Mayday, Mayday

Spring semester: day seventy-two

I'm very tired and somewhat frazzled. I say somewhat because it's strange to get used to what is, in essence, my new schedule. I've been coming home on Tuesday nights and going to bed, getting up on Wednesdays and going to teach my night class for so long that not having to do that anymore throws me off big-time. Getting up this morning, I was still in the mindset of oh, I have to do this and this and this before I leave tonight, forgetting that I don't have to go anywhere tonight because my 210 class is now done and over. I almost have to continually remind myself of that because it feels so weird to have my normal routine changing.

I'm also frazzled because of stress, of course. Yesterday was a long, long day filled with little tasks and things to do, and it felt like I was going through the motions for a lot of it, without thinking about what I was doing. On autopilot, acting as artificial intelligence, what-have-you. I barely remember most of my day; several hours in the afternoon was spent grading through all of my students' papers and readying myself for their final exam tomorrow morning, and while I did get to hang with a few friends and colleagues for a bit, it's all a big haze now. I taught my night 011 class, conferenced with my students in there and told them what their practice exam/final exam would be like, and drove home. It misted rain on me the entire way home, and the wind was still freezing and blowing hard. I stopped at Walmart, and scatterbrained as I was, I was able to get a lot of the stuff I needed for around the house, before I came home, put it away, ate, talked to Daisy on Skype for a while (though again, about what I totally don't remember) and went to sleep. I slept until almost 11AM.

Despite the blur of everything else, some good things did happen yesterday. As I mentioned in my last post, I took a big box of all of my comps studying books/poetry collections I read for those exams a year ago now down to campus because one of my friends wanted them. He offered to pay me basically whatever I wanted, but I told him it really wasn't that necessary -- again, getting rid of things I have no more room or use for is the higher priority here, as I don't want to move anything I don't have to.

Anyway, he looked at the box and asked "so how much do you want for them?"

I knew I wasn't going to be able to just give them to him without him feeling immensely guilty that he was ripping me off, even though honestly I didn't care one way or the other. Yeah, I probably spent about $150 to $200 on all of those books over the course of six months or so, getting them a few at a time, but that was so long ago (and they've now been boxed up for over a year) that it was entirely off my radar. That was also back when I had money and could afford such things, so it didn't really bother me at the time.

"Eh, $25? $30?" I mused.

"I'll give you $40 for them," he said.

"Okay," I replied, "if you want."

And he did.

Later in the day he gave me another $20, making it $60 total, as he said that he still felt like he'd shortchanged me, and wanted me to take the extra $20 as a "wedding gift" so to speak, if for nothing else. He can't come to the wedding as his cousin is getting married in Georgia on the same day. I accepted it, though I still felt a little guilty about it. Again, for me, it was more about getting rid of a box of books more than anything else. One less box to pack on the truck and move, one less box to lift and find a place for the contents inside once it got to our new home.

I didn't see my other friends who have (hopefully by now) received the table, chairs, and file cabinet that was picked up here by the brother of one of them on Monday night. I don't know if they'll give me anything for that stuff or not (they said they wanted to), but again, it's much more important to me that it's now gone than any sort of money I could receive for it. I would imagine one or both of them will give me something, but again, it's so far off my radar that I don't really care one way or the other. I have but three days left on main campus at the maximum -- next Tuesday for my 011s' final night of class, and two days the week after: one for giving the final exam and the other for grading the final exams with my partner(s). I already know my grading partners -- one of them is in my wedding -- so it's fine. The other, of course, is coming to the wedding and I'm close with her as well, so it's not like I've been paired with anyone I don't like or don't know.

I asked the department administrator yesterday if there's anything special I have to do when my employment with the university ends at the end of the semester -- as in, if there are any forms I have to fill out, if I have to do any "exit interview" stuff, or if I have to do anything else other than turn in my office keys and clean my stuff out of the office.

"Nope," she said, "since your contract expires after the semester is over, it's all done but that stuff."

"Good," I replied. "I didn't know if there was some sort of process I'd have to go through other than that, and I was hoping not since as soon as my grades are entered and finalized, I'm pretty much driving to Omaha and we're getting the truck/doing the move immediately thereafter."

"Well..." she said, thinking for a moment, "there is one thing. Are your grades entirely online?"

"I have them all on Blackboard, yes," I said.

"No, I mean is that the only place they are, or do you keep a paper grade book as well?"

"Oh, yes. I've always kept a paper grade book just in case to check and cross-reference students' grades against it to make sure everything matches up."

I'm old-school like that. For the longest time I never posted grades on Blackboard because it was a pain in the ass and an extra task to do, plus the older versions of Blackboard did not like Linux at all. And as you probably know, that's all I use on my computers.

"Then you could give us that too," she said, "just in case anyone tries to dispute a grade. Has that ever happened to you?"

"Not successfully," I replied, with a smirk. "I have occasionally made an error that I've had to correct myself once a student brought it to my attention, but nobody's ever fought me on a final letter grade they've received in a course. They've whined about it, yes, but never actually fought with me about it or challenged the grade itself."

This is true. I do make mistakes on occasion -- I am but human. And when I have, I have always fixed said mistakes promptly as soon as they've been brought to my attention, and by any means necessary. This semester, since I have three sections of three different classes and 90% of my students know right now whether they're going to pass or fail my classes (with one of those classes already completely finished and grades posted, with none of them failing), I don't foresee any issues. Even with my 102s, nobody is failing the class or is even in danger of it before the final. The ones who were previously in danger are even now well above the pass/fail line -- literally all of them who take their final tomorrow morning will basically be "adding extra points" with it to their already-passing score/grade. Again, that class is good. For the 011s, I calculated some scores last night, and there are a few of them on the borderline for passing as of right now -- the ones who have already failed, obviously, have done so for absences, not missed work.

"Yeah, that's fine," I said. "I'll leave you folks the full grade book just in case."

It didn't occur to me until later that evening that I will have to leave the forwarding address with them as well, in order for the university to send me my W-2 tax forms in January. But really, knowing that I can basically be done and cut ties completely after I clean out the office and return the keys? Yeah, that's special. That's good. One less loose end to tie up, so to speak.

The front desk administrator at West campus is taking an old crock pot off my hands prior to the yard sale (I'm bringing it in tomorrow) and she and her husband will more than likely buy the lawnmower from me as well. Still no takers yet on some of the other stuff I've put in the Craigslist ad for the sale, though I did have some guy email me to ask if I had any jewelry, hunting or fishing stuff, musical instruments, or camera gear. No, no I don't, sadly.

I should've told him I had a lot of that stuff so if/when he came by I could've said "well, all of that stuff went quickly, but lookie here at what I have and buy something!" etc. I'm not that much of a dick, though.

I did consider listing a bunch of stuff on that ad that I didn't have, though, just to make more people come by period. I doubt I'll have a lot of people on Friday, but Saturday I'll probably have a fair amount of neighborhood-wanderers. I put up a query about it on the "What's Happening in Newton" Facebook group, and apparently a lot of people are simply advertising on Craigslist instead of going through the newspaper (which, of course, charges you for ads when Craigslist doesn't). That's good. Very good. It means if people are reading my ad on there, I might see a lot more "business" than I would otherwise just by putting up a sign at the end of the street.

Tomorrow and early Friday morning I'm going to be very busy with that stuff, obviously, and again Saturday (when I'll probably have a bigger turnout). I should be working on it today, but I am...well...I really don't want to. I'm so tired and so burned out by everything going on that I just want a bit of a break. I'm also very cold today -- it's only in the low 50s outside, and was around 40 when I woke up this morning. I had to (very begrudgingly) run the furnace again for about an hour when I got up because I couldn't stop shivering and being cold. I'm still really cold. This house traps heat very well when it's hot outside, and traps cold very well when it's cold outside -- but it'll never trap either when it actually needs to.

I guess it doesn't really matter, as this is the forecast for the next week:

Yeah. Welcome to Kansas, folks.

I'm still freezing now, of course, because my body doesn't exactly acclimate well to a nearly forty-degree temperature drop in three or four days -- especially not when almost all of my warm winter-ish clothing has already been boxed away and/or otherwise packed up for the move. I am currently wearing the only hoodie and only pair of pajama pants I left out and unboxed because I really don't have any choice not to at this point if I don't want to shiver all day no matter what the temperature is outside.

Tomorrow is May 1, as you're probably aware. This afternoon I erased my dry-erase calendar and filled in all of the days and events for May, for which there are many. Doing that made me feel overwhelmed yet again. I have so many things to do and I just don't know if I have the time or energy to do all of them. On the plus side, the semester is ending very quickly and wrapping up nicely, so soon enough I will no longer have to worry about that and can focus solely on the move and on everything to do for that move. Move this, move that, sell this, pack that, move that box, pack this one, throw this away, sell that, donate that, etc. It's so exhausting. I absolutely hate moving. As you know. As you probably also know, I hate doing things on a timeframe other than my own, as well -- as it makes me feel forced to do things and makes me feel like I'm being backed into a corner. We pick up the moving truck in eighteen days. Daisy moves into our new place in five days, and the furniture is delivered then as well. I finish teaching for the semester in six days, and will give my last final exam to my students in thirteen.

AHHHHHHHH

Ahem. 

So Much to Do

Spring semester: day seventy-one

It's 45 degrees outside and raining. In response, my allergies have once again gone completely nuts.

