They Call It Stormy Friday

Spring semester: day sixty-nine

The remainder of my student conferences went fairly quickly; those students who remained (+/-10 or so) met with me either after class evaluations or in my office shortly afterwards, and I was done by around 1:30 PM. I was home by shortly after 2, made a sandwich because I was starving, sent Daisy a few messages telling her I was home safely and was going to bed, and passed the hell out.

I awoke around 1AM, unable to sleep anymore -- I'd slept almost a full ten hours straight, during which I was able to finally become fully rested. I desperately needed this. However, when I awoke, my allergies were cripplingly awful. As in, could not breathe, blew my nose thirty times, and the sinuses in the back of my head were so congested and full that my neck (even now) is stiff and achy. I took one of my last three Zyrtec Allergy pills, and it's helping, but a huge part of why my allergies are going nuts is because it was 70 yesterday and gorgeous when I came home.

I also found that the other reason my allergies were going nuts when I woke up is because it began storming pretty strongly about an hour after I came back upstairs. My overnight plans were to talk to Daisy while she's at work and to go to Walmart (since I decided against doing it last night when it was really cold and I was tired), and until the storms blow through, the latter half of those plans have been put on hold. I have to get a lot of stuff when I do my shopping, and some of it is heavy and cumbersome (cat food, cat litter, etc). The last thing I want to do is load/unload that stuff in and out of the car in torrential rains, thunder, and lightning. Not to mention that if it starts to hail, I also don't want my car to be in the middle of an unprotected Walmart parking lot. While I no longer really mind night driving (especially when I'm fully awake and alert, and because after a few years of classes that ended at 10PM I got used to it), I don't like driving through torrential rains, even if said drive is only two or three miles. I've got good wipers and headlights, but it just sucks overall. So, until the storms subside, I'm here in my Man Cave writing this blog post.

Yesterday morning, when I started the car, it shuddered for a split second, and then my "Service Engine Soon" light began flashing at me. Fuck.

For those of you who don't know, don't remember when I wrote about it before, or are unfamiliar with mid-1990s Chevrolet models, when my "Service Engine Soon" light is flashing, it means there's an engine misfire in the cylinders. This is generally attributed to one or more spark plugs blowing out. That light is always on, solid, in my car because the car's emissions system needs to be re-tuned (according to the guys who worked on it at the shop last fall), and they told me that's normal for cars of that age and not to worry about it, as it's an expensive and essentially needless repair for a car as old and beat up as my Monte Carlo is at this point. They also said it's not going to damage anything, so again, not to worry about it. However, they did tell me if the light began flashing again, it meant that one or more of my plugs were shot and that I needed to bring it back in immediately.

The car was running normally and strongly, but the light was flashing. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, I thought. You folks know how much I love my car, and how I try to take care of it as well as I possibly can. I just had all the plugs and wires replaced last fall (September, October, something like that) whenever I had them do all of the work on it.

Edit: I just checked; that was September 7th.

Regardless, I shouldn't need new plugs or wires, and the ones I have should be good for years. There's no reason for the engine to have any sort of misfire -- mechanically, though there's 227,000 miles on the car, the engine is in really good shape.

I drove the car slowly to the end of my street, and the light stopped flashing. She wasn't running hot, she wasn't acting weird, and for the rest of the day (both through my drive to campus and my drive back home in the afternoon) the light never flashed again and she ran perfectly fine at normal speeds and temperatures. I chalked it up to old age and it being bitterly cold this morning, and realized that because of the car's age, sometimes things will just sputter a bit before righting themselves. I will still, however, keep a close eye on everything -- at the very least, I need to put at least 250-300 more miles on that car between now and graduation, after which I won't be driving her nearly as much until I get a job somewhere and/or move out of this place. Yes, I did these calculations in my head based on the average amount of driving I do over any given week or two.

On that note, I'm going to take an intermission now and go to Walmart.


~~Intermission~~


Okay.

I went to Walmart at 4:30 in the morning and spent more money than I was expecting to, but I ended up getting a lot of stuff I needed -- including two books of stamps, cat food, litter, motor oil for the car (since she burns off about a quart of oil every month to six weeks), sinus/allergy medicine, cooking oils, and the normal food essentials for around the house.

However, as I was going back to the automotive section to get my motor oil, I had to walk past the plumbing section of the store -- different than the section where you can get Drano and the like -- no, this is the industrial plumbing section, where they sell not only parts for your fixtures, but the super-powerful industrial declogging stuff for drains. I had to stop and look, if only because I wanted to get a few more foamers or decloggers for my drains anyway in case the problem I had persisted.

What I found, and purchased, was interesting -- it's a gallon bottle of "Main Line Cleaner." Pour it all down a drain, wait for some hours for it to do its work (the directions suggest "overnight"), and then flush the line with water for five minutes. Safe for all pipes and plumbing. It's apparently the best stuff one can buy, really -- for ten bucks. There's a reason for that; it's mostly lye, which will dissolve basically anything in a pipe, if not anything period. Gangsters used to use lye to dissolve bodies. And, again, while I don't have any bodies in my pipes, that's good to know. As the clog (if it's still there and problematic) is in my main line somewhere, that stuff should totally flush it out and destroy it.

Mind you, I know how dangerous and/or poisonous lye is. I've put it where the cats can't get to it (even though it's in a thick plastic bottle) and if I do have to use it, I'll be sure to sequester them appropriately. But, this should be the end of my drainage/plumbing troubles one way or another. I don't think there's anything stronger I could get without having to call someone to come look at the pipes physically.

When I left Walmart, I turned the key in my car, and she took about ten seconds or so to start and fire up. Hm. Once she started, I revved the engine a few times and she was fine, but I couldn't help but wonder if this was related somehow to that light flashing yesterday morning. Maybe I've got a plug or two that's about to go out again. Maybe my battery is starting to die. Maybe my alternator is starting to die. Could be anything on a car that old, or could be nothing -- my car doesn't like it when it's all humid and muggy; she runs sluggish when there's a lot of moisture in the air, and it had been storming all night and was quite humid. The light wasn't flashing, she was running fine, and I drove her the three miles back home without incident, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit concerned. Again, I've got at least three more weeks of driving I have to do in that car before I can let her get some "rest," of sorts, for most of the summer. That's one of the reasons I got a few more jugs of motor oil -- I'll put them into her when necessary, and the next time I fill up I'll put the last of my bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil into the tank as well. I tried to get more of that at Walmart, too, but all they had were the $20, 2-gallon jugs of it. I may have to order more of that from Amazon.

I came home, put away the groceries and commodities, and ran a load of laundry. I haven't run any laundry all week, and hadn't run any large amount of water through the pipes since my last shower on Wednesday night. The laundry ran, and drained, perfectly fine on both cycles, with no overflow or backup. Maybe it's a sentient clog, and it's scared of lye. Regardless, it was fine. I'll have to shower sometime tonight, and I have another small load of laundry I need to do within the next few days as well, so I'll be closely monitoring the drain lines anyway. If I have to use the rest of the Max Gel or the Main Line Cleaner, I will.

After that, I wrote out the rent check and mailed it today, and finished addressing/sealing all of the envelopes I have so far for my graduation announcements. There are, currently, sixteen of them. I've got a few more addresses to gather over the next few days, but the first batch of announcements (to family members) is going out tomorrow. The next batch will go out on Monday, another on Tuesday, etc. Daisy asked me why I'm not just sending them out all at once in a big stack in the mailbox.

"Because I have had notoriously shitty luck with the postal service," I said, "and I know that if I mail out a huge stack of them at once, one or more of them will inevitably get lost as they're all going to different places."

"That makes no sense," she replied.

"I know," I said, "but I'm paranoid about that sort of thing."

Some of them will also take longer than others to get to their destinations, as well. I have friends and family scattered around the country. Most of them are in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, yes, but others are going to all sorts of different places. I'm trying to time it so that all of them arrive around roughly the same time. In the meantime I also have bills that will have to be mailed out as well, and I'd rather not mix in bills with a stack of graduation announcements all in uniform envelopes for the same reason that I'm paranoid that those bills will get lost as well. Again, I've had really shitty luck with the postal service over the years. I know it's probably just me being neurotic or overly paranoid, but I'm not taking any chances I don't have to. If I were a less lazy man, I'd drive to the post office and put them one-by-one into the box for out of town mail myself.

Anyway.

I talked to Daisy for a while this morning before she had to go to bed in order to be able to get up and go back to work tonight, and then I myself went back to bed around noon to take a long nap. It's been raining and thundering softly off and on all day, and it's been in the 50s. It feels nice. This is April weather, not snow and ice storms. It's going to be warm (really warm, in the 80s on Monday and Tuesday) for the foreseeable future, so hopefully we're done with the shitty cold rain/ice/snow for the year. I'm hoping it's another mild summer, like it was in 2009-10 or so, when the temperature barely hit 90 most of the time. The past two summers have been brutal and have made my electric bill (from the air conditioner) skyrocket. Oh, how nice it would be to have a $40 electric bill for the months of May and June.

This weekend, since Daisy is working, will be mostly filled with stuff I need to do around the house and for my students. As mentioned before, I have to go through their workshop drafts for next week (I'll probably do that tonight, a bit later) and I desperately need to clean the bathroom and kitchen. I also need to stick the new memory into my old Dell laptop and take it downstairs to make it my new portable DVD player. If nothing else, that's a good little backup machine to have in the house if something happens to this computer. I need to get another RAM upgrade for the Toshiba laptop Daisy got me for Christmas, too, but the sticks for that are so expensive that I have to wait until they get cheaper. To max out the RAM in that old Dell, it was $25. To do it in the Toshiba would cost me about $100, more than a third of what the computer actually cost new. I'll wait on that for a while. The Toshiba is a good machine to be sure, but it's dreadfully slow, even running Linux. The three-year-old Acer desktop I've been using here at home (and which I'm typing this post on) since I've been in grad school is leaps and bounds faster...because it has double the RAM that the Toshiba does.

