Christmas gift to my ex and she took it with her when we broke up. I might eventually buy another one; I have a ton of old VHS tapes I'd like to transfer to DVD -- stuff taped off TV in the '90s as well as actual tapes of films and/or anime purchased many years ago. I have most of the run of Dragon Ball Z on VHS, for example, purchased in my high school days from used video stores and garage sales. Really, I'd like to eventually do something with that so that the tapes don't take up so much space.
My mother told me that there's going to be some big flea market held at the storage space across the road from their house on top of the mountain starting next month, and that she and my dad plan to start selling a lot of their "junk" there, if possible. I need to do something like this myself, eventually, as mentioned here before -- sometime this summer I need to organize a big yard/garage sale, advertise the shit out of it in the newspaper and via signs around the neighborhood, and begin getting rid of a lot of the stuff cluttering up my house. And it is just stuff -- a lot of it is fairly useless to me and has been in storage for years, or has just been sitting around because I have nothing to do with any of it. Some of it was left here by my ex, some of it is stuff that I thought I would have a use for and never did, etc. A lot of it is books/tapes/DVDs/furniture/small appliances/etc, and it's all taking up space and is stuff that just can't be tossed in the trash or recycling (such as old lamps, unfinished wooden chairs, a weight bench with weights, etc). I have a lot of stuff I need to get rid of before I move out of this town and to wherever I'm going next. Half of it I just want to mark "free" and stick out in the yard during the yard sale just to be rid of it. Sell, sell, sell. I'm hoping that Daisy and I can set up a few days to do this at some point over the summer, and that maybe friends like Parker would be able to come up and/or help out as well. But it definitely needs to be done before I move out of here, otherwise I'm going to have to call the trash people and say something like "So, um, can you drop one of your dumpsters here for like, a week or so?"
Daisy thinks she's getting sick again -- yesterday, she had to work more than four hours' worth of overtime (she went to work at 8:30 PM and didn't get off until around noon or so), and last night when she went back in she was sick and severely sleep-deprived. She thinks she might be coming down with strep or something along those lines, or at least that's what she said. I told her that if she thinks she's getting sick, especially with something that bad, to get to the doctor now; not only does she get sick quite often, but you really can't let strep go, and the last thing I want is for her to come down over graduation weekend -- ten days from now -- and not only be sick, but to make me sick as well. I'm giving her as much downtime/sleep-time as she needs and am trying not to bother her too much in her off hours -- which isn't hard to do, as she generally sleeps all day when I'm awake anyhow, and because after this cycle of days off she has to work something like seven or eight days straight just to be able to come down here for graduation weekend. I was going to surprise her and ask if she wanted to come down tonight, since she won't get to see me until graduation and because she has to work a week straight beforehand -- not to mention that tomorrow is my last teaching day of the semester -- but when she got sick, those plans sort of went out the window.
I still have not mowed the grass, and it desperately needs it -- every day until today, it's either been cold, rainy, snowy, icy, or I've been on campus. For the next four days, it's supposed to storm like hell here, too (the Weather Channel has already mentioned terms like "severe" and "tornado outbreak" for Wednesday and Thursday). If it's not shitty or freezing outside, it's storming like hell. Can't we just have a week of days where it's 80 and sunny? Just one week? Y'know, since it's May and all?
It's supposed to be 75 tomorrow and the storms aren't supposed to start until the afternoon/evening. I am celebrating my last teaching day by wearing a pink/purple tie-dyed V-neck shirt, sandals, and camouflage shorts. Because that's how I roll, son. Let it storm for the rest of the week if it wants to -- I don't have anywhere to go, once I come back home from teaching, until Monday. I can stick my car in the garage and give the weather the finger.
I actually had a dream last night that we got some terrible storms with golf-ball-sized hail, and that I forgot to put my car in the garage beforehand. Premonitions? Who knows. I'm psych-o, not psych-ic.
Generally, anyway.
