In The Works, Part II

Spring semester: day sixty-two

Yesterday went very slowly. And today is going about the same.

I taught my classes yesterday just fine, came home last night, ate, and went to bed almost immediately afterwards. I was exhausted. I didn't get up until around 9 this morning, meaning I slept for eleven hours or so, roughly.

Yes, I'm still tired. It's mainly because, as mentioned in my previous post, I really didn't get much (or any, really) downtime over the weekend -- there was always something to be done, such as cleaning the garage or grading papers, and then Daisy came down and we were busy from that point forward as well.

Daisy left yesterday morning shortly before I left the house myself, and by the time I'd gotten to my computer and booted it up on main campus in the afternoon, she had arrived home safely.

I have a stack of 210 final projects that I'll collect tonight, and a few workshop copies I'll collect tomorrow. I'll be busy this weekend again not only with those, but with packing and finishing up the garage cleaning and cleaning some of the other stuff around the house that needs to be washed or otherwise scrubbed down/cleaned out. I have to work on the closets, for example, to clear stuff out for the garage sale and to pack up what isn't going to be sold.

Daisy and I are trying to plot out the days for my move; we got the final approval for the apartment yesterday. She signs the lease on the 1st and starts moving her own stuff in on the 6th. We plan to get everything out of here and up there as soon as the semester ends (a month from today, basically) so that we can be done and I won't have to pay another month's rent for June here. This means that in the next month I have a lot of administrative shit I have to do as well, including changing addresses for basically...well...everything I have which has me listed as living here for the past five years. Employers, my bank account, my credit card bills, my student loan stuff, etc. All of that will have to be updated. I'll have to schedule days to stop the electric and water/trash in my name. I'll have to schedule large item pickup for the stuff I can't trash and can't sell at the yard sale. I'll have to figure out what to do with my car's license/registration, and how to get my title back (in Kansas, official car titles are kept in the DOR's offices in Topeka), to transfer it to being registered in Nebraska. I'll have to figure out how to transfer the cable service for the internet to our new place, or if I'll have to open an entirely new account there. There's a ton of stuff like that I have to do, and if I forget anything it'll be a huge pain in the ass.

On top of all of that, I have to rent and pay for the moving truck myself (obviously), which I must put on my credit card because I don't otherwise have the money for it. It's not cheap. Just in case you were wondering. And I have to wait on that for at least a few more days until I can pay that credit card bill down a bit first, since I've not yet gotten the bill for it this month.

Needless to say, all of this is pretty stressful and not that fun -- and I'm liable to go offline for a few days or weeks while all of it's being done and taken care of, especially stuff pertaining to the move and the moving itself. Add to that the fact that I'll be teaching and proctoring/grading finals all the way up until the move, and in about a week and a half will have to give my 30 days' notice to my landlord (who I'm sure already knows that next month will be my last month, as he's been called by the new apartment's people for a reference) when I write my rent check, and I'm going to be constantly swamped. I now have specific, sometimes very difficult or tiring tasks to do every single day whether I'm teaching or not, tasks that take energy and time. I sometimes wonder how I'm going to get everything done.

After a discussion with Parker yesterday (the first time I've seen the man in about four months or so, actually) we've set up a lot of the, ahem, "bachelor party" stuff. That is in quotes because again, it is a term I use very loosely. With my parents not getting here until the night of said party (I assume, anyway), and with my dad not being the type (generally) to want to attend said parties, I doubt he'll be in attendance -- though, of course, he is certainly welcome to come. The tentative plans are to do it at Dave & Buster's (because, of course, why not have a group outing at a place which serves not only good food, but has a ton of alcohol and video games?) with a possible trip to a dive bar somewhere afterwards. It'll be on a Thursday night, so it's not like everyone in the city will be out and about everywhere during the work week.

Whether we end up doing this or not remains to be seen, but there's a Dave & Buster's like two miles from Daisy's parents' house. Parker has vowed to destroy me with shots wherever we end up going anyway. My liver will hate him the next day.

As for tonight and for the rest of this week/weekend, it's work and life per the usual. As mentioned before, I'm collecting my 210 students' final projects tonight and will be prepping them on their oral presentations -- it'll be a rather short class, though my professor evaluations will be happening in there beforehand. I have to stop at Walmart on the way home as well, as I'd rather not do it tomorrow and because I didn't get the weekly necessities and the like that I needed when I was there with Daisy over the weekend -- just the stuff we needed then. I only have five or six things I need, so that should be a rather quick in-and-out trip as well. I'll then come home, eat something (if I'm hungry) and go to bed.

In the morning I have my professor evaluations in my 102 class, then I'm covering the last two readings of the semester in their textbook (well, as much as we'll have time for, anyway, after those evaluations finish) before collecting workshop copies and coming home. I might order pizza tomorrow if I'm awake and hungry enough, but I don't know. I may save that for the weekend, when I'll be grading, packing and cleaning, and won't really want to cook.

It's warm and overcast today; 72 right now with clouds. Perfect early-evening driving weather for when I'll leave in about an hour to go teach my class. It's supposed to be cooler and rainy tomorrow, so I'm enjoying this unusually-pleasing Kansas weather while I currently have it -- as this kind of weather is my ideal weather, and the climate I wish it would be year-round.

Next week it'll probably snow again, because Kansas.

Tonight Daisy starts her new position at her company, where she'll be supervising twenty employees (though not all at the same time). It'll be a new situation for her, and I wish I could say it was an easy job, but it probably won't be. She's very strong and is cool under pressure, though; I know she can do this job well. And it goes without saying that I am very proud of her and excited for her. Her hours are much different than before, and she's working different days of the week, but aside from that it's not terribly different than what she was doing before anyhow.

As an aside, so many people are surprised that I'm leaving Kansas behind after the semester ends, even though everyone knows that Daisy is in Omaha and that the wedding is there. Did they think we were going to get married there, then she'd leave her well-paying job and move here where neither of us would have a job or be able to pay bills this summer, only to both live on the (small) professorial salary I receive once classes start up again in the fall? I don't know, really. While for the most part I have enjoyed my time here in Kansas, and have loved my teaching job despite the low pay, it's time to move on. This is a huge transition phase in not only my own life, but in hers as well. Marriage is, ahem, a big deal.

Anyway, that's pretty much my life right now. Even though I'll be busy over my weekend, I'm looking forward to getting some very restful sleep for about the first time in five or six days -- because even though I slept well last night, I wouldn't call it completely "restful."  Restful sleep comes when I don't have to worry about anything pressing hanging over my head, when I can go to bed when I'm tired and get up naturally when I'm no longer tired, regardless of how many hours that entails. That sort of sleep only comes on Thursday afternoons/evenings and Friday nights, really, as the rest of my weekends are generally devoted to tasks and work -- and even more so now.