But, for now, the big things are taken care of -- I got paid today, my graduation announcements are stamped and ready to go in the mail (as an aside, books of stamps are now over nine dollars), the rent has been paid and mailed, groceries have been purchased, and most of my laundry has been done. I can now relax a bit and focus on the stuff that will be more...I don't know, less pressing? Something like that. I actually have time to clean again. I have time to cook again, which is good, as I've made sure that I have stuff in the house to actually cook. I can start looking for jobs in and around the Omaha area, as well as anything here that I could do over the summer if necessary.

Just because I'm not swamped with super-important or pressing work doesn't mean I'm not occupied with other things. For example, Daisy and I created our Wedding Registry this morning on Amazon. We plan to use a few different places, and the first two that came to mind were Amazon and Target -- mainly because not everyone will want to use Amazon, and most people have a Target near them or at least within a half-hour's drive. I'm a huge Target fan; I wish there was one that was much closer to me than Wichita or Hutchinson. Unless Daisy has added more to it over the course of today and tonight, there are only three things on the Amazon registry thus far -- a food steamer, a juicer, and a high-end blender. Can you tell Daisy loves to cook, and to cook as healthily as possible? I can.

"Are you going to put the cotton sheets on it that you wanted?" Daisy asked me.

"Nah, not right now," I said. "I'm not going to mess with it yet. Put whatever you want or think we'll need on it."

The sheets she's referring to are a 100% cotton white sheet set for my king-size bed. Getting sheets that are 100% cotton are nigh-impossible to find under $100-200, especially in King, and I want white ones so that they can be tie-dyed in a multitude of rainbow colors. It would be the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and cotton-poly blends won't hold the dyes I use (because said dyes are inexpensive, and yes, I know this from experience). I could get a set of cotton-poly blend sheets for $30 or less, but if I wanted to dye them, I'd have to spend $100 or more on extremely expensive dye, which sort of negates the point. Even at Walmart, a single 100% cotton pillowcase -- just a pillowcase -- is $22. At this point, I'm not even making dyed shirts or other clothing anymore; I have enough of it already, and the dye kits I liked (Tulip One-Step, RBY 3-pack, $10 or so) are no longer made.

Yeah, so that will likely be a project for long after we're married, when both of us are settled and we have more money and more free time.

On that note, I am going to take care of some of that remaining stuff around the house which needs to be done, including cleaning the toilet and running that second load of laundry.

Unslept and Bloodshot

Spring semester: day sixty-eight

When I finished my previous post I took a sleeping pill, as I mentioned I would, in order to conk out and rest up. I haven't -- as you know if you've been reading this blog for a while -- been sleeping that well as of late. My body wants to sleep at weird times and for lots of short(er) intervals of about six hours or so, and even on my lighter work schedule that plays hell with the stuff I need to do during any given week. If I only sleep for six hours before a long day of work (such as this week, during student conferences) my brain and body will be shot by the time I get home and can actually go to bed again. When I do, I tend to crash out and will sleep for eight or nine hours before, once more, waking up groggy and needing a two-hour routine to fully awaken and become focused on anything, and I'm almost constantly fatigued even when I'm awake. At this point of the semester, there's no real resetting of my circadian rhythms that can take place; I just need to sleep when I can, and when I can't, I need to do what I need to do. Until I come home from Daisy's parents' after graduation weekend, I'm not going to be able to reset everything, nor will I be able to completely unhinge (in a good way, mind you) to relax. That's almost a full month away, and I can't even look that far ahead yet. I'm also bound to get some decent sleep/rest in that time as well, though I doubt I'll be able to switch around my sleeping patterns that much.

Anyway, I'm getting off track.

The sleeping pills I have (or, I should say, had ) were Lunesta. I'm sure that you've probably heard of it. My longtime ex, when she moved out, left a bunch of the sample packs here almost two years ago now, and if I've needed to sleep quickly or if I've needed to rest up for a long while without having to worry about waking up at a set time, I'd take one. This was, and is, a very rare occurrence; I'd maybe take one once or twice a year, if that. Sometimes they'd work, sometimes they wouldn't do anything at all. It all depended on the day, really. Anyway, the one I took this afternoon was the very last one I had -- and shit, it worked. It worked very, very hard.

My stomach had been bothering me all day -- I'd been in the bathroom four or five times. I'm sure you didn't need to know this, but it relates to the story. I took that pill this afternoon and almost immediately began feeling groggy. This was good; it meant that it was working, and working well. I went downstairs to bed. Suddenly, I was too hot; I was feeling queasy and needing-to-poop-esque. By this time, I was also very, very groggy; it was akin to feeling drunk, but the sick kind of drunk -- not the fun kind. I came back upstairs and went to the bathroom, in my groggy state, and I vaguely remember going back downstairs and laying down afterwards. I remember nothing after that until after 11PM when I awoke. When I came back upstairs after waking up, I noticed that I hadn't even remembered to flush the toilet. Gross.

Ladies and gentlemen, the effects of Lunesta. But -- I slept. I slept hard, and I slept well. I got the rest I so desperately needed but was unable to acquire last night because of my pounding headache (probably brought on by allergies). So why is this post titled "Unslept and Bloodshot," then? Because since then, I've been up. Yeah. Awake. Granted, this was less than five hours ago. But I've been up. I'm not mentally tired, but my body is sure tired and achy. I'm worn out. It's not stress this time; it's more that my body is fighting me because -- as I mentioned in my last post -- I have mentally checked out for the semester now that I've passed my comps. I subconsciously don't want to go back and do anything for these last few weeks; I want that diploma put in my hand now, and I want my students to get whatever grade they have in the class now and to go on their merry ways. I can't do this, of course; I've still got two more weeks of class to teach and finals week to go. But, subconsciously, my body is telling me to stop, to give up, I'm done, etc., when I'm really not. It's a neverending battle, really. This is why I am unslept and bloodshot. I'm burned out and fully rested at the same time, and why I'm awake at 3:42 AM.

I mentioned previously that I have had several of my students reschedule their conference times with me today so that they can get them done early and out of the way. My original conference schedule would have kept me on campus until well after 3PM today; now it looks like I'll be able to get out of there around or before 2, depending on who shows up and when. This is good; I might be able to coerce Rae and Jay to go get our graduation gowns today, if we all have the time, before leaving campus. That's also going to depend quite heavily on how much extra energy I have when I'm done with my conferences, too. My mind may be more shot than usual, and I may just want to come home and crash out. I was originally planning to go to Walmart tonight in the overnight hours before I had to go in to campus this morning, but I have since decided against that -- I'm too physically tired to shamble around the store right now, even though there's some stuff I need (cat food, litter, stamps, etc). Again, if it must, that can wait another 24 hours or so until I get some sleep tonight and feel rested again. Right now I'm just...exhausted. My muscles ache with fatigue. I'm wondering if my body is trying to shake off the lingering effects of the Lunesta, still. Normally I don't have a problem with stuff like that, but my eyes feel like they have cobwebs behind them, and coffee really isn't working that well to keep me motivated and energetic. I feel more tired this morning than I did the morning of my comps, when all I wanted to do was go curl up on my electric blanket and sleep the day away.

Yet, mentally awake. Of course.

I also tend to wake up very quickly and my adrenaline starts pumping when I make my drive to campus; as you know, when I get behind the wheel of the Monte Carlo every sense in my body amplifies and I become super awake, super alert immediately. It's a reflex, all fight-or-flight and all that. I've conditioned myself to be like this because Kansas drivers are all fucking idiots.

So, I'll go to campus, I'll perform my duties admirably as always, and then I will come home and go the hell to bed. I look forward to it.

The Results, Part II

Spring semester: day sixty-seven

I received my letter yesterday morning; it was waiting in my mailbox at school when I got there, though I told Parker before leaving the house that I wasn't going to open it until he got to campus as well, so (if necessary) we could cry together if for some reason I had failed. In the interim I'd also found out that two of my friends and fellow GTAs who had taken the comps with me had gotten a "high pass" on them, including Jay. So, I waited for Parker to arrive.

"Well?" he asked when stepping out of the elevator.

"Oh, I've got the letter," I said. "I told you I wasn't going to open it until you got here."

I opened the letter, and it said (I'm paraphrasing here, since it's still on my desk at work) Congratulations, you have passed your comprehensive exams with a score of "PASS." Something like that, anyway.

Well, I'm done now. Barely 24 hours later, and I am totally checked out for the rest of the semester.

I don't even care that I didn't get a high pass or anything like that -- I don't give a flying fuck, in fact. The fact is that I've already basically graduated, and everything from this point forward is just going through the motions until the semester ends. That letter, to me, is as good as an actual diploma. It basically tells me hey, you're done, you've survived grad school and you'll get another degree for it in, oh, three weeks. We just have to print it up first.

Honestly, I feel somewhat invincible now. Academically speaking, of course. Over the course of the next three weeks, all I have to deal with is tying up all the loose ends with my students' work -- grading their final papers and exit exams and the like. None of that is particularly fun, of course, but I no longer have the stress of dealing with anything but those little things. I have relative freedom in mind and spirit.

In the overnight hours, after talking to Daisy for a little while, I tried to go back to sleep but could not; I had a massive, pounding headache that would not go away no matter what I did, and it lasted for hours. Instead, after laying in bed for over an hour as it gradually got lighter outside, I got back up, came upstairs, and finalized the design of my graduation announcements -- I printed out fifteen of them on ivory linen paper (with envelopes to match), addressed them, and sealed them. I have to get stamps before I can send them out, as I only have one stamp left right now -- and that will more than likely go to the rent check this weekend. I also need about five or six more addresses from some extended family members and family friends, especially the ones who may not know offhand that I'm graduating. Most of them are people I haven't spoken to since Christmas or beforehand, or people I shoot emails back and forth with maybe once a year. Over the years, as I so rarely send out any mail to friends and family anymore, my address book has become outdated in some places -- I have at least three addresses for my friend April, for example, which have been crossed out and marked "outdated." Eh, it happens. I think I sent out maybe six Christmas cards total last year, and two of those were to my parents and Daisy's parents, despite the fact that I spent several days with each of them over the span of about two weeks.

