Overdrive, Part I

Fall semester: day ten

It's 9PM on a Friday evening, and I am feelin' it.

No, not in that way, get your mind out of the gutter.

This has been a really long week, a week which I've been constantly "on and running," so to speak, from Monday morning until today, until just this morning.

Let me explain.

When Daisy comes down to visit, I do my best to take care of everything I need to do beforehand, because I want everything else to be able to just stop for a while when she's here. Otherwise it's a somewhat pointless trip for her -- if I didn't take care of my tasks and to-do list before she gets here, she ends up spending hours upon hours sleeping without me or sitting on the couch staring off into space with nothing to do, because I'm too busy to do anything with her. This problem is magnified tenfold when the semester is in session, as I frequently have a long list of tasks to take care of for my students, and those tasks are all important and/or mandatory. As I knew well in advance that she would be coming down this week, I did everything I could before she arrived. This involved cleaning the house as much as I could, reading/making student lesson plans in advance, making sure I had vegan food in the house, making sure we had stuff to do and things to keep us occupied, etc.

I didn't have a choice in most of this if I wanted to have relative free time while Daisy was here. Some stuff has to be done whether I want to or not, or have energy for it or not. So, instead of getting any real meaningful rest last weekend, Monday, or most of Tuesday, I dove in headfirst taking care of tasks. I paid bills and rent. I went out and did the necessary shopping, despite the fact that I did so in the middle of the day and was forced to deal with the blithering idiots who infest my local Walmart during the daylight hours. I vacuumed the entire house, cleaned out the garage with the vacuum and pushbroom, did all the laundry, dishes, kitchen cleaning, sheet-washing, cat-room-sanitation, and other general house maintenance. I spent hours creating handout after handout, assignment after assignment, printout after helpful printout for everything I thought my students would possibly need for two full weeks, just so that I wouldn't have to mess with it when Daisy was here, and so that I could rest when she went home.

She went home this morning, but that isn't the point. The point is that when I'm "on," it really means "Brandon is in overdrive." It's both a mental and physical state that is really difficult to turn off once it's been activated, and leads to all sorts of physical and mental ramifications, usually until I completely exhaust myself after several days of it and crash. And when I say crash, I crash hard. Imagine a drunk waking up from a three-day bender with only the haziest idea of what transpired during it. Yeah, it's somewhat like that. It's not just Daisy, of course; it's everything crammed all together and then Daisy's visit on top of it. I've only been teaching for two weeks this semester -- I have fourteen to go, the last eight of which will be almost constant overdrive -- and I am already worn down, stressed, and exhausted. For example, I'm in a lot of pain right now (I'll get to that later); it's a side-effect of being switched on for days upon days on end.

When I get fired up and switched on, switched into overdrive, a few things happen. For one, I don't sleep. Like, almost at all. I averaged three hours a night, every night, for this past week -- with that average increasing only slightly while Daisy was here, and only then because of exhaustion. I've been wide awake since 6AM this morning, for example, and my body is primed and wired for more despite obvious signs of physical and mental deterioration.

For two, I don't eat. No, seriously, I completely lose almost any and all appetite I have. Last night, Daisy and I made vegan tacos for dinner, complete with a side of nachos with vegan cheese/vegan sour cream and salsa, and a second side of vegan Mexican rice. I ate seven tacos, a large plate of nachos, a decent helping of rice, a beer, and about a liter of Gatorade, since it was over 90 degrees in the house even after night had fallen. It was the only real "meal" I'd had all week, and that's not a lie. It's not because I don't have the time, money, or ability to eat -- it's because my appetite disappears when I switch on, and I go into what I call survival mode. Survival mode means I subsist on a diet of 70% coffee and 20% cigarettes, with the last 10% being a Powerbar, a small sandwich, or handful of chips thrown in there somewhere at least once or twice a day. Bare minimums, simply because my appetite completely disappears. If I eat more than that, it feels like I'm forcing it, or it makes me ill/makes me crash.

I don't know why my body does this, or how this mentality kicks in. It usually doesn't happen when I'm in the second week of the semester, that's for damn sure. Usually I end up turning on around Thanksgiving (in the fall) or Spring Break (in the spring, hence the name) and I'm running at a low-level version of overdrive from that point through the end of the semester as I finish everything up. Last semester, of course, I was running at full capacity and with high stakes, as I had to finish my thesis, study for and take my comps, and complete the graduation process while still dealing with and grading all of my students' work. I'm pretty sure I lost a good fifteen pounds over the course of the months of March through early May simply due to stress levels and lack of sleep or food. This semester, while I'm not dealing with stress levels that high, my body, mental state, and sleep cycles are all completely out of whack because I'm getting up and driving to one campus or another to teach four days a week, which I'm not used to. That alone makes me a bit twitchy and stressed. Throw a four-day visit from Daisy into the mix, a visit that I have to prepare for in all of the ways listed above, and everything goes berzerk.

Note: I am not in any way blaming Daisy for anything I've just described; I love her very, very much and was quite happy she was able to come down. I'm just describing the strange condition I've been in for the past week now. She knows, she understands just how much work I have to do on anything and everything over the course of any given week; she accepts it and lets me do it. If I tell her I'm hungry and need to eat and go to bed -- even if it's early afternoon and I've just gotten home from class -- she lets me do it, because she knows I need it and wouldn't say or ask it otherwise. Daisy is a very accepting person; she knows the man she's marrying, along with all of the character flaws and responsibilities he has. One of the many, many things I appreciate about her is that she doesn't fight me on any of it, and doesn't get upset, hurt, or jealous if I can only talk to her for a few minutes at a time on a busy day, and doesn't give me shit about needing to sleep, do work, or sometimes just turn off the computer and get away from everything for a while. She knows I make time for her, for us, and will always do so when I can -- and if for some reason I cannot, she knows I have a damn good reason for it and leaves it be without issue. This is wholly new and unique to me; I've never had someone like this in my life. In the past, be it in relationships, friendships, or with family or work issues, I always felt like I was being pulled in a million different directions at once, being forced to put up with other people's schedules and timeframes (or having them thrust upon me against my will) before my own took precedence. Daisy's not like that. She's patient and, more importantly, understanding.

Daisy came down on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday is what I generally refer to as my "short day," as I don't have to leave the house before dawn (I leave around 8:10 or so), I drive through the countryside to get to West campus, teach for an hour, and then hop back into the Monte Carlo to make the drive back through the countryside once more to get home usually around 11AM. It's an easy day teaching a small class on a deserted campus, and I love it -- it's almost a complete 180 from what I do on Monday and Wednesday in the department.

Daisy's original plan was to come down after she got off of work for the night -- getting in the car, driving home to quickly pick up her stuff and the groceries she'd got for us to cook with (generally we go half-and-half on the cooking supplies when she visit) and go. As she gets off work at 7:30 AM, she'd be home and on her way down here quite possibly before or around the time I left the house to teach my class, with an expected arrival time of around 1PM or so. This would give me time to teach and come home, do some last-minute tidying of the house and get a bite to eat, and possibly do a bit of student work to kill time before she arrived. This, as always, is not how things worked out.

When Daisy comes down here directly after work, she does so without sleeping first. She works an eleven-hour overnight shift, which means that she gets up sometime in the afternoon beforehand and stays awake until she gets home in the morning, at which point she usually spends a bit of time with the family before going back to bed. It's a vicious cycle; as you may be aware, I worked night shifts very similar to hers for several years. Anyway, at the very least, without stopping, the drive down here from Omaha is almost exactly five hours. With stops for gas, food, or bathroom breaks, that can easily extend to six hours or sometimes more, which is why when I'm with her, we generally make the trip at night if at all possible, especially in the summer. Going that long without sleeping is nothing new to me -- I work in academia, after all -- but for her, it's akin to hell. Daisy needs a lot of sleep, and frequently isn't able to get it. She becomes sleep-delirious worse than I do when she goes long enough without a good, solid night of rest, and that morning before I left the house, she told me that she may need to nap before making the drive. I told her that was fine, of course, just to keep me posted so that I knew when to expect her. When I got home around 11:30 after a full-length class, she sent me a message a few minutes later telling me that she had napped and that she was leaving. That put arrival time at 4:30 to 5PM, bare minimum. I told her okay and to be careful, as cops were out like crazy trying to fill their end-of-the-month ticket quotas -- I'd seen no less than four of them out patrolling the highways between campus and home, including one which had tailed me for about a mile on one of the back roads, making me nervous until he turned off onto one of the side streets leading up into a housing development.

This put me into a predicament. I hadn't eaten anything since Monday morning -- and even with no real appetite, even I can't go that long without putting something on my stomach, lest it begin to eat itself. I had to eat something, but I knew that once I did, it would make me crash out. Crashing after eating is the only time I get any actual sleep when I'm in overdrive mode, and combined with the oppressive heat (95 outside by around noon) and my lack of sleep -- plus the absolute need to sleep that night to be able to get up at 5AM on Wednesday morning -- I would crash and would basically be unresponsive until long after Daisy's arrival window, which would be bad both for getting time with her and for teaching the next day. But I was stuck. I had to eat something because I was becoming ill.

I made a turkey sandwich with Miracle Whip, provolone, and lettuce, and as soon as I was done with it I began pounding coffee, hardcore, to counteract its effects. As I've mentioned here before, I know I have a window of about an hour after eating before I get too physically sleepy to even sit upright, and of all times I needed my body and mind to remain on, to remain in overdrive, this was one of those times. It took 3/4 of a pot of coffee and some strenuous pacing back and forth around the house, in the heat, before the overwhelming need to sleep went away. Think of it as being similar to someone who needs to pull an all-nighter to study for a test; I used every trick I knew of to stay awake and mobile so that I would not pass out. Yet, while I would remain awake, I was very mentally and physically tired. Not sleepy, but tired. Fatigued. At this point I'd already been on and running for about three days on the bare minimums of rest, food, and downtime, and the rest of the week still stretched before me like a desert I had to cross. The rest of that week also involved spending as much time with Daisy as possible, and staying awake to do so. I didn't know how I would accomplish it. I was exhausted even before she got here, to the point where I could not even fathom spending another four days in overdrive.

