Bad Weekends

It has not been a good weekend.

It can't be helped, really; some things just happen, some things just spiral and compound upon one another and get worse and worse; other things stagnate and become rotten; still other things don't change at all and just suck.

The family dog died yesterday. I mentioned before here in the blog that he was fifteen years old and had a massive, inoperable tumor on his head and jaw, and that the vets said he would have to take it day to day; they'd keep him medicated on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, but that the poor old guy probably wouldn't make it much longer. He made it for over another month after that prognosis; my mother told me that he'd lost a lot of weight and that some days he was better than others; some days he'd eat a lot, some days he wouldn't, etc., but apparently on Thursday night he was having difficulty breathing, and by that point they knew it was pretty much the end. My mother told me that they were taking him to the vet yesterday morning because of the breathing issue, and last night she updated me to tell me that he didn't make it.

No, I don't know the details of any of it; I didn't ask. I don't know what "he didn't make it" meant aside from the fact that he'd died; it could've meant that he didn't make it to the vet or that he didn't make it home or anything along those lines. All I asked is what they were planning to do with him, or if that had already been "taken care of." She didn't say. That may sound like a strange question, but when our last dog died in 2008 (also after I'd already moved out), they took her to a special crematorium, and her ashes are still in a very pretty box in the bathroom closet back home. Every time I visit home, when I need to open the closet door for something (to get a roll of toilet paper or a clean towel out, for instance), I always say hi to her.

To understand the gravitas of the scenario, though, is difficult for anyone who doesn't know me and my family really well; that dog was my mother's baby. There was a long-running joke for years that she loved that dog more than she loved me or my dad, and there was probably more truth to it than joke. My mother and I picked him up on a whim from a pet store in Pittsburgh on July 5, 1998 -- when we were still living in Morgantown, even, before moving up on top of the mountain -- and really, as strange as it sounds, that was the first time I became a "father figure" of sorts to another living creature. Suddenly I had this little furball running around the house that I had to take care of and feed and watch and nurture every single day. He was a furball who would steal your sandwich when you weren't looking and would run off with it. He was a furball who would bash his head into doors over and over until we opened them and let him in (or out). He was a furball who would take off running down the street every single morning after I went to school but before my mother went to work, when she was taking him out to pee before she left. He was a furball who would hear me put my key in the door when I came home from school and would repeatedly yip in excitement until I came upstairs to let him out of his box, as we couldn't leave him alone in the house all day when he was just a puppy.

He was the furball who stood and stared at me while peeing on my bedroom floor as Bill Clinton gave his famous "Indeed I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate" speech on national television. I'll always remember that.

He was the furball who, on the first night we were in the house on top of the mountain and I had to keep him in my room while furniture was being brought in, looked around disdainfully, jumped up on my bed, and took a giant shit.

In his later years, he was the older, fatter furball who laid on his big pillow-soft bed in the corner of the dining room and snored so loudly I could hear him in my room thirty feet away, with my door closed, when I came to visit. If he slept in my room with me when I was visiting (for my room really became his room once I moved out), he did the same thing -- keeping me awake and/or disrupting my sleep on many occasions. I didn't mind. That's who he was. 

Yep. That's who he was. And he will be missed.

My parents, obviously, are taking it pretty hard; my mother is taking it really hard, even though she knew it was coming for a long time. My parents still have their three cats, yes, but the dog...he was the prince of the household. And he was treated as such for over fifteen years.

Again, I'm not asking questions; if my mother wants to talk about it, she will. If not, I'm not going to press her on it.

I'm taking it okay, I guess. I mean, I knew he was in bad shape; he wasn't incredibly healthy when I was home at Christmas last year. Regardless, it's much like the situation with my sister, albeit on a smaller, furrier scale -- dead or alive, there's nothing I can do about it 1,000 miles away. That's just the facts. I can care all I want, I can mourn in my own way for the dog or for my sister, but the reality is that neither situation would be different were I there.

Speaking of sisters, my oldest one who I messaged telling her I'd like to talk to her...oh, over a month ago now? She never got back to me. I don't know if it slipped her mind, or what, but again, I'm not going to bug her about it. I can see by her (relatively few) posts on Facebook that she's trying to piece her life back together and move onward as normally as she can, and I admire her for that. As for the rest of that side of the family, communication with them has returned to normal -- which means translation: nobody talks to me unless someone is dead, but they love me and at least care that I exist. Well, except for my father and stepmother, of course.

I am trying to keep my own life somewhat normal, though that's sometimes hard to do. I end my grace period on my student loans tomorrow, and with that will come some sort of change to my account on the servicer's site, I would imagine. I haven't heard anything else from them aside from that automated email -- which wasn't incredibly helpful, of course -- and the clock is now ticking on what can be done to get forbearance granted before the day my first payment would be due -- sometime around finals week. I will log on to the site tomorrow and will see what it says, and if nothing else is helpful I will complete, print, and fax off another (updated) forbearance request to them on Monday from the English department's office, and hope that one gets accepted. If it gets kicked back to me again, I will have to get someone there on the phone, immediately, and see what the hell is going on in their systems, because (again) I very readily qualify for forbearance since I'm so poor.

"If they give you any shit," Parker told me, "let me know. I've got some people you can talk to to get it sorted out."

Ah, Parker. Always the helpful one.

Again, there's little I can do one way or the other but wait on paperwork here and there. In 2013, there should be some way all of this can be done easily and with little issue without having to worry about papers, phones, or faxes. But then I am reminded that this is a loan servicer affiliated with the government (or even part of it; who knows) and I'm brought back to reality.

This morning, almost as soon as I got up, I received a message from Daisy, who was still awake after work -- one of the stones fell out of her engagement ring, and it's now gone. It wasn't the big stone, mind you, but one of the little ones along the sides, which are so deep-set in the ring that it's less noticeable. Still, it's not good, and she was distraught about it. So was I. She loves her ring; I picked it out especially for her from a selection of a lot of different ones, but I'll also be the first to admit that it's not like I spent thousands of dollars on it, or anything.

"I can get you another one; that's not a problem," I said. "Either the same one or a different one."

I still have the order saved in my Amazon history, and the same ring is still available. The problem is that it's only made up to a certain size, and Daisy's finger is one size bigger than that -- which is why she had to get it resized shortly after our engagement. You can see even in the photo that it's a bit tight on her finger.

"I don't want another one," she said. "This one is special to me. It's the ring you proposed with. It's got sentimental value."

"But it's just an object," I told her. "It's a thing. The actual love it represents is what's important."

She knows that, of course.

I'm not ashamed to say that my own wedding ring was purchased many months ago; it's brushed stainless steel (which I love) and it was very, very cheap on Amazon. I'm also not ashamed to say that I'm probably going to order several duplicates of it to keep in storage in case I, like an idiot, lose the primary one. Which, eventually, I probably will.

"I can do that for you too if you want, babe," I said. "Get you, like, three or four identical copies of your ring in case more stones fall out in that one, or the metal cracks/breaks where it was resized, etc."

She told me that eventually that will probably happen, by the way. When they resized it, they had to do it twice because they screwed it up the first time. It weakened the metal, and she's sure that it'll crack or break eventually.

"If I'm going to get another one," she said, "I don't want it to be the same one if it's going to have the same problems. I want it to be something that will last."

"Well, the problem with that is that rings that will 'last' tend to be really expensive, and your fiance is really, really poor."

I'm not cheap (well, I am, but not because of this), but yeah, when it comes to jewelry, this is generally the case. We looked at different rings at varying price levels for an hour or so. She didn't like any of them, even though most of them were very similar to the one she has -- I looked specifically for similar rings.

She showed me the wedding ring she picked out for herself a while back; she loves it, I think it's goofy/gaudy/not solid enough/etc, but it's her ring and she can wear whatever she wants, obviously.

We eventually decided to worry about fixing or replacing her ring later. If I can find something to replace it with, or find a way to replace the stone and hold the original ring together longer, I will, but right now it's not a huge priority for either of us. She later told me that she wants to research whether or not she can get replacement stones, little tiny ones, and stick one in there with a hot glue gun or something -- which would work well enough, I suppose.

To get out of the house this afternoon after WVU's miserable, deplorable loss to KU's godawful football team, I went over to the Dollar Tree. I needed to go anyway; I make a trip over there about once a month, and I get a lot of my stuff there -- trash bags, dish detergent/laundry detergent, razors, deodorant, shampoo, etc. I don't have a lot of money to spend right now as we go into the holiday season, so I put the $46 trip on my Amazon Visa card, which I paid off completely last week. I also needed to get my mind off of things -- between the terrible football game, the ring, the dog dying, and the loans stuff, I needed to do something to occupy myself that didn't involve me sitting around the house and staring at the computer screen, or sitting on the couch staring off into space with more football playing in the background while slowly getting more stressed out and frazzled.

The shelves there in many places were almost bare; I overheard the workers talking about not getting another truck in until Wednesday night, and that it was a big one. Well, I could see that from the shelves. I was able to get most of what I needed and came home.

I cooked and ate a small dinner in silence, in the dark, my mind not really focusing on anything, but also trying to process everything in the world all at the same time. Sadie joined me on the couch, as she's my shadow and has to be everywhere I am. I just let my head lean back against the arm of the couch and stared at the ceiling. So much going on, so little time.

The Shivers

Fall semester: day sixty-five

I've been unnaturally cold for the past two days. I can't really explain why. Most of the day on West campus yesterday -- especially when I went outside to smoke -- I was trembling with chills, chattering teeth, shivering, etc.


