The Aftermath, Part II

My eye, again this morning, is no better or worse. I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually going to heal any more than it already has, or if I'm permanently going to have a low-grade blurriness in it with everything I do. Again, there's not like I can do anything about it; it doesn't hurt, it doesn't ache, it doesn't do anything but be blurry. But it's a huge pain in the ass. If it heals, it heals. If it doesn't, there's really nothing I can do except for (I assume) some sort of weird-ass surgery somewhere down the road. Lasik to burn off the scar tissue, or something. Who knows.

"You'll know in a few weeks or a month," Daisy said, "and you can go from there."

Yes, I suppose this is true, though my eyes are pretty damn important. I'm a professor. I have to be able to read and grade papers without blurriness or issues. I have to be able to see to drive normally and still keep my hyper-vigilance when on the road, because Kansas drivers are incredibly fucking stupid. On Thursday night, I have to be able to see to drive home in the dark with no streetlights or road lights for seven or eight miles when I return from my evening class. While I can see to drive just fine (I've been driving normally since I hurt my eye with no problems at all), even with perfect vision I hate driving at night where there are no lights whatsoever -- like my drive through the countryside coming back home from West campus.

There is that issue as well. Yesterday I sent a message to all of my 210 students on Blackboard, telling them to purchase the books for and prepare for my class on Thursday, because once we get in there we have to start proverbially moving as soon as our feet hit the ground. This is because it's an eight-week course, we have fall break interrupting our class for a full week, and we have another full week off over Thanksgiving when I'll be gone. Time is short, and there's very little breathing room for dilly-dallying.

Soon after, I received an email from one of my students in that course, confirming that we were starting on this coming Thursday and telling me if that were true, he wouldn't be able to make it because he has other eight-week-course final exams that day.

What?

Okay. I don't know what this means. The schedule says the class runs from October 10 to December 5. I can only go by my schedule. By that schedule, I assume that means that since Thursday is the 10th, and the class is held on Tuesday/Thursday evenings, even with fall break starting the next day, the first class should be held that night. Yet, if there are first-eight-week final exams being held on that day, and those exams clash with the time I'd begin teaching the course, I don't know. Again, I only know what the schedule tells me, I've never taught this class before, and I've never taught an eight-week class before -- especially not one that starts right before fall break does. I'm sort of lost on what I'm supposed to do here.

I sent an email to the Director explaining the issue and asking for clarification on what I should do -- not teaching on Thursday night would be nice, as it would be a softer entry into fall break for me (and would mean I'd get to come back home on Thursday morning and go to sleep if I wanted to), but it would also require me to completely rewrite and restructure my lesson plan for the rest of the semester to be able to incorporate that unexpected extra day off...and still have time to fit in all of the necessary assignments and instruction in the remaining seven weeks. Yes, that's how tight the schedule is, because it's an eight-week course and I don't have any other option. I've already had to slightly modify some of the assignments in there and combine them, because there's just no time to give my students "option A/option B" assignments or to have a resume and a cover letter or a proposal and funding request to be two separate assignments each. There's just not. In a sixteen-week class, there's breathing space. In an eight-week class, there isn't.

Regardless of what night I start teaching that class, I have to go in there that first meeting and be a hardass who lays down the law. If those students can't keep up with the workload involved or can't show up to class at the required meeting time, they need to drop it or they will very quickly fail it. The lesson plan has them turning in an assignment once a week -- basically every other class day. Sometimes these assignments are easy (an email or a memo) or they're really detailed and intricate (a proposal and request for grant funding to implement it). Each one requires them to read anywhere between two and four chapters per week in their textbook and spend hours upon hours creating a project. There's no final exam, but the last week of the class is all oral presentations. I have 21 students; I expect to see less than half of them in there and enrolled by the end of the month, let alone by the end of the semester. The workload will overwhelm them. Hell, the grading workload will more than likely overwhelm me. As mentioned before, I will never have another "free weekend" again. Not until shortly before Christmas, anyway. 

It's in the forties outside this morning, and windy. It's relatively cold in the house. This is good, for once. I like this weather. It's pleasant, but too cold to mow the grass in. I'll probably mow the grass on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, depending on my eyesight and my energy levels then. I'd rather not trip up and cut off my toes because my blurry eye doesn't let me clearly see a branch in the grass, and I'm certainly not going to mow when I'd have to wear layers to stay warm while doing so.

I mentioned about two weeks ago (roughly) that I ordered a bottle of peppermint oil to spray down the doors and windows with around the house to keep out spiders as it gets colder. Spiders apparently hate peppermint oil and will stay away from it. I had to order the peppermint oil because it's not like I have stores around here which would sell it, and a 4oz. bottle of it on Amazon, with shipping, was something like $20. It couldn't be helped -- I'd rather keep spiders out of the house than to put out glue traps and hope for the best. Well, said bottle of oil arrived while Daisy was here, and after she left, I put it in my spray bottle with some water and shook it up to give it something to mix with and be propelled through the sprayer with. The water would evaporate once sprayed; the oil wouldn't.