You know, I thought I was done with all of this allergy shit; we had almost two weeks where the temperatures were in the 70s and 80s straight through, with very little rain and wind, and my seasonal allergies had normalized and all but disappeared. No longer did I wake up in the mornings and blow my nose forty times or hack up a lung, because I could actually breathe without mucus obstructing any and all of my airways. It felt good. I felt like a normal human being for once. And then the high temperatures dropped by twenty or thirty degrees, it began raining cold rain, and the wind became near-constant 30mph or higher gusts -- so strong that it knocked my big trash/recycling bins over twice yesterday. And they're not light or small.

One week from today is my last day of classes. This is the last Tuesday morning I'll need to be awake at 5AM for the rest of the semester, and the last long, fifteen-hour day of the semester for me. I've been waiting for this day for a long while. Obviously. Today I will get gas, drive to West campus, collect my 102 students' final papers, give them their practice exam, drive across town to main campus, wait in the parking lot for one of my friends so that he can pick up a box of poetry books I promised him, take the shuttle to my office building, give another friend a video game I promised her, make copies of my 102's final exams, sit in my office grading those aforementioned final papers as long as I can stand to, stay awake, go teach my last real 011 class of the semester (next week they take their own practice final), dismiss, take the shuttle back to my car, drive said car back to Newton, stop at Walmart to get groceries, and (finally) arrive back home around 10:30 or 11PM an exhausted, frazzled mess.

I don't get paid enough for this shit. I suppose that's why Daisy's parents -- who admire what I do for the reasons I do it -- still call it "slave labor." If I had to do it five days a week, I'd probably call it that too...and I'd more than likely be suicidal if I were still paid the same amount. Ironically enough, with everything Daisy and I have to deal with regarding the move and the wedding, I'm now sort of glad that I didn't get four or five classes this semester, even though the money would have been nice -- the workload, with all of this current stuff on top of it now -- probably would have killed me. I'm already having mini-nightmares about things going wrong with the move or with the wedding. Mini-nightmares meaning that as I'm falling asleep some little worry will worm its way into my head and I'll wake up again, fully, with a start.

It's stress. Simply put, it's stress and worry and anxiety.

"Shit will go wrong," Parker told me last week. "It will, despite your best plans and best intentions. Don't let it get to you, because it will seem major at the time when it's really not. Just push it aside and work through it. It'll all work out."

He's right, of course. Daisy tells me a variation of the same message when I'm stressed out too, and she's right as well. It's all mental, and I just have to put my head down and power through all of it.

Daisy got a three-piece furniture set yesterday -- a couch, loveseat, and chair (if I remember correctly) -- as well as a full-body adjustable floor mirror and an ottoman with storage space inside to go along with the chair. She got a good deal on all of it (of course, it's not like any of it was cheap anyway) and we qualified for the credit card/financing plan that Nebraska Furniture Mart offered -- 36 months with 0% interest. Even if we pay only the minimum payment every month, it'll all be paid off in 22 months, as she did the math there. The couch and the loveseat were, surprisingly, ones that I told her to get because I liked them. The chair she got because she and mama (who went with her) both loved it. It all gets delivered to the new place on her moving-in day (basically, a week from today) so that she can set it up and get everything ready before I move my own stuff up there later in the month.

Daisy calls it "socializing furniture." My response to that was, "what, you mean it talks to you? Does it moan when you sit on it? Sit on me harder, baby, and all that?"

Unfortunately, that's not the case; it's furniture that she says will make our new place feel like a home, and will be good for when we have guests. For example, Rae is staying with us for at least two of the days she's in town for the wedding, I expect my parents to come visit and see the new place, and my friend Jane will stop by as well (she wants to meet the cats). And, obviously, we have a lot more friends in Omaha who will stop by for visits.

Anyway, she paid extra for the workers to deliver it and bring it into our new place, which I agreed was well worth the money as it would be a huge pain in the ass otherwise. Apparently it's also stain-protected and if it does stain, we can call someone to have them come to the house and get the stain out. I'm not making that up. So, uh, whatever works, I guess.

Despite the fact that I'm going to be really busy/swamped this week with a ton of stuff to do, I am once more in relatively good spirits. This could be because my coffee is finally kicking in, or because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel a little more by the day, or both. For the moment, it's even stopped raining. I'm still tired, though; I was tired last night, but it took me forever to actually fall asleep. Part of that was because I didn't take my normal Monday night sleeping pills, and part of it was because my body didn't want to go to sleep at 10PM or so. It was well after midnight when I actually fell asleep, I'm sure. Since I don't have to leave the house tomorrow (and I know I'm going to be exhausted by the time I get home tonight) I have decided that for one day, let most of my responsibilities be damned, because I need to go to bed tonight and hopefully not awaken before noon tomorrow. I'll still be busy as hell when I do get up, and will still have a lot of things to do, but my body needs sleep more than most of those things need to be (immediately) done.

Meanwhile, for some reason Daisy and her best friend/maid of honor are making a trip to Des Moines today -- some spur-of-the-moment thing. Daisy doesn't go back to work for her week until tomorrow night, so she actually has the time and energy to do this. For what? I don't know; she didn't tell me, and she's still asleep right now. I'm sure she'll message me to tell me when she wakes up, though I probably won't get to read my messages until late afternoon at least. Her entire trip there and back will take place during the time I'm on campus this afternoon -- which should tell you just how long and grueling my Tuesdays are.

Last night, as I mentioned before, the brother of one of my colleagues brought up his truck and loaded a bunch of my stuff into it for said colleague and another friend in the department; I gave them a table, two chairs, and a file cabinet that I have no use for whatsoever. I'd originally planned to give them bookshelves and the like as well, but I wasn't able to get them hosed off this weekend (some of them are in the garage) or cleaned off within the house. Truthfully the bookshelves are terrible and half-broken anyway, so I doubt anyone would want them. I told my colleagues/friends that they didn't need to give me any money for the stuff, as it was stuff I was going to give away at the yard sale this weekend anyway, but they both insisted on giving me something that they said I could use to help cover "moving costs." While I'd normally turn that down outright and wave it off simply because getting rid of the clutter and extra shit is more valuable to me than anything else, I am also quite worried about money (as you know) and if they want to pay me a small amount for the stuff, I won't refuse it -- even if it does make me feel somewhat guilty. When your fiancee spends over a grand on furniture in one day and adds another minimum payment bill to the pile, and when I do have to pay close to $400 to rent a moving truck...yeah, anything helps. My friend who's meeting me this morning to pick up the box of books asked me how much I wanted for them as well. I told him I didn't really care, that it was totally up to him to be the judge. Again, it's more important and more fulfilling to me to get stuff out of the house than it is to worry about charging my friends for things of mine they want. That sort of makes me feel like an asshole.

Still, the books are my poetry collections I bought for studying for comps, and there's probably 30 of them total -- most of which I bought new at full price on Amazon a year and a half ago. I probably spent $200 on them overall, so if said friend wants to pay me a bit of cash for them, I'm also sort of fine with that.

In about ten minutes, I shall leave the house to start my day. I'm awake enough to get it over with, I suppose. I don't necessarily want to do it, but I keep telling myself that it's the last long day I'll have, and because of that I can just suck it up and deal.

In Place, Part III

Spring semester: day seventy

I received a phone call a few minutes ago from my landlord's wife. This isn't exactly that odd, as she's usually the one who does the checking-in with people when something must be done or if they have any questions about anything -- she's the operations, and her husband is the worker/cleaner/etc.

Her husband is also the mayor of this city, which makes her the mayor's wife, but that's beside the point for the sake to this discussion.

Anyway. She called because she'd gotten the reference calls from our new place in Omaha and wanted to make sure that I'd give my 30 days' notice for here (which, of course, has to be written). I told her that said written notice was in the mail with the rent check for the month of May, which went out on Saturday -- which means they'll get it today or tomorrow. She once more praised me on how good I am about everything and how I've stayed on top of everything on this place over the years (and I have, of course, when it comes to any matters like this), and she asked about the wedding and all of the timeframes for the move -- because she's genuinely interested in my life, not just interested in when I'll be moving out. She's always been very sweet and very nice like that. Both of them have, honestly, over the almost five years I've lived here.

I told her all of the details, including the dates of when my semester ends and when I'm picking up the truck, doing the moving, and dropping it off and the like, and she wished me/us well. I told her if she had any other questions or needed anything else to call or email me and I'd be happy to help. I would imagine they'll get the letter and check today -- she told me the mail doesn't usually arrive there until around 4PM (it's about the same here on most days) and that she "should've just had two more hours' worth of patience" before calling, which I found sweet and funny.

I am, once more, feeling very lucky that I've been able to have this sort of interaction with my landlord and his wife over the time I've lived here -- they are genuinely nice people, they help out as much as possible when asked, and they don't bother you when it's not necessary. Even though I don't own this house, for the past five years it's almost felt like I do because of that.