Regardless, those will go out next week, more than likely. I also ordered my mother a set of Mother's Day gifts off of Amazon (they'll ship tomorrow) and told her that she'll need to go to the mailbox to pick those up over the weekend or on Monday. It's so rare that I can do anything for my parents that, when I have the chance or ability, I like to do so. They've certainly done enough for me over the years.

Several friends and colleagues are holding an end-of-year graduation party on graduation night; Daisy and I are planning to attend. There's about fifteen of us who will be there (so far), including some of us who are not graduating yet but who want to see us all off properly. Daisy and I may be a little worse for wear by the time that weekend rolls around; she will have worked seven days straight in order to get that weekend off for my graduation, and I will have been grading exams and hurriedly trying to get everything put into the system for my students, as well as moving as much of my stuff out of my office as I can do myself in the interim. That includes all of my desk drawer's contents, my coffee pot, laser printer and laptop, boombox, books, papers, energy bars, etc. It's a lot of stuff. And that doesn't count whatever else I acquire when everyone else moves their stuff out and wants to get rid of everything they possibly can -- if you know me well, you know I'm a sucker for stuff like that. I'm hoping to score a free TV or something like that from somebody.

Anyway, graduation's that Friday afternoon (the 17th), with the party following directly afterwards in the evening. Let me tell you one thing -- I'm very glad Daisy doesn't drink, because this means I'll have a designated driver all set 'n ready to go. This is the figurative last blast with my friends and colleagues I've known for the past three years, and after this party I may not see some of them ever again -- people like Rae and Jay are leaving town for good shortly after graduation, and a few others are doing the same. I've already told Daisy that since I don't ever drink at any other time, I plan to get pretty sloshed with my friends there. She realizes this and certainly understands it -- it's a celebration, after all. As she knows most of my friends at this point anyway, including the majority of the people who will be attending, this isn't really a problem. For one night only, she gets to see happy, drunk Brandon make a comeback, and finally I get a chance to actually loosen up and, well, act like a normal grad student does on any other given weekend.

The next morning, Daisy and I are going back up to Omaha for a few days to spend time with her family before she has to resume her normal work schedule. This also includes showing me around parts of Omaha I haven't seen yet, as it was nut-numbingly cold and snowy the last time I was there for New Year's, and her parents also want to do a celebratory dinner (or something akin to that) while I'm there as well. She has to work one of the nights I'll be there -- I believe it's Sunday -- but we'll stay there until Wednesday or so. And after that? My schedule is...well, wide open. I should continue to be paid through at least the first half of June, but I will be doing little but looking for stable, livable employment somewhere and refining my writing. As mentioned before, I'd like to write a chronicle of graduate school, as well as do a scathing re-edit of my first book to re-release it for publication on the Kindle service and/or somewhere in print. Those things will be back-burner, though, to paying the bills and eventually getting out of Kansas -- however long that may take.

As for the rest of this week? There's not a lot else going on. I had conferences with my students all day yesterday, a trend that will continue tomorrow. Yesterday I also had to deal with some of the most horrible April weather I've ever seen -- a mix of rain, sleet, and snow with high (30-40mph) sustained winds all day long, bad enough to where it was so cold I couldn't feel my ears, and once more had to dress in layers in order to be able to stay warm. This was capped off by me going to bed last night around 6 or so, only to wake up about eight hours later with a good bit of snow on the ground here in Newton, and my car covered. Dusting to an inch, something like that. It melted off by 11AM.

I will remind you that it is April 24. And by Monday, it's supposed to be almost 80. It's ridiculous to get snow this late. Bullshit there's no such thing as climate change.

I finally brought home my old Dell laptop yesterday afternoon, after it sat in my desk drawer at school for four months, unused. I have new RAM to install in it so that I can make it a portable DVD player downstairs in my bedroom -- that will be part of my weekend activities while Daisy is at work on her normal night shifts. I also have to edit through a bunch of student workshop copies this weekend, as next week is workshop week for my students as they prepare their final papers for me. My schedule tomorrow will be somewhat strange -- normally I get home around 1PM or so, but since I've got conferences, it's all up in the air. Students are emailing me to change around their times, I don't know who's going to come in and when, etc. Once everyone's done, I can come home -- at which point I will more than likely go straight to bed, since my sleeping schedule is all sorts of screwy (as is evidenced by the fact that I'm awake at noon and have been awake since last night due to that aforementioned headache, despite trying to sleep early this morning again).

The plumbing situation is, well, okay I suppose. I drained the tub yesterday just fine and without incident, and aside from flushing the toilets and washing my hands/running some water over dirty dishes in the sink, I've not run any water at all since Monday night. I'll have to shower tonight, but other than that I don't really plan to use any large amount of water over the next several days. I do, however, need to do some big-time cleaning around the house, including scrubbing down the toilets, bathrooms, and kitchen/counters/stove. I'll probably do that over the weekend as well. I've made a new shopping list (as there are things I'm out of) and when I go take care of that, I'll get more decloggers and foamers just in case I end up needing them, but as it will be rapidly getting warmer during the foreseeable future, I won't need to be doing as much laundry because I won't be wearing layers every day anymore. I will, however, need to wash the blankets and sheets soon, though. That should be a pleasant experience if the clog isn't completely dissolved or pushed out of the system. Heavy sarcasm is, of course, intended there.

For now, as Daisy is asleep for the day, I'm going to do the same -- as I have no responsibilities for the rest of the day, I'm going to take a sleeping pill and pass out, in order to regain some of my lost rest from my headache last night that I so desperately need in order to be able to function tomorrow. Without the pill, I'll be awake all day with, ahem, reverse insomnia. I know, it's weird. Again, my sleep schedules are fucked when it comes to the majority of the week.

The Results, Part I

Spring semester: day sixty-six

I found out last night -- in the interim between showering and messing with the laundry and pipes -- that all of the MFAs received their comps results yesterday afternoon via letters in their mailboxes. My buddy Jay even received a "high pass," which is basically the best marks one can get on the comps. I'm proud of him, especially since he thought he did "just okay" or something along those lines.

I will get my own results this morning, presumably, in about 90 minutes once I'm on campus. Parker is supposed to find out his own results this week as well, from his first question of the MA comps he took on Friday.

I'm nervous and my allergies are killing me. I had to take a sleeping pill last night in order to force myself to sleep through the night, as I am forced to be on campus all day today for conferences -- 8AM through 2:40, one after another, back-to-back to back with no real breaks whatsoever. As you may have guessed, I'm not particularly looking forward to this. My allergies are killing me because in the past twelve hours, the temperature has gone from 70 to 36 degrees, and it's currently raining/sleeting/wet-snowing with 25-35mph winds. The weather forecast was right, apparently, and when it changes that rapidly, it destroys my allergies -- runny nose, watery eyes, awful congestion, the works. I'm going to try to leave a little early in order to drive a bit more slowly if necessary. The roads just look wet and it's above freezing here, and the ground sure as hell isn't frozen, but people drive like idiots in shitty weather, and the last thing I want to do is get into an accident three weeks before graduation.

The laundry/towels are done and have run their course in the dryer, but I have not yet drained the tub. I want to wait until I get home this afternoon to do so, as if I wait that long then I can be assured that everything has been drained out of the system and draining the tub shouldn't be a problem. The washer didn't give me any more issues last night when I let the rest of the drain/spin cycle run, which tells me that my theories of the pipes being mostly clear or being able to take about 30 gallons or so of water at one time before they back up is roughly correct -- the clog is either mostly dissolved/broken up or it's been pushed much further down the pipe from where it was before, but either way, it seems to be much better than before. Not worried about it for the moment, really.

I plan to leave the house in about fifteen minutes; this is going to be a stressful day for a number of reasons, the least of which are my travels to school and back in the shitty weather. As mentioned, I have conferences all day today. I also have them for the same length of time on Thursday, though with less students (most of them are coming in today). No, most of the stress is attributed to that letter sitting in my mailbox on campus right now, the one that says I'll either get to graduate next month or I won't. It's been so long since comps that I'd almost forgotten that I took them, and I've certainly forgotten most of the vast amount of information I read and studied to take them. I do, ironically, remember most of what my essays for those comps entailed, however.

For now, though, I must dress in layers and traverse the roads to get to campus. The heater in the Monte Carlo is less than ideal and takes a bit to warm up, so I'll be wearing two shirts, two pairs of pants, gloves, a coat, and thick shoes. Oy.

Stocked and Loaded, Part IV

Spring semester: day sixty-five

I went to bed last night with a feeling of hope; I let the washer finish its drain and spin cycle, and both the cat room drain and the drain under the washer remained bone-dry. Hm, I thought. Perhaps that Max Gel I poured down the drain when it was standing water after it overflowed the last time finally did it and dissolved the clog.

Mind you, I hadn't run any water, nor had I started the washer again, which I will have to do yet again because the one remaining towel I had was used to soak up the previous overflow, and the overflow also had a fair amount of bleach in it from the decloggers. On a black towel. Again, sigh. I had to throw it in with the others which were already half-washed, as I had nowhere else to put it, so the previously clean towels in the washer are now once more soiled.

I don't really care, to be honest with you -- a towel is a towel, and even if it's discolored in spots because of contact with bleach, once it's washed clean it'll still work the same as it always did. Not everything I own has to be pretty -- take a look at my car, for example.

I was previously thinking that, before bed, I should once more get dressed and go to Walmart again in the night in order to get more supplies if/when they will be necessary, but after the washer finished draining and spinning with no issue or backwash, I changed my mind. If I need to get that stuff, I'll go get it later today, but here's the plan for today:

1. Before I do anything else or run any more water, shower. With the drain plug sealed. This will allow me to get that out of the way and clean myself, and when I drain it 30 seconds at a time it will be a good test for the drains themselves -- if they bubble up again I'll know the clog isn't fixed. If they don't, well, the clog may still not be completely gone, but as it'll be the only water I've run through the pipes in over twelve hours, it'll let me gauge how much of it is still a problem. As you may recall, I was able to dump the entire wash cycle's worth of water from the washer yesterday when I washed the towels the first time -- a good 15 gallons or more -- with no issue and no backup whatsoever once I put the first foamer down the pipes. If I can shower and let the water drain completely with no issue, that'll be roughly the same amount of water down the drains, more or less.