I should also add that when Daisy is here, I spend a lot less time in my normal daily routine than I usually do, and it is that routine -- in part -- which keeps me going. My hours in front of my computer, no matter what I'm doing, with my full coffee cup always within arm's reach and a cigarette usually burning in the ashtray is a massive part of why I can survive and stay conscious and lucid when I'm on. When Daisy is here, my normal flow of routine is interrupted. I tend to smoke a lot less, and drink a lot less coffee. When I'm in overdrive mode, that is a very bad thing -- those are my two primary fuels that actually keep me active, awake, and sociable. During normal times this isn't an issue; I work around it, I have enough energy and I'm not stressed, and I can deal with it. When I'm in overdrive and must remain in it in order to accomplish anything, including getting time with my fiancee, this is a very, very dangerous and bad thing for me to have disrupted. 

Daisy arrived around 5PM, happy to be here, and I was happy to have her. By this time, of course, I was beginning to feel more than a little burnt-out, but I knew there was little I could do about it but sleep that night and try to get a little of my energy back. While I do sleep when in this mode, I sleep fitfully and very lightly -- the slightest noise or movement or even a particularly vivid dream will wake me, and once I'm awakened, I am up and running again -- there's no going back to sleep. That lighter sleep is usually enough to recharge me a bit so that I can go about the next day. With a fiancee and three cats sharing the bed with me, sleeping becomes even more difficult, especially when said fiancee wants to lay in the middle of the bed, or diagonal on the bed, or in some other weird position. I asked her if she was hungry, because I wasn't -- but was willing to make her something. She was, and I made waffles for her.

A few hours later, after we'd retreated downstairs to where the AC and two high-powered fans could keep us cool without wanting to die, out of the blue, Daisy proclaimed that she wanted pickles.

"Pickles?"

"Yes, pickles. Do you have pickles in the house?"

"No, baby," I said, "I hate pickles."

This is true, I do. While I love cucumbers, and I love dill, pickles have always been completely disgusting to me. Therefore, I don't keep any in the house. I actually don't think I've ever purchased a jar of pickles for anyone else, either.

"We can get some though," I added. "We can go out and get pickles, if you want. All I have to do is go teach tomorrow, and right now I'm wide awake."

I hadn't eaten any more, and didn't want to -- had I done so, even with Daisy there, I would have completely crashed. With the first, major wave of fatigue and sleepiness offset from the coffee, that coffee had continued to work for the majority of the afternoon and evening, leaving me burnt-out, twitchy and delirious, but completely wired and wide awake. It was getting dark at this point, and I knew that regardless of how I felt, I would indeed eventually have to go to bed and force myself to sleep, even if that meant taking a sleeping pill to do it. Even when I'm in overdrive, getting off my sleep cycles is dangerous -- it means that I cannot function properly during the times that I must be awake, because I have a set schedule during the week and cannot just say "well, I need to sleep" and just sleep. This means I have to power through absolutely everything, even when I run on little or no sleep, and frequently I don't remember most of it afterwards.

I mean, I remember going through the motions, I remember bits and pieces, but because of sleep deprivation and extreme caffeine/nicotine abuse, will I remember lots of details? No, not really. I am awake and functioning in the moment, but after that moment is lost, so is what I did in it. Frequently when I'm in this mode I'll come home and pass out after teaching/classes/etc and wake up not remembering most of what I did that day, or even what day it was. Part of this is also why a large chunk of my undergraduate years at WVU ten years ago is extremely hazy now as well. Then again, at WVU, alcohol was frequently a factor as well. When you can buy beer on campus (in multiple locations) in 6-packs/12-packs and go to the bar in the basement of the student union to begin pounding $2 Amber Bock drafts at 10AM, you forget a lot. I remember one time I bought two beers at the bar's opening, and they said they couldn't sell me the second without seeing the ID of the person I was getting it for -- and they blinked when I said truthfully that they were both for me.

Anyway, I'm getting off-track.

We went to Walmart to get the pickles. I ended up getting some other stuff I'd forgotten when I'd made my rushed trip through there the day before -- cat food/litter, coffee for my office on campus, etc -- and I found a few more dress shirts to teach in on deep clearance, for $3-7 each. Daisy indeed got her pickles -- two different kinds of pickles, actually, and we checked out.

In the parking lot, as it was now around 10:30 PM, I was becoming incredibly sleep-delirious. I had to get up at 5AM to go to work the next day, and I am also incredibly paranoid about leaving anyone in the house when I'm gone. I don't even like my landlord being in here when I'm not here. It's not that I have anything to hide (believe me, I don't; I'm a really boring person) but it's giving up a level of control that I've never been comfortable giving up. Of course, I trust Daisy -- I know that she's not going to burn the place down or let the cats out or do anything like that, ever, but it's not her, and I had to stress this. It's not her, it's anyone. This is the reason I've never trusted anyone enough to come check on the cats when I'm gone out of town (hence why I can never be gone more than about five or six days at the maximum), because not only do I not trust anyone else with my cats, ever, but I don't trust anyone else in my home when I'm not there, and why I lock the place up tight and check every door and every window when I leave.

"You can't really leave while I'm not there," I told her. "For one, you'd have to leave the house unlocked, which is a big no-no, and if you didn't, you'd be locked out."

I only have one key to my house. I don't have spares. If I lock myself out (and I have done so before) I'm truly fucked; I have to call my landlord over here to unlock the door. I can't even go in through the garage; the garage door opener doesn't work correctly and has been unplugged for two years now, and the garage door locks from the inside.

"I'll only be gone for about five hours or so, most of which you'll still be asleep," I continued. "I'm going in, doing my office work, teaching my 011 class as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then I'm coming back home. So even if you do wake up fairly early, you shouldn't have to wait on me that long. I should be home by around noon or one at the absolute latest. The cats should be fine; they have food and water and if you don't see them, don't panic, they're probably sleeping under the bed to stay cool, and I'll leave my room's door cracked so they can get in and get their food bowl--"

"You've told me all of this before," Daisy said. "I don't know why you're so paranoid. It's not like I'm going to do anything."

"I know that, baby, but it's not you. I want you to understand that. It's the fact that someone else is in my home when I'm not there, and that is something that really, really stresses me out. It's not you. Not. You. I trust you. I'm not trying to lecture you, but I need to tell you these things or otherwise I won't be able to function tomorrow due to stress and anxiety."

At that point it really was more for my own benefit than anything else. Daisy obviously felt like I didn't trust her enough to leave her there alone, since I was so incredibly paranoid about it, and that's why I had to keep stressing that it was not about her, that it was about me and my own mental state, my own psychological quirks, my own insecurities not about her but about the situation. I told her it could be my own mother and I would still be paranoid and apprehensive about it. I don't have anything to hide from my mother, nor would she ever do anything to the house or the cats if she were here when I wasn't. It's a personal space issue. It's a complex I have. And when I am sleep-deprived and delirious, all of that stuff gets magnified.

Interestingly enough, I have left Daisy here alone before while I've gone to teach on more than one occasion, and thought little of it, really. As I said, delirious.

"What happens once we're married and we're living together?" she asked.

"It's different then," I said. "It's a shared space, a vested interest, an equal partnership in the same place we live. I never had anxiety with [my ex's] comings and goings, or leaving her here when I was gone, and we lived together for five years in four different houses/apartments."

Again, this is true. I don't know why this paranoia developed over the past several years; perhaps it's because I've lived alone for so long, and my house is the only sanctuary I have to get away from the horrors of the outside world -- the only place I am free of ridicule, prying eyes, and am given the ability to relax and be myself. It is, totally and without question, my safe haven. When Daisy and I begin living together -- whether that's in a few months before the wedding or shortly thereafter -- it won't be an issue. It's only an issue now because I have a my house, my space, my rules mentality.

We went home and Daisy ate some of her pickles, and I allowed myself to eat a vegan burger that she'd brought down, as I was going to bed shortly thereafter anyway and it wouldn't matter if I crashed. We went to bed around midnight, simply because I couldn't stay up any later than that if I wanted to be able to get up at 5. Even if I was delirious and sleep-deprived, I was in that zone where I had to force myself to sleep, and the oppressive heat both outside and inside the house just made it worse.

When my alarm went off at 5, I wheeled over my arm at lightning speed and shut it off before it would wake up Daisy -- and I was once more wide-awake and wired. I came upstairs, made coffee and showered, and left the house at 7, with Daisy still asleep in the bedroom. I had to take the long way around the neighborhood because they were still repaving the streets connected to mine, and I could only get in and out one way. I went to campus, took care of my office stuff (making copies, sorting out handouts for both of my classes over the next few days) and taught my class. Said class lasted a little over forty minutes, as we weren't covering a lot that day -- just some exercises out of the book and some homework assignments in their journal for over the long weekend. On my way back out to the car when class was over, I sent Daisy a text telling her I was on my way home. She didn't respond.

When I returned home, I noticed that the air conditioner was still off. I'd left a note for her telling her how to turn it on if she got too hot (again, blazing heat; it was probably 95 by the time I got home on Wednesday), and it had been undisturbed. The cats came to greet me, but it was as if it were any other day when I was coming home from class -- not a sound, smell, or any other indication that there was anyone in the house but me. I took off my professional work clothes and went downstairs to find Daisy still sleeping. Still sleeping. She hadn't moved since I got up at 5AM.

Must be nice, I thought.

I woke her up gently -- all of my "lecturing" from the night before had been completely unnecessary. She'd slept for over twelve hours straight, and hadn't moved. We'd gone to bed around midnight, and I was waking her shortly before 1PM. Not only that, she hadn't even gotten up to go to the bathroom, nor had she heard me get up, shower, or heard me fire up the loud engine of the Monte Carlo at 7, and she hadn't heard me come back home a few minutes before. She was out like a light, sleeping the kind of deep, hard sleep that I only wish I could get these days. In hindsight, I should have expected this -- the woman barely sleeps when she's at home, and she'd only had a short nap before she drove down here the day before. She needed the rest.

I shall continue this in my next post...

Week Two

Fall semester: day seven

Five of the past seven days that classes have been in session, I have been on one campus or the other teaching them. This is not a realization I take lightly. Being an adjunct professor is, on some levels, a walk in the park, and on others it is completely exhausting, draining, and frustrating.

Add to this that for the past ten days or so overall, it's been searing, scorching hot outside every time I leave the house, and I feel more drained than I usually do at this time of the semester. The heat, though technically seasonable, is overbearing at times. I feel like Lawrence of Arabia walking to and from my classes with the sun beating down on me and not a cloud in the sky to protect or shade me.