Make no mistake -- I will miss this house. I will miss it a lot. I will miss living in this nice, quiet little town where nothing really happens, as well. I've never actually lived in a big city like Omaha before. I've lived in many smaller cities, yes, both out here in the midwest and back home, but never somewhere as large and populous as Omaha. Even when I lived in the Kansas City area, it was just the area -- not within the city itself. Once I'm in Omaha and married, settled down and comfortable, I'll have to get used to having people constantly around me again in all directions...something that I haven't had to get used to for five years. While I've lived in apartments before, I haven't done it in a very, very long time. Here, well, this is a house. In a mostly quiet neighborhood, with few people out and about at most times. Here, I have a garage which I can put my car into if necessary when it storms or snows. Here, I don't have to worry about listening to podcasts or music without headphones, because, well...nobody is around to hear it and/or complain about it anyway. Here, I can come and go as I please, at all hours of day or night, without having to wonder if I'm going to wake up the neighbors or bother them in any way. Here, the cats can tear ass back and forth through the house at 3AM without me wondering if it's going to wake up people downstairs below them. I mean, a lot is going to change.

I look at it this way: if the new apartment isn't a great place or we don't like the building's policies, rules, or what-have-you, we can pack up again and go in a year. I told Daisy that as soon as we're both financially stable enough to do so, I want to get us a house -- whether that's a rented house again or whether we actually buy a place. I'd much rather buy a house so that we don't have to live under someone else's roof, under someone else's rules, whether those rules are livable or otherwise. There's also the whole "hey, we're getting married and will probably be popping out a kid or two" thing that we'll need extra space for as well. I plan to start looking for said houses within the first two or three months after we're married. In a dual-income household, we could afford a decent home, even if those incomes aren't that high.

So that's what my day has involved thus far, though (admittedly) I've only been awake for about three hours or so. It's very dark, cloudy, and windy...and the temperature is about twenty degrees cooler than it has been (as the weather predicted) so my allergies have once again gone nuts. It looks like we could get a storm or some heavy rain at basically any time, and the Weather Channel hasn't ruled that out -- it's supposed to rain almost all day tomorrow, too, and be even cooler outside than it is today. That means I'll more than likely have to break out the hoodie and pants/socks/shoes again, which believe me, I'm sick of doing. It shouldn't be so chilly and nasty that I have to wear pants and jackets in late April/early May.

Then again, remember that last year it snowed during the last week of classes in May, so...

Ahem. Anyway. I can't wear anything heavier than that, of course, because I packed all of it up days, if not weeks ago, when it was in the mid-80s every day. Even on Saturday -- two days ago -- it was 88.

I put up the yard sale ad on Craigslist this morning and am having a few people come up from the department/around town come up to pick up some things I offered them this evening; it'll totally save me some time and I might get a little money out of the stuff the people are picking up tonight (even though I told them it wasn't necessary because they were things I just needed to "go away"). In the meantime, Daisy is going furniture shopping  this afternoon to pick out a couch and/or chair for the new place. Daisy also has drastically different aesthetic likes and dislikes compared to me when it comes to picking furniture, too, so I'm a bit nervous about what she finds and/or gets.

Okay, "a bit nervous" may be an understatement. To put it bluntly, she loves some of the most ungodly ugly and uncomfortable looking, "new style" furniture, and for me, I am really all about the basics, old-school style, and efficiency/utilitarianism of the furniture I want and like -- basic couches with three cushions and high arms, basic chairs that may not be especially pretty to look at, but will be comfortable enough and inexpensive. It's all going to be covered with cat hair (and probably cat vomit) eventually anyway.

I realize this comes from a lifetime of living with second-and-third-hand furniture and having a poverty background, as well as a bachelor's mentality. I told Daisy that whatever couch she gets, I want to be able to lay across it and be able to watch TV and/or sleep without having my feet bunched up or hanging off the end. I want it to have arms so that I can have somewhere to rest my head, shoulders, and neck -- which I don't have on the (broken) futon in the living room now. Aside from that, as long as it isn't ugly or unwieldy, I'm pretty much fine with it. Oh, and inexpensive. It should ideally be inexpensive as well, since we be poor.

So...yeah. I don't know what she'll pick. She sent me some pictures, and the first one I loved and told her to get it (it was a couch and loveseat set for less than $600 total) annnnnd then she told me she wanted to keep looking, and sent me some other pictures of some hideous things that I would never want in our house no matter how "comfy" she thinks they are in-store.

Yes, even for things that are so far off my radar that normally I couldn't care less about them, if my opinion is asked on them I immediately become really twitchy and/or stubborn/contrary. Go figure. The best solution, at least for the furniture, would probably be to leave me out of the selection/opinion process entirely, because if she just gets something I'll have to be forced to live with it regardless, whether I like it or not. And that's a lot easier for me to do than continually irritating her by saying I think 90% of her selections are ugly or not utilitarian enough, when really they're not Brandon enough because I didn't pick those things myself.

I'm usually not this much of a control freak, really.

I desperately want to shower and go back to bed more than anything else this afternoon; I didn't sleep well last night/this morning because I had indigestion and heartburn/acid reflux that kept me awake or kept waking me up. I no longer have the iron stomach I once had, apparently, and eating pizza an hour or so before bed is generally a bad idea these days. I had to get up and drink a huge glass of water just to kick it back down and dilute the acid somewhat in order to be able to go back to sleep; if I'd gone upstairs to get antacid tablets I would've been wide awake and unable to go back to sleep (at 7-8AM or so) when I so needed it. Almost every day between now and the move is going to be on some sort of schedule, some sort of timeframe where I can't just sleep and get up when I want/need to, but when I have to or can. For those of you who know me well, you know that I hate that sort of thing.

I have but four actual days left of my semester -- tomorrow, Thursday, next Tuesday, and whatever day my 011 students' final exam is on. It seems like a relatively small amount of work and working time, but it's really not -- that doesn't count all of the grading I have to do in the meantime that will take hours, doesn't count the grade calculations or meeting with my finals grading partners (yes, plural, because I teach two different classes with two different finals at two different times/levels), and doesn't count the whole "cleaning out my office on campus" scenario either...cleaning it out so that I can bring stuff home that, again, I have no place for. All of it is stressful and makes me feel like I'm being pulled in fifteen different directions at once.

Yet, even now, things are slowly falling into place, piece by piece, every day. I accomplish a small task toward the larger whole every day; I put another little puzzle piece into its slot. Last night, for example, I looked up how to change/turn off my utilities, and it doesn't appear to be that hard for any of them. Tonight I'll get rid of some of the stuff in storage that I need to get rid of, and tomorrow I'll do the same with some of my books. Regardless of whether I like what she picks or not, Daisy will be picking out our furniture. And I do have a fair amount that's already packed, and will hope to get rid of a lot of other stuff and make some money at this weekend's yard sale. So yes, things are falling into place.

But I still wish it were all just done and over with.

In Place, Part II

The storms and tornadoes that were supposed to roll through here last night and this morning consisted of, seriously, four big rumbles of thunder and a little rain in the early morning hours while I was sleeping. I know this because the thunder woke me up around 7AM, and I only heard it thunder four times before it was all gone. That's it. When I finally got up around 11, the pavement was a little damp, but even that didn't last long in the afternoon sun.

It's supposed to be a lot cooler this coming week, with highs in the mid-50s and low 60s. I'm mostly fine with this, really; I only have to leave the house twice this week, both times for teaching. Both of those days (Tuesday and Thursday) will involve errands as well; one of my friends is picking up a big box of my old comps books from me on Tuesday morning, and on Thursday morning after my 102 students' final finishes, I'm taking my two massive bags full of donations over to the Goodwill next to the West campus.

I will not get a whole lot of sleep this week -- tonight, really, will be my last night of really good rest I'll get for almost a full week. Why? Well, tomorrow night I'll have to go to bed early to stay awake all day on Tuesday (as per the usual), on Wednesday I'll have to be awake and mobile most of the day as I will have, and will be grading, my 102 students' final papers -- as well as tagging more items for the garage sale and moving said items downstairs. On Thursday I'll give my 102 students their exam, come home, and will have to focus on nothing but readying for the garage sale for most of the afternoon and evening before I crash, and then early Friday morning the garage sale starts (8AM, which means I have to get everything outside and ready by then), meaning I'll be outside in the yard/driveway for most of the day. On Saturday that cycle repeats again (it's a two-day thing). Next Sunday I'll be grading everything I have that I -- of course -- couldn't get to during the weekend when I was working the garage sale, as well as doing more boxing/cleaning/situation-assessing as to whatever's left afterwards, likely creating another massive filling of the trash/recycling bins for Monday morning.

That's a full week, folks. A full week of frantic tasks, running around, taking care of everything possible, and barely sleeping. And the rest of May isn't going to get any better. Everything's just going to get harder, time is just going to move faster, and I'm just going to get more tired and worn down.

Tonight, I booked the U-Haul truck for the moving. However, the problem is that there will be two of us, with two cars, and a truck. We can't drive three vehicles to Omaha with two of us unless one of those cars is a black Trans Am voiced by William Daniels. And sadly, it is not. So, with that in mind, we had two choices: either spend between $60 and $80 more to get a trailer for Daisy's car (my car I don't trust on a trailer, as it's falling apart anyhow) or I drive up there the night before the moving starts, park my car there, and come back down in Daisy's car when she'd come down anyhow.

Obviously it doesn't really matter either way when it comes to the Monte Carlo -- regardless of when it happens, the car still has to be driven up to Omaha, as it's not like I'm leaving the Millennium Falcon of automobiles behind. I kind of need the car. Duh. But it's less hassle to drive it up and park it there than it would be to have Daisy drive down here, hook up her car to a trailer, and take it back that way with me following. I'll probably spend about $60 on gas for the Monte Carlo just to drive it up there anyhow (well, something like that, anyway, depending on gas prices) and it'll get rid of the hassle.