2. If it does back up again, before I do anything else, I let it dry out and apply the foamer and/or the rest of the Max Gel to help kick it along, dump the bottle of bleach down the drain(s), and go out to get more supplies. I have to get stamps anyway, so it's not like that would be the only reason I'd leave the house. It's warm today, too, before the snow hits tomorrow. Yes, more fucking snow.

 
See? Not fucking kidding.
 

3. Repeat the process from yesterday; run the laundry, see how much/if it backs up, and each time it does (if it does), continue to pour uncloggers down all holes, rinsing with water and alternating with doses of bleach. Again, it's all draining out, even if slowly at times -- so everything I'm putting down the drains must be hitting the clog(s) as it flows through. It's only a matter of time until it's all washed out. This is the only logical thought process I can have on the matter.



When I got up this afternoon, I poured the last foamer down the drain under the washer and let it sit for well over an hour. I debated on doing this, but I wanted to do everything I could before I showered and tested the washer again, in hopes that anything that could be kicked out or dissolved with the last foamer I have would be. I then went upstairs and took a shower, making sure the stopper was pulled closed, and showered as quickly as possible to minimize water use -- if it's going to overflow when I drain it, after all, I wanted to make sure it would overflow as little as possible. There's probably four inches of water in the fairly small tub; that's maybe twenty gallons or so, give or take, by eyeballing it. That's slightly more than a full washer load uses, I'm guessing.

I also came to a big, problematic debate here -- once I flush out the drain under the washer, do I test the washer first or do I drain the tub first? My original plan, as you know, was to drain the tub first and to see what happens with that, but that's also more water than the washer produces (again, I'm guessing) and if it begins to overflow, I can't immediately stop the tub like I can stop the washer -- I'd have to run back upstairs, burning about ten seconds when it would be overflowing through one or both drains. On the other hand, I don't want to let dirty shower water sit in the tub upstairs any longer than I have to.

After hemming and hawwing for a while, I decided to flush the drain and start the washer load again. If it overflowed or backed up, I thought, I could shut it down and use the rest of the Max Gel on the drain again before continuing, and unlike the shower drain, I can control the water flow of the washer. Later, once the water levels go down (if it was still clogged) I could empty the tub little by little.

I flushed the drain and ran the washer load, again, full and hot water. First cycle went beautifully -- wash and drain. Not a drop of overflow in either drain; both stayed dry. I thought maybe the foamer had finally fully worked and knocked out whatever was in the line. I let the second cycle start, the rinse cycle, which fills the washer again, but it is much shorter -- I'm guessing about five minutes. Remember this, as it's important.

When the rinse cycle completed and began to drain, I thought: Okay, here it is, the moment of truth. 

It drained well. I watched it. I stopped it about halfway through the drain cycle, and I'm glad I did -- the moment I hit the stop button it had started to come back up into the drain. It drained out quickly, though. I checked the drain in the cat room and it had some water in it as well, but wasn't even a quarter of the way filled up (that drain is bowl-shaped, not a grate, and larger). When I stopped the washer, everything receded quickly.


Hm, I thought. So the drainage system can take about thirty or so gallons at a time, roughly, before it's full and backs up. This is, despite what it may seem, good news. This means that the clog has either been mostly broken up or that it's been pushed down the line far enough to where it will take more water, and more time, to back things up. It also means that once the water has been drained out of the lines, an average washer load (not a super-big load) or average shower should not overflow the drains anymore. In essence, I am slowly winning this battle. I think it overflowed again on the drain/spin cycle about halfway through it because it is much shorter -- there is still water in the lines draining out from the wash cycle.

I did nothing else with any uncloggers; the water isn't standing, but draining almost as quickly as it backs up. That means that there's good flow going already, and once the pipes are emptied out (I'll give 'em another hour or so) I'll finish draining the washer and let it complete its cycle, as that should be more than enough time to dump the last 5-8 gallons or so out of the washer for its drain/spin cycle. And maybe that water that's quickly flowing out will help break up the clog more and/or move it further out of the system. Couldn't hurt, right?


After that, I'll wait another two or three hours and slowly drain the tub before bed. I've already showered (and don't plan to shower again in the morning before I leave the house) and the towels were the only laundry I had, so normal water use of washing my hands, flushing the toilet, or running the dishwasher (which uses very little water, actually) when I need to sometime this coming week shouldn't clog anything up, and I'll watch the drains when I shower and drain the tub over the next several days. What I'm saying is that basically, for the moment, the battle is over until the next time I have to do laundry or run a lot of water at one time, which shouldn't be for another week or so (read: when I have time to deal with it if it acts up again).

Again, it's not completely over; I will still probably have to go get more unclogger products, and I will still have to keep an eye on everything, and I may still have to call my landlord at some point over the next month or so if I come to a point where I'm no longer making headway on the issue. But, for right now, I've come to a stopping point; I'm making some sort of progress, and I know how much water I can actually run down the drains at any given time before they back up, which is a lot more than I could before. Not to mention that I still have half a bottle of Max Gel and almost a full bottle of bleach. I should be able to win this fight outright eventually.

Stocked and Loaded, Part III

This shit is seriously starting to irritate me. Like, no foolin'.

I started phase three by pouring a good 1/3 of the bottle of bleach down the drain under the washer, and then followed it with a full 10-quart bucket of hot water. I waited an hour for that to flow through the pipes and empty out/dry up, and dumped foamer #2 down the cat room drain. I waited another hour and flushed out the foamer with another 10-quart bucket of water, and it drained quickly and cleanly, as if anything that was in the drain between the cat room and washer was now completely cleared -- and moreover, it did not bubble up into the drain under the washer when I flushed it. This was a good sign.

The washer, as mentioned before, was stopped at the rinse/spin cycle with the towels, which would be the completion of that load. I started it again once everything had been flushed out in order to see if it would drain out and spin completely to a stop without overflowing the bottom drain again (it was about 2/3 empty of its water when I stopped it). It drained almost all of its remaining water out before it once more began to bubble up through the floor drain and gurgle in the cat room. Sigh. What the fuck, man? I once more stopped it, but this time I was pissed and was taking no prisoners -- since there was still standing water that was draining slowly in the drain under the washer, I dumped about half the remaining bottle of Max Gel in there with it to let it go down and hit the clog, wherever it may be.

And that's the end of phase three.

Phase four will be, as I've basically exhausted most of my other options at this point, dump everything I have into all drains and flush them repeatedly, over and over, until whatever clog is in there is flushed out and/or broken up. And if that doesn't clear it completely, buy more Max Gel and foamers to repeat the process until it does, as I seem to be making at least a little bit of headway. Regardless, my "drain surgery" is basically done for tonight; I will try to drain the towels one more time before bed in order to see if I can further push the Max Gel down against the clog to destroy it, but if I can't or it backs up again, I'll basically repeat the same process I did today when I get up tomorrow, using the last foamer, the last of the Max Gel, and the bleach before moving on to the baking soda and vinegar if necessary -- and if that doesn't help much, buy more of that stuff tomorrow and repeat. If I do it enough times with enough stuff, it'll more than likely break up anything that's in there clogging up the works. As it does drain, albeit slowly sometimes (and quickly other times) that unclogging stuff must be hitting it and doing something to it. As it's kind of important that I be able to shower without worrying about whether I'm going to flood the basement every time I do so, I need to take care of this vigorously and ceaselessly until it's cleared out. I've made the decision that I'll buy a shitload of Drano, foamers, and bleach three times (I've already done so once, of course) and if it's still screwing up, I'll have no choice but to call my landlord and see what he can do about the problem -- as, if it reaches that point, I will have poured close to five gallons of unclogger stuff down the drains in my house, which should be enough to dissolve a body were one to be stuck in there (spoiler alert: there's not a body stuck in there). I'll start with the last foamer in the drain under the washer tomorrow morning, and follow up with the rest of the Max Gel in the cat room drain if that doesn't clear it out. After that, it's bleach and hot water to flush anything I can out of there, and baking soda/vinegar in the proper proportions as well if that doesn't work. I have to do this quickly, again; I desperately need a shower, and can't shower if the drains are backing up like crazy over and over. Well, I can shower, but I have to keep the tub plugged and drain it out very, very, very slowly over a few hours, about 30 seconds worth of draining at a time. With me spending all day Tuesday on campus in conferences with my students one-on-one, I'd rather not have to do that with unwashed, greasy hair and oily skin.

"You may have to call the landlord anyway," Daisy told me tonight. "I mean, this stuff happens on occasion, especially in an old house. Your house is old, babe."

"My house was built in the '70s, honey," I said. "It's not that old. And I don't know what the hell could be clogging it anyway. It's not like I'm flushing tampons down the toilet or anything like that."

I even get the really cheap toilet paper that basically dissolves as soon as water touches it. It could just be a buildup of years upon years worth of crud/hair/etc., but even that should be flushed out with all of the unclogger stuff. Even when/if I do get it unclogged, it's not like I'm not going to watch it cautiously every time I do laundry or take a shower over the course of a few weeks or months afterwards to make sure these issues don't come back. I have a feeling these issues are going to be recurring ones from time to time, which is yet another reason I hope to be able to get a job and a home out-of-state once I graduate next month -- let the next person who has this place deal with the plumbing issues if I can't keep 'em fixed.

So -- phase four begins tomorrow morning, the "dump everything down there and let it destroy all it comes across" phase. Again, there's only so much I can do, and it's a lot of trial-and-error. Dump and flush, dump and flush, try the washer again, etc. If it works, it works.

Stocked and Loaded, Part II

Okay. Well.

I'll say that this story at least starts off well.

After I poured the Drano Max Gel into the drain in the cat room, I let it sit for an hour or so. When I went back down there, the drain had emptied and dried out. I filled my 10-quart bucket with hot water, and poured it down that drain. It drained really smoothly and quickly. Hm. Okay. Maybe that took care of the rest of the clog, I thought. I started the washer again.

