Normality

Fall semester: day twenty-two

I am ill. With something, anyway. I've been feeling sick since yesterday. I don't know if it's allergies, fatigue, stress, or if I'm coming down with something, but I've been sick to my stomach a lot (heartburn, indigestion, general unease) and my joints are all stiff and sore. I came home from teaching yesterday afternoon and my knees and ankles just ached, and my legs felt all weak and wobbly and sort of pained (similar to "growing pains" all of us had as kids). Yes, I could probably chalk it up to the rain and storms that have been rolling through the area for the past two days making me more allergic and fatigued than usual, but it's more than that. Every time I eat something, even if I'm ravenously hungry beforehand, I get sick to my stomach and feel unwell for an hour or two afterwards -- sometimes, like tonight in the overnight hours, to the point of cold sweats and dizziness. I've been like this for the past three or four days, and every time I eat, the same thing happens.

Amusingly enough, this does not happen when I sit here and pound coffee in an attempt to make myself alert and feel normal again. When I feel ill after eating, drinking a few glasses of cold filtered water from the fridge over the span of an hour or two usually helps quite a bit, as well. I'm not sure why. It's not that I'm incredibly thirsty, and I'm not dehydrated or anything like that...I just feel, well, ill.

Yesterday morning, I went over to payroll to pick up my check, and signed off on the paperwork for it. It was explained to me, in detail, what the whole "advance" nature of the check was, and what they meant by it, so here goes -- this is the best I can explain it from what I was told: because I wasn't in payroll for August's check, none of my "hours" (their term, not mine) have arrived in payroll or have yet been tallied up -- not even now. The "advance" was based on anticipated pay based on the hours that will roll in for the check on the 27th. In essence, it means I've been paid for hours that haven't been put on the books yet, and I've been paid out of a different set of university funds because of that. I had to sign a form that authorized the payroll department to -- once they get my tallied hours/info/etc for the 27th's check (which will be an entire month's amount of pay and time) to go back in and retroactively deduct the amount I was just paid on Friday so that the rest of my checks will normalize. In effect, it really is an advance in that sense. Payroll will get my hours for the month this week, and in the interim between the end of this week and the check on the 27th, they'll deduct the amount paid to me on Friday, and I'll be left with a normal paycheck.

Hopefully that makes sense. I understood it when the payroll lady explained it to me.

"I hope this doesn't mean that I'm going to have to go over there to pick up a paper check every two weeks," I told the office administrator this morning. "Because that's a huge pain in the ass when I have to mail my check back home to WV to deposit it."

"No, no," she replied, "all of your info is still in the system. They can't DD those 'advance' checks because of the funds they pay them with. Payroll said in that email I forwarded to you that all of your other checks will be paid normally."

This is true; I remembered that after she said it.

As for the check itself, it's a simple paper check that I bound with a deposit slip and note for my mother in an envelope, and it's being mailed home today. I need it in my account more than I need the cash in hand, especially as I'll have more bills coming due before the end of the month, and will actually have to get some more groceries again over the course of the next several days or so -- my last trip to Walmart was for "essentials only," because I never want to spend any more money than I have to, and when I'm not only busy but almost constantly sleep-deprived, fighting my way through the throngs of idiot mouth-breathers at Walmart makes me want to stab people in the eyes with a Bic pen. It becomes a chore, a battle of wits with my patience. I can't go shopping in the middle of the night anymore unless I don't have to teach the next morning, because shopping in and of itself makes me even more tired, which is a very bad thing when I'm as constantly fatigued as I am now.

I came home yesterday afternoon, driving through misting rain and fog (I had to turn on my headlights and keep them on for the entire drive, even though it was after noon), ate a little bit, talked to Rae for a while on Facebook, and then went to bed around 5PM. I sent Daisy (who had gone to bed about an hour or so before I got home) a message telling her I needed to sleep, and went downstairs to pass out.

When I awoke, it was dark -- but then again, it had been dark the entire day anyhow. I'd only slept for a little more than four hours; it was barely 10PM. And, once more, I was wide awake. There was no going back to sleep. I don't know why my body does this to me, this cycle of "well, it's a weeknight and you really need your sleep, so I'm going to fuck you over and force you to get up so that you don't get it" shit, but it's tiring. Pun intended. This only really happens during the week. It's like I have some sort of subconscious block installed in my brain, a subtle internal revolt against my new daily schedule that my body is trying to pull on me. My body doesn't like leaving the house for several hours a day four days a week to do a job. My body doesn't like responsibility. My body doesn't like the fact that I can no longer go to bed at 4AM and wake up naturally whenever I want to. So, it fights me. It fights me at every turn, it fights me and does shit specifically to piss me off, such as waking me up after a short four hours of sleep, or making me feel incredibly ill for an hour or two after I eat anything as a form of protest. I seriously think it does it just to fuck with me, like a fussy child would throw a temper tantrum to get its way.