The 17-footer truck itself was $267.00. Adding in insurance and two rental dollies (because while we may have one if Daisy's parents have one and can find it, I don't have one here, and I needed a big one for the washer/dryer), the total for everything came to $336.00. And that's before tax. They don't charge my card now; they only charge it when we pick up everything. They require it to reserve the truck and equipment, though. It would've been $500 or more if we would've gotten the car trailer too. It may still be $500 or more after tax. I don't know how they'll work that out when we go to pick it up.

We get the truck for three days and 363 miles. We pick it up in Wichita, make a stop here to load it up, and then drive to Omaha. The entire trip is 325 miles -- I mapped it. That means even with a little wiggle room we'll still baaaaarely slide in under the maximum mileage limit. I'm also guessing they base that limit on the pickup and drop-off points for the truck, so that makes some sense (obviously). We pick it up on a Monday and drop it off on Thursday in Omaha. That gives us plenty of time to get everything done both here and there.

The truck was the cheapest option; in doing a little research on the U-Haul website, they have a service similar to the Pods moving people as well...you know, the company who comes and drops off containers at your house, you fill them, and then they pick them back up and move them to wherever you're going...yeah, that started at about $1,000. For the "apartment" sized set. They also had the option to add contracted moving crews as well -- people who do the heavy lifting on both ends (both figuratively and literally). Those plans started at about $400 more...each way. With an additional $70/hour charge if it took them longer than the requested time limit.

Yeah. You know, it's good sometimes to have friends and family already waiting to help (and asking to help) in the city to which one is moving...

Anyway.

After everything involving the move is done, I plan to sleep for about three days. I'm not kidding. Daisy works the next two nights after we drop off the truck, so we'd be "apart" for those days anyhow. I have the feeling that I'll really, really just want to curl up with the cats and sleep like the dead.

In the meantime is when everything else must be done, of course.  If I don't want to go insane, I have to see if I can near-seamlessly transfer the internet account to our new place and have it ready to go by the time I get there and am settled in enough to use it/need it. I have to close the utilities' accounts and give them the final forwarding address. I have to change my address on everything else as well. And then, of course, is all of the packing and cleaning I've yet to do, which in itself makes me go a bit nuts.

I've been progressing with that a fair amount over this weekend, though. It's still slow going, and it feels like I'm somewhat dragging my feet, but most of the major stuff will be done in the last week or two leading up to the move anyway. All of now is simply preparation for that time, more than anything else. This weekend I finally finished cleaning out the storage room, and readied a good chunk of the stuff in the garage to be moved out to the yard/driveway for the yard sale. I packed several boxes full of both yard sale stuff and actual moving stuff. I'm slowly clearing out the spare room. In a week or so, I will have finished packing the stuff that I can pack up now, without fear of needing something that's boxed away before I move. I've reorganized boxes, I've cleared off shelves, I've done laundry and dishes. I've tried to map out which rooms need to be worked on and completely boxed up on which days, start to finish. I even found three new jobs to apply for in Omaha, in case nothing else works out between now and when I get there. I'm off on Wednesday. On Thursday, my 102 students take their final exam.

I can finally begin to see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. That's what I'm getting at, really. Even though that light may seem far, far away for the time being, I can still see it.

On that note, I'm going to get something to eat, decompress with several episodes of Scrubs, and go to bed. I have a feeling I'll need the sleep much more than my body and soul will let on.

In Place

It's been a rough weekend for me thus far. Well, mostly, anyway. Once again I feel swamped and overburdened with things to do, and my fatigue levels just want me to sleep and do absolutely nothing -- to roll over and cover my head. I always feel so overwhelmed, even at times when I'm actually not. There's always something else to do, someone else to try to please, something else to pack, clean, or organize. I know this time is only going to last for another month or so, but still. Ugh.

Last night, shortly before midnight, I went to meet up with two friends from the department at a late-night donut shop here in town for some much-needed decompression time. I saw they were in town and could've said nothing, could've ignored it and continued to sit here in my room and dick around on the computer, but I didn't -- instead I told them I'd be there in five minutes (said donut shop is across the street from the newspaper where I used to work, and is thus only about two or three miles from my house at the most), put on a pair of shorts and threw on a shirt, and left.

As I drove the Monte Carlo through the silent, empty residential streets and neighborhoods between here and the donut shop, I thought to myself, I need this. I really do. I hadn't been over there since I worked at the paper, and there are so few opportunities to see my friends outside the department. One of those said friends is going to be at the wedding as well as the "bachelor party," but I so rarely see anyone anymore aside from the cats, my students, and the late-night cashiers at Walmart. Tuesday is the only day I have any real social interaction with anyone on campus, and most of the time I'm holed up in my office or in the office of one or two friends, and I still don't really see much of anyone aside from those friends.

The conversation (over a caramel/chocolate nut roll and a big cup of fountain-drink Mountain Dew) was concerned primarily with my wedding and moving plans. I didn't dominate the conversation or anything -- generally I try not to -- but that was the overall big discussion topic: the whos, wheres, and whens of everything, and about what it has been like to live up here in Newton for the past five years. It's so rare that anyone I know comes up here that it was slightly bizarre.

As for the donut shop itself, the place is the hangout in this town for anyone between the ages of 16 and 80, basically, as the town has no other night life whatsoever, and they're an overnight donut shop, so at midnight the place was jam-packed with locals both young and old, high schoolers as well as middle-aged and senior-citizen night owls. I don't know how long the other guys were there before I got there, but we were all there for about an hour or so before the place quieted down and went dead; when we left around 1 or so, there were a few small tables with older folks gathered around them drinking coffee and talking quietly, but no one else left.

It was...shall we say...cathartic for me to just sit there with some friends and relax, pushing the rest of the world aside for a brief hour. It feels different to do it in a public place, outside of our offices. It's like we're different people, even though we're not. I'm the same person everywhere I go and in everything I do, no matter what situation I'm in. I know other professors and GTAs who have a "classroom persona" that at times even extends to the office, a persona that is a mask they wear to be professional and/or make themselves sound and act more important than they actually are. I've never bothered with such a facade. I'm the same person in front of my classes as I am around my friends and colleagues, the same person I am around my family or around Daisy.

I actually almost called Daisy by the name "Daisy" in conversation last night (obviously, that's not her real name), which I found internally hilarious. I don't think either of those friends read my blog, but I'm sure they know it exists. I'm actually fairly certain that most of the department (excluding the higher-ups like the chair and the Directors) know it exists, and it's never really bothered me that much. There's nothing, ahem, incriminating on it, and while I do talk about being a professor, I have always taken great pains not to call the university by name. Also, with about three weeks left to work there anyway, my ability to care about who reads it or knows about it is rapidly diminishing. I know many friends read it or at least check it once in a while, because I always have a ton of hits from Wichita.

On the drive home, I waited on a train, and the low oil light in my car came on. That's a sign that I need to do my monthly/bi-monthly maintenance on said car again, as I know the car's not been dripping oil as of late, but just slowly burning it off since it's old. Because of the storms expected today and tonight (nothing yet, though) I pulled the car into the garage once I got home. I'll do said maintenance in the morning when I take it back out, or tonight if nothing happens and I'm awake enough to go to Walmart to check for some more boxes in about twelve hours or so. I haven't decided yet, and totally don't know how alert and/or awake I'll be then. Whenever I do go, of course, I should probably get more oil. Duh.

As for everything else going on? Well, I packed three more boxes this afternoon and the pile of disarray in the spare room is slowly being reduced. I still have a lot more to do over the course of the next several days; posting my mock-up yard sale ad on Facebook got several friends interested in some of the stuff I have, so tomorrow one of those friends is coming to get some stuff, and on Monday another is coming up to get other stuff. I still have to do all my grading (that's tonight's plans, more than anything else) and I do, at some point, have to get at least a marginally-acceptable amount of sleep over the next few days to be able to continue to function.

Of course, my time is limited; I could be completely done for the semester already (I'm not, obviously) and I'd still feel swamped and overwhelmed. Most of what I'm doing in regards to cleaning/packing/trashing things should've been done months ago, if not a year or so ago -- I was just never motivated enough to do it. Fear, apprehension, and the pressure of being on a time frame is a great motivator, apparently. With my 30 days' notice letter being mailed along with my rent check today, the clock is officially ticking now. Adding insult to injury is that I got my electric bill today, and despite the fact that I've been barely doing anything that requires a large amount of electricity -- like running the furnace -- it's still almost $100. WTF. I mean, do I have to turn the house's breakers completely off when I'm not here, or something, to get an electric bill that's $40 again? I don't get it.

The storms aren't popping up yet, though I do expect them to start firing up all over the area at basically any given time. It's 86 degrees outside and it's after 6PM. It's April. It's windy. This is prime severe storm/tornado weather. If we don't get anything? Good! If we do? It'll be nasty and will more than likely hit under the cover of darkness -- which is, of course, the worst time for that shit to happen.

I can't let it concern me either way, really; I have too much other stuff to deal with and/or worry about right now, starting with my grading. Speaking of which...