I tend to get cold a lot more easily when I'm ill or sleep-deprived, but I slept ten hours last night, and the illness I suffered at the beginning of the week was, apparently, nothing more than a 24-hour bug of some kind (or, again, mild food poisoning). After Tuesday morning, I felt fine and was no longer dizzy. So, I'd slept. I'd eaten yesterday -- energy bars, coffee, and tea. I wasn't ill. There was no reason for me to feel unnaturally cold. Yet there I was, shaking and shivering. I am, of course, getting burnt out and worn down; I always do at the end of the semester. I am quite glad that it's the weekend (at least for me) so that I don't have to set my alarm and can wake up whenever I feel like it. It always feels as if I have something else to do, and usually that's the case -- there's no true peace for me anymore at this time of the semester. Assignments are coming in one after another, and there's always a mountain of papers to grade, assign, collect and grade again, etc.

My 210 class isn't exactly happy with me. They've had six assignments thus far, and the first five were pretty easy. The latest one, the Resume/Cover Letter (which I mentioned here before) I graded today, and many of them did quite poorly on it. Consequently, they'll now have to use their one allowed rewrite on it if they want to do well on it...at the same time they're also producing their mammoth, 12-to-18-page (average) final assignment of the semester, their Proposal/Grant Request. In a normal semester that wasn't an 8-week course, they'd have the better part of a month to do this. In a course that's 8 weeks long, when I'm out of town for Thanksgiving week and then when we return it's the last week of class, that simply isn't possible. And they're not too happy about that.

"I don't like it either," I told them last night, "but I have to follow the lesson plans the way the department has them set up in order to fit all the assignments in. Keep in mind that I have to grade twenty 12-to-18-page reports as well; you're not the only ones working here."

This is true; I don't necessarily care if they take sympathy on me or not, but I do feel it for them. It's really shitty the way the class runs because of this schedule -- it's fine for the smaller assignments, but for the really long and intricate ones it doesn't change, and it's not like I can extend deadlines or change around timeframes when the schedule is set by the university. Can I tweak lesson plans? Yes. I've had to do that a lot when it comes to this class. Can I outright delete assignments or magically add another few weeks to the course calendar? No, no I cannot.

"Look at it this way," I said. "If you were taking the sixteen-week version of the class, this Proposal/Grant Request assignment would be two different assignments -- as it is originally set up in the workbook -- and each of them would be 10-15 pages minimum. So, you're getting off a little lighter than other 210 students would."

This is also true. It may not make them feel better, but it's true. The workload for 210 is heavier than many of the grad school courses I took -- heavier than 700-and-800-level courses. That's not a joke. I'm doing the best I can with it and I'm trying to help them every step of the way on it to make it as easy as possible for them. I think most of them recognize that, but I also know that they don't necessarily like it, which I can't really help. It's the luck of the draw, good or bad, and it's the "luck" of the fall semester's scheduling. Taking a second-8-weeks class is brutal.

I've tried to schedule things as gingerly as possible, but again, there's not a whole lot of time to do it. As a result, I introduced that massive assignment three nights ago, and I collect drafts of it -- from everyone -- on Tuesday. They can choose whether or not they want me to keep the draft and grade it as their final copy, or if they'll keep it themselves and turn it in two days later on next Thursday after they've made more finalized corrections and additions. The object here is to give them a rewrite on it without them actually doing a rewrite, and for them to have the best copy possible to turn in whenever they do give me a copy to grade. The bonus for turning it in early is that I won't take off for any errors they find and fix and/or any other corrections they make in peer-review during Tuesday's class, and they'll get my helpful pointers on how to shorten it and condense it down to ten minutes at most for their Oral Presentations...which they immediately start doing as soon as we get back from Thanksgiving. If they wait to turn it in next Thursday, they're on their own for edits and the like, and they won't get my feedback on their finished assignments until I give their graded copies back. Copies which they can't rewrite anyway, because they'll be doing Oral Presentations on them and then the class will end.

So, yeah. It's a shitty situation all around, but I'm trying to give them as many concessions as possible, and help them out as much as possible. I don't want to see any of my students fail the course. Most of them are doing pretty well, with the exceptions of the awful Resumes/Cover Letters that they'll more than likely rewrite and fix up over the weekend. Most of them just had a lot of careless mistakes -- spelling errors, missing dates, missing job experience, strange organization, or they were just left unfinished. 700 out of 1000 points have now been given out in the class -- the Proposal/Grant Request is 150, their Oral Presentation 100, and their attendance/participation is 50. The grading scale is pretty simple. It also doesn't leave any room for error. I've given out a total of 25 bonus points over the semester for people who dressed up for Halloween and who went to the Writing Center as well, so it's not like I'm not trying to be nice and helpful.

In contrast, my 011 and 101 classes are clicking along pretty smoothly. I collect another set of papers in my 011 class on Monday, and then we cover as much MLA stuff as possible and do workshopping in my 101 class this coming week.

I love teaching all three classes; really, I do. I love teaching in general, which you may already know, but I didn't know if I'd like the 011 and 210 since I'd never taught them before. I do. They're all enjoyable classes, and I just want to see everyone succeed. That's totally all I'm looking for in my classes. If my students show up and do the work, I give them every chance possible for them to be successful, and most of them rise to the occasion.

Today, the MFA students who graduate in December took their comps, including a few close friends. I feel for them, I really do; I know how stressful that is. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable. I did not like it. And I especially didn't like waiting for three weeks (or however long it was) before I found out my results. My own comps weren't as bad as I expected them to be, but they were by no means easy or pleasurable to get through. But, again, keep in mind that there have only been two or three students over the course of the past ten years or more who have failed their comps, and ten or more students take them every semester. Parker's comps, the MA comps, are a week from today -- the MAs do it on a different date than the MFAs -- and they're the reason he and I aren't going to the KU/WVU football game tomorrow as we'd originally planned earlier this fall. It can't be helped, really; I don't blame him. Parker, for as incredibly, ludicrously intelligent as he is, still gets stressed and obsessive about studying for comps just like the rest of us did/do. Again, I've been there -- I wasn't going to tell him to snap out of it or anything like that, because I know what it's like. I've let him remain laser-focused and have tried not to bother him much over the course of the past week or so, as he holes up and prepares -- only coming out of his office to teach and go home, still dressed to the nines but now more often unshaven than not. I totally feel for him, as well as for the MFAs who took theirs today.

I haven't heard anything else about my loans and forbearance; I got what appears to be an automated email response from the loan servicer because I sent off that email, but that's about it. As it is now Friday night (and thus, past the "two business days" they mentioned it would take to get back to me, I'm guessing that their automated response was my response, which really pisses me off, as I asked specific questions that I wanted a human to answer. I suppose I'm going to wait until I exit my grace period on Sunday and see what happens then (they'll tell me more info after that, almost guaranteed) and weigh my options on what to do. If nothing else, I can redo the forbearance paperwork and fax it in, again, on Monday or Wednesday. The English department does have a working fax machine that gets used pretty often, apparently, and the administrators told me it would be fine for me to use it. Upon telling my mother my dilemma (and her reading my last post here), she assured me that it'll get sorted out one way or another -- her way of telling me not to stress out about it. I just have to wait, but waiting (of course) isn't helping my stress levels; especially not when I have to wait yet another week before I get my next paycheck, when I'll have more bills coming in over the course of the next few days, and when I had to do my grocery shopping last night on the way home just so that I had enough food in the house that was different to eat over the next week or so.

In reality, this weekend is much like any other -- I have lesson planning and chores to do, as always, and football, kitty-time, and Daisy-time will be involved. I do, however, feel somewhat more detached from reality than I've been in a long time. My brain is basically fried. I'm forgetting the simplest things, like things I have to grade or what books to take with me to class. I've caught myself driving to campus while asking, aloud, what day it is, and if I'm sure I'm driving to the right campus at the right time to teach. In my sleep, my dreams are wildly erratic and crazy; things that are charged with tension and oddities, yet things I can never remember more than two or three minutes after waking up. The dreams seem stronger when I take the sleeping pills (if I do) on Monday and Wednesday nights. Underneath the surface of everything, I'm a mess who's barely holding everything together, but trying desperately to do so. I find myself thinking fatalistic thoughts, such as "all it would take would be one little thing to go wrong -- a blown part on my car, a paycheck that got screwed up, a bill lost in the mail -- to make everything crash down around me and end my life as I know it." The sad part is that's true. I've been living so long on mediocre luck, guts, and gumption that if something were to go wrong, I don't know if I could deal with it. I can never think completely straight, or think completely rationally, when I have a million things going on -- and between now and December 13 it's all only going to get worse as we rush headlong into the end of the semester and finals week. I have but eight teaching days left spread over my three classes, really -- next week and the last week of classes. Eight days to collect five different sets of papers, grade them, give a final, grade it, and then sit in for and grade Oral Presentations. It's insane. No wonder I'm beginning to go gray at my temples (no, that's not a joke; it's there).

There are twenty students in that 210 class, as mentioned before. They're all giving those Oral Presentations during the last week of classes. The class is scheduled to run from 7:20 to 10, which means that if it were to run the full time on the first night of that week, we could fit in sixteen of the twenty presentations if they were a full ten minutes each. Some may be a few minutes shorter, some may be a few minutes longer. This means, conceivably, we could get through all of them on the night of the 3rd, and wouldn't have to come back in the night of the 5th (since the class would be over), even if those who absolutely needed to go home left at 10 and the rest of us stayed late to finish them up, it would be so much better than to drag everyone back in there for an extra night two days later -- requiring me to stay on campus on that day for eight hours after I give my 101 students' final exam but before being in class for twenty or thirty minutes tops for the last three or four of them. Get what I'm saying here? I'd really, really like to be able to go home after my 101 students' exam is finished at 11:05 AM instead of sticking around until 9PM because four or five students need to present their reports to the class...a class which, for the rest of them who have already presented, is already over -- they'd basically be coming in against their wills just so that they're not counted absent.