I am not a fan.

My school email is completely on the fritz, as they say. Or, at least I think it is -- I haven't received an email from any of my students (or anyone else but the director's wife) since before classes started. I'm not getting department-wide emails or updates from the campus system administrators. I'm getting nothing. Yet, if I send an email to my school email from one of my personal addresses (and vice versa) it goes through fine, so I don't know what the problem is, or if there really is one. To remedy any problems if they exist, I created a special Gmail account for class issues and sent it to my students, telling them that when they need to contact me, they need to send it to both my school email and the new Gmail -- if it shows up in the latter and not the former, well, I'll know something's up.

I can't stand the school's email system anyhow. It's nice in principle, but its mail servers are really slow, messages will time out half the time and say they haven't been sent when they have, etc. The school can spend millions on wiping out the best parking lot on campus to build a new (unnecessary) dorm, they can spend millions rebuilding and designing the student union (which was perfectly fine to begin with), and they can fill classrooms with brand-new desks and equipment, yet they can't fix the email system or pay their GTAs more than $8500 a year.

I'm guessing most schools have these sorts of issues, though.

Upon getting up on Saturday morning to mow the grass, I found that I had another bright-orange door-hanger notice on my (rarely used) bottom door -- they were going to be repaving the streets again.

Okay, I thought, so why are they telling me this? They've already done mine.

My street is T-shaped. The bottom, vertical part of that T is the street I live on, which they already paved last month (as you may remember). The top crossbar? That's the street that leads me to my street and is the only way in and out -- my street is a dead-end, as right next to me is the neighbors' horse ranch. They were repaving the crossbar part, the street that connects to mine. That means my street would again be completely closed and locked down, again, after 7AM on Monday morning.

Fuck, I thought.

Mind you, I normally leave the house on Mondays (at least now, anyway) at that time of day, roughly, so this wasn't a huge issue. What was a huge issue is that when they're paving, they close down the street until they're done...which usually takes nine or ten hours. I could leave the house just fine in the morning, but when I would typically return home around 1 or so in the afternoon, I'd still be blocked out of getting back down my street and getting home for another four hours or so.

It appeared that I would have time to kill. Time that, on Mondays, I typically do not want to kill, as I generally just want to get home, eat, and pass out so that I can get up and do work before I have to teach on Tuesdays.

Sunday night around 6:30, I took a sleeping pill to ensure that I would actually go to bed and get some real rest (instead of forcing myself to go to bed only to lay there for an hour or three, frustrated that I couldn't sleep, and then get back up). On weekends I'm used to sleeping as much as I want, when I want, and that makes it really difficult to sleep normal hours on Sunday nights when I have to get up at 5AM on Monday morning. There's little I can do about it most of the time, unless I force myself to get up really early on Sunday morning (never gonna happen) or take a sleeping pill to force myself to rest.

When I got up yesterday morning (yes, I did sleep the whole night) I left the house around 6:30 to avoid any barriers they'd set up to close the street, and stayed on campus until around 3:30 yesterday just to be able to kill that necessary time. 3:30 is about my limit on days I stick around; if I don't leave by then, I can't leave until around 6 or so because of bumper-to-bumper, car-overheating-in-95-degree-weather traffic on the interstate for about five miles. Before that is good, and after that is good. I figured if I left around 3:30 I'd be able to avoid traffic, stop at Walmart on the way home to kill a bit more time, and then by the time I was done with that, the street would be open again and I'd be able to get back to the house. The gamble here was that if the street was not yet open again, I'd be stuck sitting in my black-on-black car with leather interior in 95-degree weather and a load of cold groceries from Walmart until it did reopen, something (of course) I was hoping wouldn't happen.

It didn't happen, thankfully. I rolled down my street around 4:45 and it looked as if the road had been open for some time. I saw one road-crew truck further down the lane about two blocks awake, though what they were doing down there was beyond me.

I also, finally, got my office yesterday. To little fanfare, at that.

The key had arrived at some point since last Wednesday when I was last on the main campus; it's shiny and bronze and new, and I "moved in" what little I had with me to my new office. It's larger than I expected -- the adjunct I'm sharing it with has remarkably little clutter and/or other stuff filling it, so there's plenty of room. One of the other GTA offices provided me with a computer desk that they weren't using as well, so even though it's small I will have a base of operations there when necessary. I will have to bring my name placard back in to campus and will have to find a way to affix it to the door, though, as there's only one holder for a name (again, one-person office). I left a note on my officemate's desk thanking him for use of the space, and stuck my desk and other stuff (new tape dispenser, some pens and other office supplies) in the corner to mess with later. It'll be next week before I even attempt to bring in anything like my energy bars, coffee pot, or laptop to set up there -- I've got too much to deal with right now to try to gather those things and take them in tomorrow.

Today, Daisy is coming down to spend the next few days with me. She gets off work at 7:30, and I'll leave my house around 8:10 or so to go teach on West campus. By the time I get home around 11, I'll have some time to tidy up a bit more around the house and/or take care of minor student stuff for tomorrow before she arrives this afternoon and we can both sleep. Part of the reason I went to Walmart yesterday was not only to kill time, but to be able to get stuff to cook while she's here -- she wants tacos, and while I have some of the vegan taco ingredients already, I needed to get more. She's bringing the rest of our cooking supplies, so it's basically a half-and-half thing.

I don't know what we'll do (or what we'll have time to do, really) while she's here; as mentioned previously here in the blog, Daisy's only time off during the week comes during my absolute busiest days of the week. The majority of tomorrow I'll be gone on campus while she (hopefully) sleeps, and on Thursday I've asked if she wants to come to class with me so she can see how I teach -- since I don't have to get up as early on Thursday and because it's not like anyone on West campus is going to care or notice that my fiancee is sitting in on my class with me. It also lets her spend a little more time with me, it's the first real/full lesson I'll teach to my 101 class, and after that it's the end of my week anyhow.

Regardless she'll either have to go back on Thursday night or Friday morning at the latest, as even though it's a holiday weekend she still has to work up until Sunday night at midnight before she gets any of that "holiday" time off. While yes, I think this is ridiculous, it's the way her job works.

As for her trip down here? Well...

"I'm going to try to shower and go. I'm hoping my energy kicks in," she told me this morning when I asked her what her timeframe was.

"Regardless, you must keep me updated today on what you're doing and the progress of your trip, because by the time I get home I'm going to be really hungry and/or sleepy," I told her. "This means that I need to know where you are and when you're going to get here, because if I fall asleep and you show up an hour into that sleep and wake me up, I'm going to be REALLY cranky and/or angry. Not at you, of course, but because I more than likely will need that sleep and will once more be stuck wide awake."

This may sound harsh, but it's absolutely true. I don't get much sleep anymore, as you probably know. I'm not trying to be mean; I'm trying to keep Daisy on somewhat of a schedule, while slowly trying to wean her off of her I'll-get-there-when-I-get-there, Daisy Standard Time. 

"...I find it frustrating that I'm always supposed to have a never ending supply of energy and operate on everyone else's schedule," she replied.

This is also a very valid point. Her sister and nephews are in town, her mother is still recovering from her surgery, her father had horrible food poisoning last week, and she works an incredibly inconvenient set of hours every week. So, really, I completely understand her frustration. She doesn't sleep that much either, and the drive down here to visit is a long one. However, and again not to sound harsh, but there is little I can do about any of that.

"[Daisy], my week is only halfway over and I have a LOT of work I have to do before that week is finished," I told her. "I'm on a set schedule that doesn't change, and there's nothing I can do about that. I told you, and you know, that I have to operate on my own hours and timeframes during the semester and do work and get sleep when I can. I can't help that your schedule clashes so horribly with mine."

"Honey, I'm not trying to lecture you," I added. "I'm just saying that if you have to sleep before you come down you have to tell me this, and/or if your schedule changes you also have to tell me because I have to worry about and take care of all of my own stuff for today and tomorrow regardless of when you get here, and I need to know when I can do that with the least amount of inconvenience to you."

I love Daisy very much, but if there's anything that's a point of contention in our relationship it's that our work and sleep schedules do terribly, horribly clash with one another. Frequently, whenever we do get to Skype or message one another back and forth, one or both of us should ideally be sleeping during that time, so it throws off our patterns a bit more. The messages I cut-and-pasted above were sent back and forth while I was getting ready to leave the house this morning to teach, and while she was still at work. That's what our communication has been like since the semester started. No, it's not ideal. But it's what we have to work with, and we deal with it the best we can.

Thankfully, I do have an extra day of decompression time this weekend, since we don't have classes on Monday because of Labor Day. Not only will that save me some gas money (which is important, since we don't get paid for the first time until September 13) but it means I won't have to get up at 5AM and go to the main campus on Monday to sit around for four hours before I teach. It will also allow me to work up the week's lesson plans at my leisure while I get to bask in the first weekend of college football. WVU plays for the first time on Saturday, though it won't be on broadcast TV out here -- I may have to find some way to watch it online. 

In the meantime I am simply battling the brutal heat -- it hit 95 or so yesterday, and with the humidity and mugginess in the air, it felt well over 100. I've been running the air conditioner in the house for hours every day, despite the fact that my electric bill will steadily rise in my doing so, just to be able to not sweat through every piece of clothing I have on. Taking off the clothing doesn't help, either; the sweat just rolls down my body in big, thick drops and will soak wherever I'm sitting or laying. On Skype with Daisy over the weekend, I showed her my tank top I was wearing, which was completely soaked through as if I'd taken a shower with my clothes on. Seriously. There's not much I can do about being so hot; all I can do is basically drink a gallon or more of ice water or other liquid every day and try to stay cool. I got a big can of Gatorade powder last night at Walmart, despite the fact that I didn't want to spend the $8 on it, because I need to be able to keep myself hydrated with something other than water sometimes. 

So that's all that's going on right now. I'll update you again in another day or three when I have the time to do so. That time, over the course of the rest of the semester, will soon become more and more valuable.  

The Fatigue

Fall semester: day four

If there's one thing I've noticed thus far about my fall semester of teaching, it's that there's a lot of...well, waiting around. I don't necessarily mind this, but I've found myself doing a lot more waiting, pacing back and forth, and not sleeping than I've found myself teaching.

