It's been a rough weekend for me thus far. Well, mostly, anyway. Once again I feel swamped and overburdened with things to do, and my fatigue levels just want me to sleep and do absolutely nothing -- to roll over and cover my head. I always feel so overwhelmed, even at times when I'm actually not. There's always something else to do, someone else to try to please, something else to pack, clean, or organize. I know this time is only going to last for another month or so, but still. Ugh.
Last night, shortly before midnight, I went to meet up with two friends from the department at a late-night donut shop here in town for some much-needed decompression time. I saw they were in town and could've said nothing, could've ignored it and continued to sit here in my room and dick around on the computer, but I didn't -- instead I told them I'd be there in five minutes (said donut shop is across the street from the newspaper where I used to work, and is thus only about two or three miles from my house at the most), put on a pair of shorts and threw on a shirt, and left.
As I drove the Monte Carlo through the silent, empty residential streets and neighborhoods between here and the donut shop, I thought to myself, I need this. I really do. I hadn't been over there since I worked at the paper, and there are so few opportunities to see my friends outside the department. One of those said friends is going to be at the wedding as well as the "bachelor party," but I so rarely see anyone anymore aside from the cats, my students, and the late-night cashiers at Walmart. Tuesday is the only day I have any real social interaction with anyone on campus, and most of the time I'm holed up in my office or in the office of one or two friends, and I still don't really see much of anyone aside from those friends.
The conversation (over a caramel/chocolate nut roll and a big cup of fountain-drink Mountain Dew) was concerned primarily with my wedding and moving plans. I didn't dominate the conversation or anything -- generally I try not to -- but that was the overall big discussion topic: the whos, wheres, and whens of everything, and about what it has been like to live up here in Newton for the past five years. It's so rare that anyone I know comes up here that it was slightly bizarre.
As for the donut shop itself, the place is the hangout in this town for anyone between the ages of 16 and 80, basically, as the town has no other night life whatsoever, and they're an overnight donut shop, so at midnight the place was jam-packed with locals both young and old, high schoolers as well as middle-aged and senior-citizen night owls. I don't know how long the other guys were there before I got there, but we were all there for about an hour or so before the place quieted down and went dead; when we left around 1 or so, there were a few small tables with older folks gathered around them drinking coffee and talking quietly, but no one else left.
It was...shall we say...cathartic for me to just sit there with some friends and relax, pushing the rest of the world aside for a brief hour. It feels different to do it in a public place, outside of our offices. It's like we're different people, even though we're not. I'm the same person everywhere I go and in everything I do, no matter what situation I'm in. I know other professors and GTAs who have a "classroom persona" that at times even extends to the office, a persona that is a mask they wear to be professional and/or make themselves sound and act more important than they actually are. I've never bothered with such a facade. I'm the same person in front of my classes as I am around my friends and colleagues, the same person I am around my family or around Daisy.
I actually almost called Daisy by the name "Daisy" in conversation last night (obviously, that's not her real name), which I found internally hilarious. I don't think either of those friends read my blog, but I'm sure they know it exists. I'm actually fairly certain that most of the department (excluding the higher-ups like the chair and the Directors) know it exists, and it's never really bothered me that much. There's nothing, ahem, incriminating on it, and while I do talk about being a professor, I have always taken great pains not to call the university by name. Also, with about three weeks left to work there anyway, my ability to care about who reads it or knows about it is rapidly diminishing. I know many friends read it or at least check it once in a while, because I always have a ton of hits from Wichita.
On the drive home, I waited on a train, and the low oil light in my car came on. That's a sign that I need to do my monthly/bi-monthly maintenance on said car again, as I know the car's not been dripping oil as of late, but just slowly burning it off since it's old. Because of the storms expected today and tonight (nothing yet, though) I pulled the car into the garage once I got home. I'll do said maintenance in the morning when I take it back out, or tonight if nothing happens and I'm awake enough to go to Walmart to check for some more boxes in about twelve hours or so. I haven't decided yet, and totally don't know how alert and/or awake I'll be then. Whenever I do go, of course, I should probably get more oil. Duh.
As for everything else going on? Well, I packed three more boxes this afternoon and the pile of disarray in the spare room is slowly being reduced. I still have a lot more to do over the course of the next several days; posting my mock-up yard sale ad on Facebook got several friends interested in some of the stuff I have, so tomorrow one of those friends is coming to get some stuff, and on Monday another is coming up to get other stuff. I still have to do all my grading (that's tonight's plans, more than anything else) and I do, at some point, have to get at least a marginally-acceptable amount of sleep over the next few days to be able to continue to function.