I worked it into the assignment that we'll indeed come in on the 5th to finish up if we have to, that it's not optional if we need to do it, but I'm going to check and see how late the building will remain open after my class is scheduled to end at 10, and how long, exactly, these presentations will run. If I'm lucky, we may get to start class early and hit the ground running -- I don't think there are any classes in there before mine, and if there are, they're done well before 6:40 or so (I've been in there around that time setting up things). I'll check with the front office to see what the schedule is like in there during that week. I've also made it very clear in the assignment that if they skip class on the presentation day, that's on them -- they may not (and probably won't) get another shot and/or time to do it during class hours, and to get the points would have to come to my office hours either on main campus on Wednesday that week, or after I give my 101 final on West campus (it ends, again, at 11:05 AM) to give me their presentation in person.

Basically, I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for all of them to get done that first night if I can. It's so much easier for everyone involved, even if it means that class starts a little early and/or ends a little late. I know how students think -- nobody's going to want to come in on that second night of class if they can possibly avoid it, especially as it's the last day of the semester.

So, that's really what's going on in my life right now. I will, of course, update you with anything else as it comes in.

Denied

Fall semester: day sixty-three

I received a letter in the mail last night that denied forbearance on my loans.

This pissed me off. Mainly because there's no real reason why.

I logged onto the loan servicer's website to see if I could get an explanation. I am still in my "grace" period, of course -- at least for the next five days -- and my first payment isn't due to them until (apparently) December 11, according to the statement I received from them late last month. My balance on my account, therefore, still reads $0.00 owed to them, since I'm still in grace. Try as I might, I couldn't find anything else in my account that said why I would have been denied forbearance unless they're basing it on the fact that I currently have no balance due yet because I am still in grace.

I mean, all of my loan amounts are on there; it's not like they don't know I owe them money. I was trying to be proactive, but maybe I acted too soon.

One way or the other, I had to figure this out and get some answers someplace, so I clicked the "contact us" link, which allowed me to type out a detailed email to them. Here is what I wrote, sent to the "Payments" people (the closest approximation reasonable):

Hi there. I'm hoping I'm sending this to the right department, so bear with me if I am not. I am currently in grace for my student loans until 11/17/2013. Last month, I requested forbearance of a year, as I am currently not employed what would be considered full time; I am an adjunct professor teaching at [University.] I received a statement in the mail on 10/22/13 that said my grace period ends on 11/17/2013, which I knew, and that my first payment on my loans would be $524.40 and due on 12/11/2013. I mailed you folks the forbearance paperwork and my latest pay stub from [University], which states that I make $617.02 every two weeks after taxes, for a combined total of $1234.04 every month. In order to receive forbearance, my monthly student loan payment would need to be more than 20% of my monthly income. At a loan payment of $524.40, that would be 42.49% of my monthly income, well over the amount necessary to receive forbearance. Even taking gross pay before taxes into account ($787.50 every two weeks), the $524.40 loan payment would still be 33.29% of my monthly income -- again well over the 20% needed to receive forbearance. Today, I got a letter in the mail that said my forbearance had been denied for the reason that "Your total monthly payment on your eligible student loan(s) is not equal to or greater than 20% of your total monthly gross income." Again, before taxes, my monthly gross income would be $1575.00, and the $524.40 monthly loan payment would still be 33.29% of that. My question is, is the reason I've not been granted forbearance yet is because I'm still in grace (for the next five days, anyway)? If so, I would like to know how this situation can be rectified so that I can indeed qualify for forbearance when it does apply to me once my grace period ends on 11/17.

Thank you for any help or information you can give.

[Me]

As I was writing that email -- as calmly as possible, I might add -- I'm pretty sure I sort of answered my own question, and have a good idea of what they'll reply -- I'm in grace, obviously. My grace period hasn't yet ended, so until it does, the balance owed is $0.00. If that's what shows up when they run my scans for forbearance, obviously it's going to be denied because right now, I don't owe them anything, and therefore my payment isn't 20% or more than my monthly income.

I am apparently to wait up to two business days for a reply, at which point they'll probably tell me that's the reason why and that I'll have to, once more, submit all the paperwork all over again before they'll approve it. The shitty thing is that this is coming at the worst possible time of the year for me, a time when I won't have access to the office at school, nor will I have access to my printer to print out all that shit again, change the dates on it, and mail it right after my grace period ends unless I do it this weekend, right at the date that it ends on the 17th (Sunday), since surprise! Thanksgiving is coming up and I won't be here in Kansas for a few days, nor will I be on either campus for the span of eleven days or so.

If that's the overall issue, I'll be happy to print out another set of forms and send them along, especially if it rectifies the problem. That monthly loan payment is sixty cents less per month than my rent is. There's absolutely no way I could pay that right now, not unless I magically land a job that pays me about 10x more per year than I make now, or Daisy and I hit the lottery tomorrow. I'm more likely to be killed by a flying cow turd than for either of those things to happen.

By the way, I didn't change those figures for the sake of this blog post -- that is exactly how little I get paid as an English professor, in case you ever wondered. And that's teaching three classes per semester, too.

"If that's what you have to do, instead of mailing them again, fax it to them," Daisy told me.

"It's 2013," I said. "Who has a fax machine?"

"...everyone," she said. "I have one at my office."

"...you work in telecommunications, darling, of course you have a fax machine there."

"There was one at my old job too, and my parents have one...I'm sure the department has one somewhere."

They probably do; I'm not entirely sure, as I can't recall a time when I've ever seen someone use one for anything up there.

Daisy's old job, by the way, was in a credit union, and her father has worked in corporate IT for as long as I've been alive. There used to be a fax machine in the grocery store in which I worked in Missouri, because people who needed to fax something were charged so many cents per page or what-have-you.





Look, I'll do everything I need to do to get that forbearance granted; again, it's not like I make too much to qualify for it. But this is just one more thing added on top of an already overflowing pile of shit to do, a pile that keeps getting larger as the month of November wears on. I was hoping that by sending the form early enough, I would be able to avoid all of the hassle of it, but apparently not. The grace period is the only reason I can think of why it kicked it back at me. I literally make enough to pay the bills and put gas in the car, and that's about it. Monetarily, as you see above, I am waaaaay overqualified to get it -- not the opposite.

"Grace didn't affect my forbearance, though," Daisy told me. "Though it could be because we have different lenders."

We do. Hers is through some company I've never heard of.

"Well, that's literally the only thing I can think of that would possibly stop me from getting it granted right now," I said. "I mean, they know how much I owe. They know what I get paid. It's all out there. They have every bit of that information on the forms I sent in."

"Maybe it's human error then," she said. "Maybe they accidentally put in that you're getting paid that much every week and not every two weeks. Would that mean you wouldn't qualify then?"

"Probably," I said.

I later did the math; after taxes, yes, I would still qualify at 21%. Before taxes -- gross income, overall, I wouldn't, if they put it in that way due to human error. Daisy's right; it's at least possible they screwed it up that way somehow -- even though it says on the form I mailed (I still have a copy of it) that I get $1733.33 a month, or about $800 every two weeks gross -- which is pretty close, actually.

Regardless, I now have two business days to dwell on it and figure out what's gone wrong. In my mind, however, thinking logically, unless they're going off the grace period when I owe nothing, or unless there's been some human error they'll rectify when they receive that email and review my account...I really, really can't think of anything else it could possibly be. I just don't make enough money to not qualify for it. I just don't. It's all there in black and white, really. It's not like I'm lying about it, it's not like I'm trying to trick anyone with anything -- it's pretty straightforward.

"It'll all get fixed," Daisy said, doing her best to soothe me. "It'll all get worked out."

I mean, I know it will somehow, she's right, but...right now it's a huge ball of stress that I absolutely don't need. I sent the paperwork early so that I could be done with it and so that I didn't have to worry about it anymore. All I wanted was for it to be taken care of so that I didn't have to somehow worry about paying a huge bill that I do not have the money to pay. Like, sorry, can't pay it. I don't have the money to pay it. They know I don't have the money to pay it, and they're supposed to fix that for me by giving me forbearance. That's what happens for poor people.

After sleeping on it last night, I'm not as stressed out about it or nervous as I was when I got home to that news after working a twelve-hour teaching day, but obviously it wasn't something I wanted to come home to. It'll get worked out one way or another, because it's not like there's some weird roadblock stopping me from getting it (or at least there shouldn't be), so eh. Worst-case scenario and it takes me past the payment due date to get forbearance granted? I can put the first payment on my Discover card while everything gets sorted out, a card which I've never used and have saved for emergencies such as this (it's also the card with the highest limit). Regardless, there's little I can do about it but wait, now, since I sent that inquiry email last night. I'll check when I get to campus today to see if there's a fax machine in the department somewhere that I could use on, say, Monday, if I have to send all of that paperwork in again. At least it'll get there quickly if I do that, and not through the slow-as-piss mail system.

I also can't get too stressed out about it anyhow because I have way too much other shit going on right now that I have to take care of for my classes and at home. I have all sorts of things to take care of, including three different sets of papers I either have now or will be collecting over the course of the next seven days. This morning it is also nineteen degrees outside, which is the coldest morning of the fall by far. It's supposed to reach the mid-50s today, and be in the 70s again by Saturday, but that's not helping my comfort levels now and it's certainly not going to help my car get started and warmed up this morning on my drive to campus. My allergies, not to be outdone, are going absolutely bugshit over this weather. My sinuses are killing me, and I've blown my nose probably thirty times over the course of the past hour.