Mondays and Wednesdays, of course, involve a lot of waiting. Get up, go to campus, wait roughly four hours until I can teach and come home. The parking situation on main campus is an absolute mess. By the time I get there (at around 7:20 or so, give or take) the front third to front half of the student lot is already filled. By 8 it's usually completely full. By 9:30 or so when Parker arrives, he's lucky to find a spot. By the time my 11AM students come to class, they're telling me that they're parking on the street and walking a good half-mile or so to class. The university doesn't need a new dorm; it needs a five-or-six-level parking garage. Or less students.

I'll say this, though -- on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I teach on West campus, I roll out of the house after 8AM, make the beautiful drive through back roads and countryside, and get to the campus around 8:40-8:50 before my 9:15 class. There are twelve cars in the parking lot other than mine. Twelve. Ten of them are my students. The other two are the office staff.  There is not another single morning class taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the West campus -- it is a ghost town.

It is 3AM, and I once more find myself waiting. My fatigue has taken a strong hold this week, and has worked hand in hand with my insomnia. This means that I am sleeping at extremely odd hours, for varying lengths of time, yet when I'm awake and at home I have little energy to do anything productive, and I am usually between times where I could get any more actual productive sleep as well, due to the schedule I have to keep. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I got home around 12:30. I took off my hot, overbearing dressy clothing, let Daisy know I was home safely, and ate lunch on the couch with a book. When I felt myself getting sleepy, I went downstairs and went to bed. I woke up around 11PM, wide awake and unable to go back to sleep or keep sleeping, but with no real energy to do anything once awake.

This is apparently my life right now until I can figure out how to better regulate my sleep patterns. Basically, I now wait until I can leave the house in a little over four hours, go teach my class, come back home, and if I'm tired, sleep then. It's maddening.

Some of you may be thinking why don't you just go back to bed if you're tired, and try to sleep until you have to get up and get ready? I did this last night; I was stuck awake until 2:30 AM or so when I had to get up at 5, and was sleepy, so I set my alarm and went back to sleep...only to wake up at 5, hit the snooze three times, finally got up around six, and felt like absolute shit. Making myself go back to sleep is pointless if I can't get a good six-to-eight hours, because I will wake up feeling much worse than if I just stayed up and drank about four or five more cups of coffee to compensate. When I crash out, however, I crash out.

This has, of course, put a damper on communication this week between me and Daisy; we've Skyped but once since Sunday, and all other communication back and forth has been via message here and there, spottily at best. She's been off work since Tuesday morning, but of course, I haven't. I sleep when she's awake most of the time, and vice versa. I really won't get the chance to talk to her again until at least this afternoon, and that's if neither of us are asleep. Knowing how my body works, as soon as I eat something upon arriving home in the afternoon, I have about an hour (maximum) after that before I get so tired that I literally cannot sit upright and must sleep. By the time I get home from teaching I am also usually ravenously hungry as well, so you can see how this cycle tends to work most of the time. This also happens regardless of how much I've slept the night before or how much caffeine I've consumed prior to eating. It just does. I conk out, the combination of having a full stomach, responsibilities taken care of for the day, and my fatigue finally taking over.

I checked on my office situation yesterday morning while on the main campus, and it remains much the same.

"So do I have a key yet?" I asked the administrator.

"They've made it and it's coming in the mail, as much as I hate it that they send it that way. I've offered to send someone over to pick it up, but they always just send it. When the mail comes today I'll see if it's here."

Mail in the department comes in around midday, sometimes a little earlier or later. My class is at 11, and after it I go back home, since I have literally nothing else to do on campus after it.

"That's good," I said, relieved. "I won't be back on campus today after my class until Monday morning, since I teach tomorrow on West campus, so keep me posted on it."

I thanked her graciously, of course. This morning, since I didn't have an office to sit in, I sat in the lounge and read probably 100 pages of the Pears Cyclopaedia from 1985, a book which someone long ago left in there and had forgotten about. It was mildly interesting if only because it was shocking to see how woefully outdated much of its information was 28 years later. I also made a mental note to charge and bring my DS with me on Monday in case I still don't have access to my new office yet.

My internet, which was out all night Monday night (as you know) has been incredibly spotty for the several days since; in the overnight hours that I've been awake, it has gone offline over and over, only to pop back up a few minutes later. I counted at least four times it's gone out in the past 2.5 hours tonight, and probably missed a few times as well. I don't know if the techs are upgrading it or working on it or what -- all I know is that I've been living here for over four years now, and every year the price of my monthly internet goes up a little bit more. Originally it was $47, then $54, and now it's $57. If I'm still with the same company next year, I'm guessing it'll be over $60. And that's just for internet alone, the second-fastest-tiered service they have. I don't have telephone or cable television through them (I don't have it at all, and if I did, I'd barely use either one anyhow). In those four years, the internet has only gone out for a long stretch of time a very small handful of times. Even during the worst thunderstorms or ice/snowstorms, I haven't lost it for more than a few minutes at a time, and then only very rarely.

My 011 class yesterday went well; in the interim between Monday and yesterday, someone completely rearranged the classroom and actually made the desks and chairs fit into it really well. I now have a desk and chair in there myself (no podium or lectern, though), so I have a teaching space that will be effective enough for the semester. The students seemed to be a little more loosened-up for yesterday's class as well, though that was possibly because we didn't do much other than the diagnostic essay. Unlike other diagnostics in other composition classes, these kids get theirs back and we discuss them in class next week. I graded them one by one as my students turned them in and left the class, and honestly was pretty surprised by their ability to write (for the most part). Judging by their diagnostics, some of these kids would do perfectly fine in 101, so why many of them tested into 011 is beyond me. I'm more concerned about those students who are signed up for the class yet haven't showed up yet -- I've got four or five of them out of a full class capped at twenty. If they don't show up, it's less to grade, yes (they'll auto-fail in two more weeks due to absences alone), but they're going to have some real issues if they suddenly appear in class on Monday morning asking me what they've missed.

As for my 101 class, today I give them their diagnostic. In the overnight hours, to try to be as productive as I can while awake and hating it, I wrote up lesson plans and made handouts for the entire semester through early November. This was like going back in time, sort of, to a simpler era of teaching, and adjusting the readings/schedules to do everything within the allotted timeframe felt totally freeing and almost like reflexes, muscle memory of teaching 101 all flooding back to me, despite the fact that I only taught it for one two-semester year. Thankfully, in the new version of the textbook, they do have a few of the readings I used to cover in appropriate units, so I was able to incorporate a few of those. I didn't make out a schedule for the last unit of the semester yet (early November through finals week in December), though, because I need to overhaul some of the dates and timeframes on that, especially around Thanksgiving week, since I already plan to be out of town and in Omaha for that week.

Pete and Sadie have about halfway made up, it seems. She'll occasionally still growl or hiss at him every few hours, but no longer goes after him or seems to care when he's around unless he looks at her like he wants to spar with her. He even spent some time earlier cuddled up to her licking her ears and face, which she didn't seem to mind. Then again, Sadie is basically bipolar anyway, so who knows.

It's hot; really hot, actually. By the time I got home from class yesterday it was around 90, and my car -- since it's all black with black leather interior, and sat out in the sun all morning -- was sweltering and oppressive. I immediately ran the AC when I got home, and let it run until I went downstairs to bed yesterday afternoon. I turned it on for a while more when I got up, before realizing that it wasn't doing much good. On Tuesday when I ran it once it got stiflingly hot, I let it run for about six hours, and it dropped the temperature in the house considerably before it began making its whining noise again and stopped blowing, signifying that I'd run it too long in this humidity and that it was freezing up. At 6:30 in the morning, in my Man Cave, it is 88.7 degrees. It's 70 outside right now, with a predicted high of 92 this afternoon. I have no doubt I'll have to run it when I come back home from teaching this morning.

Yesterday, only four days after I sent the payment, my new registration sticker for my car came in the mail. That's super-fast, and I'm glad I no longer have to worry about it. I have to remember to put it on the plate in the coming days at some point, though technically I don't have to until the end of September. The car needs a fill-up at the gas station this morning before I drive to/from West campus. It looks like, on average, I'll have to fill the gas tank about every week and a half or so during the semester. I drive a little further on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since the West campus is a little further out of the way for me. I'm getting excellent gas mileage, though, even better than before, since I put new oil and Marvel Mystery Oil into the car last weekend. I don't know if that's really the reason why or what, but it's still good.  This morning I'll put some fuel system cleaner into it on fill-up, as it's been a few months since I last did that (and because I haven't driven the car a lot all summer up until this week). That should hopefully knock any more "kinks" out of it, if there are any.

I leave the house in about eighty minutes or so; I showered earlier and put on a fresh, new undershirt I purchased from Walmart on clearance, which I will wear with the shirt I wore to teach in on Monday and a pair of shorts (since it's West campus and all). I told Parker that since I travel between two campuses on different days, I could cut my laundry in half by wearing the same outfit to teach in on alternating days, depending on weather of course. For example, I wore the same shirt yesterday to teach in that I wore when I taught on Tuesday on the West campus. Today I'll be wearing the same shirt I wore on Monday when I taught on the main campus. I consider this to be a small stroke of genius. As long as I don't, like, spill coffee on myself or anything like that, I can get by with two outfits for any given week most of the time if necessary, and may be able to do something along these lines indefinitely for most of the semester. Why not, you know? If nothing else I'll at least be able to do it with my pants, as I have several identical pairs of pants, and don't tend to get them as dirty as quickly.

It's amusing to me how much time and thought I put into what I'm going to wear. I'm not generally that kind of person, yet I already see myself de-evolving into Polo shirts instead of button-up shirts for my West campus days next week, and probably dressier t-shirts for the week after, normal tees the week after that. For my main campus days? Pretty much the same sort of schedule, though a little more slowly. I doubt I'll start wearing my t-shirts until I wear a hoodie or zip-up jacket over them later in the semester, probably past the midterm point when it's colder and I've begun the big wardrobe switch from summer clothes to fall and winter clothes.