Of course, my time is limited; I could be completely done for the semester already (I'm not, obviously) and I'd still feel swamped and overwhelmed. Most of what I'm doing in regards to cleaning/packing/trashing things should've been done months ago, if not a year or so ago -- I was just never motivated enough to do it. Fear, apprehension, and the pressure of being on a time frame is a great motivator, apparently. With my 30 days' notice letter being mailed along with my rent check today, the clock is officially ticking now. Adding insult to injury is that I got my electric bill today, and despite the fact that I've been barely doing anything that requires a large amount of electricity -- like running the furnace -- it's still almost $100. WTF. I mean, do I have to turn the house's breakers completely off when I'm not here, or something, to get an electric bill that's $40 again? I don't get it.
The storms aren't popping up yet, though I do expect them to start firing up all over the area at basically any given time. It's 86 degrees outside and it's after 6PM. It's April. It's windy. This is prime severe storm/tornado weather. If we don't get anything? Good! If we do? It'll be nasty and will more than likely hit under the cover of darkness -- which is, of course, the worst time for that shit to happen.
I can't let it concern me either way, really; I have too much other stuff to deal with and/or worry about right now, starting with my grading. Speaking of which...
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Comfortability
Spring semester: day sixty-nine (69, broooooo! *air guitar*)
I probably have about ten boxes total that aren't filled yet. Of those ten boxes, three or four of them are paper ream boxes saved for me by the kind office ladies on the West campus. I have two of those on main campus as well, in my office, but I'll need them there in order to be able to move my stuff out of my office at the end of the semester. What little I have in my office, anyway. Most of it is just my laptop, my spare monitor and speakers, a few books and papers, etc.
I mentioned before that this is a big weekend for me with a lot of work to do, and that's very true. In addition to my normal tasks (like grading papers, cleaning, paying bills, etc) I'm still readying things for the yard sale, I'm still gutting my closets and rooms, I'm still packing boxes (a process that won't end until probably the day of the move) and I still have to finish completely cleaning/sweeping out the garage if at all possible. Today, actually, I'll probably end up mowing the grass for the first and only time this year, since I'll move out before it needs to be done again.
I've also mentioned before that I feel a little more comfortable, a little more accomplished, with each task I take care of between now and the end of the semester and the moving date(s), though that doesn't mean I don't still feel absolutely overwhelmed at times. It's a feeling that comes and goes. Sometimes I feel as if I am on top of everything, and nothing can hold me back, and other times it feels as if I'm being crushed under the weight of that same everything. It really depends on the day. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle; there's a lot of stuff that I'll do this weekend which will make me feel much better about myself and about all of my upcoming big life changes, but that's only a small amount of what actually needs to be done. I'm more comforted by the fact that Daisy seems to be really on top of things up in Omaha, getting everything taken care of that she can do. When she was down here two weeks ago, I wrote her a $450 check (which was basically the last bit of my federal tax refund money) to help cover a lot of that stuff, and she did.
The wedding and everything it entails? That's mostly paid for, or otherwise covered by credit cards and the like. Our new home? Rent and deposit are both paid, utilities are set up and ready to go, and she'll begin moving into the place in about a week and a half -- unpacking and setting things up while I finish my semester here. Her job? Stable. Her life? Much more stable than mine is right now.
There were no more storms yesterday after I got to campus to teach; it sprinkled rain a bit, and there was some thunder and lightning very briefly when I got down to West campus, but by the time I was done with my class, everything had moved off and it was sunny enough to where I needed my sunglasses for a good chunk of my drive back home. By the time I went to sleep yesterday afternoon, it was very sunny and very bright outside, with no real clouds left. The Weather Channel, which just yesterday morning was predicting a Tor:Con of 5/10 for us on Saturday/Saturday night, is now iffy on whether we're going to get any severe storms at all. Of course, that's another reason I'd like to mow the grass today if possible -- if we do get a ton of rain and storms, it'll only make the grass taller than it is now, and about the only other time I'd have to do it would be a week from this Sunday, since the yard sale is next weekend -- and that's only if I don't sell the mower.
