The Christmas board? You may be asking silently. Well, for those of you who don't know what it is, it's this:
It's a lot more decorated than this, of course; I decorate it with new stickers and the like every year. It's become a dry-humor tradition in my household.
Why a board? I have three cats. Three curious, get-into-shit, get-up-on-the-counters little bastard cats who, were it an actual tree (artificial or genuine), would destroy it. I know this. It's not hard to assume, knowing my cats and knowing the shit they tear up anyway. They leave the board alone, because it's a board. There's nothing flashing or shiny dangling off of it. It's a board.
Daisy desperately wants an actual Christmas tree in our home once we're married. I've told her that is a supremely bad idea because of the cats, and my parents agree, but she insists. I'm gone out of the house for too many hours every day to have a real tree up, and I don't foresee anything being different next year. Despite the fact that all of these cats are six years old, all of them still tear ass through the house, chase each other, spar, and play with toys like they're still kittens. Anyone who says "oh, cats calm down and become sedentary after they grow up; they stop being so crazily active" is full of shit. Pete, who will turn seven in May, is still as much of a bastard as he's always been, and would shred a Christmas tree if left alone with it for an hour. Pete runs back and forth through the house at full speed for no reason; he pounces on and bites your feet in bed, he waits for one of the girls to walk by before jumping on their back and pinning them to the floor. He's a dick. Sadie tears shit up as well; she's too dumb to remember that if she tips her water dish over, it spills, and then she doesn't have any water, so she comes crying to me when there's no water to be drank since it's all over the floor. I used to have a water bowl with an attached 1-gallon bottle of water for the cats, a gravity feed, and she would knock the bottle off an hour after I set it up, every time, and then act surprised when the water went everywhere. Yeah, she's dumb. Maggie? Eh. Maggie never does anything or gets into anything -- she's too fat to care. She won't even chase the dot from the laser pointer when I play with it with the other cats; she'll look at it and look at me as if to say "I'm not chasing that, screw you."
"We're having a tree," Daisy said firmly. "There's not really any discussion about it."
"Okay, then you can take care of it," I replied. "You can fix it and clean up the messes every time the cats knock it over or break all the ornaments, tear branches off it, pee on it, and anything else they do."
This is a grand experiment waiting to happen, I suppose, next Christmas. And when it does happen, I'll sit back with a knowing smile and will say/do nothing, holding the Christmas board in my lap and stroking it lovingly, as I know the cats have no interest in it whatsoever.
Anyway.
Today is the last day of my Thanksgiving "break," I suppose. Tomorrow morning I join the ranks of my fellow professors again as we begin to wrap up the semester. I have now finished my grading, though it took quite some time to do, and will return to campus for in-class conferences, practice finals, actual finals, and oral presentations this week before I get a shorter break next weekend before Finals Week starts up. I'm reaching this state of zen-like calm at this point, really; yes, I have a lot of work to do in the interim, but the calm comes from knowing that it will all be over soon, and knowing that a week from tomorrow will possibly be the last day I have to be on any campus for about six weeks. I shall begrudgingly turn on my alarm clock tonight when I go to bed for one of the last few days I'll have to do so. Sleep deprivation is no longer a concern; I'll sleep when I do, and when I don't it won't matter -- I am desperately looking forward to Tuesday the 10th, when I may be completely done with everything if I'm really, really lucky, and can sleep for days afterwards if necessary.
Last night was my first night of "normal" sleep in a long time -- meaning that it's the first night since last Sunday night where I slept in my own bed, alone with my kitties, and could stretch out and sleep like I always do. I slept until well after noon today because of this. The flannel sheets Daisy's parents gave me kept me really warm last night, and coupled with my electric blanket, I passed out and stayed blissfully asleep and unaware of the world around me for many hours.
There are a few things I have to do today, and the weather is indeed helping -- it's 60 degrees outside right now. I need to put some new oil and coolant in the car to prep it for the cold a bit more; it's supposed to be really cold and snow later this week, so that can only help, and I need to take out the trash and recycling. I also have to print another copy of the forbearance form and write a short letter to include with it so that I can fax it when I get to work in the morning -- I mentioned this before -- so that hopefully it gets into somebody's hands before the deadline, as the mail is notoriously slow for that sort of thing. It's now been a week, and they email me when the form is received. Well, I haven't gotten any emails yet, and the clock is ticking, so I don't have much of a choice in the matter other than to fax them more forms tomorrow just in case. That's all I can do.
I will say that it may be difficult to get back into the "groove" of being a professor for the last few days of class; I've sent my students emails reminding them of what they're all doing this week, but they're as much reminders for me as they are for them. I've not taught a class since Thursday the 21st, so I myself am out of the loop -- big time. I know what I'm supposed to do, obviously, but to remind them to get all of their own work done is the big thing since I have a fair amount of slackers scattered through my classes. Most of my students are great, but still, in any semester you'll have the ones who don't really care that much. That's basically universal.
Really, I'm looking forward to coming home tomorrow around noon and going back to bed in the afternoon. I know my sleep cycles will be off because of the change back to work, but again, after a week from tomorrow that won't matter.
So. On with it.
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