Comfortability

Spring semester: day sixty-nine (69, broooooo! *air guitar*)

I probably have about ten boxes total that aren't filled yet. Of those ten boxes, three or four of them are paper ream boxes saved for me by the kind office ladies on the West campus. I have two of those on main campus as well, in my office, but I'll need them there in order to be able to move my stuff out of my office at the end of the semester. What little I have in my office, anyway. Most of it is just my laptop, my spare monitor and speakers, a few books and papers, etc.

I mentioned before that this is a big weekend for me with a lot of work to do, and that's very true. In addition to my normal tasks (like grading papers, cleaning, paying bills, etc) I'm still readying things for the yard sale, I'm still gutting my closets and rooms, I'm still packing boxes (a process that won't end until probably the day of the move) and I still have to finish completely cleaning/sweeping out the garage if at all possible. Today, actually, I'll probably end up mowing the grass for the first and only time this year, since I'll move out before it needs to be done again.

I've also mentioned before that I feel a little more comfortable, a little more accomplished, with each task I take care of between now and the end of the semester and the moving date(s), though that doesn't mean I don't still feel absolutely overwhelmed at times. It's a feeling that comes and goes. Sometimes I feel as if I am on top of everything, and nothing can hold me back, and other times it feels as if I'm being crushed under the weight of that same everything. It really depends on the day. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle; there's a lot of stuff that I'll do this weekend which will make me feel much better about myself and about all of my upcoming big life changes, but that's only a small amount of what actually needs to be done. I'm more comforted by the fact that Daisy seems to be really on top of things up in Omaha, getting everything taken care of that she can do. When she was down here two weeks ago, I wrote her a $450 check (which was basically the last bit of my federal tax refund money) to help cover a lot of that stuff, and she did.

The wedding and everything it entails? That's mostly paid for, or otherwise covered by credit cards and the like. Our new home? Rent and deposit are both paid, utilities are set up and ready to go, and she'll begin moving into the place in about a week and a half -- unpacking and setting things up while I finish my semester here. Her job? Stable. Her life? Much more stable than mine is right now.

There were no more storms yesterday after I got to campus to teach; it sprinkled rain a bit, and there was some thunder and lightning very briefly when I got down to West campus, but by the time I was done with my class, everything had moved off and it was sunny enough to where I needed my sunglasses for a good chunk of my drive back home. By the time I went to sleep yesterday afternoon, it was very sunny and very bright outside, with no real clouds left. The Weather Channel, which just yesterday morning was predicting a Tor:Con of 5/10 for us on Saturday/Saturday night, is now iffy on whether we're going to get any severe storms at all. Of course, that's another reason I'd like to mow the grass today if possible -- if we do get a ton of rain and storms, it'll only make the grass taller than it is now, and about the only other time I'd have to do it would be a week from this Sunday, since the yard sale is next weekend -- and that's only if I don't sell the mower.

I've decided that if I have to, I'll extend the yard sale to two weekends in a row -- next weekend, of course, and then (if necessary) the weekend after to get rid of whatever's still left. Whatever's left after that, of course, will just have to be trashed and/or donated. It's not like I can do anything else with it. May 10-17 is, basically, the weekend before finals week, finals week, and the time after (basically as soon as finals week ends), I'll be moving out. Everything must go one way or another. Nothing can remain behind.  I wrote out the ad for said yard sale tonight and put it on Facebook to give my local friends "first dibs" on all of this stuff, so to speak. I'll upload it next week sometime to Craigslist once I edit it (if any of my friends claim anything, of course). I'm not expecting any of them to want anything or even bother to read said note about it, but eh. It's worth a shot, right? Especially if it helps me get rid of the big things that need to be taken away.

This weekend I have to start labeling everything with prices. It'll be an ungodly-time-consuming process. The spare room is also filled right now with boxes to be packed, two bags of trash and recycling, and everything in there is in general disarray. Obviously every week between now and when I move the trash/recycling bins are going to be full, but it wasn't until I started cleaning and boxing things that I realized just how much shit I have that needs to be thrown away...and how little space those bins really have in them.

Daisy is going to check out some clearance furniture soon at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. Apparently if we can get on a finance plan for some stuff it's something like $25 a month or so until it's paid off, which I'd be fine with overall.

"I'm just worried about money," I told her this afternoon, frankly. "I'm more worried about money than anything else."

Regardless of what we do for a living or where we're both working, we still have to be able to pay the bills and rent. I come from a poverty background -- I grew up a poor kid in West Virginia, where nobody in my family could be classified as "wealthy" or even moderately rich. Most of them, like I have been my entire adult life, have been scraping by because it's not like West Virginia offers any exciting job opportunities (or even a "good life," really) -- you're born, you work in the coal mines, for the university, or for Walmart for forty or fifty years, and then you die penniless. Moving out of the state eight years ago without any sort of truly marketable skill meant that I carried that poverty background with me, and I ended up working low-paying jobs for many years and needed to take student loans just to be able to eat and keep gas in my car while I was in graduate school. I've never truly had enough money in my bank account, or to my name, where I wasn't near-constantly worried about being able to pay bills or rent. I don't really know what it feels like to not live paycheck-to-paycheck, and I know the fear and stress that comes along with being underpaid and underappreciated, trying to scrape together proverbial coins and wrinkled dollar bills just so that the electricity doesn't get turned off.

My bills have been paid; I sent the 30 days' notice letter as well as the rent, and paid $100 on my Discover card (which is but a drop in the bucket, but it helps). I ordered pizza with my Amazon card, since there's barely anything on it right now (I paid it off before with my tax refund). I ate some of said pizza. My stomach took approximately five hours -- five hours -- to digest said pizza enough to where I didn't feel full/bloated/nauseated anymore.  On the plus side, I'll now have food for several days, food that I won't have to cook.

The weather forecast has changed throughout the day today, and for the worse -- apparently we're once more expected to get some severe storms and possible tornadoes tomorrow and tomorrow night, and 60mph+ winds and baseball-sized hail are, apparently, almost a certainty. Looks like the car's being put in the garage at the first sign of nastiness, which means that my plans to finish cleaning the garage are all but abandoned now. Oh well, I suppose. I've still got the rest of the weekend, of course, and now that I have Wednesdays off, I have Wednesday if I need it as well.

No, wait, actually I don't -- Wednesday I'll be grading my 102 students' papers and practice exams all day, as they take their final on Thursday and I have to get all of those back to them. Shit. Oh well. Guess Sunday or Monday it is.

Thunderbolts and Lightning

...very very frightening, me.

Spring semester: day sixty-eight

I awoke this morning to heavy rain and thunderstorms just as I was getting out of bed. It's like they waited for me to wake up so that I could enjoy them. Most of it has moved off now, but it's nice and cool outside (I can feel the breeze through my windows), and I love driving in weather like this.

I do have to drive this morning, of course -- I have to teach my last real 102 morning class. Next week they take their practice exam, turn in their last paper, and take their final...and once their final is done a week from today, the class is over.

Everything's coming up so quickly. Daisy signed the lease to the new place yesterday (I thought she was signing it on the 1st, but apparently not) and paid May's rent and the pet deposit for the cats. She will begin moving her stuff in there during the first week of the month. She also set up the electric service to be turned on as well as the water and trash pickup. I, in the meantime, will get paid tomorrow and will be sending out my own rent check with the 30 days' notice letter this weekend, as you know. There's a lot to do in the course of the next month or so, and I have to be able to keep myself from going crazy (or running out of money) while I do it.

My final 210 class last night was rather subdued, to be honest with you. My students did their presentations and defended their projects, and all of them did quite well. Many of them used handouts, one of them used PowerPoint and YouTube, two of them brought in cookies and snacks for everyone, and overall it was fun -- but it was also very low-key. I got the sense that most of these students were at least a little sad that the class was ending, as throughout the semester I'd definitely gotten the vibe from them that my class was by far the most interesting or otherwise fun class they were taking. Most of the department's instructors hate teaching 210 because they find it boring; I love it because it's easy to teach and the assignments are fun and interesting, and unlike some other classes I've taught, the 210 assignments tend to be actually useful and applicable to the students' lives.

At the end of the class, I gave a shortened version of my standard end-of-the-semester speech, which is basically me thanking the students for allowing me the privilege of teaching them for the semester, saying I hoped they had fun, saying that this may be the last 210 class (or even type of class) that I'll ever teach, and that it was a pleasure to have them, etc. Then I dismissed, and everyone dispersed.

It's always sad on some level for me to end a class; it doesn't matter how inconvenient it was for me or how much I loved/hated teaching it. I always make a connection with and association with some of my students, and as sappy as it may sound, I do make memories in my classes every semester -- memories I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. This was a good group of students; they came to class on time every week (I only had three absences total the entire semester long), they did their work, they asked questions when they had them, didn't pick fights with me (or one another) and didn't talk or sleep during class, and all of them were smart and mature. It's also the only class I've taught in recent memory where nobody has failed for any reason. I'm proud of and impressed with those students. Perhaps that's why, to me, that class ending is somewhat bittersweet.

I've put all of their final grades on Blackboard but haven't yet rolled them in the official Banner system. It doesn't matter anyway; grades on Banner can be put on there at any time, but they're not officially written to record until something like May 21st, after everything is officially done and over with for the semester. That changed last fall; it used to be that they'd be "rolled" at the end of day processes on whatever date they were entered, and if they needed to be changed after that, you had to do a paper "change of grade" form with the department and the registrar. I had to do like, three of those last spring for people who didn't show up for the final and ended up having to take their exams late.