I've decided that if I have to, I'll extend the yard sale to two weekends in a row -- next weekend, of course, and then (if necessary) the weekend after to get rid of whatever's still left. Whatever's left after that, of course, will just have to be trashed and/or donated. It's not like I can do anything else with it. May 10-17 is, basically, the weekend before finals week, finals week, and the time after (basically as soon as finals week ends), I'll be moving out. Everything must go one way or another. Nothing can remain behind. I wrote out the ad for said yard sale tonight and put it on Facebook to give my local friends "first dibs" on all of this stuff, so to speak. I'll upload it next week sometime to Craigslist once I edit it (if any of my friends claim anything, of course). I'm not expecting any of them to want anything or even bother to read said note about it, but eh. It's worth a shot, right? Especially if it helps me get rid of the big things that need to be taken away.
This weekend I have to start labeling everything with prices. It'll be an ungodly-time-consuming process. The spare room is also filled right now with boxes to be packed, two bags of trash and recycling, and everything in there is in general disarray. Obviously every week between now and when I move the trash/recycling bins are going to be full, but it wasn't until I started cleaning and boxing things that I realized just how much shit I have that needs to be thrown away...and how little space those bins really have in them.
Daisy is going to check out some clearance furniture soon at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. Apparently if we can get on a finance plan for some stuff it's something like $25 a month or so until it's paid off, which I'd be fine with overall.
"I'm just worried about money," I told her this afternoon, frankly. "I'm more worried about money than anything else."
Regardless of what we do for a living or where we're both working, we still have to be able to pay the bills and rent. I come from a poverty background -- I grew up a poor kid in West Virginia, where nobody in my family could be classified as "wealthy" or even moderately rich. Most of them, like I have been my entire adult life, have been scraping by because it's not like West Virginia offers any exciting job opportunities (or even a "good life," really) -- you're born, you work in the coal mines, for the university, or for Walmart for forty or fifty years, and then you die penniless. Moving out of the state eight years ago without any sort of truly marketable skill meant that I carried that poverty background with me, and I ended up working low-paying jobs for many years and needed to take student loans just to be able to eat and keep gas in my car while I was in graduate school. I've never truly had enough money in my bank account, or to my name, where I wasn't near-constantly worried about being able to pay bills or rent. I don't really know what it feels like to not live paycheck-to-paycheck, and I know the fear and stress that comes along with being underpaid and underappreciated, trying to scrape together proverbial coins and wrinkled dollar bills just so that the electricity doesn't get turned off.
My bills have been paid; I sent the 30 days' notice letter as well as the rent, and paid $100 on my Discover card (which is but a drop in the bucket, but it helps). I ordered pizza with my Amazon card, since there's barely anything on it right now (I paid it off before with my tax refund). I ate some of said pizza. My stomach took approximately five hours -- five hours -- to digest said pizza enough to where I didn't feel full/bloated/nauseated anymore. On the plus side, I'll now have food for several days, food that I won't have to cook.
The weather forecast has changed throughout the day today, and for the worse -- apparently we're once more expected to get some severe storms and possible tornadoes tomorrow and tomorrow night, and 60mph+ winds and baseball-sized hail are, apparently, almost a certainty. Looks like the car's being put in the garage at the first sign of nastiness, which means that my plans to finish cleaning the garage are all but abandoned now. Oh well, I suppose. I've still got the rest of the weekend, of course, and now that I have Wednesdays off, I have Wednesday if I need it as well.
No, wait, actually I don't -- Wednesday I'll be grading my 102 students' papers and practice exams all day, as they take their final on Thursday and I have to get all of those back to them. Shit. Oh well. Guess Sunday or Monday it is.
I probably have about ten boxes total that aren't filled yet. Of those ten boxes, three or four of them are paper ream boxes saved for me by the kind office ladies on the West campus. I have two of those on main campus as well, in my office, but I'll need them there in order to be able to move my stuff out of my office at the end of the semester. What little I have in my office, anyway. Most of it is just my laptop, my spare monitor and speakers, a few books and papers, etc.
I mentioned before that this is a big weekend for me with a lot of work to do, and that's very true. In addition to my normal tasks (like grading papers, cleaning, paying bills, etc) I'm still readying things for the yard sale, I'm still gutting my closets and rooms, I'm still packing boxes (a process that won't end until probably the day of the move) and I still have to finish completely cleaning/sweeping out the garage if at all possible. Today, actually, I'll probably end up mowing the grass for the first and only time this year, since I'll move out before it needs to be done again.