On that note, I have to leave the house in 25 minutes, and I'm still sitting here in my bathrobe and slippers. I will update you folks on whatever I find out, of course.

Vertigo'd

Fall semester: day sixty-two

Well, it's happened. I am officially sick.

Generally, I have a pretty decent immune system. I've always had a pretty decent immune system, despite the fact that I treat my body terribly -- I eat terrible food, I smoke, I drink gallons of coffee, and I tend to not get a lot of sleep most of the time during the semester. Despite this, I tend to take vitamins when I remember to do so, I very rarely drink alcohol, and I don't really get out much aside from driving to/from campus to teach my classes. I'm not generally put into a lot of situations where I'd be around sick people, so to speak, so I don't get sick that often. My average is about once a year, and most of the time that involves an ear/sinus infection brought on by allergies, and not necessarily a virus from someone else. I used to get sick like clockwork in October and late January/early February, though I've been able to stave that off for the most part over the past few years.

I felt a bit odd all day on Sunday. Not sick, just odd. I had nausea and felt queasy, and I was tired and lethargic all day long. This is generally par for the course for me on a weekend, especially if I was up late on Saturday night (I was; I had to create lesson plans and handouts for this week). I tried to go to bed early on Sunday night, as I needed to get up at 5 yesterday morning to get ready to go in to teach.

At 1AM, I woke up and was feeling really, really ill. Like, cold-sweats ill. I was also dizzy. This was new. I came upstairs thinking I was going to vomit, because that's what it felt like. I didn't vomit, but...well...let's just say I was in the bathroom for half an hour or more. I was sick. It was not pleasant.

I was finally able to go back to bed and sleep, though the dizziness didn't subside even when I laid back down. I've found that even when I'm more sick than not, usually going to sleep will help quite a bit; by the time I wake up, most of the time, I feel normal again. When my alarm went off at 5, I got up and almost fell over -- the slight dizziness had transformed into full-blown crazy vertigo, and had not gone away in my sleep but had intensified dramatically. Of course, I was still feeling queasy and ill, which continued in the bathroom no less than three times in the span of 90 minutes or so.

I had a choice at that point -- I could either cancel my class for the day and go back to bed, or I could take some Tums and a "stop pooping" pill and power through it, come back home, and crash (as is customary for me on Monday afternoons anyhow). As I have a lot to cover in my classes between now and Thanksgiving, cancelling class for a mild sickness that I can function through, especially with some medicines, is out of the question no matter how much I desperately wanted to go back to sleep. I felt like fried hell, but there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't justify cancelling class enough to do it -- especially not with my students already getting Thanksgiving week off. So, I got dressed and went in.

It was bad enough trying to teach when I was feeling ill, of course, but I did it. I was fine. When I got to school, one of my friends gave me two cups of peppermint tea, which helped soothe my stomach a little bit, but my vertigo didn't go away at all -- in fact, it felt worse. I almost fell over a few times because it was really hard to keep my balance unless I was leaning against something or sitting down, and sudden movements made the room spin. It was this vertigo that let me know that this wasn't run-of-the-mill stomach issues; something was wrong, something was making me sick. When I've had food poisoning in the past, occasionally it has been accompanied by this sort of dizziness and vertigo. What was worse was that I hadn't eaten anything different or out of the ordinary compared to my normal diet -- my dinner on Sunday night was a sandwich and some curry couscous, which I've made many times before. On Saturday I made burgers for football, which yes, were cooked perfectly fine and completely through, and had a beer with them. Nothing out of the ordinary for me. When I came home yesterday I made the same sandwich I'd had before, with no further ill effects, so really, I have no clue what it is or what's causing it. It is, perhaps, one of those 24-hour stomach bugs.

I taught my class and drove home, and I was feeling much better than before physically, but was still really, really dizzy -- which, in turn, kept me feeling queasy. I talked to Daisy for a bit on Skype; she'd stayed awake until I got home to make sure I was okay, and then around 4PM I went downstairs and went to bed. I got up at 3:30 this morning to find that yes, I still had my dizziness and vertigo, but it was much less powerful than before. Internally, I felt (and still feel) mostly fine.

So what is/was it? No clue. I mean, I'm okay -- I can function normally with no real issues, and most of the dizziness has worn off now that I've been awake for a while, but I still have a low-level icky-ness that I can't really shake. It's not something I like, obviously, but I can deal with it. It's not going to stop me from teaching today, or spending the twelve hours on West campus that I need to spend there.

It is, however, really cold. Yesterday it was cloudy and 60 degrees in the morning, but the temperature dropped like a stone in the afternoon hours. It was barely 40 when I went to bed, and right now it's 28 with a wind chill of 12. Twelve. It was snowing on Daisy yesterday in Omaha (according to the radar) when it was still 60 here. My car tends to like the cold for the most part, though such a rapid drop so fast may affect my ability to get her started and warmed up this morning -- and I may have to scrape ice off the back glass before I drive down south this morning in a few hours.

As for other stuff going on? Not a whole lot, really. When I got paid on Friday, I went shopping on Saturday and paid the bills I had (credit card and water bills), and ordered more cat food and other small things on Amazon because it's cheaper than getting it in the store, and now I'm back to almost where I was before I got paid. That's okay, I suppose. I get paid my next check on Black Friday, and can wait until then before I need to do anything else with my money (such as pay the rent again). Of course, since yesterday was Veterans' Day, the bills I paid won't even go out in the mail until today...yet I still received my Amazon stuff from UPS yesterday. UPS delivers on "holidays" but the mail doesn't? Ugh. I'll have another package waiting for me when I get home tonight -- Daisy's first Christmas present arrives today, according to the shipment tracking info. It's about time; I ordered it almost three weeks ago now.

The car is running fine; it seemed to love the dry, 60-degree weather yesterday and performed admirably and wonderfully. It will also cross the 230,000 mile mark on Thursday, so fingers crossed and all that. Especially since this is the coldest morning on record since, say, early May, if not late April.

As for my forbearance on my loans, I haven't heard anything yet -- but I'm expecting something in the mail this week to tell me it's been granted, as, well, I kind of need it. Again, my balance due as of my first statement is $0.00, so it's not like they're going to put it into collections or anything if I pay them nothing right now. It's also going to be delayed a day because of the Veterans' Day holiday as well, so, again, all I can do is wait and proverbially twiddle my thumbs.

Today is a huge day in both of my classes, as we're covering a lot of material in each of them -- we're starting the big final projects in each one today. In my 101, that's their final argumentative research paper, and in my 210, that's their Proposal/Request for Grant Funding. There's a lot to cover in those classes today, and both of them will more than likely run the entire time. Well, the 101 will definitely run close to the entire time. The 210 is three hours, and I doubt I'll be in there for all of it, especially because I never am, no matter how much work there is to be done. I had to make copies for my classes yesterday, and probably used almost two full reams of paper on the copy machine at work. 90% of those copies will be distributed in my classes today and covered. So, yeah. Lot of stuff to do today. On the plus side, I'm collecting my 101's papers this morning, so I'll have something to grade this afternoon in my off-hours. It's only today that will be super-crazy-long in my classes; tomorrow and Thursday things quiet down a bit as we get into the lessons and the like for these units we're covering. Still, with next week being the second-to-last week of classes for my students, this month is going very quickly.

I have begun packing my bag for Omaha, despite the fact that I don't leave for there for another two weeks. This is a force of habit of mine; I always pack as early as I can so that I don't have to throw it all together at the last minute. Daisy and I will have a short few days together up there, during which we'll be having our "official engagement photos" taken by her best friend, so part of what I've packed thus far are the dress clothes for that. Daisy's home is warm, yes, so I can wear normal clothing most of the time, but I also have to pack warmer clothing because there I have to go outside to smoke -- and if it's freezing all the time when I'm up there, that's not going to be pleasant at all if all of my clothing is lighter in nature. Today, because it's so cold, I am again dressing in layers; I have a layer of longjohns under a shirt and a fleece jacket in addition to my normal wool peacoat, thick pants, two pairs of boot socks, and my warmest shoes. I don't have much of a choice if I don't want to be freezing all day long. I also get more fatigued when I'm cold, as well. Being warm keeps me awake, ironically, at least when I have something to do.

Now watch there be a massive snowstorm while I'm gone to Omaha, or something like that. Ice storm. Snowstorm. Late-fall tornadoes. Who knows. Remember, that's why I don't like to travel during the holidays -- something like that almost always happens when I do. Last year at Christmas it was two snowstorms in a row, one of which I had to experience three times in the same day -- once here, before I got on the plane, then in Chicago when I changed flights, then again in Pittsburgh when I landed there that afternoon. And, of course, there was the second snowstorm that delayed my flight home by two more days.

And people wonder why I don't like to travel.

On that note, I'm going to continue to get dressed and warm myself up before I have to jump in the car to go to school. When I get home tonight, I will have to force myself to eat something small and then crash out so that I can get up early again tomorrow and do this shit all over again.

Sigh. The semester is ending soon, but not soon enough for my tastes.

Lockdown

Fall semester: day sixty
Payday, finally

With a month left in the semester (counting final exam day for the department) everything is ramping up like crazy. I told Rae earlier this afternoon that I'm swamped and frazzled, or something to that effect, and I am. Yes, as a professor, there is always something to do; it never really stops from August to December, or from January to May, respectively. As we barrel headlong into November this becomes even more of an issue, as due dates and deadlines become critical at the same time you count down your final paychecks (I have three remaining).