Yes, I do put thought into this, don't I? This is totally bolstered by the fact that -- as I mentioned above -- aside from me, my students, and two office staff members, West campus is deserted when I'm there. It's not like I have any administration over there that I need to, or must, impress. That may change for the second eight weeks starting in October, but still. If I wasn't so bored and restless and wanting to get it over with, I could conceivably leave the house at 8:30 or later and get there five minutes before class started, but I always give myself some extra time for traffic or car troubles, as well as a smoke before I go inside to teach. That's also part of the reason I go to the main campus so early on Monday/Wednesday as well, though the bigger reason is parking.

Parker has seriously upgraded his office this semester, even though he is scheduled to graduate in December. He brought in a massive lounge chair that he calls "the throne," and the title is accurate. It's wider, and twice as deep, as my couch. His officemate, not to be outdone, brought in a vertical ionizing fan with remote controlled-oscillation and three speeds. With some new lamps for mood lighting as well, the office is now a completely different place. I can't help but feel a little envious, as I expect my own office (when I get it) to be small, cramped, and nowhere near as inviting. But, it doesn't really matter as long as I get it.

I may stop for Burger King on my way home from teaching; I should roll off the interstate and back into Newton around 11 this morning, before the lunchtime rush. I don't really have anything in the house that I want to eat, and what I have been eating (mainly sandwiches and the occasional can of soup) has really started to wear on me. I have boxed stuff in the cupboard, such as mac & cheese and couscous that I could make, but I'm already tired (again, the fatigue) and by the time 11AM rolls around and I get back up here, I will totally be in full weekend mode, and will want to do nothing but stop doing work, including cooking. As you folks may already know, it's not like I eat fast food all the time, or really at all -- maybe once or twice a semester I'll stop for it just so I don't have to make anything at home -- but I have been desperately craving a burger for the past few weeks, and since the McDonald's in Walmart shut down, Burger King is the closest option for me (and it's right off the interstate on the way home). I may consider it. It depends on how tired and/or hungry I am by the time I get back home.

I messaged Daisy in the overnight hours and told her that if she was awake before 8, we could Skype before I went to campus, but I doubt she will be. As a result I probably won't get to talk to her until this afternoon, provided I'm still awake when she's around.

My weekend plans are sparse; I need to mow the grass again, more than likely, which I'll do on whatever day is the coolest and least sunny, and I'll be spending a bit of time working on student stuff, but other than that? I desperately need to get some quality, off-the-grid sleep where I don't have to worry about getting up at a set time and don't have to plot my resting hours around when I can get it or when I can feasibly continue sleeping instead of just staying awake for hours upon hours on end to power through things. I'll need to write out my rent check and mail it, which will be another large chunk of money gone from my bank account, but thankfully that will be replenished in another three weeks or so with my first paycheck (September 13). And, luckily, I only have another four days of teaching after today before I get a four-day weekend for Labor Day, as well. With Daisy coming down midweek (at least she plans to, I believe) I've got a good stretch of days ahead of me.

Now, off to teach.

Hot Hot Heat

Fall semester: day three

By the time I got home yesterday morning after teaching my first 101 class of the semester, my mind and body were -- as if by muscle memory -- in weekend mode. That's because I'd already made my two trips to campus and back for the week, and had taught both times, so my mind and reflexes were like okay, your week's over now.

No, no; no, it's not. That's my body thinking it's on its old, grad student schedule from last year, of only needing to go to campus twice a week for a few hours each time to teach. My week is only half over.

I haven't had to go to campus four days a week in over two years. More than that, I've never had to teach four days a week before. The entire process of everything I do now is completely different than what I've done before. My body and mental state still need to get used to it, hence why I was subconsciously ready to start my weekend at 11AM on a Tuesday morning.

My sleep schedules are all kinds of fucked up right now. Monday night I came home and went to sleep until 10PM before I got up, stayed up, and taught yesterday, came home, and passed out again around 2PM on the couch, then went downstairs until around 9PM to sleep. Now it's after midnight and I'm wide awake. My alarm is supposed to go off at 5AM, and yet I'm up here typing away. Whether I go back down there for a several-hour power nap or not remains to be seen.

I suppose, at this early juncture of the semester, I can afford myself this. Tuesday night has become my "hump day" of the week, where I reach the week's midpoint. I've now learned that until I start teaching my night class in October, Monday and Wednesday will be my "long days," and that's only because I have to get to campus dreadfully early in order to be able to park. No, I don't like this, especially since I still do not officially have an office (which I'll get to). This means I'm just there, with nowhere to put my stuff, nowhere to put a coffee pot and sit down at a desk, nowhere for my laptop or anything of that nature. For around five hours total, including the time I teach (an hour, at most, for that). Really, I won't even notice this time when I get an office, as having an office again will allow me to actually relax, sit down, get up and move around when I need to, visit with colleagues, etc. But now? Being there with nowhere to go, when I have to be there regardless, is maddening.

I've been given a minimal update on the office situation, at least. The colleague who I'll more than likely be sharing the office with is fine with my presence there (from what I've been told), especially since we won't really cross paths that often or possibly at all due to our differing schedules. However, we need to try to find a second desk to put in there, even if it's a tiny corner table or something, so I have somewhere to work from. It is, as I mentioned, a tiny made-for-one-person office. And I really don't want to intrude on anyone's space; if I didn't need somewhere to go in the mornings I'm there, I wouldn't be incredibly insistent on having an office at all. But, sadly, I do need one, and my students need somewhere they can go to talk to me for "office hours" scenarios, if and when those scenarios arise. At the very least I need somewhere I can set up three things: my laptop, my small laser printer, and my coffee pot. That's it, really. It's all I need for an office. I don't have books or paperwork as a student anymore, and whatever teaching books and papers I need for the day are in my bag. I already have a spare office chair ready to go in Parker's office, which I'll need to fetch as soon as I get the key to my new one. Whenever that may be, of course.

In other news, it's been incredibly hot this week. Yes, it's been nice and cool for the past month or so, with rain and highs in the 60s and 70s, which has been wonderful not only for my comfort levels but stress levels and electric bill as well. Of course, now that classes have started back up, there's not a cloud in the sky, it's muggy as fuck, and the temperature reaches the high 80s by noon. For the rest of the week the temperatures are supposed to top out in the low-to-mid-90s every day with fairly high humidity. As mentioned previously, it's after midnight and it's still 75 outside with 74% humidity. This would be welcomed in, say, the second half of the semester as a respite from the otherwise fall-and-winter-like weather of possible early snowfall, ice storms, and howling winds, but for the first week back to school, while pretty, it is torturous to be out in every single day when one has to dress respectably in slacks and nice button-up shirts. As you know, my house becomes a sauna when it gets hot outside, whether the house is closed up or with the windows open. It doesn't matter either way. The temperature in my Man Cave right now is 89.6 degrees, and that's after I ran the air conditioner for a few hours earlier this evening. Because of this, dressed or undressed, I'm almost constantly coated in a thin layer of sweat. My body got too used to those highs in the 60s and 70s for the majority of the past month, and grew to crave that again, to physically need those cool temperatures and rains in order to be comfortable.

Of course, in two or three months when it only reaches 30 degrees for the high and I can't keep it warmer than 65 in the house at any given time, I will be cursing that weather too. It's almost impossible for me to stay constantly comfortable, but all of the cooler, rainy weather this past month did it for me. That's what I love. Perhaps I should move to Scotland.

While I was gone to teach yesterday morning (only for about three hours, perhaps less), apparently Pete and Sadie got into some sort of huge fight. I came back home to find that my Man Cave door was open (the latch no longer works properly, so if they try hard enough, they can get the door open) and my room a mess. Pete had knocked over my trash can and had knocked half the stuff off my desk, and one of them had sprayed on the floor in front of my printer -- something they only do when they're fighting hardcore. Sadie, even fourteen hours later, will growl, grunt, snort, and hiss violently if Pete even looks at her or gets closer to her than about ten feet away. I know it's between the two of them, because sweet and innocent Maggie, who would never hurt a fly or cause any trouble whatsoever, routinely cuddles up to me or Sadie, sometimes Pete as well, and Sadie doesn't bat an eye. I don't know what's going on; cat spat, it seems. Pete always looks at me, and at Sadie, like "what's she being a bitch about?" when this sort of thing occurs.

Believe it or not, this happens about four or five times a year, roughly. Most of the time it's over in a matter of hours, if not minutes, but I've seen it last as long as a month before -- a month of hearing their screaming fights in the night while I try to sleep, or a month of Sadie basically hiding under the bed or in my room 90% of the time and only coming out to eat and go to the litter pan. It's not like they're going into heat or anything like that -- all three cats are fixed and have been since they were kittens. Sadie just wants to be a little cunt sometimes, and sometimes that stretches out into a month or so of her just being plain mean to Pete, but never to her sister Maggie. What's worse is that Pete is a pussy about it and puts up with it until she starts acting normally again, treading lightly, avoiding her, and running away instead of standing up to her and fighting back, which would make that shit stop really quick. Sadie likes to play the victim and be mean for no real reason. Being pissed off and growly at Pete for a few hours or for a full day is understandable. Being a total cunt for a month or more is not. Doing shit like keeping Pete from being able to come upstairs or go downstairs because she blocks the stairwell is not. Hiding under the bed and hissing/growling any time I go to bed and Pete comes down to sleep with me is not. I have no patience whatsoever for that shit. The only sort of funny thing about it is that whenever Sadie is being mean, Pete will be extra lovey and clingy with me, as if to say "protect me from that mean crazy bitch." Sometimes that's difficult, as Sadie rarely leaves my side.

Anyway.

My English 101 class today was fine. I have ten students total, as mentioned before. None of them are English majors, and (surprisingly) none of them are high schoolers. They're all either brand new freshmen or they're non-traditional returning students, and the gender ratio is about half and half. Also, to my great delight, all ten of them have experience writing in MLA format. All ten. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. It's a pretty balanced, small and intimate class, taught in the same classroom I taught my summer 102 in over a year ago. These students seem to be mostly quiet and looked a bit scared as well, though. I've invented a term for this perceived mentality: first semester shell shock. Many of the students I have in both of my semester-long classes are fresh out of high school, having never taken any college courses before. As such, they don't know what to expect, and on their first day in there they have a big burly guy reading to them very seriously and intently from a very strictly-and-officially-written syllabus about what the expectations of the course are -- I can certainly understand that they may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. That's why, at the end of the first class of the semester, I try to describe the sort of person I am without going into too much detail, but to ease their fears -- i.e., I'm a laid-back guy who teaches a pretty casual class, dresses casually, and thinks casually, and that I'm not there to be the English boogeyman, but to genuinely help them learn how to write better, and that I've been doing this a long time. One of my non-traditional
students, who is more than likely around my mother's age, was really nervous about the class until I assured her that I've taught it and other classes many times before, and that I'm a professor who's doing it because he wants to and not a grad student doing it simply because he has to. It has also been my experience that students who take classes on the West campus do it there because they have a particular mindset that doesn't necessarily mesh with the "herd them all into a room with a grad student" sort of classroom environment for one reason or another. The West students tend to be the overachievers, non-traditional, or part-time students, and also tend to be the ones who desperately want to do well. That means they actually put effort into their work, usually to great effect.  This group looks like it'll be a fun one simply because of that.