It didn't get halfway through the drain cycle before it gurgled and bubbled up through both drains like crazy -- and this time, under the washer, it was kicking up all sorts of gunk from the drain in the bathroom as well. Fuck. Double-fuck, because I don't exactly know what this means. My first thoughts were that the clogging was kicked further down the line to exactly where the washer drains, which would explain all of the gunk from the bathroom drain coming up under there. A further thought after that was that at least it seemed to be moving somewhat, and that I was correct in my first assumption that drainage water from upstairs (where I've not run any water today) will hit the drain in the cat room before it hits the drain under the washer -- and that the drain field must be out of the front of the house and not the back if it's moving the clog(s) along and it's all coming up through the drain under the washer. That may mean it's clogged in two places, or just one big clog somewhere in one.

I assessed the situation. I have two bottles of foamer left, half a bottle of Max Gel, an entire bottle of bleach (which, let's be honest, is basically what most drain cleaners consist of) and an entire bottle of vinegar/huge box of baking soda. The clog(s) are being moved, or at least are being partially broken up by the stuff I've put down the drains thus far, and I have enough stuff left to try to wash them the rest of the way out. This is good. This is a plus, even if it looks sort of shitty right now. Phase two is over. This is where I enter phase three. This is what phase three consists of:


1. First and foremost, flush the drain under the washer with hot water and a good amount of bleach once it's dried up and drained completely. That should get any remnants of the clogged gunk from the cat room moving further through the pipes, and the added bleach will help whatever's left of the previous Max Gel and foamer move through the pipes and keep working as well.

2. Put a foamer down the drain in the cat room after the water from the front drain under the washer has completely drained out and dried up, and has moved everything else down through those pipes more, to kick out anything that's left, then flush that drain with more hot water as well after the appropriate amount of time has passed.

3. Let the load of towels finish and drain, even if I have to keep stopping it and it keeps backing up, so that they can be dried and used again if it overflows more. I have no clean towels in the house anymore, not even dish towels. Again, this will also get more water moving through the drains, and hopefully will continue to kick that clog out with the added bleach and foamer.


As I told Daisy when I updated her on my progress, this is more of a trial-and-error process than anything else. Kick the clog(s) down the drains further and further until they/it either breaks up or is flushed out, by any means necessary. If it takes a while, oh well, it takes a while. Can't do much about that. If I have to go purchase another $30 of plumbing supplies, then I'll have to as long as they keep working. Right now, I'm doing all I can do myself, slowly, and am doing my best to get this stuff unclogged and moving. I'd like to save at least part of the bottle of the Max Gel to run down through the shower as well, to get anything in those pipes and to use the draining shower to my advantage, if necessary, but that would be the very last thing I'd do after I'm sure the drains are (mostly) clear.

So, that being said, let's start phase three...

Stocked and Loaded, Part I

Last night, after the conclusion of my previous post, I sat here at my desk for a moment to think. I had two options -- I could either go out to Walmart then and get the stuff I needed to take care of the drain situation, or I could go to bed, get up, and go fight the Sunday afternoon crowd.

Sigh. I don't want to do that. Fuck. Looks like I'm doing it tonight.

I got up, got dressed, and at 4:10 in the morning got into the Monte Carlo and went to Walmart, where I was one of only three customers in the store.


Big bottle of Drano Max Gel: $6.98.
Three bottles of Drano Foaming Pipe Snake at $3.87 each: $11.61.
One gallon of white vinegar: $2.38.
The biggest box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda I could find: $2.24.
One gallon of bleach: $3.24.
One 10-quart bucket: $1.98.
________________________________________________________________

Grand total for drain-cleaning justice: $28.43.


It wasn't until I'd gotten home that I realized I'd forgotten to get more new towels. And, because I got the other stuff, I didn't get the 2L bottles of Coke. But I did, however, purchase two new Hawaiian shirts. Because, after all, I'm me. Go figure.

The foaming pipe snake is guaranteed to clear any clog. It says so right on the bottle. I have three bottles of it to try on the two different drains, as well as a third as an extra (oh yes, I planned this out). If that can't get it, the massive bottle of "Max Gel" stuff will. I've found recipes to mix the baking soda and vinegar in the proper proportions so that it won't hurt the pipes as well (something Daisy was worried about) in case I need to use that too. The bleach is to clean out the drains, especially the one in the closet of the cat room, before and after the flushing procedure. The bucket is to be able to put water in the drains so that the stuff can work -- plus, I needed a bucket around the house anyway. For...um...bucket-y things.

I decided, after checking the drains again to make sure that they'd completely emptied and dried, that I would wait until I got up in the afternoon before I went on the attack. In addition to the tools and chemicals listed above, I also have a pair of industrial rubber gloves (purchased long ago, for when I make tie-dyes) and a tough, awesome plunger. Hopefully the latter won't be necessary.

"Why don't you call the landlord?" Daisy asked me. "Because this is really his issue."

Again, I really don't want to bug the man for something I should be able to take care of myself. Spending $28 on some drain-flushing things is a lot cheaper than him calling the Roto-Rooter people out to the house. If this doesn't work, that may happen anyway, but I want to at least try to fix it myself if at all possible. My landlord's been really good to me over the years -- I don't want to bother him unless absolutely necessary, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever had to call him about anything. I'd like to continue that trend if at all possible.

Mind you, I knew going in that this could go very badly; I don't know, again, exactly where this clog is, or why it disappears for a while before reappearing and causing problems again. Up until last night I was sure that it was a drain field issue, after all -- but I did know that it was somewhere between the washer and the drainage for the house, which means that it was probably in the main drainage line somewhere. If that's the case, I figured, then, theoretically, putting this stuff in *any* drain in the house should at least do *something* to help clear it. I simply wanted to put it in the closest drain(s) possible.

Also mind you that I am not a plumber. For a man of age thirty, I have a rather limited skill set, and that skill set simply does not include plumbing. The most knowledge I know about this is because my parents had a similar issue with their own plumbing, where the pipe would get clogged at the entrance to their septic tank -- but I do not have a septic tank. My system is different if for just that fact alone.

Dammit, Jim! I'm a poet, not a plumber!

Anyway.


Despite my apprehensions and knowledge that my work would not necessarily be pleasant in the least, I resolved to deal with it when I woke up and went to bed. When I awaken, I thought, your clogged ass is mine.

Which, in retrospect, sounds really horrific when taken out of context.

When I awoke, I read the directions on one of the bottles of foaming stuff -- it said to pour the whole bottle down the drain, wait for an hour, and then flush the drain with hot water. Okay, I can do that. So, as a first test, I uncapped it and poured it down the drain under the washer, as that's where I first experienced the drain backing up. I also had that load of wet/dirty towels in the washer which needed to be washed with hot water, so my plan was to, in an hour's time, go down there and start the washer to let it run a load -- and to watch it, to see if it would overflow or visibly back up again. The hot water from the washer would give the drain line the water it needed to flush out whatever was down there. If it worked, it worked, and I'd have some extra bottles of that stuff to use if it popped up again, and I'd use the bucket and bleach to flush out the other drain in the bathroom closet. If it didn't work, or didn't work completely, I thought, well, those extra bottles of stuff would come in useful.

I waited that hour, during which I made coffee, fed the cats, and attempted to wake up a little more, and decided on my backup plan during that time -- if the foamer didn't clear the clog completely, I'd wait until the drain under the washer backed up enough to have water in it, and then I'd stop it, pour the recommended amount of the "Max Gel" down that drain, and once more wait the hour for that stuff to clear it before continuing. I wasn't going to mess with the drain in the cat room closet until I did a little experimentation, especially as I was pretty sure the clog -- or whatever it was -- was out past the washer and not in the drain back there, as the cat room is behind the washer.

When the hour passed, I set the washer for a heavy load, on hot water, at its fullest setting. I needed to do this to clean the towels anyway, obviously, but I also wanted it to be as hot and full as possible to flush that foamer stuff out of the lines, and with it whatever clog there may have been present as well. I let it run its wash cycle and get to the drain cycle -- this was the moment of truth, when I would be able to see if the foamer worked.

On a drain cycle with a full washer of hot water, it didn't come up through the bottom drain under the washer. At all. Didn't bubble up even a little bit. I was amazed. Holy shit. All that, and that's all it needed? A foaming unclogger bottle? I let it fill up again for the rinse cycle and watched it. It went through its rinse cycle fine, as expected, but what I was waiting for was the drain and spin cycle, again, to see what would happen.

It hit the drain cycle and again drained admirably, but I heard gurgling. Wait, what? I looked down at my feet. The washer drain was fine. The gurgling was coming from the drain in the cat room. Again, what? I immediately shut the washer off and went into the cat room to open the closet. I luckily (very luckily) have untiled, concrete floors in that closet, and the drain there was full, bubbled up, but not overflowing.

Hm.

I had assumed, perhaps falsely, that the waste drain would run out of the front of the house into the sewer system, out past the water meter (which is right behind my mailbox), not behind the house and wayyyy under the foundation and back grass. There would be no real reason to do that. But, again, I can't see those pipes or the main line; all I know is where those two drains are.

I began thinking. Okay, the foamer did *something* at least; it either dissolved most of the "clog" or whatever it is, because the washer drain didn't back up and overflow at all this time even on the washer's biggest load. However, the other drain in the cat room is gurgling and filling up, which means that whatever it is, it isn't completely cleared yet. Hm.

I turned off the washer completely and began phase two of my plan -- I poured half the bottle of the Max Gel into the slowly-draining, standing water in the drain in the cat room. If it's backing up there, the clog is somewhere between that and where it drains out into the system -- apparently the foamer got some of it, but not enough. And, again, I'm not sure where the drain system even goes or how it leaves the house, but now I know that this drain is indeed clogged somehow, at least. I am letting that sit before using the bucket to flush it with hot water in an hour or so, in hopes that will clear it completely. Then, I will restart the washer again from the beginning to see what happens.

So, dear reader, my battle continues. It's not over yet. But I'm making headway.