There have been a few updates, though, to stuff I've mentioned previously.

For one, I received this email yesterday from the student loan people:

WHY WE ARE CONTACTING YOU
To advise you that we received the forbearance form that you recently sent/faxed to our office.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION YOU MAY FIND HELPFUL

• Please allow up to 10 business days for us to process your request.
• Once we have processed your forbearance, we will send you a letter indicating whether your request has been approved or denied.
• It is important that you continue to make payments until we approve your forbearance request. If your loan(s) is or becomes delinquent, collection activities will occur until the forbearance is approved.
• If you use Direct Debit, our electronic funds transfer service, we will continue to debit payments until your forbearance request is approved. If you wish to suspend a monthly payment, you must contact us at least 3 business days prior to your payment due date.

...okay, good for them, I suppose?

Using the term "recently" is sort of amusing, as I mailed the forms out on October 23. That was sixteen days ago. I know that it didn't take them sixteen days to receive it and for them to open/process it. So, really, anything I have to send to these people, in order to have them actually look at it in a timely fashion, I have to send a month in advance? That sounds shockingly inefficient for people who manage money for the governme....yeah, you know what? I rescind that statement.

Ahem. Anyway.

Okay, well, there's nothing I can do but wait; I know the forbearance will be granted -- I make waaaaay too little for it not to be. And as for that "continue to make payments" thing? That statement I got earlier this week in the mail says my balance due is $0.00. So, if something pops up, I'm holding on to that and I'll fax it to them from work if they try to give me any shit.

Do I want to be in debt? No. Do I hate it? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No, not right now. Not if I want to eat and be able to keep the lights on in the house. Would I rather grow a thick, curled mustache, change my name to Enrico McSpaniard, and become a migrant strawberry picker rather who lives in an RV rather than find some way to eventually pay it off? Yes. At least that would be steady work (probably paid "under the table" and tax-free), compared to worrying about how many classes I'll get to teach every semester, if any, for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of which, I found out yesterday morning via my connections that an English 102 class will be taught next semester on West campus with the same days/times I'm teaching my current 101 class there. I'm guessing this will again be a class that I'm picked to teach, as that's a difficult time/spot to fill, and it is well-known that I love teaching out there. There's another 210 class as well, but it's a 16-week class that's one night a week. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get both and another MW class on main campus, as I have this time around. I haven't a clue, really -- as you know, I won't know what I teach until probably early January. It's possible I'd know sooner, but I doubt it. Not even West campus can pick their instructors; it's just who the department(s) involved assign. Again, all I can do is cross my fingers and wait.

This weekend involves a lot of work for me, actually; I have to create and print out for copies the last two big assignments for my 101 and 210 classes, as they will both begin working on them on Tuesday. I don't have any grading to do (I did all of that yesterday in my off-hours between those classes) but putting together those assignments takes a lot of time and patience, as well as planning. My classes this week will all run the maximum amount of time, for the most part, as there's a lot to cover. We have but two weeks now until Thanksgiving break starts, and only three full weeks of actual classes left. That's not a lot of time to cover everything my students need for their last big assignments.  Amazingly enough, in my 011 class -- with three weeks left in the semester -- they haven't even been given 50% of their points for the class. They've been given 48%. The other 52% of their grade is made in these last few weeks, which makes the course schedule and its grading horribly lopsided. Students who are doing well now may not be by the end of the semester, and that's a terrible way to schedule the course. It's not the lesson plan, though -- that is absolutely wonderful -- it's the way fall semester is set up. It's like that in all of my classes: Easy work, easy work, easy work, midterms, easy work, BAM LOTS OF HARD WORK ALL AT ONCE OMG. That's how it goes in the fall. Many students' grades are either saved or broken in the last few weeks of class.

I was, thankfully, able to set up my final exam in my 101 class to be on the last day of class. None of the students who have that class right before mine have a final in it -- not just not on that day, but at all. And nobody has anything directly after my class that would interfere with them taking the final on that day.  So, during yesterday morning's class, we settled it and I'll be giving the exam that day so that nobody has to come in during finals week. I have to be there all day that day anyhow, since I'll be lording over my 210 students' final oral presentations that night. The "make up" final, if I have any students who need to take one, will either be that afternoon when I'm in my office for hours on end, or on the Monday morning of finals week on main campus in my office there. Barring that, if necessary I could sneak a student into the room where I'll give my 011 final as well at the normal time for that, I suppose. There are, indeed, options.

I'm also lucky enough to get the exam early from the department so that I can give said exam on the last day of class, and if I'm lucky, I may be able to get my grading partner (whoever that may be) to grade them before I have to give the 011 final on the Monday afternoon of finals week, saving some time. Already the wheels are turning in my head. Already I'm trying to plot things out, plan them out, in order to maximize my time and efficiency -- but more than that it's so that I can get in, get out, and get the hell done with this semester.

Today already has been spent recuperating and doing various chores around the house. Daisy will be going back to work tonight, and I got to speak to her briefly last night when I got home, but she's been sleeping since I got up this morning. The muscle relaxer her doctor put her on makes her incredibly tired and feeling loopy, so I don't, and haven't, really bothered today except to tell her I hope she sleeps well. I don't want any messages I send her to wake her up with phone vibrations or anything like that. Smartphone people problems, right? I don't have one myself, as you may know, and I so rarely use my phone anyway that it wouldn't matter if I did. My phone is basically emergency use only, mainly because I so hate telephones, and it costs me money every time I do use it.

That's my actual phone, by the way. In case you were wondering. A Samsung SGH-T139. Yeah. I know the model number. I've had this phone for four years. Some people's marriages don't even last that long.

Ahem.

While we're on the subject of marriages, Daisy is going to see one of her close friends get married next month. It happens during finals week (at the end of it, I think) so I won't be able to go with her as requested, but it marvels me at how fast the wedding itself was put together. This friend got engaged on September 2. The wedding is a little more than a month from now. That, my friends, boggles my mind. Three months to plan a wedding from engagement to ceremony? I couldn't do it. Daisy and I have been engaged for almost nine months now, and I can't wrap my mind around that fast of a turnaround -- to go from not even engaged to married in a quarter of a year. I want to know how that woman has time to sleep with all of the planning and the like that must be going on.

In comparison, Daisy and I have done relatively little planning. We're more focused on the big things that will happen between now and then, such as where I'll be working and when, where Daisy will be working and when, and where we'll be living and when. We don't exactly have a ton of free time to deal with or worry about many of the "little things," so to speak. We have the bigger ones taken care of -- the venue and date, and the registries -- everything else we're playing by ear and planning as we go, because really that's about the only way we can do it. Daisy works strange hours and tends to be constantly swamped, asleep, or sick/in pain with her muscular issues when she's off work, and until at least a month from now, I'm going to be practically buried in student work and will suffer near-constant lack of sleep every other day or so. From mid-December to March or so, we'll be able to focus a bit more time on some of those things as I either won't be working over the Christmas Break, or I won't be busy yet when I do begin teaching again, but I would imagine a large amount of the planning will be semi-last-minute. Getting everyone's flight info and trying to synch as much travel as possible is going to be a logistical nightmare in itself, not to mention everything involving the catering of the wedding (vegan only, and we have to avoid many different types of foods due to allergy issues and gluten intolerances) and attire for most of the people involved in the wedding itself. My side is easy, of course, what with the tuxedo t-shirts, but Daisy's side isn't that simple.

On a related note, my mother asked what I thought they should wear to the wedding. I didn't exactly know how to answer that question. I told her something business casual would do -- it doesn't have to be something supremely dressy; "church clothes" at best, or something along those lines. They could show up in jeans and t-shirts if they wanted to; it makes no real difference to me, really, but I know it makes a difference to Daisy to some extent. Daisy's side is going to be dressy, I would imagine. I'm just not a "traditional" dressy person. In fact, I totally hate getting dressed up. And something rubs me the wrong way about making people get dressed up on my account, even for a wedding. It seems like such a bother. Yes, I take the wedding seriously -- I take it very seriously -- but it's just like any other day, really, except at the end of that day I get to call Daisy my wife. Again, I'm laid back. I don't get worked up over things. In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter what anyone wears?

Anyway. We'll work it all out as we go, I suppose.

It's been very warm for the vast majority of this week; yesterday, it was 29 when I left the house and 65-70 by the afternoon. It's November. We're supposed to have temperatures in the 60s all the way through the middle of next week, then it's supposed to get cold for a few days, then get back up into the mid-fifties and possibly sixties again. Again, November. This either means we're going to get horrific snowstorms all the way through April and May again, or it's going to be warm all winter and we won't get anything at all. It's Kansas, folks -- anything goes here. Here I was, expecting it to be velvet shirt weather.

Yes, I own a velvet shirt. It's green. I only wear it when it's really cold, as it's like a portable furnace otherwise.

Some of my students yesterday asked me about my eye, and if it had healed. I had basically forgotten about it, really. I'm at about 98% of my normal vision in it again, to the point where it's almost hard to notice any real difference between the two eyes except for a very slight blurriness.

On that note, I'm going to make some coffee and get started on my lesson plans while I wait for Daisy to get up for the night.