The rest of my week is pretty straightforward in both classes -- take attendance and give them their diagnostic exams, then leave when they're done. My 011 class will be given their first reading assignment today for over the weekend, and my 101 class will be assigned to purchase their workbook, as that's what we'll be going over on Tuesday. This weekend I'll grade the diagnostics and look over the sections I'll be covering for both classes, altogether an hour or two worth of teaching-oriented work I'll be doing while watching preseason football.

The rest of my weekend? Eh. Sleeping? Probably a lot, since my schedule is so messed up. After making my shopping trip in the overnight hours of Monday night, I don't have to go shopping anytime soon, and all of my bills are paid. I'll need gas in the car probably before I go to West campus tomorrow morning again, and I'll have to mail out the rent, but other than that I have nothing else that must be done aside from the aforementioned small amount of student stuff.

For now, though? I'm going to take a shower and see if I can conk out for a short few hours before getting up and facing another day on the main campus.

Our First Day Back(ward)

Fall semester: day two

As an aside before I begin, I do rather like keeping track of the days here, as you see above. I've done it for years now. Sometimes it feels good to be able to keep everything inside a set frame that I can look at and say well, I got through all of the days leading up to this one, at least, or something to that effect. As the semester winds down, I can look at it and say X days to go...

There were many times over the course of the past three months where I never thought I would see this day again -- the first day of a new semester where I'm teaching classes, I mean. As I told Parker last week, I never thought I would sit on the couch in his office ever again. I had a rather...well, depressing summer, as you folks know. Not depressing like "oh god this is the worst summer ever" but a summer which, until a little less than a month ago, I was receiving rejection after rejection for teaching applications, my money was running out, my patience for other people and society in general had worn down to nothing, etc. Yes, actual depression was involved for a good chunk of time. I was convinced for a while that even with my skills, experience, and shining recommendations, I would never teach again -- adjuncting at the university was truly my last hope, the last-ditch backup plan that, after a while, was forced to become the main plan if I didn't want to end up working at Walmart or Wendy's. And it wasn't guaranteed. I was a failure, a failure with two degrees and $40k in student loan debt -- the last of which, which I'd saved for almost a full year -- was petering out slowly as I was using it for survival purposes and bills.

By luck's good graces, of course (which is unusual because I consider myself to be really unlucky most of the time) I got three classes to teach at the university for the fall, and would be able to become a professor, a real professor, in my own right.

It's really strange to think about, actually. It's sort of bittersweet. I will be making enough money over the course of these next sixteen weeks to live on fairly comfortably, and will be able to rebuild some of my savings as well in that time, but it almost feels like...a step backward, sort of? I've graduated and have my degree, yes, but I'm still employed by the same university, the same department, and am surrounded by the same people because even with my Master's degree I couldn't break free of the situation. Think of it as a rocket that cannot reach escape velocity, so it falls back to earth a short distance from where it took off.

Don't get me wrong -- I am excited and slobberingly grateful to be teaching at the university this semester (and quite possibly next semester as well, knowing my luck) because I absolutely adore my job and thrive in an academic environment, but this isn't at all where I thought I'd be after graduation. I had friends and family ask me many times things along the lines of "so what's next?" and I had nothing to tell them, because I didn't know where I'd end up. I've had many, many plans that have fallen through or changed drastically over the course of the past year, and if I were to travel back in time to the first day of classes last year to tell myself where I'd be now, past-me would be like "wow, really? way to go, future me." Sarcastically, of course. I'd had plans to move to the east coast to work for publishing houses and teach at one of a large number of small universities, I had plans to find teaching work in Omaha, I had plans to return home to West Virginia (as much as I desperately did not want to) to work somewhere around my hometown, etc. Over the past year, all of those plans had to be scrapped due to my lack of ability to find stable employment in any of those places, and I ended up being left with my last, and only, option.

So really, my interior monologue is asking me are you better off now than you were before graduation? And the answer, really, is yes and no. It's yes in that I'm getting paid quite a bit more money per paycheck than I did before, I'm no longer taking or studying for classes of my own, and that I'm still teaching, but it's no in that I'm on campus twice as much as I was before, my schedule is alternating back and forth between campuses, I'm driving back and forth more than I've driven since probably my first year of grad school, I don't yet officially have a new office, and getting any free time to myself or time to spend with Daisy is going to be maddening, especially after October 10.

But that's how it goes; this is the hand I've been dealt, and I am incredibly grateful for what I have and what I'll do with it.

Yesterday I exhausted myself doing everything I needed to do before the beginning of the semester today. I took care of all the fluids in the car, draining the rest of my bottle of coolant into it (it was, indeed, a bit low) and put another quart of oil as well as a few good shots of Marvel Mystery Oil. I took out the trash, cleaned the cat room, reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned off the kitchen counters, made sure my syllabi were completely ready, and to be assured that I would sleep, before I went to bed I took three melatonin pills. I was in bed by 9PM, if not before.

I did not go to Walmart; I was hot and tired, and doing everything I needed to do around the house had drained me to the point where I didn't want to get dressed, get in the car, drive there, go shopping, come home, put everything away, and then go to bed. No, by the time I was getting ready to sleep I was so not up for that sort of adventure. As a result, I had to stop at the gas station yesterday morning to get more cigarettes before I drove to campus; I had no other choice if I wanted to be able to survive the day without killing someone. I decided that if I desperately needed to, I could stop at Walmart on the way home.

I did not end up doing that, by the way (I did it in the overnight hours tonight, for reasons which will soon become apparent). By the time I got back up to Newton after my class yesterday, I was tired and didn't want to deal with it. Also, since I wore actual pants yesterday -- and corduroy at that -- I wanted to take them the fuck off, since sweat was running down my legs like rivers. It was nearly 90 degrees by the time I got home yesterday afternoon, and that's no fun for anyone actually dressed professionally.

My class itself went...okay, I suppose. I wouldn't say it went great, or even well. The students in my 011 class almost seem afraid of me. Barely any of them spoke, and I absolutely hate the room I've been stuck in to teach -- it's basically a science classroom. I don't have a lectern or even a table to stand at or sit at, to I was forced to stand in front of the room, or pace back and forth in the front of the room, while I delivered my first-day-of-class, let's-cover-the-syllabus speech. I don't know how I'm going to rectify this situation, or if there's anything I can do to change it anyway. The classroom is oddly shaped, and it's small and cramped -- not much larger than, say, my living room and kitchen combined. For any of you who have been to my house (a fair amount of my readership here, actually), you know how small of a space that is. For twenty students and myself. The chairs/tables were filled completely, and I still had four students absent. I don't know what's going to happen if those four students show up on Wednesday along with everyone else. There's nowhere, really, to put them. I may have to see if I can get a change of room, because I'm really not sure I can deal with that all semester long.

Anyway, I reassured my students that even though I seemed like a hardass while reading from the syllabus, I'm actually a pretty laid-back guy and I'm there to help, not to frighten them. I told them that this is the shortest they'd see my beard all semester, and probably the most dressed-up for classes they'll see me as well. While I'll look somewhat respectable most of the time, it's going to get to the point where I will psychologically need to teach in a t-shirt at times. They seemed to get the fact that I know what I'm doing, I have the experience and wherewithal to teach them, and were a little more at ease by the end of the class. This morning they just seemed fairly frightened -- most of them seemed jarred and didn't know what to expect from their first college class ever. And, really, for a lot of them, it is. I asked, and about 80% of the students in that class graduated from high school in May. They don't know what to expect, they're nervous about college and about college English, and I would imagine over the course of the next few weeks they'll slip more into their normal classroom roles.

One guy did ask me after class if I was serious about the attendance policy. He also happened to be the only student in class who was easily in his mid-to-late-40s.

"Yes," I replied firmly, "I am. It's department policy, not mine."

I wanted to say something along the lines of can you not read, since it's in the syllabus which I just went over less than fifteen minutes before, but then again I realized that this was 011, and there is the genuine possibility that students in this class don't have the greatest reading comprehension skills.

I ran into the Director yesterday morning when I first got there. He and I were dressed similarly, with dressier shirts on and long pants.

"I look respectable," I said. "...it burns."

Mind you, I was wearing a simple button-up white cotton shirt, plaid with brown and blue stripes. The brown matched my corduroy pants, the blue matched my socks and sneakers. Everyone was really impressed, saying things like "wow, you look nice," etc. Parker was awed by my transformation from grad student in Batman t-shirts and long unruly hair to somewhat-clean-cut, respectable Brandon. He was even more awed by my ability to match everything I was wearing, as if he didn't think I knew how to do that.

I have clearly given these people the wrong impression about me for the past three years. I can and do clean up nicely when I need to.

"But," I told Parker when we were alone in his office yesterday, "I am sweating like crazy. Tomorrow I'm on West campus. Nobody sees me. Shorts and sandals, totally."

"Right on," he replied. "I don't blame you."

This is true, really. On West campus, there's nobody there from the department. Nobody there knows me, since I haven't taught there in over a year. At the most, the only people who may recognize me are one or two fellow adjuncts, the ones who teach there all the time, or one of the office support staff there. To everyone else I'm just another instructor, and most of the time, don't look too much different (or much older) than the actual students there. To those ends, yes, today I will indeed wear one of my other dressy button-up shirts, but I am totally wearing my shorts and sandals, because I don't want to sweat half a gallon of liquid from my pores.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I've decided, will be much more casual than Mondays and Wednesdays are on the main campus, at least for a while. No, I'm not going to break out the t-shirts immediately and try to pass myself off as the super-groovy-fun-time professor, but I will dress more casually and work my way down to that eventually, say, around late September or so. I'll put it this way -- once hoodie weather starts, I will be back in my element for the most part, more than likely on both campuses. Until then? I shall attempt to at least appear mostly respectable. I only have so many respectable-ish outfits that I can cycle through when I'm teaching four days per week.