In other news, I think I found my wedding ring; or, rather, Daisy found it for me:
Tungsten carbide (if you couldn't tell from the inlay). Pretty, inexpensive, and elegant. I don't like gold (of any color, really); Daisy's engagement ring is white gold, but that's because it's her engagement ring. I tend to like the harder, less expensive metals like stainless steel, sterling silver, tungsten carbide, titanium (yes, they have titanium rings, and they're super-inexpensive), etc. I also don't like wearing rings with stones and I don't like rings that have a highly-polished finish for the most part, either. I like the antiqued rings, which basically means "hey, we didn't polish this" or "it's been treated to look older and more matte than metals of this type normally would be."
Rings can be purchased on Amazon very cheaply these days; there's no reason to go to a jeweler anymore unless you want something customized. I bought Daisy a pre-wedding ring with inlaid stones all around it to see how she likes it before I get her real one, and it was, literally, pennies.
"What if I really like that one, though?" she asked me. "You know I don't care about how much the ring costs. It's unimportant."
"If you really like that one, I can get you one just like it and actually get one that will hold up," I replied. "Because the reviews on this one say that the stones eventually start falling out the more you wear it, and that's a bad thing with three cats in the house."
Again, pennies.
I'm also helped by the fact that Daisy does not want a diamond; the stone in her engagement ring is highly-polished Swarovski crystal (and believe me, I looked around for a long time for a ring that wasn't a diamond or CZ, but was unique in its own way), and the stones in the pre-wedding ring are all tiny little CZs in a stainless-steel channel setting. The cost of my own wedding ring pictured above, if I choose that one, is comparable to the cost of her engagement ring -- so it'll balance out in some weird way. There are others I've seen which are more or less expensive, though I haven't yet come across one I like more than that one. Not yet, anyway.
While we know the weekend that we want to hold the wedding, we've still not yet set a formal wedding date; we can't do that until after this summer, roughly, once I figure out what I'll be doing and where I'll be doing it. I need a bit of relative calm and focus in order to bury myself in my work and job applications for places for eight hours a day, and that relative calm won't come until after I return from Omaha after graduation. Daisy is patient with me; there's no rush, of course, but both of us still want to get settled and get on with our lives as soon as possible. As mentioned previously, I've lived pretty frugally all semester long, and with my last two paychecks, my tax returns, and any graduation money yet to come in added to what I already have, I'll have well more than enough money necessary to survive for about six months or so if required, barring any sort of catastrophe. I don't eat much, I don't drive around a lot in the summers (so I won't be filling my car with gas every week) and as long as it stays relatively cool outside for a while, I won't have to run the air conditioner that much, if at all. I have relatively few needs or bills, and tend to stay pretty self-sufficient.
I have received my first "graduation present" of sorts -- my friend April, in Portland, sent me a $50 Amazon gift card yesterday. This is incredibly generous of her; April has helped me out a lot over the years. We've had a long, strange friendship that started close to ten years ago now when I was a fan of the radio show she was doing at the time. When that ended when she moved to Portland, she and I became good friends via Facebook and other online means. I've helped to edit her novel for her (something which I will continue to do as long as she keeps adding to it) and provided her with the archive of her radio shows that she'd lost, mainly because back in the day I was one of those nutty people who archived everything, and in turn she has done all sorts of stuff for me -- she got me a knife block set a few years ago when I needed one, she's sent me gift cards for Walmart when I've been really poor, etc. April also probably owns more of my tie-dyed shirts than anyone else, as well -- if she's not outright purchased them from me, I've sent her big care packages over the years containing two or three shirts at a time, I've baked/mailed cookies to her, etc. While we don't talk a lot, I do consider her a close friend, so I mailed her a graduation announcement (since she and her husband are two of about ten friends or so I always mail stuff to, like Christmas cards and the like). I figured it was nice; she graduated from a graphic design program she'd been in for a few years as of late as well, so spread the love, right? I certainly didn't expect her to do anything for me. It was very, very sweet of her -- and it lets me know that yes, there are some people out there who care about me and want to do things for me, even when unnecessary. It really pepped up my mood quite a bit yesterday, and I thanked her profusely. It also reminded me that I have to get more thank-you notes soon as well, for anyone else who does do this sort of thing for me, yet I am not in regular contact with.