Swamped

I came home Thursday afternoon from teaching, ate a quick lunch (even though I'm still somewhat suffering from acid reflux/heartburn issues) and crashed. I slept so hard and so deeply that when I awoke around 9PM and it was dark, I didn't remember what day it was, what time of day it was, or what I'd been doing before I went to sleep or needed to do once I got up. I was in, ahem, panic mode. Then it slowly came back to me. Today is Thursday, right? I think? Yeah. It's Thursday. I taught this morning. I collected my students' Proposals and Annotated Bibliographies, and came home and went to bed. 

I'm not making this up; these were my actual thought processes. I was disoriented and jarred. I've been so stressed out and worn down that -- even though comps are behind me now and done with, and have been for two weeks -- I can't fully recover and get my body and mental state back to completely normal. Thus, whenever I sleep I generally don't have a problem falling asleep, but it's a problem with staying asleep and not waking up in a panic or a jumble and thinking I am automatically shirking responsibilities somehow. Over the past three months I wired my brain to immediately start processing things when I wake up on school days, or even on days I'm off, when I had pressing things to do (such as reading/studying hundreds of pages a day for comps). Now, even after all of that stuff is mostly over, I still wake up in a panic sometimes -- oh gods, what time is it, what day is it, did I oversleep? Should I be teaching right now? Why am I not studying? Etc. And it does take a minute or three to completely orient myself and allow my memory to come back -- but by that time, I'm fully awake and can't sleep again. That, dear reader, is stress, and the after-effects of the stress I was under for a long, long time. Now, mind you, I am still under stress, but it is nowhere near the amount I was under leading up to comps. I still have daily tasks that are time-consuming; I still have to grade student papers, I still have to pay bills, do laundry and take care of errands/shopping, and make sure I can stay on top of everything so that I don't fall behind.

Through all of this of course, while I do sleep, I've been sleeping shittily. I'll sleep for five or six hours at a time at most, regardless of how tired I am, before waking up in the aforementioned fashion above. It is this and the constant bombardment by my allergies that is making me incredibly tired and fairly antisocial most of the time. I feel sluggish and not all "with it" a fair amount of the time I'm awake, and I know my allergies are a big part of it. Thursday was April 18, and when I went to teach my class at 9:30 AM, it was snowing. Yes, snowing.


Go home, Winter. You're drunk.

Tonight, in the overnight hours, it's 57, which is a more reasonable, expected low temperature for Kansas two-thirds of the way through April. However, this means nothing -- even though it's supposed to be relatively warm tomorrow and Monday (50s, 60s-ish), Tuesday it's supposed to be 39 for a high, below freezing at night, and it's supposed to rain/sleet/snow all day.

Tuesday is April 23. WTF.

Again, can we get an actual spring, please? I don't remember any year I've been alive where it's been snowing into late April and where I haven't been wearing shorts and flip-flops everywhere for weeks by this time. None of this makes any damned sense. I don't remember any April on record where we've been under freeze warnings at night in the two weeks or so leading up to the end of the semester. It's tornado season, and while we'll occasionally get a good, strong thunderstorm for a little while, maybe with just a bit of hail, it's too cold for tornadoes to happen. For those, you actually need some warm air.

Not that I want tornadoes, mind you, I'm just saying.

The drain is still backing up into my basement on occasion, and it is doing it now sometimes even when I shower (which isn't a good thing, of course). There is no real rhyme or reason to it -- sometimes it'll be just fine, others it'll back up and overflow under my washer. Tomorrow or Monday I plan to go out and do a little shopping for some Drano or something of that nature (I have to get stamps anyway), and the next time I shower, I plan to pour a bottle or two of it down the drain when I let the shower drain out, also pouring another bottle down the downstairs drain to see if it helps. What I do know is that until recently, the shower never made it back up, only the washer, so if there's something lodged in there or there's a clog somewhere in the line, it's somewhere out past where the shower drain meets up with the washer drain. Again, I couldn't tell you what it is, as if it were an actual big clog somewhere in the works, it would be draining slowly (or not at all) all the time, and not just occasionally. As I've run several large loads of laundry a day sometimes in addition to taking a shower and/or running the dishwasher with no issues, I honestly cannot tell you what the hell is down there or out there. Maybe a few bottles of Drano will clear out whatever it is -- it's either that or call my landlord and tell him to get someone to snake all the pipes in the house (or the main drainage line), which would not only be expensive for him but probably, overall, unnecessary. I've been reading up on a lot of home-remedies for clogs; some of them are as simple as pouring baking soda and vinegar down your drain or emptying a two-liter of Coca-Cola down it, as it's acidic enough on its own to break through most stuff, in addition to the carbonation. There's little else I can do for the moment, and as long as it doesn't get really bad, if it requires the full work-up it may have to wait until after graduation before I can really have the time to do anything about it like call the landlord or get the pipes snaked to see what the problem is. Until then I sort of have to keep an eye on things and only use water/do laundry when absolutely necessary, lest I make any problems worse.

Daisy is having a hard week at work -- she's management at her job, and it's her duty to work what's called "tickets," which is a short way of saying that she's doing work that she hasn't necessarily been properly trained how to do, and is really the responsibility of people she's supposed to be managing. However, when they're swamped, she has little choice in the matter and must help out in whatever way she can. Well, this week they're really swamped, which means that when she's at work in the overnight hours -- when we'd usually be able to chat via Facebook occasionally -- she's been very silent because she's busting her ass all night long on her shift. Of course, as you know, the nights she's at work are the nights when I'm off from school, so we maybe get to Skype, briefly, an hour per night -- maybe two if she gets up early enough -- before she must leave for work, whether either of us like it or not. As much as we both generally dislike this, we know it's necessary; she's working to pay her bills as much as I am working to pay mine, and when she's at work I usually have pretty pressing matters to take care of as well. For example, last night I was grading all of my students' aforementioned Proposals and Annotated Bibliographies in preparation for their final paper, which will come in on the last day of class in a little over two weeks. Tonight I did the dishes and ran a load of laundry (which, of course, I had to keep stopping over and over so that it didn't overflow the downstairs drain).

Update: I think I have found the drain problem. There is a clog, somewhere, in the downstairs part of the main line.

Where this clog is, I don't know. And I know that it's only a partial clog, as evidenced by the fact that the household drains will run empty and the drain under the washer will as well.

Here's what I do know, and what I found out tonight -- there's a secondary overflow drain in the downstairs bathroom (read: cat room) closet, which I didn't know about before. I found this out when, as a test, I flushed the toilet upstairs and drained the sink of its dirty dishwater at the same time, which caused said drain to gurgle and overflow all over the bathroom floor -- requiring me, once more, to use every towel I had to clean up the mess (and basically scrub the floor of the cat room clean). I also know that all of the upstairs drains, including the tub and sinks, drain out very quickly and perfectly fine, not slowly at all, so the clog is somewhere between that bottom, previously unknown drain, and where the water exits the house into the waste system. Bingo. Now I know exactly where to pour the foaming pipe snakes once I get them -- one down the drain under the washer, and if that doesn't fix it, another down that previously unknown drain (and repeat ad nauseum). The overflow drain under the washer must connect up with that secondary drain, as otherwise it wouldn't have overflowed it, and the one under the washer overflows first. And, as it is (apparently) not going to go away on its own this time, I have a new mission for tomorrow. I'd do it tonight; go out and get the stuff now, deal with it now, etc, but I don't plan to run any more water tonight and it's three in the morning -- I'm tired. And, before I tackle it, I'd like to let any remaining water in the system drain out first. Whenever I awaken tomorrow, regardless of when that may be, I'll be going to Walmart and/or Dillons to stock up on drain-clearing supplies of all sorts, and we'll see who wins this battle.

I've got two more days off, plumbing system -- time for you to submit to your master.

Shopping list: at least four bottles of foaming pipe snake, two 2L bottles of Coca-Cola, a gallon of vinegar, the biggest box of baking soda I can find, a gallon of bleach, and about four or five more thick towels. Your move.

Anyway.

I have still yet to receive my comps results; the MFA director said that we should get an official letter on or around April 22; well, the 22nd is Monday, and I'm not on campus on Monday. The department is certainly taking its sweet time on that, as was told to us they may, but it's still damned peculiar. There is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, apparently, that we may not be privy to as simple students and GTAs. What I do know is that it's never taken this long before to receive comps results back -- and, as previously mentioned, it's not just me but all of us who took them. The MAs, including Parker, took their own comps (or at least the first question of theirs, since the MAs can split theirs up) on Friday -- and I absolutely expected to have our results back before the MAs took theirs. Hell, I was expecting, really, to have my results back almost two weeks ago now, but then again I should have learned by this point to lower my expectations on almost everything in life.

My next two or three weeks are going to be crazy busy, both at home and at school. Aside from the plumbing stuff, I do have to spend an inordinate amount of time grading papers, as next week I get workshop copies during conferences and the week after that I will be grading final papers before the exit exam -- which of course, I will also have to grade. While I was able to vacuum the house on Friday, I still have to clean the kitchen and scrub down the upstairs bathroom (the latter of which I've been putting off mainly because of the drainage issues), and once I do figure out the drains I have another load of sopping wet towels to wash now as well in the washing machine, something that'll just have to wait -- as much as I hate to leave dirty, wet towels in the washer due to possible mold/mildew forming on or in them -- until a day or two from now, if not longer. I can't really avoid that. Not to mention that I need to find a day/time to go over to the bookstore on campus and get my cap and gown in order to walk in the graduation ceremony, print and mail out (once I get stamps and my comps results) my graduation announcements, and take care of all sorts of other myriad issues that can, and probably will, pop up between now and May 17th. Daisy mentioned that she's going to get an oil change in her car soon, which reminded me that I need one in the Monte Carlo pretty soon as well, if I'm not already overdue for one. I also need to look for jobs and to rebuild/revise my CV so that I can start applying to different places. And, to top everything else off, once it gets warm enough and stays that way, I need to start mowing the grass again, as it's growing well (but every three days it drops below freezing and/or snows).

