Countdown to Fall Semester: 20 days
I don't know if it's the heat, the fact that I've drank about two gallons of water (and half a gallon of coffee, easily) today, or the fact that the only thing I've eaten in about 48 hours aside from my vitamins has been a few slices of pizza and cheese sticks from Papa John's, but for most of the evening hours -- now leading into the overnight hours -- I've been dizzy and light-headed. I don't feel sick or anything; in fact, I feel quite normal. Afraid that it could possibly be the beginnings of an inner ear infection messing with my balance and equilibrium, I took some Sudafed earlier to help clear the oppressive summer allergies out of my sinuses and ears. I also could have low blood pressure/blood sugar since I haven't eaten that much in the past two days.
Yet, the thought it could be a brain tumor slowly eating away at your grey matter wafts through my mind. It would be just my luck, really -- smoke for ten years, still have relatively healthy lungs, tumor metastasizes in the brain.
My Monte Carlo is leaking some sort of fluid, slowly, the first I've seen of that since I purchased the vehicle. Could be coolant, could be windshield washer fluid. I don't know, really. It looks like it's coming from a hose, and probably means one of the hose seals is going bad. It's not a lot of fluid, obviously, otherwise I'd be really concerned, but it's enough to notice in the driveway under the car. I can't afford to get it looked at or worked on for another few weeks, however, so I'm hoping the leak stops on its own. I do know it's not brake fluid and I'm pretty sure it's not transmission or power steering fluid, so if it leaks a little coolant here and there, I can deal with it; the reservoir is always full, and it's probably fairly cheap to fix a hose or a hose seal. If the water pump goes out, however, well fuck -- I might as well buy a new car.
The former girlfriend's car is giving her problems as well. It stalled out on her twice today while she was out looking at apartments, and she's figured out that it's the fuel filter that's getting clogged and old, probably due to a metal gas tank that may be rusting from the inside. She just replaced the fuel filter over Thanksgiving, and has a new, spare one -- she just has to find someone who can install it. Aside from regular maintenance, that car's treated us both really well over the years. Mine's in a lot worse shape both cosmetically and mechanically, but as it's so old and so beat up -- not to mention it has about 115,000 more miles than the former girlfriend's car -- aside from the mostly minor repairs it needs right now, I'm just going to drive it until it dies. Fixing everything would cost about twice what the car's worth, if not more.
On the plus side, the Kelley Blue Book says my car's worth more than the $500 I paid for it (though not by much), even in its current condition. Too bad nobody goes by the Blue Book values anymore.
The former girlfriend hasn't had any luck with apartments in Wichita yet, and yesterday's ventures down there were mostly a bust. She's come to terms with the fact that she may have to end up getting a smaller place than she wanted, and either rent a storage unit for her duration of time in the city, or take as much of her stuff as she can back to her parents' in Missouri or down to the lake house. Unless she gets a lead on a good place tomorrow, she won't be able to move out this week. Once again, I told her there's no hurry to take into consideration on my part, at least -- but the fact remains that students will be moving back into town over the next week or two and taking all of the better, cheaper places, so she wants and needs to find something that will work for her soon.
I did make my trip to Walmart last night, in the then-106-degree-heat, forgetting that going to Walmart at 6PM on a Monday night that is also, coincidentally, the first of the month was a bad, bad idea. I got food and necessities for me to live on for a while, including all of the cat-related food and litter, coffee/smokes, and other things like toilet paper and dishwasher detergent, though I didn't specifically get anything for the former girlfriend. Later she told me that she would get her own food from now on, of course, implying that duh, it's no longer my responsibility to provide for both of us. It's such a weird concept to wrap my head around, though: shopping for one. It is, however, a bit cheaper.
I've gotten a bit of relief and/or reprieve from budgetary worries, however; I did some research and looked at my bank statements from the beginning of the year when the last of my loans disbursed, and found that the loan disbursed roughly ten days or so before we returned to classes in the spring. I can't really remember when they disbursed last fall, but if they keep the same schedule and pattern, I should receive mine around the 11th or 12th of this month, as we return to school on the 22nd. That certainly makes me breathe a little bit easier. Also, the water bill isn't due until August 20 (my parents' shared birthday, coincidentally), so I can wait on that for another week or so until I can see what my financial situation is. If the loan I have disburses around that aforementioned time, I'll also have a bit of time before classes start to see if I can get the car worked on before I start needing to drive it back and forth to Wichita several days a week.
According to the former girlfriend, who asked about it in the office this afternoon, I've been given a tentative teaching schedule of Tuesday/Thursday classes yet again. This is exactly what I wanted, regardless of the times I'm teaching, because with a Tuesday/Thursday schedule I will be off every Monday and every Friday, barring any unforeseen schedule conflicts, and I will only have to tax the Monte Carlo to be in there three days a week instead of four (or sometimes all five, as the case was sometimes last semester when extraneous shit happened that we had to be on campus for). That four-day weekend also gives me plenty of time to grade, work on my own classwork, and -- perhaps most importantly this semester, as I have two hardcore literature classes -- read. I packed up my novels/texts for the fall semester into my backpack tonight so that I can take it all in to my office over the next few days sometime, and I could barely zip the backpack closed. Yeah. I'll be reading a lot this semester. It's not going to be too pleasant. But, again, I'm single now. I'll have time to kill.
This afternoon when I got the mail, I saw that there was a self-addressed, stamped envelope to myself from Cottonwood Magazine, the literary journal of sorts from the University of Kansas. This was one of the submissions I had out, currently -- the others are to Parcel, The Pennsylvania Review, and an online-only journal called (Un)remarkable. I could tell by the thickness of the envelope that it was another rejection, and it was. Their rejection letter consisted of a simple, small slip of paper that read "we are unable to use your work in our magazine; our large volume of submissions prevents us from replying in a more personal way" or something like that, with my two mailed, submitted poems inside the envelope as well. I retooled that document, added two more poems to it (one new, one older) and sent it off this evening to Painted Bride Quarterly, an awesome journal that usually runs themed issues. I do this sort of thing every time I get a rejection; usually in the same day -- I will change it around, rework it somewhat, and add or delete a poem from it -- before I pick the next journal on my list and submit away. The problem is that I have now exhausted my list of journals and publications that accept work year-round, and now have to wait to submit anything else to anywhere else until around September 1, lest I find more journals over the next few weeks with year-round reading periods. Currently, Parcel has my best work of the past six months or so, and they have an exorbitantly long waiting period -- I sent that submission to them on May 17th. When you're a professional writer, student, and poet who's trying to get work published, that's part of the game -- waiting.
As for my book, I edited a bit more of it this afternoon (read: a few more pages/chapters) but not much. Granted, however, over the past two days there's been a lot more pressing issues going on and other logistical things to ponder and take care of, but over the next week or so I'll be able to get back on track with my final edits, so to speak, and will more than likely have it finished soon. I know a lot of people are waiting on it. Okay, maybe not a lot, but a fair amount. Okay, my parents. Who don't even own Kindles. And about three other readers.
As an aside, and a warning, never look up "causes of lightheadedness" on either Wikipedia or Google unless you want to spend the rest of your night paranoid. Thanks, Wikipedia; it's good to know that I could be having a stroke, developing an irregular heart rhythm, or in the first stages of a heart attack right now. Thaaaaaaanks. At least the brain tumor could kill me slowly.
Anyway, I'm off to bed. My new motto is to try to make every new day better than the last. Let's make tomorrow an excellent day.
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