In other news, my internet was out for a long time tonight. Yesterday when I got home, I messaged Daisy to tell her I was home and safe, made lunch, and watched the first half of Thor. It was hot and stuffy in the upstairs of the house, and I was tired, so I went downstairs and went to bed, only to wake up around 10PM. I hadn't done much; I got up, readied my stuff for today's class -- including filling out my gradebook for everything I needed to fill out, and sent Daisy a few messages telling her I was awake, since for some reason I couldn't sleep anymore (even after being mind-numbingly exhausted when I went downstairs). I began uploading course documents to my students' Blackboard pages when the internet stopped responding.

Hm, I thought. This can't be good. I checked the modem. Yep, internet was out. Cable was out, specifically. I know what the corresponding sets and patterns of lights on my modem mean, so I can easily diagnose problems like this myself. This happened at exactly midnight, so I thought they may have been doing some sort of monthly test on things, and didn't think much else of it. I also know that when the cable goes out, it's usually back on within a few short minutes, and that after I refresh the IP on my router when it comes back, everything is normal again.

Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Twenty. Still out. I turned on my phone and sent Daisy a text message, telling her that the internet was down and that I was going to take a shower and go to Walmart, finally. I wasn't tired enough to go back to sleep, and I needed to go anyway (truthfully, I would've gone were the internet actually working, since I'd put it off for two extra days anyhow). By the time I showered, dressed, and left the house, it was 1AM, and the internet was still down.

It didn't come back. When I got home, I worked more on the long letter to my grandmother that I've been writing for over a month now (I'm on page sixteen) and played a game on my computer. I knew I wasn't going to get to go back to sleep; I was too awake, not to mention that I didn't really care since I also knew that this morning's class would go quickly and then I'd be back home to sleep when, and as much, as I needed to. I began drinking coffee, alternating between that and Cherry RC Cola (which I picked up at Walmart while I was there). I made a sandwich and ate it as my "dinner" at 2:30 AM. I turned on the AC and let it run, as for some reason it was almost 90 upstairs in my house.

Finally, around 4:30 AM, when the internet had still not come back up, I made a service call to Cox, the cable company. They have an automated menu that lets you request a "box refresh," which means they reset your connection at the central hub. When I chose that option, an automated voice came on that said that there were a large number of outages in my area and that technical crews had been dispatched to work on them. Hm. Interesting.

The internet popped back up sometime after 6AM or so (I wasn't watching or paying attention when it did) and has been fine since. Were I to have slept the entire night as I usually do on weeknights before classes, I may not have noticed it was out. I wonder how often this happens, actually.

My schedule for the day is rather brief. I'll leave the house here around 8, since I don't have to worry about parking on the West campus. I'll teach my first 101 class of the semester at 9:15, a class which only has ten students and should be quite short because all we're doing is going over the syllabus and class policies, and then I'll drive back home. Barring any sort of awful traffic or other issues, I should be back home before 11AM -- an extremely short day for me. I'll spend as much time driving to and from there as I will in front of the students in the class. And, with a class of only ten students, I'll be able to whip through things with no problem, hopefully, for the entire semester. It's the large classes which are difficult to teach because there are so many papers and assignments to grade. Smaller classes are more intimate groups with more class participation and more camaraderie, and I am totally lucky this class is a small one, as it's the class which will produce the most work for me throughout the semester, with four long papers, workshops, a multitude of quizzes and journals, etc.

I told Daisy that I'd be home relatively early, and once I am, we can finally Skype again for the first time since briefly on Sunday...provided that the internet continues working, anyway. She gets off work until Friday after she gets home this morning, and we're trying to plan for her to come down here next week on her days off, since I won't yet be incredibly busy in the semester. The real work with my students will kick off around week three or four, when they're beginning their papers and the like. Until October 10, anyway, even when I keep the 101 class the entire time, I should still be home well before noon. That is a major plus when it comes to my teaching schedule for the first half of the semester.

On that note, I must change my clothing and ready myself to drive southwestward. Is that a word? It is now; I have two English degrees, and therefore have license to make shit up.

Anticipation

Countdown to fall semester: less than 24 hours

As it is my last weekend of relative freedom, I have (ironically) been trying to take care of everything that needs to be done beforehand, things both easy and ponderous.

Twenty-four hours from right at this moment, I will be standing in a classroom again, dressed somewhat respectably, with nineteen students in front of me in desks. The last Sunday before a semester starts is, and has always been, a day filled with both excitement and fear, an anticipation that is not always completely good or optimistic. For the first half of the semester, I will spend almost the same amount of time driving to/from my classes as I will spend actually teaching my students in those classes. At least the weather is supposed to be nice for the foreseeable future.

People -- friends, colleagues, family, but nobody in the realm of academia -- have always asked me something along the lines of "Don't you get nervous? Public speaking is supposed to be the number one fear of most people."

No, I don't get nervous. Tomorrow begins my fourth year in a row of doing this teaching stuff. I know the drill at this point. The only time I was nervous or out of sorts was my very first teaching day, way back in 2010, when I showed up to my first class five minutes late because I couldn't find the building. It was also 100 degrees that day and I was wearing a thick, long-sleeved shirt, tie, dress slacks, and I had my hair slicked back, so I was basically running around to find my classroom huffing, puffing, and sweaty. Ironically, even though several of my students in that class would become longtime, trusted friends, this was their first impression of me not only as a person, but as their instructor.

After that semester I studied the locations of most buildings on campus where I'd teach in, and plotted routes that would get me from my office to class 1 and from class 1 to class 2 in the least amount of time. My 011 class tomorrow is in a building I've never taught in before, but Parker teaches over there at the same time, so I'll stroll over with him.

But nervous? No. Pshaw. I don't get nervous. Teaching is a thrill to me at this point. My plans for tomorrow are simple -- get up, pound coffee, drive to campus early, make the copies I need to make, meet some of the newbies (if applicable), see my returning friends, teach, and come home. I should be home by 1PM tomorrow at the latest, I'm guessing. No, I don't yet have an office (officially, anyhow). Yes, I'll be tired by the evening, and will probably go to bed early. 

I forced myself to go to bed relatively early last night, and again forced myself to get up somewhat early this morning (early for a Sunday, anyway), to try to get my body back on a sleep-at-night, be-able-to-get-up-at-5AM sort of cycle again. I've been somewhat successful with this over the past few days, but the weekend has sort of thrown that a bit out of whack. Tonight I'll probably be in bed by 11, and that's even fairly late for me on the night before the first day of classes.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least, I'll be able to move at a more languid pace in the mornings -- the drive to West campus is a bit longer (by five miles or so, give or take, though it's driving in a different direction), but I don't have to worry about parking as much out there, and won't have to fight traffic anywhere near as much as I would going to the main campus. That means I'll be able to leave the house around 8 or so.

What does the start of the semester mean for me? Well, a lot of things, actually, both good and bad:

1. Regular paychecks again (once they start, anyway). Not as much worrying about budgeting and bill-paying every month.
2. A lot more driving back-and-forth. I have to add fluids and check out my car beforehand this afternoon. This also means, unfortunately...
3. More money spent on gas. Ugh.
4. Daily social interaction with other people -- colleagues, higher-ups, my students, etc.
5. The beard comes back.
6. Much, much less nightly sleep, except on weekends and holidays.
7. Much less free time for chores and errands; shopping, for example, will have to be done on my way home from work or on the overnights of the weekends. Mowing the grass, house cleaning, and laundry will have to be done only when I can make time to do those things.
8. I'll lose weight again -- when I'm moving a lot and am not eating during the day because of teaching (during the semester I mostly subsist on coffee, cigarettes, and energy bars), I'll lose the extra pounds I put on this summer from being able to eat what I wanted whenever I wanted to.
9. Much more time spent in front of the television with football on (either college or NFL)...but, unfortunately, 90% of that time will be spent grading papers or other assignments for my students.
10. The time to write here will slowly dissipate more and more throughout the semester.
11. Much less time to spend with Daisy, either on Skype or in person.

Daisy is troubled by that last bit, as am I, but neither of us can do much about it at this point. I teach Monday through Thursday -- she gets off work for the week on Tuesday mornings an hour after I've left the house, and goes back to work on Friday evening, when my weekend is starting and I'll be swamped with whatever grading, housework, or errands I'll have to do on my time off. Once again, our schedules clash horribly, and not much can be done about that. She sleeps during the day and works at night, and I teach during the day and sleep at night. I know my body and its limits -- on Thursdays, for the first half of the semester, anyway, I will come home and crash after my week ends, and I'll be in bed by 2PM. This is what I've done every Thursday of the past two years, pretty much, when my week has ended. Getting any time with her during the second half of the semester will be even more difficult once I start teaching my 210 class on Tuesday/Thursday nights -- a class which is completely full at its cap already. Both of those nights I will be coming home and going directly to bed, especially Tuesday nights, as I'll need to get up at 5AM again the next morning. I told her that I will do everything I can to make time for her and for us, but I can only make so much time before I have stuff that I must take care of or before I become completely delirious from lack of sleep.

"We'll figure it out," she tells me.

I don't know what to say in response to that, really. She's mentioned that there's the possibility she could end up changing shifts at work due to a few different factors, and I encouraged her to take that shift change if it's offered -- briefly, anyway, before she dismissed it and said she didn't want to do it because it would be five days a week instead of four. The shift change would be from her overnight shift to an afternoon/evening shift or a normal day shift. I didn't have the chance to explain that I wanted her to do it because it may give her the opportunity to actually get weekends off (like normal people in normal office jobs) and that would be the only time she'd be able to come down here and spend time with me during the semester without me having my hands completely full with absolutely everything I have to do as a professor. As much as I would like them to, my responsibilities don't just stop. If she comes down here on her normal days off, especially during the second half of the semester, she'd never see me and we'd never get any time together. Teaching every-other-day classes on different days, instead of both on the same day, means that on the off-days when I'm not teaching one class or the other, I'm doing the work for those classes. Four mornings of the week, I'll be getting up early to drive to one campus or the other to teach, and won't be back home until the afternoon hours. On Monday and Tuesday nights I'll be grading papers and assignments for my Monday/Wednesday classes. On Wednesday nights I'll be grading papers and assignments for my Tuesday/Thursday classes, which will also extend into at least part of the weekend, more than likely. On Thursday nights for the first half of the semester, I will desperately need to be asleep, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the second half of the semester I will be on campus from 8AM to after 10PM straight through. The weekend is the only time where I won't be running back and forth to and from two different campuses, and the only time where I may not be swamped with student work to take care of. Those short three days I'm off are three of the four days she works overnights. As much as we both desperately want her to be able to come down here to get time with each other for a few days at a time, the only days she could currently do it are my absolute busiest days of the week -- and in the second half of the semester, two of those three mid-week days she has off, I won't be home at all between the hours of 8AM and 10PM.