See, despite the amount of "free time" I supposedly have, there's a lot of things that need to be done which continually fill that time. No wonder I haven't been sleeping well or sleeping for long stretches of time -- all of this stuff is continually running through my mind, and I have to section off hours and days to deal with it all. The plumbing issue is just the first and most important of that stuff right now, and the one that I have to take care of so that I'm not continually freaking out about it.

Full of Shit

Spring semester: day sixty-two

As the semester winds down, I find myself more and more tired by the day. This is not a good thing, as my workload -- previously constituted of mostly my own work, and now fully consumed by student papers one after another every week -- ramps up. It seems I can never get enough rest, and that my body is constantly tired while my mind is mostly awake. This is sort of my lot in life at this point, I think. Add to this that we've still not heard anything about comps, and all of us who are graduating this semester are at least somewhat still on-edge.

I told my mother that I'm not going to prepare graduation announcements -- even though graduation is one month from today -- until I get those results back and they are "a lock." Mind you, I know nobody can or will come to my graduation except for Daisy, but it's more of a customary sort of gesture at this point. I'm not in contact with the vast majority of my family on a regular basis, only my parents, my brother, and occasionally my grandmother when I get the chance (or have the minutes) to call her. I'm sure most of the rest of my family knows I'm graduating and engaged and all that, but for the most part they go their own ways and I go mine. Also realize that I've not yet gone over to the bookstore to purchase my cap and gown or whatever other regalia is required to "walk" in the ceremony, whatever that entails, nor have any of us been given any sort of real information on that either. Again, it's like pulling teeth to get any info out of anyone in that department about anything these days.

Yesterday, I took my students to the library for their "library activity day," where they were to look up three sources for their final paper in the course and for their Proposal/Annotated Bibliography assignment, which is due in class tomorrow. I also found out that two students are on some sort of academic activity team (I couldn't tell you what it is offhand) and that they will be forced to take a make-up final exam as they will be in Michigan over finals week. This entails that I arrange with the department for them to take their exams early -- probably next week or the week after, as they have no other real choice of times. The end of finals week, as you know, is graduation day, and the day after that I'll be going to Omaha for several days. I discussed this with the chair, and it's pretty simple -- they'll just take an alternate exam than the others, earlier before the actual exams are given, and probably in the writing center. I'm personally unavailable, obviously, for them to take it after the normal exam because (as mentioned before) I'll be graduating, and because I'll be grading all of my other students' exams as well with a grading partner during that time, which is something that is bound to cause mass confusion and frustration if said grading partner operates on a different schedule than I do. My objective for finals week is always to get in, give my exam, grade it and submit the grades, and get out -- that schedule is doubly important this semester as in the interim, I will be moving a lot of shit out of my office since I'm graduating -- something that isn't necessarily going to be fun to do, and then Daisy is coming down on Thursday evening before I go back in on Friday for the actual graduation ceremonies. Because of that, I desperately need everything to go as smoothly as possible for the foreseeable future. Over the course of my graduate school education, I've accumulated a lot of shit in that office, not all of which will be easy to move back out of there when I'm done. Most of the less-important stuff, such as old books and the like, will more than likely be given away to anyone who wants them just so that I don't have to take them home.

When I came home this evening, I talked to both Daisy and her father on Skype for a while before going to bed around 8PM. I was awakened around 3AM, maybe later, by one of the most ferocious thunderstorms to hit Newton since I've been living here -- one which knocked out power for a bit and brought thunder, lightning and rain so hard and so loud that the cats hid under the bed -- and they're not even afraid of storms, really. Once that hit, and once the power was knocked out for a few minutes, I figured that once more it was best that I come back upstairs and see if, oh, there were any tornadoes or the like headed my way. This is Kansas in tornado season, after all. There weren't, but this morning I did read this message from the local ABC affiliate in Wichita, KAKE:

Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Severe weather is anticipated to enter KAKEland later Wednesday afternoon. There is a broad risk of hazards today, from tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds to wintery precipitation.
Areas southeast of the Kansas Turnpike stand the greatest risk of experiencing severe weather, including tornadoes. The Wichita area is more likely to see large hail, up to the size of ping-pong balls and damaging winds. The Storm Prediction Center has placed Wichita in a slight risk of severe weather, while the areas south east of the turnpike have been placed in a moderate risk.

Oh, how pleasant.

Look, I knew the weather was supposed to get shitty -- when I came home yesterday afternoon, I put my car in the garage in anticipation of it. What sucks is that today is my day off, and I have shit I have to do. I need to run several errands, including getting a few books of stamps and putting gas in the car, and I'm not going out to do those things if there's a possibility that a severe thunderstorm with hail the size of ping-pong balls could just blow up out of the blue and destroy my car. I guess I'll save that stuff for Friday -- though I will have to get gas tomorrow morning when I leave the house for campus.

By the way, KAKE, learn how to spell the word wintry, please.

The wintry precipitation they're calling for is on the northwest part of the state, hundreds of miles away from me. They could get a ton of snow out there, apparently, along the Colorado and southwest Nebraska borders.

This weather is full of shit. Seriously. Yesterday it was in the 40s all day with hard, cold winds. Again, it's mid-April. We're almost 2/3 of the way through April. Weather, please stop forcing me to wear layers every day and let spring actually arrive and settle in. Not to mention that it's still killing my allergies with all of this warm/cold waffling, rain, snow, ice, storms, etc every other day. This is probably a huge part of why I've been so incredibly tired as of late.

I have three papers left to grade today; they were left in the folder outside my office over the weekend, and they were all on SafeAssign on time, so I don't really have any choice but to grade them. I'm not an incredible hardass; if a student gets a paper to me, I'll generally grade it. I'd rather grade it than give them a zero for it. These papers are what I plan to spend an hour or two doing this morning, since I'm awake, before I possibly go back to bed later on -- especially if it's just going to storm all day long anyway. I've had heartburn/acid reflux for the past two days that's been bugging me, and hopefully getting enough rest will make it sort of slack off a bit. Daisy's asleep anyway, since she has to sleep during the day (and she goes back to work tomorrow night). Meanwhile, I can't even do laundry or run the dishwasher -- I'm almost certain that if I tried either one, it would overflow the drain in the basement again, what with all the rain we've gotten over the course of the past eight hours or so -- it's still raining now.

Blogging 3.0

I've decided that more than likely after I graduate, depending on what I do next, I'm probably going to shut this blog down. I'd like to take some of the stories here and elaborate upon them for my next book, which would be a memoir of graduate school (of sorts, anyway). As some of you know, I already have one book which I sold for a short while on Amazon's Kindle service, but removed because the file formatting was corrupted badly in the transfer from my manuscript to the Kindle format. That book, in case you didn't know, was a collected and edited version of the 1.0 version of this blog (which is why it's 2.0 now, in case you didn't notice that) about my time as a grocery store worker -- the genesis of this blog's existence in the first place. The manuscript of that book is about 500 pages, and looks beautiful in PDF, but still needs to be edited once or twice more to get it "right."

Of course, I'll also be collecting/writing more poetry in the meanwhile as well, in order to put together another volume or two of that.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing online, of course; I'll probably find another outlet for my day-to-day life eventually, it just probably won't be here. But as I graduate soon and will have a lot of free time on my hands between then and post-graduate employment, a large amount of that time will be focused on refining and finishing a lot of the writing that I've meant to do for a long time, but has been sidetracked by work and school. Getting someone to publish any/all of it is another story altogether, but I'd at least like to have a body of work to draw from.

I haven't come to this decision lightly; while whether or not I'll continue to write here after graduation depends on a number of large factors, including whether I'll get to work somewhere which will allow this blog to continue as-is under its same themes, or whether I end up moving to Omaha or anywhere else in the foreseeable future. Right now, as you know, everything is up in the air; every day, someone asks me "so what are you doing after graduation?" and my answer is always "not a fucking clue." Because, really, that's the truth. I haven't a clue where I'll be or what I'll be doing a year from now -- hell, I couldn't even tell you where I'll be or what I'll be doing six months from now. All I can say is that unless something big pops up, more than likely I'll be here in Kansas throughout the end of the year, doing something. But even that's not guaranteed, only probable based on my finances and situation right now. For now, really all I'm doing is paying the bills and surviving, doing my day-to-day tasks involving my students and, when I can, I try to get enough sleep and decompression.

My decompression took another hit this afternoon as, once more, the drain in the basement overflowed for no goddamned reason. I ran a load of laundry -- I've ran no less than ten loads of laundry over the course of the past several weeks with no problems, actually -- and today when I washed three small towels from the cat room and the blanket that covers the couch in the living room, it overflowed. This is the only water I've ran in the house all day long, aside from flushing the toilet once or twice, and it wasn't a washer load even as large as many of the others I've ran over the course of the past two or three weeks. Also, since the ice storm on Tuesday, we've had no rain or other precipitation all week, so I don't know why it would back up. Regardless, this wastes a shitload more of my time this weekend, as I will now be forced to run at least another load or two of laundry to wash the towels I've dried the carpet with, which means I have to watch the washer/drain for the entire cycle. If it starts to overflow for the towels, I have to stop the washer over and over to let it recede before continuing to let it run and drain. I can't just let the soaked towels sit in the washer -- they're the only towels I have, and letting them sit there would make them mildew like crazy very quickly. This takes an incredible amount of time, and I have no idea why it's overflowing in the first place. Believe me, it's incredibly fucking frustrating. Obviously there's a lot of groundwater in the system, as evidenced by the fact that my grass has suddenly gone from brown and yellow (which it has been for the past two years due to the drought) back to vibrant green again. It doesn't matter; the drain thing is still a huge pain in the ass. If it were a simple clog, it wouldn't work at all, or it would be draining slowly all the time. There's no such thing as a clog that packs up shop and moves out only to move back in later. There's too much groundwater in the drain field somewhere, and nothing can be done about that, really except for to let it all drain out and dry up. What I'm worried about is what will happen if there comes a week or two where we get an inch or more of rain every day -- will it back up into the house without me running any water at all?

