Big Rumblings, Part II

Fall semester: day nineteen

I will be getting paid on Friday, but there are a few drawbacks to it which were explained to me this morning. The first, and most ponderous, is because it was classified as an "advance" or "specialized check" through the payroll department (even though, really, it's not) they've had to rewrite my pay schedule -- which is what I mentioned before that payroll would more than likely not want to do as it throws me off for the rest of the semester compared to the rest of the department. The rest of the department gets nine checks this semester; their first one, obviously, was two weeks ago. Since I didn't get paid two weeks ago (schedule 2, or whatever they called it), I will have eight checks instead, of equal (read: slightly higher) amounts. They had to, as I said, rewrite my entire pay schedule for that. And I'm not alone, either -- I know at least one or two other people who had the same problem I did with background checks, paperwork, etc. The second drawback is that since it's a specialized paycheck for me this Friday, it's a paper check -- not a direct deposit as per the usual. And I have to pick it up from payroll myself.

"I won't be back in here again until Monday," I told the office administrator this morning. "So I'll have to pick it up then."

"Can you wait that long?" she asked me.

"Yeah, three days is nothing," I replied. "The world around me isn't going to collapse in three days."

"Okay," she said. "Just making sure."

Even if the check were direct deposit, as my normal ones are, it wouldn't fully clear my bank account until at least Saturday night anyhow. They take 24 hours to clear, and since my bank account is in West Virginia, it can sometimes take a bit longer.

"I'm sorry, baby," Daisy told me this afternoon when I told her about it.

"It's not a big deal at all," I said. "It just means that I have to mail it to my parents so that my mother can drop it in the bank for me, that's all."

"What if you just cashed it at Walmart or someplace? I know they do check-cashing."

"I could do that, yes," I said, "but I can't write checks to pay my bills with cash in hand."

Looking at my finances for the rest of the month before I get paid again on the 27th, I'm not sure what I'll do, actually. I have more than enough in my account to pay bills, rent, and the like. I could conceivably just cash the check and use the cash to get groceries, put gas in the car, and do other stuff like that if I so chose. And I never keep cash on me or in the house -- I just don't. Almost every transaction for me is digital, via credit or debit card, and the ones that aren't are when I write checks to pay bills. So, really, I don't know what I'll do yet. It would be nice to be able to sock away a bit of that first check to save up for emergencies or the like. Once it's in my bank account it's all just a number to me; I'm detached from it and how much things really cost, or how much I have at any given time because, even though I keep meticulous track of it, it's just a number in a bank 1,100 miles away, and not in my physical presence.

So yeah, that's settled at least. My last paycheck for the semester will be on my birthday -- December 20 -- which is a full week after final exams end. I'll get paid every two weeks from Friday until then, for a total of eight checks. I'd been expecting eight checks anyhow from the get-go; a sixteen-week semester would typically mean check every two weeks anyway. My original budget I'd tried to plot out a month ago remains on-track with my original projections.

I woke up yesterday morning, after sleeping very fitfully for about three hours after I finished my last post here, with one of the worst sinus/allergy headaches I've had in months. It was my first sign that the weather was finally starting to change -- I tend to get those excruciating headaches anytime a new weather front is coming in, or a change in the weather patterns is about to occur after a long period of one type of weather (this time, high pressure/scorching heat for three weeks straight). Between 24-36 hours before the weather changes, it hits me; it's happened without fail since I was a child. After finishing my teaching yesterday, as I was driving back up to Newton in the once more blazing heat, I could literally see relief on the horizon -- massive cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds to the north of me, getting bigger and more ominous as I drove further north towards them. By around 2PM, it was more cloudy than it was sunny, and a breeze picked up.

I went to bed in the mid-afternoon, trying to make up for my lack of sleep last night. I (mostly) succeeded; I slept until after 10PM, getting a good seven hours or so of just out-cold rest. Now, at 1AM, the rain/storms are finally starting to slowly work their way into the area. I'm guessing in seven hours, when I leave the house to teach my final class of the week this morning, it will be raining and much cooler outside. Me, Parker, and the Director were talking in the morning about the weather change; the Director mentioned that he'd heard we were supposed to get some severe stuff, with hail and the like, though I hadn't heard anything like that.

"Bring it on," Parker said. "I hate this heat. I'm ready for snow."

"Of course you are," I said sarcastically. "You have a massive Jeep that you could drive through anything. My Monte Carlo can't do that."

Actually, my Monte Carlo does handle most shitty weather rather well. I've driven her through ice storms and through six inches of packed-snow covered roads (very carefully, mind you) with no major issues. I just have to drive much slower and let my hyper-vigilance take over. Parker does, indeed, drive a massive Jeep of some sort, and it's new-ish. I have dubbed it "Gigantor."

The sinus headache is still there, at least a bit. It's a dull throbbing that I only notice when I actually try to pay attention to it. I took pills for it before I went to class yesterday morning, though they've now long ago worn off. Until the actual rain/storms roll through and my allergies can get used to the change in barometric pressure, it will persist; sinus/pain medicine will only subdue it for a while.

Daisy wants to come down for our...ahem... "official" anniversary, which is October 3. I say "official" anniversary because until then, last summer, we'd been on-again/off-again (to sum it up as easily as possible) since mid-July. October 3 is the day we officially changed our relationship statuses on Facebook, which records that sort of thing (because I never would have remembered it otherwise), which is the only reason it's hazily counted as our "official anniversary." Okay. Yeah, it's confusing to me too. The 3rd is a Thursday, which would mean she'd be coming down on the 1st, a Tuesday, on much the same schedule she was down here a few weeks ago. It's a week after I've collected my students' first papers, so I should have finished grading them (or most of them) at that point, and I should have a little downtime window during that week before midterm grades come due and before I begin teaching the 210 class on Tuesday/Thursday nights a week later. It is simply random chance that our anniversary falls during that time. If it came a week before or a week later, I'd be completely swamped. So, I guess we're making plans for her to visit then. By the time she gets here, I will have been paid again on the weekend prior to her visit, and I'm sure she'll want to do our typical movie-and-dinner date we always do. I shouldn't have any trouble clearing most of my schedule for three days; I can balance it out again with the weekend after she goes home and goes back to work.