"I can't go without seeing you until Thanksgiving," she told me a few nights ago. "That's not going to work. I need you."

"I know that," I said, "and I need you too, but I don't know how to work this out yet."

I really don't. She can come down here anytime she wants, obviously -- that's not the issue. The issue is actually seeing me when she does, and getting any time together when she does. For the first half of the semester (for example purposes here), if she came directly down here on Tuesday when she got off work in the morning, for example, she'd arrive here around the time I got home from teaching, and we'd be able to spend time together that afternoon/night before I got up at 5AM on Wednesday morning while she was still asleep and went to teach until that afternoon as well. I'd get home Wednesday hours upon hours after she'd gotten up, would be tired when I got home, yet most of the time would still not get much quality time with her as I would have to take care of everything for my Thursday class that I didn't get to do on Tuesday afternoon/evening because she came down. Our "quality time" that night would basically be her staring at me while I graded papers or did other student work alone in my room on my computer. I cannot avoid this; it has to be done. Thursday morning, I'd get up to go teach yet again while she was sleeping, and by the time I got home on Thursday afternoon at the end of my week -- mind you, she's been awake and alone once more for hours on end -- I'd be even more tired and probably cranky, and she'd either have to leave that evening or on early Friday morning at the very latest, as she works Friday nights.

This is not the sort of scenario I want, at all, when she comes to visit. I'm marrying this woman; I want to actually be able to enjoy the time I spend with her instead of making her feel like she's inconveniencing me or that she's in the way. When Daisy comes down here, I treat her like a queen -- I buy special food for her, cook it and eat it together, we go out to the movies and go shopping together (two things which have become an unspoken sort of tradition when she's here now) and we sleep until we both wake up naturally. That's just how it works. It's like a mini-vacation for both of us, where real life goes away for a few short days. Real life, and the responsibilities associated with it, never go away during the semester.

To run that same scenario for the second half of the semester is even more depressing, but I'll run it anyway: she could still come down on Tuesday if she wanted, though I wouldn't be home until around 11PM and she'd be waiting in my driveway until I got home. We'd get about an hour together at most that night before I had to force myself to sleep and get up at 5AM to leave her still asleep and go teach my Wednesday class. We'd get a few hours together Wednesday afternoon once I got home, if I wasn't swamped with student work to grade and deal with, before I once more had to go to bed early to get up early on Thursday morning, where I would leave her alone for fourteen hours straight once more before I got home after 11PM on Thursday night. She'd either leave then or would leave on Friday morning, at the latest, for work that night, giving her a total of about six to eight hours with me when I'm actually conscious and in her presence over the course of three days.

Even this fall's "fall break" doesn't offer true relief from either of these scenarios; I begin teaching my 210 class on October 10, a Thursday. "Fall break" is the following Monday and Tuesday (the 14th and 15th), which yes, I'll both have off, though she works Sunday and Monday nights. Coming down even on Tuesday morning that week would give us a few more hours together during that day, yes, but would also completely deprive her of sleep for more than 24 hours, and the second-half-of-the-semester cycle that you see above will prevail for the rest of that week anyway...and for another two months afterwards.

I don't know how to fix this, or if it can be fixed. My own schedule, and the workload associated with my schedule, are both set; they can't be altered or changed, truly, in any way. If Daisy could switch to a Monday night through Thursday night shift instead of the opposite (which is what she has now), the problems with scheduling visiting time would disappear, but it's not like I wouldn't be working and/or grading over the weekends as well most of the time. I could at least plan for weekends, though, trying to get everything cleared off my schedule to maximize time with her, such as doing as much grading and lesson planning during the week as humanly possible. However, remembering the incredible amount of finagling she had to do in order to get a few days switched for one week for my graduation back in May, that scenario doesn't seem likely either. In order to do that, as you may recall, she had to work like eight days straight beforehand. I'm not going to ask her to request days off and put her through that again just so she can come down here and visit me. She shouldn't have to work over a week straight just to get a few days off of her choosing. So, really, I'm rather lost and somewhat stumped on what to do here, or what to suggest to her.

As this is weighing heavily on my mind, I wanted to take care of absolutely everything else I could take care of this weekend before classes start tomorrow and I will no longer have anywhere near the amount of time I used to have to do things. To those ends, I have paid all the bills I've had come in the mail over the past week, and have renewed my car's registration -- the latter of which doesn't expire for well over another month, but I didn't want to get swamped and forget about it -- and in a short while I will go downstairs to work on the car itself, replenishing her fluids and giving her a sort of "checkup," so to speak, before I begin to drive her 200 miles a week for the entire semester. My laundry is done and put away, the dishwasher is half full and ready to be ran once it becomes completely full, the garbage has been taken out, and after checking the yard this morning, I won't have to mow it again for at least another week. I even ordered pizza a few nights ago, of which I still have almost a full pizza left, so I don't have to worry about cooking as much for the next few days. My "respectable" teaching outfit for tomorrow has been laid out and is ready for me. My syllabus for 011 -- as well as a few handouts -- have been printed up and are ready for copies in the morning. My class rosters (as of today) have been printed out so that I can have a set attendance list without needing to fill out my gradebook yet, in case some students add/drop this week. Finally, before I go to bed tonight, I will shower, give myself a clean shave to trim up the beard, and put on a fresh pot of coffee so that when I awaken at 5AM, I can begin pounding cup after cup to wake up. All of these things combined take care of virtually everything I can think of before I go back to work for the next sixteen weeks.

Except one thing. One horrible, terrible, frightening thing.

The cats are running out of food and litter, I'm down to my last pot or three of coffee, I have one stamp left after mailing out all my bills, and I'm on my last pack of cigarettes. I will, at some point in the next ten or so hours before I go to sleep, need to go to Walmart.

Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. I don't like going to Walmart on weekends, but if I have to, do it, I do. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to navigate through throngs of lower-class mouth breathers who get in the way, have conversations that take up entire aisles -- oblivious to the people who need to go down those aisles to shop -- and dodge screaming kids tearing ass around the store, kids who don't speak English (and neither do their parents). And if it's not those people, it's the snooty senior citizens who think they're better or smarter than you just because they're older and richer, and because of that are some of the rudest people you'll ever meet (I'm glad most of them will be dead soon).

This is all normal, and all things I tend to experience when and if I venture to Walmart during daylight hours on a weekend. However, this weekend is different. Tomorrow is the first day of classes at the university. And I learned, long ago, never to venture anywhere close to a shopping center, especially Walmart, and especially the only Walmart in a 30 mile radius, on the weekend before classes start back up -- high school or college. Never. Never ever. You won't even be able to get through the aisles, and all of the problem folks in our society listed above turn their annoyance factors up to 11. It's almost like trying to go shopping for simple groceries and household supplies on Black Friday...if you're oblivious to the fact that it's Black Friday. This is basically Black Sunday, and I urge anyone reading this to stay away from any sort of retail chain today.

I considered putting it off and just stopping there tomorrow afternoon on my way home from campus, as Monday afternoons tend to be pretty quiet, but my cigarettes won't last that long and I'm not going to stop at the gas station or somewhere for no reason just to get more. I have electronic ones, but on the first day (read: week or so) of classes, my stress levels and exhaustion levels are going to be so high that I will need the real thing just to stay focused and to stay awake. I hate admitting that, of course, but it's true. And, more than likely, I'll probably come home tomorrow, make something to eat, and go to sleep in the late afternoon or early evening hours -- since I will not yet be used to getting up and getting off to a running start at 5AM again and twelve hours later I will be feeling that. As mentioned above, I'm going to make myself go to bed as early as possible tonight in order to maximize my sleep, but regardless of that, 5AM is fun for no one.

This means that Walmart must be the last thing I do tonight before going to bed. If I wait until after 9 or 10PM, everything will have quieted down enough for me to go get what I need, quickly, and come back home to sleep. It sort of makes me feel like a spy, operating under cover of darkness, to infiltrate an establishment at a time when the hellhounds that are other people are looking the other way and/or aren't around. I need relatively little; an in-and-out trip should take half an hour, tops.

One of my friends and colleagues is throwing a welcome-back-to-the-grind sort of party, similar to the graduation party, next weekend on Saturday night. I might go to it, though it depends heavily on what I need to do next weekend. Teaching, as I've brought up here before, is one of those professions where one has to live day-by-day, never able to plan anything outside of the classroom more than a week in advance because everything hinges on being able to get those day-to-day tasks done. In this instance, it will involve how tired I am, how much gas I have in the car, how much grading, reading, or lesson planning needs to be done, and what needs to be done around the house or otherwise.

As put-together as things sound, my work for classes and in the department this week is not yet complete; I do not yet have an office, officially, nor have I heard anything else about that (I'll have to check on that tomorrow if the office ladies aren't completely swamped on the first day). I also don't have a diagnostic exam to give to my 011 students, nor do I have their paper assignments yet, so I'll have to get those from the Director's wife -- who teaches in the same classroom I do the hour before I'm in there, coincidentally. Parker teaches in the same building at the same time I do, so at least I'll have company for the walk.

So, really folks, that's all I have for you. Most of my friends in the department who are on Facebook seem to be in hibernation or deep preparation today, as my news feed has been remarkably quiet since I got up this morning, and Daisy herself is in hibernation as well as she works tonight. I'll get to talk to her for a while before she goes to work and before I head out to Walmart (shudder) tonight, but in the meantime I'm going to go work on the car and take care of any and all other little odds-and-ends things I need to do for the day.