Anyway.

Once class was done last night -- meaning that now, on Wednesdays, I never have to leave the house if I don't want to, and will save a day's worth of gas every week -- I drove home. Thunderstorms were rolling in from the west; because this is Kansas and everything is so goddamned flat, you can actually see the storms from probably twenty or thirty miles away if you're in an open area with no buildings or trees around...such as the interstate between here and campus. I watched them roll in out of the corner of my eye as I took the interstate back home, and by the time I got to Newton the lightning was getting closer. I couldn't help it, though; I still had to stop at Walmart and do my weekly shopping, since I'd skipped out on it on Tuesday night and thus was either almost out or completely out of many essentials around the house.

When I got to Walmart, it was actually somewhat busy (for it being, y'know, 10PM on a Wednesday). I followed my list and got everything on it I needed, wincing at the prices on some of it, but getting it anyway -- higher-end items like cleaning supplies, bleach, duct tape for packing, extra cat food and litter -- and was in and out of the store in about half an hour. When I left, the store was deserted and cleared out almost completely; it was weird. By the time I got home and got everything brought into the house, it was beginning to thunder a bit. It rained for maybe fifteen minutes, and there was a little pretty lightning and mild thunder, but no hail or anything like that. The storm we got this morning upon my awakening was much stronger.

After I messaged Daisy to tell her I was home safely, I ate and went to bed, got up, and here I am now -- dressed in shorts, sandals, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt -- ready to drive south to teach my students this morning how to take their final exam next week. Daisy got home and went to bed this morning around the same time I got up, so I didn't get to talk to her (and probably won't be able to until tonight), even though my class today will probably be somewhat short and I'll more than likely be home by 10:30 or a little after at the latest. That's less than three hours from now. My Thursday consists of three hours of work, of which roughly an hour will be spent driving back and forth.

Despite this, I have a soul-crushingly busy weekend ahead of me. While I no longer have any work to do for my 210s, I have a stack of papers to grade for my 011s and a stack of journals for the 102s I'll teach this morning. I will also be finishing up the cleaning of the garage, though I may wait until Sunday for that -- it's supposed to be 92 degrees on Saturday, and Saturday evening/night we're supposed to get some nasty storms, so I may have to put the car in the garage (which, of course, would stop me from being able to effectively sweep out said garage). I need to fully gut the rest of my closets and begin marking/pricing larger items for the yard sale next weekend, and if it's nice enough, with all of this rain we've gotten in the past 24 hours or so, I should probably mow the grass. I also want to use the rest of the boxes I have now to pack whatever I can in them so that I can clear out that space in the garage, and will more than likely go get more this weekend as well, probably in the middle of the night from Walmart. It's very evident at this point that I'll need a lot more than I currently have.

So, yes, it'll be another long, work-filled weekend, and to start it, I'll probably come home and crash early this afternoon so that I can recoup some of the rest I sorely need. While I'm relatively awake this morning, I'm also sure that by the time I get home and eat/decompress a bit, I'll be tired again. I didn't want to get up this morning when my alarm went off -- for once, I was in a deep sleep and the alarm scared me when it went off instead of me waking up a few minutes beforehand and expecting it.

On that note? Off I go to class.

Spirits, Part II

Spring semester: day sixty-seven

Last night, as I was absolutely frazzled, had a bad headache (from fatigue, lack of caffeine, and probably because I hadn't really eaten much) and I was driving home from campus around 9PM, I kept thinking to myself things like only two more weeks of this, Brandon. Two more. 

I don't know why yesterday was so difficult for me to get through. Again, I think I'm getting too old for this shit. I'd been starving all day, I had one of the worst headaches I've had in a while -- worst as in, a few shades short of a migraine -- and the entire day I was just...exhausted. For no real reason, really. I mean, I'd slept on Monday night and had slept relatively well. My allergies weren't bothering me that much (they've sort of tapered off for the time being, and are now a low-grade simple annoyance more than anything else). Physically, I looked good -- my hair looked great yesterday, my beard was near-perfect, and I was dressed relatively sharply for a teaching day. Why I felt like hell, then, is anyone's guess. By the time I got home -- skipping my planned Walmart trip because I was so tired -- I was mostly delirious. I quickly messaged Daisy to tell her I was safe, made food to eat so that I could feel a little bit better, and took headache pills. By the time I was done eating, I was so tired that I could barely sit up straight. I returned to the computer, told Daisy I was going to bed (so that she wouldn't worry about me) and went downstairs. I don't remember actually laying down or trying to sleep, as I'm fairly certain that as soon as I was on the bed, I was unconscious.

I slept for nine hours straight -- dreamless, blackout sleep -- and woke up this morning sometime after eight. I'm still groggy and a bit slow now, even after I've been awake and up for over an hour, even though I've been able to get coffee into me. Some coffee, anyway. This morning is off to a really slow start until I can fully wake up and be myself.

Yesterday was actually a pretty good day work-wise, to be honest with you. I did my final workshops in my morning 102 class, came to main campus, made copies of everything I needed between now and the end of the semester (with the exception of my 102's final exams) and collected my 011 students' papers before giving them their final assignment for the course. At this point my classes are definitely on autopilot for the rest of the semester -- there are no more lectures, no more readings to cover, no more necessary books to bring to class...nothing. It's all final papers, projects, and preparing for final exams. Tonight's the last night of my 210 class, and my students are doing their oral presentations in there before the class officially ends with the last presentation's conclusion. There are eight of them, so the class will take between eighty minutes and two hours, I'm guessing.

Yesterday was also a good day personally, despite my tiredness -- I brought in the groom's party gifts for Parker and Amanda, so that I wouldn't lose/break them in my packing and moving. I also got to see several people I don't normally get to see, primarily as we're getting close to the time of year where everyone crawls out of the woodwork to get their final projects/papers done (as well as do everything that needs to be done for their students). We're trying to solidify groom's party plans and travel stuff as it pertains to the wedding and the "bachelor party" beforehand. Parker is going to drive several of them up -- he calls it "the ascension" -- and most of them will probably room with him in the hotel for the duration of the stay. I told them not to go out of their way too much or to spend too much money on coming up for everything, and he told me "don't worry about it; this day is about you. We'll figure it out."

He's right, of course, but still. Everyone dropping everything to focus on me, in most situations, plays directly to the narcissist in me. In situations like this, though, they're all doing me a huge favor -- especially those folks who are in the wedding, and it just feels like...I don't know...like I should be doing everything in my power to make it easier for them. Focus on me is good when it comes to someone praising me or telling me that I'm intelligent and/or attractive, but otherwise? It generally feels awkward.

When my students compliment me, my teaching style, or (especially) when they thank me for all the work I've done and/or my willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to help them out in class...it's even more awkward. I thank them, of course, but for some reason I become extremely bashful and without words because I'm so not used to that; I'm so not used to anyone telling me that I've done a good job for anything, because I so rarely actually hear it. Adam Carolla (whose podcast I listen to almost religiously) always says that he grew up not with low self-esteem, but no self-esteem. I can definitely relate to that. I used to have decent self-esteem, but over the years it has been systematically beaten out of me by other people's apathy, doing grunt work jobs that were akin to slave labor, academia, and several failed relationships. Only now am I beginning to get a little of it back.

One of my students, a guy in his...oh, late 30s? Early 40s? Something like that, asked me last night if I could redo my academic career from start to finish if I choose the same path and do it again. I didn't have a solid yes or no answer for him. While I am, indeed, proud of my achievements, I'm also $40k in student loan debt and I only made about $12k in the past year. Total. When I told him I would probably end up with a job in Daisy's company once I moved to Omaha (fingers crossed, anyhow), he asked me why I didn't want a job in which I could use my degrees.

"I do," I said. "They're just not out there, and the ones that are have thousands of applicants."

Have I also mentioned before that I have incredibly shitty luck most of the time when it comes to job applications and interviews? Well, I do. One of the jobs I applied for at Daisy's company was filled, and I wasn't selected for it. I got the email this morning. At least they tell you, right?

Anyway.

I had two more people drop out of being able to come to the wedding, but one more who said she would be there and said she'd RSVP last night. Whether she did or not, I don't know -- all of the RSVPs go to Daisy. I don't know what our current guest count is, but the last I heard it was around 70 or so -- with most of those wedding guests being people Daisy knows, her family/extended family, and people she worked/currently works with (and probably some of her friends from college). People coming from "my side" is confined to my parents, my groom's party, and plus/minus ten friends or so from the department -- as well as probably my friend Jane from back home. I'm glad there's not going to be assigned seating or "sides" to sit on at the wedding, because if so it would be extremely lopsided.

Yesterday morning I wrote the 30 days' notice letter to my landlord. I haven't sent it yet, of course; I won't mail it until the weekend once I get paid again and write the rent check out. I have a few bills to pay this weekend in addition to that, and I need to book the moving truck as well. To add insult to injury, my electric bill should arrive this weekend also. No, I don't expect it to be high at all, seeing as I've run the furnace approximately four days or so during the past month, but eh. It's still money I'll have to spend. I had to order a new watch from Amazon yesterday morning as well, as the one I have now (which, admittedly, I did get on clearance at Walmart for like, $7) has a really weak battery and it's about to die. The one I wear now is both analog and digital, and the hands on the clock stopped moving. I reset it and they started moving again, but they don't keep the time and will occasionally stop for hours upon hours on end. The calendar function reset itself months ago as well, so I'm pretty sure the battery is almost dead. I just ordered another Casio Databank watch like I've worn for years (before this one, I mean); it'll be the third Databank I've owned, and it was only $15 when the same watch at Walmart is $30 or more.

