Moments of Truth

Finals week: day two
Countdown to 30th birthday: ten days

It is 1:48 AM on Monday morning.

Twelve hours from now, I will be sitting in a bowl-shaped lecture hall room on campus, quietly watching my students take their English 102 final exam.

That's right, folks. Today, I shall be the tester. And they shall be my...testees.

It's funnier if you say it aloud.

I can't sleep. I slept until 3PM, and now I'm wide awake. If I'm lucky, I'll get about two or three hours of real solid rest before I have to get back up in the morning to make my jaunt to campus. It is the day of reckoning for my students, and likewise the last day most of the department has to be on campus for anything but administrative stuff like proctoring finals. There's a shockingly low number of final exams in grad school -- they all but disappear after one's first eighteen months or so, unless you take classes in which the professor specifically bases a large chunk of the grade on a final exam. Most of the time we just have final papers to do.

I didn't realize it at the time, but last Wednesday night, with the end of the Surrealism class, I attended my last formal class of my college career. Like, the last class of my entire education. Yes, I still have to meet with my Playwriting class two nights from now for our final meeting, but it's a very informal meeting and not an actual class. In the spring, I have thesis hours and the "visiting writer," neither of which are really actual classes. This means that, well, I've finished with all of my actual classes for good.

Upon coming to this realization, I almost cried tears of joy.

In other news, it is absolutely freezing. The temperature is supposed to drop to 10 degrees tonight, which means that it'll be fun trying to start/defrost my car in the morning, and even more fun to get gas in the cold (as I need it before I go to campus). Right now it's 21 degrees, and I've been forced to run my furnace most of the past two days -- I don't have a choice. Even inside, if I don't run the furnace, my fingers get so cold that they don't want to move, and I can barely feel them. My toes are the same way, but thankfully if I wear enough socks and thick enough slippers, I can keep them mostly warm.

I made a shopping trip today -- I went to the Dollar Tree this evening. I wanted to go to Walmart, but I went outside and realized how cold it was, then looked at the Walmart parking lot (almost completely full) as I drove past, and said "fuck it, I'll wait until the middle of the night later this week."

I dressed in layers -- three shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, and the thickest, warmest pair of shoes I own -- along with my jacket, hat, and gloves. I was still freezing. My body does not acclimate well to cold or heat; it never has. This is one of the many reasons why I hope I get offered a job in a more temperate climate, somewhere which doesn't get any colder than 50 degrees and never gets warmer than 80. I chose to simply go to the Dollar Tree because I was already out, I was already cold, and because I needed to go there anyhow -- I've needed to for several weeks now.

And, really, I didn't want to fight the Sunday evening Walmart crowds.

I wouldn't have gone out at all, except when I made coffee when I woke up this afternoon, I realized that I'd have to open my new can I had on the floor of my room. In reality, this was not a new can, but an empty can that I had put there and had forgotten to put in the recycling bin. So I was out of coffee. Being out of coffee, for me, is as bad as being out of cigarettes. I'll freak out and start going nuts. It's imperative for my own mental health, as well as the health and well-being of everyone around me, that I have continual access to coffee no matter where I am -- whether I'm at home, work, or otherwise. It's the only thing that keeps me going and keeps me from needing to sleep sixteen hours a day. So, regardless of how cold I was, I needed to go out. I rationalized that I could get coffee at the Dollar Tree (I did) and that I wouldn't spend as much money there as I would at Walmart anyway, which is true -- while I need cat litter, they can wait another two days, and while I need cigarettes and some actual food for the next few days while I'm off, those things can wait as well.

I ended up spending $46 at the Dollar Tree, which is about half of what I would've spent at Walmart. I got the essential stuff I needed to pick up there for the past few weeks (deodorant, exactly four Christmas cards to the four people I need to send them to, etc), and got a lot of cleaning supplies for the bathroom -- as I plan to scrub it down this week once I'm done with everything. I also got a few more little gifts for Daisy, things that I know she can use and/or needs. This allowed me to wrap her final present tonight with those things, as I forgot to wrap one of them last night -- I'd stuffed it away in a drawer and had forgotten about it.

Did you know Dollar Tree sells Blu-rays now? Too bad none of them are movies anyone actually wants to own.

I then came home and made a quesadilla for dinner, took the garbage out, put the bills in the mail, and did the dishes, before watching Red vs. Blue Season 10, which was almost three hours long. It feels nice to actually have time to sit down and watch a movie again. I missed that.

And now I'm here. I've been writing here for an hour. My alarm clock downstairs will go off in two hours and twenty minutes. If I'm lucky, I'll actually sleep before 4AM, meaning I'll get an hour of rest before it goes off. Why am I getting up at 5 when the finals feast isn't until 12 and the exam isn't until 1? The same reason I get up early every other morning I have to go to campus -- parking. It's finals week. Good luck finding a parking spot anywhere close to any of the buildings during finals week unless one gets there really effing early. I'm planning on redoing, printing, and filing my plan of study in the morning to kill some time (and stay awake). I know, thankfully, that at least I can come home tomorrow night and not have to get up early again for a month.

So that's my life right now, folks. I'll let you know how things go.