The first door I wanted to spray down was the door that leads out to the back deck; the seal on it isn't that great, and brown recluse will come in around it on occasion (because I tend to kill a fair amount of them around that door). The spray bottle I use has a jet-like spray -- it's focused in a squirt similar to a water gun, not a mist. I raised the bottle to the corner of the door and squeezed the trigger. The spray shot out, splashed and ricocheted, and the resulting splash of water and peppermint oil shot back and bounced right into my fucking injured eye. Of all fucking places.

Let me tell you, folks, it was not pleasant.

This is not my week.

It burned and watered for about five minutes or so until I could blink enough and carefully wipe down my eye enough to get it out. It didn't hurt the eye -- again, I'm no more or less blurry/injured than before -- but it's not like I enjoyed it, obviously.

I carefully sprayed down the doors of the house, including the garage doors, and sprayed around the accessible windows, both inside and out. The cats seemed intrigued by the peppermint-y smell, but as it's the only deterrent option that won't hurt them if they get into it/smell it/lick it, it's all I could do. It took the entire bottle of water/oil, and I'll probably have to order more eventually to give it a second coat. On the plus side, my entire house now smells like peppermint as opposed to cigarette/incense smoke or cat/cat litter.

On the plus side, since the temperatures cooled off, my allergies have almost disappeared. I say almost because yes, they're still there, but they're much less severe than they were before the storm front rolled through on Friday.

It's the little things, I suppose.

I messaged my cousin and asked her if she thought I should talk to my oldest sister; I wanted to know how the girls were holding up, and gauge from what she said if talking to her would help or just make things worse. I never, never want to be a bother to my sister, nor do I want to make her feel worse. I know she has her own life that I'm not really a part of. I know she's independent and intelligent and has a good career. And I also know our youngest sister's death really, really rocked her. It had to. My cousin said I should talk to her -- the family had a support network until Friday, until the funeral was over. Now everyone's gone home and they're alone, and she could probably use the support from her brother.

I still don't know. I don't want it to sound like "hey, I know we haven't talked in a while, but our sister is dead so this is my excuse to message you." And I'm afraid if I do, that's what it will feel or seem like. That's not it at all, obviously. Regardless of whether or not we're in frequent contact, she's still my sister and I'm still her brother, even if our father has cast me aside and ignores my existence.

And, again, I'm awkward. It doesn't matter that I'm a grown man of thirty or that I'm an English professor -- I don't even know where to begin. I'm having a really difficult time in grieving over my sister because I don't even know if I have a right to be grieving since I'm so completely detached from everything. It's not like I've ever been in a situation like this before, either. My coping skills for even little things are shot, since I hate the world anyhow. When a big thing like this comes along, I don't know how to deal with it.

I eventually sent her a message this morning, just to let her know I'm there and dealing with it too:

"I hope you girls are holding up okay. I can't imagine how hard it is for you. I am having great difficulties in processing it myself since I'm so far removed from the situation. I don't know what I should feel or say. I mean, I never even had the chance to meet [sister], so I don't know how I can even process things properly anyhow. Just know that I love you and I want to talk to you when you have the time. We may never see each other and we may be separated by a lot of distance, but that doesn't mean I care any less."

It's all I could do. It's all I could say. All I can do is reach out. I want to tell her why I wasn't at the funeral. I want to tell her why I'm not in her life more. I want to tell her how our father basically cast me aside for no reason. I want to tell her how sad it is to me that I didn't get to grow up with all three of my sisters as I should have, that I didn't get to be the big brother they went to for advice or cried to when their boyfriends broke their hearts. But I won't. I can't, really -- it's pointless to do so. Life is what it is. It is a precious thing, and the past can't be changed. I hold no true resentment for any of the non-contact with my father; I have no relationship with him, or his wife, whatsoever. What I want is to be a brother to my sisters. Especially now. Life's too short. 

My week coming up is a long one, not just because of my third class starting up. Tomorrow I'll be on the main campus for an extended period of time. As I mentioned before in hush-hush secrecy, there's a major, super-famous author coming to campus on his reading tour, and until now, I didn't want to mention him by name because the department has been keeping a pretty low profile about it. Well, as that tour date is tomorrow, I can now say who it is. It's Chuck Palahniuk. That's right, the guy who wrote Fight Club and a ton of other crazy-good novels. I'm not going to the actual reading/tour date thing he's doing on campus tomorrow evening, as it's not free -- the tickets are $25 each or something like that -- but I am going to a private Q&A he's doing tomorrow afternoon with the English department where I'll more than likely get to meet the man personally and/or ask him a question or two. I've been (understandably) looking forward to it for weeks. Maybe it'll help get my mind off of everything else going on right now. 

As I've been working on this post, my sister read the message I sent her, but has not replied. Let her take all the time she needs. Again, I'm not going to be a bother.

On that note, I need to go out to the living room and look over some student rewrites of papers. I'll put on football. I'll zone out. I'll try to decompress. I don't know how successful I shall be.