Apparently, according to the weather forecasts I've seen, there's a risk of severe weather this afternoon and tonight...when I'll be out and about to go teach my class. The risk is much higher over the weekend, though. This means that before I leave this afternoon, whether I like it or not, I have to move the unused boxes out of the garage and into the basement/bedroom so that if I have to put my car in the garage upon my return home, I can do so. I can't use any of the boxes until I get more duct tape at Walmart tonight (when I plan to make my shopping trip) anyway.

I do, sadly, have a fair amount of stuff I need to get at Walmart tonight, not just the tape. I need to get the necessities of cat food and litter, coffee, cigarettes, some actual food that I can make quickly after I return home from my classes, cooking oil, sandwich stuff, etc. While I'd like to get some marked-down Easter candy, I'm guessing it's all gone by now. I really hope the storms can hold off until after I'm home, as having the Monte Carlo sit in a parking lot anywhere (whether that be Walmart or on West campus) makes said parking lot a shooting gallery if there's large hail. It's not like I can afford to replace a windshield right now, either.

As an aside, the Monte Carlo has been running/driving extremely well for the past few weeks. I'm getting really good gas mileage, I've noticed a big difference in the way the car accelerates and handles now that it's warm (and it isn't fighting the cold every morning and night), and it doesn't seem to be burning off or dripping any oil or coolant -- at least not like before. As I've said before, that car is a tank. She's got some life in her yet, apparently.

As mentioned, my classes are on autopilot. Tonight ends the 210, and tomorrow I cover the stuff for the final exam in my 102 and hold a Q&A session. Tuesday brings the same stuff for my 011s and the practice exam in my 102 (papers are also due in there then), and then next Thursday is the final exam in my 102. Two weeks from last night is the last day of my semester before finals. I have everything printed and copied; basically all I have to do for the rest of the semester for my classes is be present at the scheduled time and have a pulse. Of course, I have to grade all of their work that comes in, but still.

Still no state tax refund check in the mail yet; once I get it, I'll cash it and apply it to groceries and the like, and then save whatever's left afterwards. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

This coming weekend -- regardless of the weather -- involves me doing (of course) more packing and cleaning. I have to finish emptying the garage of anything I no longer want or need, and then (weather permitting) sweeping it out and getting rid of all of the dirt/dust/grass/leaves, etc in there and around the garage, car, and doors. There's also grading I'll have to do as well, though it'll be somewhat lighter grading than usual. I'll have journals for my 102s and papers for my 011s. I have the papers now, but I won't get to them before the weekend.

For now, though? A shower and some food seems to be in order. It's time to start my day.

Spirits

Spring semester: day sixty-six

I've mentioned here before that while everything is ramping up for my students, my own work (at least for teaching-related stuff) is beginning to wind down. Tomorrow, as you may know, is the last day of my 210 class, and therefore the last Wednesday I'll have to leave the house this semester. Today I do workshops in my 102 class and collect papers/introduce the last paper in my 011 class. Thursday is a Q&A day in my 102 class for final questions for their final papers (said papers are due one week from today), when I'll go over their final exam stuff/exam prep, and when I collect their journals. They take their exam in a week and a half, on May 1st. I have but eight classes total to teach for the rest of the semester between all three courses I'm teaching, not counting the final exam for my 011 students. Four this week, three next week, and the last one on May 6 for said 011s (as the other two classes will be finished by that point).

While this sort of schedule will free up a considerable amount of time for me in the beginning of May, it's not like everything else in my life will be easy after that. I'm still packing, of course -- and I have to do everything else beforehand to prepare myself for the move, as things will start to seriously ramp up between now and then. Today is April 22nd; I'll have to send out my last rent check and written 30 days' notice to my landlord by the end of the week, and I'll have to begin plotting out days and times to turn off all the utilities and other services. Plus, the yard sale is coming up. Plus, I have to book the moving truck. Plus, I have bills to pay. Plus, there's still finals week and the timeframe needed to grade final exams with a "grading partner." Plus, I have to move everything out of my office on campus. It's all going to be a massive to-do list and none of the items on it can be put off or ignored.

Meanwhile, Daisy is plugging away at her new job within her company on a new schedule. She's been off since Sunday, but will go back to work tomorrow evening at about the same time I'll go to teach my final 210 class. She neither strongly dislikes or likes her new position; it's similar to her old one, though it carries what I call "bosslady duties." There are many things Daisy does well -- taking charge of a situation is one of them. After all, she put together most of the wedding stuff/planning herself, as you may recall. I got another email from her company HR guy yesterday for a job starting 5/5, second shift (3PM to midnight). Of course, I can't take that, but it's good to know I'm still on the mailing list for them. 6/5 I could do. 5/5 I can't. Soooo...yeah.

As for other positions I've applied for at other places? Again, I haven't heard anything yet. And that includes the paper-only, snail-mailed application to the university I applied to up there. I've basically resigned myself to the fact that I will more than likely not be teaching this summer or fall, anywhere, because almost all faculty positions have either been filled at this point or they've otherwise disappeared from higher education job boards. This is both good and bad, of course; I'd love to continue teaching, yes, but I'm pretty sure even in Nebraska or Iowa that an academic lecturer position (or equivalent) wouldn't pay enough for us to live on -- it might not even pay the same amount I'm making right now. That means, sadly, if I want to keep teaching I'll have to take at least a semester or two off first to assess financial needs and other issues -- and I may never be able to go back to the career which has been, for the past five semester years, the most fulfilling thing I've ever done with my life. The sad part is that teachers don't make any money, and I will soon have a wife to help support along with myself and the cats -- and probably, within a year, a child.

More than anything else, I'm excited to get this show on the road, so to speak. Yes, I dread moving. I dread the work, I dread the time and money which will be spent on it, and I dread the next several weeks of balls-to-the-wall busy-ness. However, I'm not so stressed out by it that I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel -- marrying Daisy, starting our life together, and starting over in a new home in a new state that's not fucking Kansas. Knowing what's ahead of me/us is calming, in a sense.

Daisy told me last night that one of my family friends back home sent us a very sweet card with a $35 check inside for the wedding. I found that incredibly nice. My parents are close with said family friend, so I asked my mother to forward me her email address so that I could drop her a line. Yes, we're going to send out a lot of thank-you cards anyway, but I'd like to thank her personally while I have the chance, before I'm bogged down by a ton of other shit to do.

Last night I slept rather well, actually, until the cats started fighting over who got to play in the boxes I have downstairs in the bedroom for packing the bedsheets and blankets. Despite that, I still went to bed before dark and slept most of the night. It's now about 5AM (the time where my alarm would normally go off on a Tuesday morning) and I'm awake and okay -- despite the fact that today is my long day. Aside from my normal school tasks, I don't have anything pressing that must be done this week aside from paying the rent and writing the 30 days' notice letter. I get paid again on Friday, I'll probably do the weekly shopping tonight or tomorrow night after class (depending on how tired I am), and overall, I'm in good spirits. Again, I'm excited and anxious to take care of everything I have to do. With every box I pack, I feel a little more accomplished. The same goes for when I wheel 200 pounds of trash and recycling from my cleaning down to the road every week and bring back the empty bins when it's taken away. I'm sure this doesn't mean a lot in the long run, but right now it feels good. Except, well, I'm running out of boxes (I have maybe five left, and they're all relatively small) and I've already burned through a roll and a half of tape on the ones I do have.

Daisy moves into the new place on the 6th, I think. She signs the lease on the 1st, but she will be working after that and won't be able to begin moving her stuff in until she's off for a few days. She's been packing her stuff as well, and has been doing a "great cleansing" of her own -- she said she has something like six bags of donation things for Goodwill from yesterday alone. I myself have two massive bags of donation stuff that I'll more than likely drop off at the Goodwill next to West campus next week when I'm down there for the last time this semester. I'll have more than that, of course, by the time I'm done cleaning and packing -- especially after the yard sale, when I'll either donate or trash whatever's left that I couldn't get rid of.

On the plus side, while doing her cleaning/packing, she found her Super Nintendo and the four games she has for it. She said it needs a new cable (probably a power cable or AV cable) to make it operational again. That's about $1.50 on Amazon. I never had a Super Nintendo growing up -- I was the Sega Genesis guy (sadly). I didn't even get an NES until high school, and that one (which I still have back home in West Virginia) I bought used and professionally rebuilt/refurbished. I still have my original Genesis, too, though all of that stuff has been boxed up in my closet back home for many, many years. All of my games for both systems were sold long, long ago to a used games store in Morgantown. Oh well.

While it has remained warm and pleasant outside for the past week or so (and my allergies have mostly subsided because of that), I've not been feeling that great physically. I do feel like an old man at times -- my body aches from packing/cleaning everything, my stomach has been bothering me off and on for the past several days, and while I've been sleeping okay (mostly), I never feel as if I can get enough solid rest. This is something I just have to get used to, I suppose. I mean, really, I have one super-long day every week -- the rest of the time I can generally sleep when I want and when I need to (provided that I'm not busting ass doing everything that needs to be done, of course). As if I didn't do it enough now, for the next month and a half I'm going to be surviving on little more than coffee and cigarettes and sleeping when I can just to be able to get through everything I need to do within the time I need to do it, so once all of that work gets serious, I'll be even more fried and frazzled than I normally am. 