Over the course of the next month or so, I have been reminded (by just now receiving an application rejection from Shepherd University yesterday morning, a full three weeks into this semester) that a lot of my free time must be spent re-starting my search for gainful employment for after this semester ends in December, and seeing what I can find. I do have to limit myself more this time around; after examining mentally where I'm going to be in December, and as the wedding is this summer in Omaha, I can't really go outside of the tri-state area in my searching simply for practicality purposes. Obviously, if the schedule permits me to do so, I could very well spend another semester adjuncting here at the university -- but again, that heavily depends on whether there would be classes available for me to teach in the spring, and if they were willing to take me back on. The latter is almost certain; the former is not. And, really I don't want that to be the only option I have -- it's really just to buy time and pay the bills until I can find something more live-able.

Also in the equation is that Daisy doesn't herself know where she'll be by December; she hates her job and the petty drama that goes on at said job, amongst other things about it, and wants to find a way out of it. After hearing some of her stories, I can't say I blame her. This brings an interesting scenario into play, and some of those questions that will pop up come around Thanksgiving or so -- what to do?

I say this because the wedding will occur shortly after the spring semester ends. Yes, I could stay here if I find nothing else, and more than likely end up adjuncting again. That's not necessarily a problem. The problem comes with what we'll do in those last few months leading up to the wedding. If Daisy starts a new job there before Christmas or so, it would be poor form to leave it before the summer. If I'm teaching here again starting in January, I can't move to the Omaha area. If I'm still here and she's still there, come around March or so at the latest, some big decisions have to be made about where we're going to be living and working after the wedding -- either here or there. I can't go anywhere if I'm teaching here, as I mentioned before. I'm locked in for the entirety of the semester regardless of anything going on in my personal life outside my job at the university. If she gets a new job there, she more than likely can't go anywhere either, so we'd be at an impasse. I've seen this coming for a while and I've tried to talk to her about it, but I can tell her now that if I'm stuck here and she's stuck there, we're going to have some issues when it comes to the wedding. I've mentioned before that it's not like I'm going to go to Omaha for the weekend, get married, and then come back down here to my house in Newton to continue living alone. I've also told her that I may be stuck here, in Kansas, working at the university for an indeterminate amount of time. I can search for positions all I want, but if I can't find anything, I can't find anything and have to work with what I'm given. At this point, that means I'm here and we'd have to deal with it, as it's a steady, reliable job for at least 32 weeks a year as long as I keep getting classes to teach. No, the pay isn't great -- and it varies greatly depending on how many classes one teaches per semester -- but it's better than unemployment or fast food. Worst case scenario would be that I have a guaranteed or at least mostly-guaranteed and/or reliable position teaching here every semester, can't find anything else, and she would have to move here and find work here until I or both of us can find something that will take us out of here. We're not living apart while we're married just because of work issues. Some people can do that. I can't. I am not one of those people. It would drive me insane.

We've talked about this possibility before -- the possibility that, since I'm a failure who has made many poor life choices, I won't be able to find any sort of employment, professional or otherwise, which would pay better than adjuncting here at the university for many years to come, and the possibility that she would have to move down here sooner rather than later. We've already agreed that if this happens, we'd find another house to move into -- whether we purchase it or rent it -- and that it would probably be much closer to campus than this one is. That's still going to take time and it's going to take a lot of thought and work, however; it is quite possible she'll be living here with me in Newton for a few months at some point while we look for new places to live.

Of course, all of this may be moot. I may find a high-paying teaching position in Omaha that will start in the spring, and they may hire me and I could leave this state behind. As nice as that would be, however, I'm not sure how likely it actually is to happen. Again, I'm not a pessimist, but a realist. I know full well that my degrees are basically useless outside of a few fairly narrow professional and educational fields, and those fields are highly competitive ones. I no longer look through rose-colored glasses; I wear survival aviators. Daisy, while she may have a lesser degree, has a skill set and experience in her field much greater than my own, and she could find a live-able job almost anywhere with her employment history and list of references from the companies she's worked for. I am not that fortunate. The day may come where it is her job that provides for us much more than mine ever could, and I've accepted that. Hell, she already makes twice what I'd make in a year in the job she has now. She has more bills, yes, but still.

I have decided to stay up the rest of the night all the way through tomorrow when I get home from teaching around 11 or so. I slept enough to keep me up, and coffee will do the rest to power me through the next nine hours or so. The second half of my week always, always goes quickly. If I want to, I can come home around 11, eat something, and go back to bed if I feel the need to, since my week is over. I'll have a fair amount of light work to do over the weekend but nothing too incredibly difficult or time-consuming -- I have to take care of my students' workshop copies, I should probably vacuum the house again, and I'll need to do a bit of grocery/essentials shopping (since I don't have to worry as much about money now). If I tried to go back to sleep now, I'd only get about three more hours anyway, which is nearly pointless and usually serves only to make me more tired. I can utilize my time better by staying up, reviewing my lesson plans for the day, and taking a shower. I've already done a load of laundry in the overnight hours as well, and the Weather Channel now says that occasional thunderstorms should start around 6:30 this morning -- just as it's beginning to get light outside. Sounds like gorgeous, comfortable driving weather for me once I get out the door around 8 or so.