Once I was awake and mobile, no matter how tired I was (and still am) there was no point in, or ability to, go back to bed. No, I'm up and now have to force myself to stay up whether I like it or not, lest I end up feeling even worse if I try to go back to sleep and get up again later, or sleep through the time I would teach my class this morning. I told Daisy (who is at work) that I would more than likely be coming home this morning around 11, quickly eating something small (so that I don't get super-ill again) and would be going back to bed and actually sleeping, even if it meant that I had to take melatonin or something beforehand to ensure that I actually stayed asleep for more than four hours. I felt like sobbing to her. I keep telling myself that I only have to be awake for five more hours, I told her. I could be asleep in ten minutes were I to go back downstairs now, but I can't -- I have to teach today. I have to get gas in the car and drive 56 miles, round-trip, to go over my students' workshop copies one by one until the class period runs out. I have to be awake until all of this is done, I have to be awake (and probably deliriously tired and somewhat delusional) until my schedule allows me to actually rest again. I always feel like I'm walking through a constant thin fog these days. That's my life -- always being just awake enough to barely function and perform the duties of my job, and being miserable the rest of the time. I'm so miserable because I'm so sleep-deprived and feeling ill that I feel like I could burst into tears at any time in frustration.

I just want to feel normal again. I just want to feel like myself.

Now you watch; I'll come back home from teaching this morning and I will be wired and unable to sleep, because my body likes to torture me both physically and psychologically.

The weather really isn't helping; it's near perfect sleeping weather, with it being 66, foggy, and damp outside. I love this sort of weather regardless -- my ideal temperatures, my ideal weather conditions -- but when I'm so tired it's like it's mocking me. And I again remind myself that even after today, my week is only half over. Fuck, just shoot me.

At this point, the pot of coffee I've drank since, oh, 2AM is barely even keeping me on an even keel. It's keeping me just awake and alert enough to stay that way. I know I can't keep doing this forever. I envision nights where, long after Daisy and I are married, I am awake with bloodshot eyes and sitting here at my desk because even then I'll be unable to sleep or get any rest due to my schedule, and because my body is an asshole it deprives her any ability to get me to sleep next to her. I don't want that to happen. That can't be my life. It already happens too much when she's here to visit -- many hours she sleeps are spent sleeping alone, because I cannot force my body to listen to me.

"You can't keep abusing your body and then get upset when it doesn't do what you want it to do," she told me earlier this week.

"I don't have a choice," I told her. "I don't get to magically say that I want to teach my classes in the middle of the night, when for some reason my body forces me to be awake even though I desperately need sleep. I don't get to pick the time that I want to leave the house to go teach, I don't get to do things my way. My body has to realize that it needs to listen to me whether it likes it or not."

I really do want to weep in frustration sometimes. I'm not making that up.

Up until about an hour ago, Pete was running through the house, back and forth, at full speed -- chasing the girls, making them hiss, bursting through my bedroom door with such force and speed that it would fly open and hit the doorstop on the wall behind it. He tried to jump into the shower with me when I was in there, he runs and jumps up on the counters, sinks, and tables, and does not appear to understand the phrase "PLEASE GO THE FUCK TO BED ALREADY." I desperately hope this means that he'll sleep with me today when I get home, because I have absolutely no patience for that shit when I'm trying to sleep. When I feel like this, my patience is already worn really thin anyhow.

As an example of this, I asked my 011 students yesterday how many of them had actually done the reading they'd been assigned (a whopping two-and-a-half pages, a 500-word short nonfiction piece) for class discussion. Only five out of the fifteen of them raised their hands, and then one of them spoke up:

"I don't have time for this; I have a two-year-old, I have work, and I have assignments to read and work on for all of my other classes."

"That's not my problem," I said flatly, "and that's not an excuse. When I assign you a reading, I expect you to do it. Your personal life, other classes, or children are not my concern. If you don't do the work that's assigned to you, you're not going to pass your classes. Get used to being in college, because this is what it's like."

Translation: Don't you DARE come into *my* classroom and tell me that what I've assigned isn't important enough for you to actually do, simply because you can't be bothered to do it.

She immediately looked down in shame once I said this and said nothing more. Good.

Again, I'm a pretty easygoing professor, but I don't tolerate insubordination or smart-ass comments like that, and I certainly will bring the hammer down on someone, or an entire class, who doesn't do the assigned work if I deem it necessary to do so. Was my response a bit harsh? Maybe. Was it warranted? Absolutely. I will put the fear of God into these kids if I have to, especially the slackers, and they'll either rise to the occasion or they'll drop the class and take it again next semester with someone else. Regardless, it's a win-win situation for me.

I am thankful that my 101 students aren't like that. Those students show up, they do their work, and they don't give me any shit about it.

As mentioned before, this week is workshop week for my 101 students. It's bittersweet, because though I don't have to do any lesson planning for them this week, workshop weeks are the only weeks of the entire semester where I'm virtually guaranteed to be in class the full 75 minutes each day. Most of my classes end up being about 40-45 minutes most of the time, especially the smaller classes, because once I'm done with my lesson for the day, I'm done with my lesson for the day. I'm not going to force my students to do busywork or needless group activities or anything like that if it doesn't benefit them and just keeps us all there longer. I'm a big proponent of the let's-teach-and-GTFO philosophy. Why make them sit there any longer than they have to? That means I have to as well. I'd much rather be at home. I'm sure they would as well.

Because of the cooler weather this morning and the off-chance of getting caught in a possible downpour either on the way to campus or on the way back, I have broken out one of my fleece jackets -- not a hoodie, mind you, just one of my zip-up jackets I bought several years ago at Target. Doing this also allows me to wear whatever I want underneath it; today it's an Angry Birds: Star Wars t-shirt I got on clearance from Walmart several months ago. This is another big reason I'm looking forward to "hoodie weather," as mentioned before. I also figure that if I wear it during class, it'll keep me awake since I can't get tired when I'm hot.

So, yes, my plan for the day is clear: leave the house. Teach. Come home. Sleep as long as humanly possible.