So that's the next few days for me, really. Here's hoping they go smoothly and swiftly.

The Great Cleansing, Part III

All that's left in the garage and storage area now is, basically, trash and other junk that wouldn't fit into the cans for this week. What I'm not keeping will go out next week.

I couldn't tell you how many...ahem... empty spider egg sacs I ran across, though. Luckily, none of them looked new. In fact, I'm quite sure many of them have been there for the five years or so everything's been down there in the garage. The cold winter has been wonderful for cleaning -- I've only seen one, single living spider throughout all of my cleaning down there, and it was a harmless orb weaver. Are there webs and cobwebs everywhere? Yes. Were there many years-old molts of brown recluse down there? Oh yes. But as for living spiders? Nope. Nothin'. That's a blessing, at least.

Once I get the majority of everything out of the garage, the garage swept clean and everything in its place and figured out, I'll use it as my new, ahem, holding area for everything I've packed thus far. Packed boxes are stacking up in both my Man Cave and in the spare room -- the spare room being literally half full of them, leaving little room for actual, y'know, movement in and out of there.

After cleaning out what I could of the garage yesterday, my back was positively killing me by the evening, to the point where I was so stiff I could barely move. It was not a pleasant experience. I took some aspirin and tried to relax, and eventually the screaming pain died down and went away. After it did, I packed two more huge boxes full of things -- mostly clothing and the like -- and this morning, I packed two more (despite my back pain still lingering somewhat).

I want to say that approximately 1/4 of the house has been packed up at this point. I'm not sure how accurate that is, actually, but it has to be something along those lines. Most of my important possessions and other things are already boxed. Most of the kitchen dishes (except what I'll use) is boxed. Most of my clothing is boxed. Most of the yard sale stuff is sorted and ready. Given the fact that I have close to a month to pack everything else, and given that the "everything else" (at least packing-wise) could be done in the span of about two days of pretty nonstop work, I'm rather proud of myself, actually. That doesn't mean I don't have a lot to do between now and then, but it does mean that I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting there, like I'm making headway. If I can feel like I'm making headway, I won't feel so overwhelmed or stressed.

As for the yard sale, If I even make a total of $20 during it, I'll be happy. If I can get someone to haul away a lot of the big stuff I have no use for and can't move, I'll be even happier, even if I make no money. It's in two weeks.

I have a lot of clerical tasks to do this week. Clerical as in, well, I have to write out my 30 days' notice to my landlord to send along with the rent check, I have to pay my Discover card bill (it came in the mail yesterday) and I will be spending a fair amount of time readying final exams and information sheets for my students -- not to mention grading their papers that will all be coming in at almost the same exact time(s). In addition to that, I have to start sending out my first sets of address change forms for magazines and other things I get via mail. And, as soon as I get my state tax refund check (which no, still has not arrived yet), I have to cash that too.

 

Buuuuuuuuuuuullshit. They told me this last year as well. And I got the refund relatively quickly. Like, in six weeks or so. Sixteen weeks is four months -- nobody in any state waits four months for a tax return.

As I completed and sent my return earlier than usual this year I would imagine I'll get the check in a few weeks at the most. This is good, as I'm only going to be living here for another month.

Still, yes, it would be fantastic to be able to get that money sooner rather than later. Writing a large check to Daisy last week to help cover wedding/living expenses has made my budget tighter than usual until I get paid on Friday.

Over the course of the past week, people have been dropping off the guest list for the wedding like crazy -- mainly people from my side, and all of them locals. I've had three or four people tell me that they'll be unable to make it, and I have no doubt I'll hear the same from others. That's fine, of course; it was me who, in the beginning, wanted a much smaller affair than a larger one anyway. Again, I already view Daisy as my wife; the whole "ceremony" and "photos" and "reception" thing is just a formality to me more than anything else. And I understand that it's expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient at best to attend a wedding, let alone anything else involved with said wedding. Several of my friends, and possibly my parents, will be "bugging out" as soon as the reception is over, as they have tight travel schedules. Parker has already told me that he's probably returning home to Wichita the same night. My parents, of course, will have to return home quickly as well, as they're taking off basically a week of work to be able to be there, and are boarding the dog and the cats while they are here. April has already told me that she and her husband are going to be in-and-out on a tight schedule because of her new job.

I don't have any problems with this, of course; look, people have lives and responsibilities -- either business or personal -- and it's really flattering that many of these people would come at all. I can't help it if they can't come, or if they can't stay long (or at all) after the ceremony.

My brother, who -- as you'll remember -- was unable to come due to crushing financial and work responsibilities, told me that he wants to get us a nice gift to make up for it. I told him that wasn't necessary at all; I don't want anyone to spend a bunch of money on us, especially those who can't afford to. Daisy and I don't need gifts or fancy things; the registry is basically a formality because I know most people won't use it. It's not like Daisy and I have any rich relatives or friends who would swoop in and say, buy us a new car because mine's falling apart, or give us a wad of hundreds in a handshake, which are the things we really need. That's not going to happen. More than that, I don't want a bunch of gifts just because people feel obligated to get us things. It's not Christmas, after all, and we're not royalty -- we're just two normal people getting married.

Rae has apparently taken it upon herself to get us something, though what that something may be, who knows. I told her that it was extremely unnecessary; she's getting gifts from me because she's in my groom's party. The groom's party doesn't give gifts, they receive them; any gifts for us are really not necessary -- the fact that those people are in the wedding is enough of a gift to us. I'd assume the same thing goes for the bridal party as well, though I'm not sure. All of these wedding rules and formalities are weird, strange customs to me.

"Who do you want to be your witness?" Daisy asked me.

"My what?"

"Your witness," she said. "When we sign the marriage license we have to have two witnesses for it."

I shrugged. "Honestly, I don't care, babe."

She gave me a quizzical, shocked look. "You don't care?"

"...no...why would I? Does it matter? Your parents can do it, right?"

"...of course it matters," she said, then explained how her sisters had specifically asked certain people to be there and be their witnesses, and how she'd been one of the witnesses for one of them.

"I...I really just don't care, love," I said. "It makes absolutely no difference to me who does it. I've given it no thought whatsoever and have no desires for anyone specific to do it."

This is true. I really don't care. It doesn't matter to me in the least as long as it's done. People put so much metaphorical weight into these little rituals that have absolutely no meaning to me or any bearing on anything real. One of our nieces or nephews could be our witness, for all it matters to me. It's a signature on a piece of paper. It doesn't change anything by who does it. If I could get away with it, I'd sign it myself and write "Santa Claus" or "Dr. Ben Dover." I'm pretty sure nobody ever looks at it or cares -- it's just another piece of paperwork that gets filed away in a cabinet somewhere.

"You should ask your mother to do it," she said.

"Okay, well, if she wants to, she can. I'm fine with that," I said. "Or my dad. Or Rae. Or Parker. Or anyone. Whatever works."

Again, so much ritual, so much pomp and circumstance.

I love Daisy. I love her very, very much. And I'm glad that she's done this metaphorical dance before with her sisters and friends who have gotten married over the years, so she knows everything that has to be done and everything that must take place in a specific order. But it's all news to me. It's all completely alien, completely foreign. I'm along for the ride here; I do what she tells me to do.

I do think it is incredibly amusing that not a single one of my friends has asked me if we're doing a prenuptial agreement. We're not, obviously, because it's me and Daisy and I don't think anything could make us want to divorce, but I think it's amusing that nobody's asked about it. Yes, I know that most of my friends aren't as blunt and to-the-point as I am, but I think the larger part of it is that for those of them who have met Daisy, have seen us together, or know her well, they also know that it would be pointless to ask because they can tell we're really perfect for each other. I don't know how many times over the course of the past, oh, year or so that I've been told something along the lines of "good lord, you two really are the perfect couple." It's more than I can count on one hand, I'll say that. The actual subject of a prenup has come up between me and Daisy -- over the course of the past almost two years we've been together -- only once or twice, and we both agreed that it was unnecessary.

Besides, neither of us have anything of value to split anyhow...not that I think it would matter if we did.

Tonight comes more boxing and packing, mostly of large things that need large boxes. I have to go out into the garage and get another large box for the extra bedsheets and blankets, as well as the air mattress I have, so that I can get those packed up and ready to throw onto the truck...which I have yet to book as I am low on money right now. When I'm at Walmart next, I'll need to get as many large boxes as I can, get another roll of duct tape for said boxes (as boxing things this weekend used up most of the roll I had), as well as a large bag of non-clumping cat litter to soak up the oil spots from the car in my garage and driveway. I'll also need to stock up on essentials once more, though thankfully I can wait to do most of that stuff for another several days, I'm guessing. This probably means that (once more) I will be doing a shopping trip on Wednesday night after my 210 students' presentations finish, and will be doing another smaller one next weekend to get more boxes -- since I don't need them yet.

It's humid and stuffy today; it rained lightly for a while this afternoon, but the storms they were calling for haven't yet actually rolled in (and I don't think they will, honestly, unless some of them start firing up soon). Even if they do, I hope there's no large hail, as I can't pull the car into the garage with a large stack of broken-down boxes in there waiting to be used.