So there's that. Luckily it wasn't too bad today; six or seven bath towels placed strategically were able to soak up all of the overflow, and I've got the fan and dehumidifier on downstairs to get the rest of it and dry it out. I'll give it a few hours before I try to wash the towels, not just to see if they can soak up all they can but to let the water levels fall and drain as much as possible. Again, huge pain in the ass, folks, but one that is (mostly) manageable. Luckily, summer is coming up, and I do laundry like, twice a month in the summer because I no longer have to dress in layers and fill my hamper to overflowing every four days.

In other news, I graded around twenty papers last night, the first seven of which were rewrites and took considerably longer to go through. I have about thirty-five left -- most of my first class and all of my second -- and they're very good so far, for the most part. I should be able to finish them tonight once Daisy goes to work. It'll take some time, but as I told my friend Ryan last night when I had wrapped up my grading for the night, it's all I have left. Comps are over, thesis is done and the copies are at the library, and all I'm doing is taking care of student stuff for this last month of the semester. It's 9PM now; with any luck (and some great papers to breeze through) I will hopefully be done by 3AM. That's six hours of grading, and less time than I spent on the twenty or so I graded yesterday/last night. I'm pretty sure I can do it.

I don't really have plans for tomorrow; I would imagine that if I don't finish grading tonight, I will be doing that. I need to do a bunch of random little errands soon as well, such as go to the Dollar Tree and the discount grocery store, get more stamps, order another box of checks, get gas in the car, etc. If I'm energetic enough tomorrow, perhaps I'll take care of some of those little things.

Slow Normalization

I have rested, I have started to decompress, and I have (finally) started to feel a bit more at peace.

I will not lie -- Daisy was a big part of that. Despite my frustrated and antisocial tendencies (as exhibited in my previous post), I talked to Daisy for a long time yesterday afternoon and evening, and she helped me feel much, much better about my life and situation. She does, after all, tend to have that effect on me -- I mean, I'm going to marry the woman, so it's good that she can calm me down if I'm mentally starting to go off the deep end of anger and frustration at the world.

Although I did have to tell her several times (in a very joking fashion, of course) to "stop fucking crying, woman" because she was worried about me.

Mind you, I would never say that in seriousness to any woman, least of all my fiancee.

I'm okay. A lot of it was fatigue and stress, letting all the little things get to me. Some of it was probably hunger, as well -- perhaps that Snickers commercial that says "you're not yourself when you're hungry" is right. I ordered pizza yesterday afternoon and felt much better once I ate something that I didn't have to spend an hour cooking on the stove, and another hour washing the dishes/pots/pans for afterwards.

My Citi card bill came in the mail today; the billing period was from 3/7 to 4/5, which means that I did effectively skip a billing cycle on that (which is why the bill is just now getting here). The only thing on my statement, obviously, is Daisy's clothing that I purchased for her on 3/8, and the bill is not due until 5/3. I'll get it in the mail on Monday to be done with it.

I got paid yesterday, which is the other reason I ordered pizza -- I have a bit of money to spare right now, and I usually order about $40-50 worth of pizza at any given time when I get it (I usually get at least three pizzas, then freeze one entirely so that I can eat on it later when I don't want to cook). Ordering pizza also effectively cuts my grocery bill in half over any substantial two-week period, if not more. Ironically, it ends up saving me money. And I did feel much better after I ate and talked to Daisy -- maybe I needed some grease and cheese to right my body chemistry, or something.

Last night I also made my shopping trip to Walmart while it was still relatively warm outside (around 50 or so; it's 72 right now) and I got the stuff I needed around the house. Some of it I waited on; the cats have enough food and litter to last another week or more, and I have enough coffee to last about that much time as well. I did get some of the more ancillary things I kept forgetting to get, however, such as baking soda (for the laundry; it really works well for that when added to detergent in regular loads), dishwasher soap, and dandruff shampoo. Yeah, I know, I lead a really boring life, folks. Work, teach, come home, eat, sleep, grade, go to Walmart. Repeat every week. As I've said before, I'm on a first-name basis with the late-night cashier there, a sweet older lady, and she knows to expect me every week on Friday or Saturday night. She's even pretty close to memorizing the brand of cigarettes I get, though last night I admitted to her that I alternate between two brands depending on what's in stock (Liggett or Grand Prix).

At least it gets me out of the house for a little while, right?

Ahem. Anyway.

I have still not yet received any notification of my comps results, and at this point don't expect to until I return to campus next week. As stressful as it is to wait for them, I'm actually rather at peace with it -- they're not really on my mind that much because the actual exams are in the past. I've got other stuff to focus on over the course of the last few weeks of the semester. Most of my time this weekend will be devoted to grading through the stack of rewrites and new papers I collected on Thursday, and now that I've done my grocery shopping, I can also catch up on sleep and a bit of relaxation.

Daisy and I are discussing wedding plans -- or are trying to, anyway. She's been deeply researching themes, locations, and prices for everything over the course of the past two weeks or so. I've told her not to worry about it too much yet, as everything will fall into place as we get to it -- plus there's the added factor of me not yet knowing where I'll be or what I'll be doing after graduation. Hell, I still have a lot of stuff to take care of before I graduate; I can't even look ahead to what will happen past that point yet. When it comes to the aforementioned grading, I'll basically be grading a set of papers every weekend between now and the end of the semester -- this weekend I've got paper 2 and rewrites of paper 1, next weekend I have Proposals/Annotated Bibliographies to grade, the weekend after that I have workshop copies to go through, and the weekend after that is the end of the semester and I'll be finishing up the grading of their final papers before finals week. During finals week I'll grade their exams, and then at the end of finals week, I graduate. I make this point to tell you folks how detached I currently am from the whole "wedding plans" process. We've basically settled on the date at this point (though, again, I'm not giving that info out here because we may have to change it), but that's about it when it comes to our planning processes. Daisy is "wedding crazy," so to speak; looking up different stuff and throwing different ideas my way is what she spends most of her free time doing. Meanwhile, most of my free time is spent sleeping or grading. See the disconnect there, folks?

"What do you think about a destination wedding?" she asked me last night.

"Unless that destination is Las Vegas....no."

Daisy knows that my dream wedding is to be married in a cheesy chapel in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. Either that or the Han Solo/Princess Leia costume wedding, solely so that I could finally have an excuse to purchase one of those expensive replica blaster pistols and wear it on my hip. Neither one of those scenarios is ever going to happen.

I also suggested the Firefly wedding, where I'd dress as a Browncoat (and give me yet another reason to wear a very expensive replica gun on my belt). Nope. Shot down there too. Sigh.

"This is our wedding," Daisy told me. "Can it please be serious, an actual wedding? It's the only one we get."

I can't really argue with that logic, though I can pout about it and grumble now and again on occasion.

Daisy has also told me that she wants to get me a "graduation present" of sorts, and that she was looking through my Amazon wish list and Christmas lists on there for ideas.

"Didn't you say you wanted an XBOX?" she asked. "I was thinking I could get you one of those, or something like that, just something that would let you relax and decompress. Something fun."

"Honey," I said, "save your money. Pay your bills. If you think we don't get enough time together now....well, if you got me an XBOX and I hooked it up to my TV in the living room, you'd never see me again."

As much as I'd love a 360, it won't serve me much purpose at this point in my life -- I don't have time to play it. My old, original XBOX sits hooked up to my TV in the corner of my Man Cave, and I haven't even turned it on since January. I've got great games for it, too -- I just never play it.

"Plus, the only games I really play anymore are the Pokemon games," I said, "and not only does the next one not come out until October, but it's 3DS only -- which I don't have."

I've reiterated to Daisy a number of times that I don't need her to do anything for me, and yet I know how much she wants to. I'm sure it frustrates her on some level. I don't want for much out of life, really. I'm fine with what I've got. I have plenty of clothes (more than I need, really), I have enough electronics, most of which I barely use, as well as a massive stack of movies and TV series on DVD that I have still not yet watched. More than that, I have food, a decent car (well, decent enough), quite adequate shelter, and enough money to last me comfortably for some time. Really, there's nothing I need or really want -- it's the same conundrum Daisy had when she was looking for stuff to get me for my birthday/Christmas.

She also said that her parents want to do a big fancy-dinner-thing for me once I get up there for a few days after graduation, though I do not yet know what that will entail. Again I told her not to worry about it until the time comes closer, since all of us have so much to do between now and then. Daisy herself had to do some big-time finagling to even get the days off to come down here for my graduation, and to be able to have me spend a few days up there in Omaha in the interim between her shifts. Even with that, it's a lot of driving and time on the road for her -- well, for both of us, really, but for her and her car. As you may know, I've basically been told that I'm not allowed to take my own car to Omaha and back because it's falling apart -- not that I would trust it for that much driving anyhow without at least two new tires, a total oil and fluids flush/change/filters change, and a $300 fix to my wheel bearing that's been loud and really rumbly for the past year. Not to mention that if I really wanted to be able to trust that car for an incredibly long drive, I'd definitely want to get the brakes/rotors/shocks replaced as well. Make no mistake, whenever I move out of the area I'm either going to spend a lot of money on one last-ditch effort to repair all of the old parts on that car before they fail -- in order to squeeze another year or three of use out of it -- or I'm going to get another car and (sadly) junk my baby. If I can't afford either one, then I suppose I'll have to hook it up to the back of a U-Haul and tow it wherever I end up, driving it once I get there until it finally dies.

As you folks know, I try hard to take care of that car. I love my Monte Carlo. And after all the money and work I put into her, she's in relatively stable mechanical shape. But I do know she won't last forever. There are few inanimate objects that I've ever truly loved; that car is one of them. I love that car so much that I've told Daisy that once she dies, I will immediately be searching for another Monte Carlo around the same age (but hopefully in much better condition).

So, that's what's been going on. I'm going to spend the next several hours grading papers before going to bed, and then I'll be getting up tomorrow to continue that process. Hopefully, if I'm lucky, I'll finish tomorrow and will have Monday all to myself to relax and continue my decompression. If not, well, there's an extra day to make sure everything's finished up.