Perchance to Dream

Fall semester: day fifty-nine

Thanks to my exhaustion and the help offered to me by generic sleeping pills from Walmart, I am actually able to sleep at night now -- and sleep the whole night through if I wish -- on Monday and Wednesday nights. Before, as you may know, I would fall asleep in the afternoon, sleep for five or six hours, then wake up around 11 or 12 and be unable to go back to sleep. With the sleeping pills I no longer have to worry about that. I've been taking them after I've gotten home in the afternoons and have settled in and gotten something to eat, and when I feel tired enough to sleep, I do. And I stay asleep. I'll usually wake up a few times -- if I'm too cold, if the cats are fighting/growling at each other, or if I have to pee -- but generally I can roll back over and go back to sleep with no issue at all. Previously, once something woke me up, I'd be awake and wide awake. I now wake up rested and actually ready to go about my day, instead of a horrible train-wreck of a mess because I haven't slept as much as I need.

On Monday night, I slept for 12.5 hours. Last night, I slept for a little less than 10. Both are equal to or more than double what I was able to sleep before. My ability to actually get sleep now has turned my schedule around and has actually made me more alert and useful during my waking hours. I get a lot more done, I'm not drinking two pots of coffee every day to force myself to stay awake, and there are times when I'm at work where -- dare I say it -- I'm actually bored, which never happened before. When I went to West campus on Tuesday, the weather was incredibly shitty all day long (hard rains and vicious, unstopping cold winds), which would normally make me want to curl up under my coat in my tiny office over there and pass out for a few hours, as I didn't have a whole lot to do. Instead, I spent the afternoon creating the practice final exam for my 101 students, reading the lecture material for my 011 students and highlighting what I wanted to cover in class, and then reading the news archive for a few of the sites I follow, like io9. I didn't even touch my DS or my mp3 player, both of which I'd brought with me to stave off boredom. I'll be doing much the same today, though today I do have a stack of 210 assignments to grade to keep me mostly busy through the afternoon hours.

In other news, there have been a few new developments when it comes to things happening in my life, and most of them have popped up since I last wrote here on Tuesday morning. The first is that (apparently?) I was granted forbearance on my loans.

I say "apparently?" because I got my first statement in the mail on Tuesday night, and while it lists my full amounts of my student loans, my balance due is $0.00 and it plainly reads "this is not a bill" written across it. That day I also got an email about my loans as well that said my loan servicer would be contacting me, that on an income-based repayment plan I could pay as little as $0.00 initially, etc. Neither said anything like "forbearance granted" or anything like that, which is really what I'm looking for, somewhere, in print -- so I don't have to worry about it anymore. I want to know that free and clear, so to speak, but maybe this is how they do it. I couldn't tell you, since it's not like anyone ever tells me these things. I'll keep you updated on what happens, of course, but as of right now I'm not as worried or nervous about it as I was before. So, that's a plus. At least it seems they know that I'm a poor adjunct lecturer who is barely able to make ends meet as it is.

On Tuesday, because I was curious (as were my students), I asked the West campus office administrator about how I could/would/should handle my final exam for my 101 students.

Normally, of course, this is out of my hands -- were I teaching 101 on the main campus, the time would be set and locked in by the department, as all main campus composition students take their final exams at the same time on the same day. It's always the Monday of Finals Week, from 1-2:50PM. The rooms will constantly change every semester, but they try to group everyone together in big lecture halls with six or eight sections of whatever class all taking the exam at the same time. I will have to be there for the 011 exam on main campus at that time, probably with a lot of other 011 students in the room from other instructors as well. However, since I teach my 101 on the West campus, they have a completely different schedule for their students' exams, since they're an extension campus or something like that.

"Basically, it's whenever you want," the office administrator lady said. "It's whenever works for you and whenever works for your students. A lot of instructors over here will administer their final exam during the last class session of the semester."

"I can do that?" I asked, incredulously. I'd never considered it before.

"If that works for everyone, yes," she said. "those instructors who don't do that usually do them during normal class time in finals week."

Wow, I thought. That's really nice. I began planning in my head. She told me to tell her once it was finalized within my class so that she could "put it on the schedule," so to speak.

I have a few options I have been turning over in my head for the past two days. The first, obviously, is to give it during the normal class time on the last day of class. I checked with the office administrators in the department on main campus, and was given the go-ahead on that; I'll get the exam early (the Wednesday morning before I administer it on Thursday over there) and that's been totally greenlighted if my students are able to do that and want to do that. I'd need to modify my lesson plan a bit for that last week of classes to permit it, but it can be done easily, and would save them (and me) from needing to come back to West campus on the Tuesday of finals week if it can be avoided.

The other option, of course, is to do it that Tuesday of finals week during normal class time, but here's the possible problem with that -- some of those students have a class right before mine, and it's possible that they may be taking their final exam for that class during their normal class time, and that would bleed over into my own class time. That's why I have to check. The same could be true for the last class of the semester in their class before mine as well, so I sent an email to my students yesterday morning telling them to find out their exam times for other classes -- especially the ones on West campus -- ASAP, and we'd plot around those.

Ideally, of course, I'd much rather do it on the last day of classes -- Thursday, December 5 -- than make them come back in on Tuesday the 9th to get them to take an exam which I will then have to drive over to main campus again to turn in to the main office. In my 102 classes I used to end class a day early so that they could turn in their papers and I'd have a week to grade them between then and their final -- that can't really happen in a fall semester when we're set up the way we are this time (with the last week of classes happening as soon as we come back from Thanksgiving), and not with classes that are scheduled on a different campus. For professors, it's a logistical nightmare.

To these ends, I'll discuss the options in class with my students this morning and we will see what we can do. I have already created two different lesson plans, or "timelines," as I refer to them -- one with the final on the last day of class and one with the final on the Tuesday of finals week. Both are workable, and both are quite similar up until the day before Thanksgiving week, when they diverge into two different paths. The problem is that I have to know today when I can schedule that final exam, because on Tuesday when I go back in there, I'll have to distribute one timeline or the other. Because I set my own schedule, I can do some probable workarounds if necessary -- especially since I'll be over there on West campus all day on class days through the evening hours, even on the last day of class. My 210 class finishes their oral presentations that night, which acts as their final exam.

The thought of only (possibly) needing to be on campus for one day during finals week thrills me; I really hope that's the case. It will give me all the time necessary to get everything accomplished in regards to tallying and posting final grades at my own pace. And, of course, it will save me gas money and mileage on the car. I must be on campus that one day regardless; the 011 final on main campus takes place at the same time as all of the other ones, so it's not like I can avoid it altogether.

As for the whole "grading partner" issue...sigh. As you folks may be aware from my talking about it when I was a GTA, even as an actual professor I can't get out of having a grading partner for my students' exams. Yes, it's ridiculous. The exams are scored on a scale of 1-5 by me, and then I trade with someone else and they do the same thing. The two scores are averaged together for the actual exam score -- and this almost never helps the student. If I give the exam a 3 and my grading partner gives it a 2, the score is a 2.5. That's a D+, when the grade I would give my student is a mid-C. I do not like anyone, anyone else, having any control whatsoever over my students' grades. When I was a GTA, I dealt with it because it was department policy. As a lecturer, as a professor, I shouldn't be forced to do this -- I know how to grade exams at this point. I know how my students perform, and I'm not exactly lenient in my grading. Yet, I was notified yesterday morning that I still must have a grading partner for my final exams this semester.

I have 28 students total on my roster for the classes taking exams (the 210 class doesn't have an exam, so I don't have to worry about them). Of those 28, I've had two at this point fail for absences and will probably have a third or fourth, three more who have never shown up to my classes to begin with, and at least one whose grades in my class are so low that the final won't save them anyway, so who knows if they'll take it. So, realistically speaking, I have 22-23 or so actual exams to grade. We're paired up with grading partners based on the total number of students we have as well as who's teaching what classes. I've been told by the Director that this will be as painless a process as possible for me, and that it will be set up to where I shouldn't have to make any extra trips to campus for grading issues -- which is good, seeing as who knows what the weather will be like a month from now anyhow, and because I want to get everything done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don't really have time or patience for fucking around, so to speak, and I really don't have the patience to operate on someone else's schedule because they can't be bothered to grade through my exams quickly. I've switched partners before, or had someone else grade through my exams quickly just because I've had people want to wait until four days after the exam was given before they would be willing to work in the half-hour or so (at most) it takes for them to look through my students' blue books. That's ridiculous. Get in, get out, get it over with, the semester's over, LET IT END. I don't have patience or compassion for anyone else's schedules when the semester has been over for four days by the time we give the exam, so if I get a grad student who's still grading through their students' papers or still trying to finish papers of their own for their own classes, sorry, that's on them. When I was a grad student, all of my own work was done well before the final exam was administered. If I could do it, so can they. It's not my problem if they can't manage their time effectively.

In years past, I've proctored the exam from 1-2:50, had the exams graded by both myself and by my partner by 3:30, and had everything tallied and uploaded by 4PM, getting home before rush hour traffic hit -- and usually hauling home at least one or two full pizzas with me, as the "finals feast" is that morning. If I can replicate this experience this year, I will be incredibly happy. And, mind you, that was when I had close to fifty exams to grade at the end of the semester.

I want to start telling my friends and colleagues within the department things like fail everyone you can for your classes, but I won't. Why? Because I'll need students to teach in whatever sections I get for the spring, and if there aren't as many students, not as many sections will be offered. I do not know yet what I will teach in the spring, but I made my formal declaration of availability to teach as many sections possible of anything offered on either main, West campus, or both, on Monday. The department administration knew I planned to keep on as a lecturer anyhow, though they like to be told personally and to have it in writing so that they know who's available and when. My flexibility in hours/days/location definitely helps me land more sections when they become available, especially on West campus (where other instructors don't tend to like to go to teach, for some reason). I told them I could take on four or five sections of anything, if available, since I'm teaching three sections of three different classes right now with no issue. The only issue I have this semester is the fact that I must be stuck on West campus for twelve hours straight on Tuesday/Thursday, which -- if I were teaching other classes during my downtime there -- I really probably wouldn't notice that much. If I get four or five sections of something, I probably wouldn't be able to come home at noon on Monday/Wednesday either, but the money would definitely make up for that (in addition to allowing me to save as much money as possible for the wedding).   