I have been obsessively checking my mailbox every day for my tax returns so that I can cash those checks when I get them. I don't know when they'll get here, but as mentioned before, I desperately want them to arrive before I graduate and go up to Omaha so that I have a bit of pocket money to take with me for food, shopping, etc. The mall Daisy took me to when I was there over New Year's was fantastic, even though there wasn't much I could find then that I could afford, and we didn't even hit the gigantic thrift stores up there (which I am absolutely, totally itching to plunder). She told me there's a better mall closer to her house, too, and it excites me. I'm such a woman sometimes -- I absolutely adore shopping and going through thrift stores for clothing and knick-knacks. This is probably why I also adore yard/garage sales. It's all an adventure to me. It gets my blood pumping. There are few things I enjoy more than going through clearance racks and diving into piles of deeply-discounted things. Most of my favorite clothing (the clothing I haven't purchased on Amazon, that is) has been found on clearance racks at JCPenney, Target, Walmart, Kmart, Old Navy, T.J. Maxx, and from many thrift stores. As I have none of those places here in Newton aside from Walmart (remember, in small towns like mine it's Walmart or die), I don't actually get out to do any of this sort of shopping much -- something that is totally commonplace for most other people, especially those folks with a mall or many of these sorts of stores around them -- is almost completely foreign (and exciting) to me now, after living in a tiny town like this one for the past four years. Hence why, if I want or need anything new, I tend to order it from Amazon and cross my fingers to hope it fits or looks good when it gets here. Certain things I can't do that with, though -- for example, my favorite pair of sandals I've ever owned I found by happenstance on a clearance rack in a Macy's store in San Antonio, Texas, in March 2011, when I was there for a conference and the mall was attached to the hotel. I paid four dollars for them and have never seen a similar pair anywhere else since.
Ah, I miss San Antonio. What an awesome town. Lone Star beer, incredible food, the riverwalk was amazing, the weather was gorgeous, etc. I so loved it there for the short four days I was at that conference.
I hear more neighbors outside mowing their grass. Bah. It's only 64; that's still a bit chilly for me to be outside mowing. When I'm inside and my fingers are cold, and I'm still wearing slippers because my toes are freezing, it's not warm enough to mow. I'll give it a few days and let those storms roll through first; once I start mowing, if it keeps raining every few days, I'll have to end up continually mowing the grass over and over and over anyhow.
So, tomorrow's my last teaching day. I don't want to say goodbye to my students; for the most part, they're fun, bright individuals with good futures ahead of them. More than that, I don't want to receive the 500-page stack of papers I'll have to grade through between now and their exam a week from today. I have no doubt that most of them will be well-written papers, but I really am saying goodbye to my teaching career for the foreseeable future. I don't know if I'll be adjuncting or teaching someplace else in the fall, and more than that I don't know if I'll adjunct or otherwise teach a class ever again after tomorrow. It could be a grand ending to my teaching career and I'll not know it.
I can't leave campus tomorrow directly after my classes, however -- I still have to work my very last hour ever in the Writing Center after I'm done with my classes. I would imagine it will be busy, since it's the final week of classes and everyone has papers coming due this week, not just us English professors. It's quite possible there may be a line out the door, a concept which fills me with absolute terror and dread. Because tomorrow is my last day on campus before my students' final exam, I've told friends and colleagues that I'm holding a little coffee-and-chat party in my office from 7-9AM before I have to teach, as it'll be one of the last times I'll be around without anything to do (next Monday morning, when I go in before the final exam, I will be spending all of my time packing up said office as much as possible before graduation, and Daisy and I will be moving all of that stuff out on graduation day). I doubt anyone will show up other than those of us who are there normally on a Tuesday morning, but it would be nice to at least see a few of my friends -- especially because in two weeks, most of them will be gone from town for good.
On that note, I need to get something to eat and possibly get a shower; Daisy will be awake eventually, and I want to find out how she's feeling. I worry about her. Then, later tonight, I'll go to bed to get up and face the world in the morning for my last day as an English 102 instructor.
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