I've been told by the administration they'll do their best when it comes to giving me classes to teach, though it won't be known how many sections of anything will be offered at least until the enrollment numbers come in for the spring. Spring registration begins on November 14 and runs through the 19th, I believe. I'm not incredibly concerned about it, really; the vast number of students taking 011 and 101 this semester will more than likely move on to 101 and 102 next semester, respectively, so if I'm teaching either of those I'll have a good number of students, and we're going to have several GTAs who will no longer be teaching after December as they finish up their degrees (as mentioned before), so those spots will be "open," so to speak. There's always those 8-week courses, too, which aren't given to GTAs. So, there are options. I'm actually sort of excited about it.

In other news, it's below freezing this morning for the first time this fall -- the temperature outside is 30 degrees, and the cars and yards are all coated with a thick frost. Tuesday, with its wind and whipping/blowing rain, was miserable -- at least I don't have to deal with that this morning. Today it's just the cold. On the plus side, the Monte Carlo tends to love the cold weather. On the minus side, I tend to hate it. I'm already gathering my layers to dress in for the day, as since I'm stuck over there on West campus until late this evening, I'll have to be able to stay warm.

Today is actually pretty quiet and rote when it comes to my classes. We're discussing the exam issue in my first class and we're doing mini-workshopping/Q&As, and then I'll grade my 210's papers in my off-hours before I cover resume-writing tips and cover letter issues/problems in there tonight, as well as doing some workshopping of those aforementioned resumes and cover letters. On Tuesday, I collect the next set of papers from both classes, so I'll have something to do in my downtime then as well.

As for my car, she seems to be running pretty well. The transmission issues seem confined to the automatic overdrive gear, which I use mostly on the highway. The normal drive is perfectly fine. Yes, there is a difference; in the latter, the engine cycles up more slowly and cycles down more quickly, but tends to use a bit more gas -- it's more of a "city driving" gear. In the former, the engine cycles up a lot more quickly, with its 215hp V6 get-up-and-go, and cycles down a lot more slowly. It depends greatly on the day, the weather, and the traffic which one I'll use, but I've never noticed any goofy issues with the normal drive -- so I've been using it a bit more often. Again, I tend to notice these issues a bit more when I've run down the gas tank as well, and she doesn't give me any trouble most of the time when she has a full tank. I think that car really just likes having a full gas tank at all times; it seems to make even the minor creaks and croaks in a car of her age go away. I'll have to get gas this morning on my way to West campus, so I'm mostly expecting a rather smooth ride.

I also didn't mention it before, but Daisy has been in a lot of back pain this week. Her shoulder blades and all of the muscles up there are either spasming for no reason, or they've somehow been pulled. She wakes up crying because she can't move, and Daisy tends to have a decently high pain tolerance (unlike myself). Finally, after a few days of my begging for her to do so, yesterday she went to the doctor. Apparently she's pulled muscles and/or irritated nerves somehow in that area of her back, and her doctor prescribed her some muscle relaxers and physical therapy. Physical therapy isn't covered by her insurance (which really doesn't make that much sense), so she'd have to pay $40 twice a week for appointments for it, which she can't afford. In lieu of that, she's going to try getting a deep-tissue massage today to see if that helps the muscles, and may begin visiting a chiropractor if the problems don't get any better. She doesn't know how she pulled the muscles or hurt the nerve or what-have-you, and she's never really had back problems before now aside from some minor fatigue aches and the like. I was concerned because it was her upper back, not her lower back, which could have been anything -- not just muscle related, but internal like her heart, lungs, etc.

On that note, I'm readying myself to leave the house. It says it's 34 outside now, but it's not like that's a comfortable temperature, or anything. I'm wearing a thick turtleneck under a sweatshirt and khakis with thermal bottoms underneath with two pairs of thick boot socks. I've gotta be outside a lot today, so I'm going to be comfortably warm when I am. I'll have my thick wool peacoat on, too.

Alive

Fall semester: day fifty-seven
Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

Yesterday afternoon, upon coming home, I sent Daisy a message that told her I was home and safe, yet I had seen three different types of police patrolling the interstate for speeders -- the county sheriff, highway patrol, and a Newton city cop.

I want to let it be known that I like police -- I've never had a problem with any of the ones I've met or have known over the years. The Newton city cops are actually pretty cool; I've talked to many of them over the years, both when I was working for the newspaper and afterwards, and they do their job well. What I can't stand is when three different types of police patrol a 20-mile stretch of highway between Newton and Wichita, in the middle of the day when there's no real traffic, looking to give out chicken-shit speeding tickets for people going 82 in a 75.

This is a relatively new thing; in my second year of grad school (so, a year and a half ago, roughly) when I first lived alone and was driving to/from campus every day by myself, there were never cops of any sort on the interstate anywhere. Occasionally, you'd see one in the median if the interstate passed over/through a town's city limits and it was technically in a city cop's jurisdiction, but only rarely. It is 22 miles from my front door to the main campus parking lot -- my speed record for making that trip is eighteen minutes. Yes, I've timed it. I used to be able to get on the interstate, get in the left lane, and cruise at 85-90 all the way to Wichita and back at any given hour of day or night with no issue, passing everyone else. It became normal after a while. And, again, my Monte Carlo Z34 will do 80 if you look at it funny -- just because it's old, heavy, and falling apart doesn't mean it's not incredibly fast. Keep in mind that it did this before I had the spark plugs and wires replaced last fall, too.

Now, it's different. You have to drive at or below the speed limit now because if you don't, a cop will spot you and will pull you over, and they're everywhere. They've started patrolling the interstate, in that stretch between my house and campus, hardcore. They're out there before dawn, and they're out there long after dark -- frequently on my way home from teaching my night class, I'll see at least one or two of them in the median on my way home. They put the black/dark blue cars out there at night so that you can't see them until you're right up on them -- another chicken-shit move.

I've also been on the interstate at night, with no one around me, and have had cops (usually Highway Patrol, in their Chargers) tailgate me really closely to see if I'll speed up to get them off my ass. Of course, at night, all you can see are headlights, especially when they're so close to your back bumper -- within a car-length of space. This is probably illegal, of course, but it would be just as illegal to speed up over the speed limit to get them off your ass as well, which would mean they'd be able to nab you. It's sneaky, assholish, underhanded shit, and it's happened to me no less than three times in the past two year or so, in the zones where it's only 60mph on the interstate. When the speed limit goes up to 70 (it becomes 75 a few miles later), just like clockwork, they'll speed up and go around me, and I'll see that they're cops.

I told Daisy how much I miss the days of being able to drive as fast as I wanted to/from campus, and she responded with one statement: "I like you alive."

Yeah, well, being constantly paranoid and on the lookout for cops 24/7 has completely killed my love of driving. Driving is now no longer fun, but a chore. I can no longer have peace in my travels, nor can I enjoy my trip to/from campus because there's always a chicken-shit cop out there waiting to bust me if I go any faster than the posted speed limit. My car doesn't have working cruise control (it's there, but it's never worked), so I have to constantly adjust my speed. The cops patrolling the interstates do it not because of "safety" anymore -- it's about them making money. They know as well as anyone else that most new cars on the interstate, in a long straight stretch of highway, can operate perfectly safe at 100mph.

Anyway. End rant.

As today is Tuesday, it's one of my two long days of the week. It's also supposed to be raining and storming all day long, though nothing severe. I'm quite surprised, actually, that it's 7AM in November and the temperature is already/still hovering around 60 degrees -- however, it's not like I want to drive home tonight when it's really dark and pouring rain, so my fingers are crossed that it mostly finishes up by then. I just got out of a nice, hot shower, and have dressed myself for the day in a thick hoodie and a thermal shirt underneath just so I don't get soaked to the bone if it does rain terribly all day long.

The good thing about today is that I don't have a lot to take care of -- in my 101 class, we're workshopping. In my 210, I'm collecting papers and introducing the next assignment, which I created from scratch (as I mentioned over the weekend). The bad thing is that I really don't have a whole lot to work on over the course of my day between my classes, and will probably end up being pretty bored. I also won't be able to take a nap and sleep, more than likely, as I slept for thirteen hours last night (oh, thank you sleeping pills). I've charged my mp3 player and my DS to take with me today to pass the time, if necessary, but I don't know if I'll use them a lot. Usually when I make the effort to take them with me, I barely get to touch them. Today's workload is pretty light, however. Thursday's workload really won't be; I'll have grading to do most of the day for my 210 class.

I am, actually, pretty excited about teaching that class tonight, which is a sure sign that I'm at least somewhat delusional. It's because I did create their new assignment from scratch, and it's a good assignment. I was given a weekly lesson plan and it's different than what the book covers, so really I've been writing a lot of the stuff for the class and modifying a good chunk of it heavily for the 8-week version of the class anyhow.

I talked briefly to the administrators yesterday morning about teaching in the spring and when the schedules will be done by. They could feasibly be done by Christmas, but that is doubtful; more than likely it will be well after the new year before they come available. I also doubt, even though I asked if one would be available, that I'll be able to get one of the coveted lit classes this fall; they've hired three new lit professors over the course of the past eighteen months or so, and another one starts in the fall. I don't care what I teach, in all honesty -- I just want to teach at least three or four sections of something, even if they're all different classes, so that I can continue to survive with decent pay. That's what's important to me right now, really. The adjuncts/lecturers get what's left after the GTAs' sections are filled, and as we now have a large group of GTAs and at least 5-10 adjuncts/lecturers at this point, well, it may be "slim pickings" for the spring. The good news is that several of those GTAs who are teaching now will not be in the spring, as they either graduate in December or have decided not to teach so that they can finish up their degrees for May. That means more sections of whatever they teach are opening up. Parker, for example, is one of those people. He could teach in the spring, but is not so that he can focus on his thesis.

"I'll be teaching composition classes for, basically, the foreseeable future," one of my colleagues told me, "as they've hired all of these new professors. I don't know when I'll get to teach a lit course again."

Of course, a lot of us are in the same boat. But, interestingly enough, I'm seeing fewer and fewer adjunct faculty sticking around these days, or adjuncts that are teaching but one class because they're teaching for other little schools around the area. It's something to think about, at least.

Anyway, on that note, I must prepare for my day on campus, which means I'm gathering all of my materials and lugging my heavy bag with me. Fare thee well, folks.

Can it Just End?

Time-travel day

I really have trouble with weekends these days. It's not that I get time off -- it's that there's way, way too little of it. Mind you, I know this is a problem (perhaps even a first-world problem) that's been bitched/whined/moaned about by everyone throughout time, but...I don't know, with the career I have and how little I get any true downtime anyway, I have to spend more than half of my weekend recovering from the week beforehand, and then spend the second half prepping for the next week. It doesn't feel like I get any real "downtime" at all. My work week always seems ten times longer than the time I actually get off, the time I mostly spend at home sleeping and doing work for the next work week anyway.

I've lost interest in most football; I'll watch WVU play, and that's about it. That's the only football I've watched all weekend, actually, and I only watched it languidly at best yesterday. I still had a ton of work to do, and spent most of my day/night doing it until I went to bed.

My exhaustion levels -- both mental and psychological, as well as those involving my overall demeanor -- are bubbling up and are about to boil over. And I still have something like seven or eight papers to collect and grade over the course of the next month from my three classes. I've been busier before, I've been more stressed before, but I can't remember the last time I was this tired, or this sick of everything, all the time. The only thing that's stopping me from lapsing into a deep, terrifying depressive episode is that I can recognize myself going that way and I mentally stop it -- I don't have time for it. I have too much shit to do.

The cold doesn't help; the fact that the temperatures for the past few days have been in the 30s-50s with high winds puts a chill in my bones that I can't get rid of because I'm so tired -- I get, and stay, much physically colder when I'm tired, to the point of shivering -- and I can't get or stay warm unless I wear fifteen different layers of clothing (or, conversely, stay in bed all day). I needed to go out shopping last night, for example, and while I wasn't particularly sleepy then, I couldn't bring myself to get up, put on clothing, and drive to the store because I knew it would be cold and I would hate it.

A big part of it is the construct of fall semester itself; as you folks know if you've been reading this blog a while, fall semester is generally hellish. The temperatures gradually get colder and the weather gets worse as the workload piles on higher, and then -- at the end of it, when the holidays roll around and you need money the most -- the paychecks stop for four or five weeks and you're fucked for when all of your bills and monetary obligations come due (such as rent for January, car insurance, and Christmas presents). I also know nothing yet about teaching for the spring -- all I've been told is that I shouldn't have to worry about getting classes, but again I don't know what/where/when they are because the schedule, of course, is not yet set and probably won't be until after the New Year. I could end up with 3-4 classes, or I could end up with 1-2. Either way, it's not like I've got the cushion of student loans to live on anymore; I have to live on what I can and do make in my line of work. I'm not living paycheck-to-paycheck or anything like that, but I am not exactly wealthy -- by the time the first week of classes rolls around in mid-January, I'll be down to about $100 in my bank account again, more than likely, simply because of bills and rent. My last paycheck for the fall semester is on December 20, my birthday. That's really early. That's also because the semester ends early -- finals week ends a week before that. Thanksgiving comes late, the semester ends early, and while there's a long break before classes start up again in January (over a month) that's a month I'm not getting paid. Most of that time I'll be in limbo, of course, while I wait to see what classes I'm teaching in the spring.

Daisy, of course, is looking for jobs down here. She doesn't want to be apart from me any longer than she has to as we count down to the wedding, and as I may have more solid employment with the university in the fall (who knows, though), right now we're focusing on that and we're trying to make things work out. She has mentioned that if she finds a job down here, March would be about the latest she could make the move, which is true. I've also reminded her that it's not like I will have the time to be looking for homes and the like while I'm teaching in the spring -- if how busy I am now is any indication, anyway -- and that I'm going to remain crazily busy and sleep-deprived more than likely through our actual wedding day. There's really nothing I can do about that. That's my lot in life; that's my career, and that's the way it works.

All of this stuff -- all of it -- is rolling around in my head subconsciously, at all times. I can never just relax, because all of it is still there and still needs attention. Some people get used to high levels of stress and can deal with problems efficiently and as they come in; some people can push it aside for a while and actually relax and enjoy life. I used to be one of those people, but am no longer. I can't deal with anything anymore, especially when anything could basically destroy my life or send me into financial ruin. Everything that pops up, big or small, just gets added to the pile and angers/frustrates me just as much as anything else. When I go out to do my shopping this afternoon/evening/whenever, because I can't do it in the middle of the night, I'll be forced to deal with mouth-breathing idiots that do nothing but get in the way and are oblivious and/or belligerent to everyone else around them, and it will take every ounce of my self-control not to start screaming at or punching them. When I'm under extreme amounts of stress and am frustrated at life, the real person I am inside comes out -- and I am a violent, angry, and incredibly selfish person inside.

This is probably why I don't really have a social life and tend to keep to myself most of the time. I don't have patience for anyone else or their bullshit.

My computer has been acting up recently; it has been, on occasion, freezing or running really slowly. I know it's getting old, obviously, since I've had it since I started grad school, but it's not like I can afford a new one right now, and if it dies on me, the laptop Daisy bought me for Christmas last year is way too slow and underpowered to use as a replacement for longer than a few days unless I spend $200 to double the memory in it. I don't know if it's a software or hardware problem on the desktop; its hardware appears to be functioning fine, and I can't update any of the software more than I already have -- I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, which is the last long-term release, and the last one which will fully support the GNOME desktop environment that I've used for almost ten years now. I've tried 12.10 and 13.04 on other machines and I hate it (I have 12.10 running on my laptop at work, and had 13.04 very briefly on the newer laptop before I realized how much I hated it and switched to Linux Mint 15). There's only so much modification I can do to the desktop before I'd have to wipe the HD and install another OS, which I do not want to do as I don't have the materials/flash drives/etc to back up all of my files easily, and all of the customized programs I run -- programs that I've tweaked, installed, and gotten working correctly for years now -- would be gone and I'd have to start over from scratch. I can't exactly do that without spending an entire week or so reinstalling things and changing them around to get a workable, usable machine again. I put a portable 500GB HD on my Amazon Christmas List in case someone wants to get it for me, as without that I'll never be able to back up all of my stuff. My podcasts alone -- that I spent a good week going out and re-downloading after the disaster before -- take up 68.3GB of space, and that was me being able to recover only about half of what I had, since many of them are no longer available on their respective servers due to them being so old. It would take fifteen 4.7GB DVD-Rs just to be able to back up those alone. If my computer has a brain fart and I lose those again, I will probably take the machine out into the back yard and shoot it out of anger.

My car seems to be running okay, I guess. I didn't have any of those weird transmission issues last week, but it's still rattling like crazy. It's not the wheel bearings or anything like that (those are the same) but it may be the rotors wearing out and getting squeal-y. I don't know. All I know is that the engine seems to be fine, and that she seems to be perfectly fine -- like just-off-the-lot fine -- when she has a full tank of gas. I refill the gas tank about once a week, when I've driven between 200-220 miles, and it's at the half-tank mark. I'm actually getting better gas mileage, I think, than I was before; I was able to put less than 10.5 gallons in this week when I drove her a little farther than I normally would before a fill-up. Normally it's 11 or 11.5, so I couldn't tell you what the issue is. The "low coolant" light is always on now, even though it's full, so the sensor is on the fritz there again -- especially because it takes a lot to get that car's temperature gauge even up to the halfway point. So, it's not like she's overheating or anything like that. She's also not dropping or leaking any oil or coolant in the parking lots at school (I've checked), so any fluids the car's using it's either slowly burning off or it's keeping them all. This is a plus -- that coolant is like $10 for a gallon of it, and I'd rather not have to buy a gallon of it every month.

Again, the car is old. It'll act up sometimes, and sometimes it won't. There's not a lot of rhyme or reason to the way it acts. I'm really surprised and impressed that it's running as well as it is, and is still making 50-mile round trips every day without any major issues.

This afternoon/evening I will be working on, yes, more student papers yet again. And, of course, I'll have to go out and do my shopping as well. I ordered pizza last week in order to postpone that for as long as possible, but I finished it off yesterday morning for breakfast. That means I actually have to go out and get real groceries in order to have something to eat for the next week or so. I'm also, as always, on my last pack of cigarettes, and the cats have very little litter left after I cleaned their box on Friday. It's almost 60 degrees outside today, yes, but there are constant and oppressive 25mph Kansas winds, which (the weather claims) doesn't make it feel any colder, but I'm willing to bet that's a horrible bold-faced lie from weather liars. It's either do it now or do it after the sun sets when it's colder and nastier, though, so I suppose I should get to it and actually do what I need to do.