I've also mentioned before that I feel a little more comfortable, a little more accomplished, with each task I take care of between now and the end of the semester and the moving date(s), though that doesn't mean I don't still feel absolutely overwhelmed at times. It's a feeling that comes and goes. Sometimes I feel as if I am on top of everything, and nothing can hold me back, and other times it feels as if I'm being crushed under the weight of that same everything. It really depends on the day. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle; there's a lot of stuff that I'll do this weekend which will make me feel much better about myself and about all of my upcoming big life changes, but that's only a small amount of what actually needs to be done. I'm more comforted by the fact that Daisy seems to be really on top of things up in Omaha, getting everything taken care of that she can do. When she was down here two weeks ago, I wrote her a $450 check (which was basically the last bit of my federal tax refund money) to help cover a lot of that stuff, and she did.
The wedding and everything it entails? That's mostly paid for, or otherwise covered by credit cards and the like. Our new home? Rent and deposit are both paid, utilities are set up and ready to go, and she'll begin moving into the place in about a week and a half -- unpacking and setting things up while I finish my semester here. Her job? Stable. Her life? Much more stable than mine is right now.
There were no more storms yesterday after I got to campus to teach; it sprinkled rain a bit, and there was some thunder and lightning very briefly when I got down to West campus, but by the time I was done with my class, everything had moved off and it was sunny enough to where I needed my sunglasses for a good chunk of my drive back home. By the time I went to sleep yesterday afternoon, it was very sunny and very bright outside, with no real clouds left. The Weather Channel, which just yesterday morning was predicting a Tor:Con of 5/10 for us on Saturday/Saturday night, is now iffy on whether we're going to get any severe storms at all. Of course, that's another reason I'd like to mow the grass today if possible -- if we do get a ton of rain and storms, it'll only make the grass taller than it is now, and about the only other time I'd have to do it would be a week from this Sunday, since the yard sale is next weekend -- and that's only if I don't sell the mower.
I've decided that if I have to, I'll extend the yard sale to two weekends in a row -- next weekend, of course, and then (if necessary) the weekend after to get rid of whatever's still left. Whatever's left after that, of course, will just have to be trashed and/or donated. It's not like I can do anything else with it. May 10-17 is, basically, the weekend before finals week, finals week, and the time after (basically as soon as finals week ends), I'll be moving out. Everything must go one way or another. Nothing can remain behind. I wrote out the ad for said yard sale tonight and put it on Facebook to give my local friends "first dibs" on all of this stuff, so to speak. I'll upload it next week sometime to Craigslist once I edit it (if any of my friends claim anything, of course). I'm not expecting any of them to want anything or even bother to read said note about it, but eh. It's worth a shot, right? Especially if it helps me get rid of the big things that need to be taken away.
This weekend I have to start labeling everything with prices. It'll be an ungodly-time-consuming process. The spare room is also filled right now with boxes to be packed, two bags of trash and recycling, and everything in there is in general disarray. Obviously every week between now and when I move the trash/recycling bins are going to be full, but it wasn't until I started cleaning and boxing things that I realized just how much shit I have that needs to be thrown away...and how little space those bins really have in them.
Daisy is going to check out some clearance furniture soon at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. Apparently if we can get on a finance plan for some stuff it's something like $25 a month or so until it's paid off, which I'd be fine with overall.
"I'm just worried about money," I told her this afternoon, frankly. "I'm more worried about money than anything else."
Regardless of what we do for a living or where we're both working, we still have to be able to pay the bills and rent. I come from a poverty background -- I grew up a poor kid in West Virginia, where nobody in my family could be classified as "wealthy" or even moderately rich. Most of them, like I have been my entire adult life, have been scraping by because it's not like West Virginia offers any exciting job opportunities (or even a "good life," really) -- you're born, you work in the coal mines, for the university, or for Walmart for forty or fifty years, and then you die penniless. Moving out of the state eight years ago without any sort of truly marketable skill meant that I carried that poverty background with me, and I ended up working low-paying jobs for many years and needed to take student loans just to be able to eat and keep gas in my car while I was in graduate school. I've never truly had enough money in my bank account, or to my name, where I wasn't near-constantly worried about being able to pay bills or rent. I don't really know what it feels like to not live paycheck-to-paycheck, and I know the fear and stress that comes along with being underpaid and underappreciated, trying to scrape together proverbial coins and wrinkled dollar bills just so that the electricity doesn't get turned off.
My bills have been paid; I sent the 30 days' notice letter as well as the rent, and paid $100 on my Discover card (which is but a drop in the bucket, but it helps). I ordered pizza with my Amazon card, since there's barely anything on it right now (I paid it off before with my tax refund). I ate some of said pizza. My stomach took approximately five hours -- five hours -- to digest said pizza enough to where I didn't feel full/bloated/nauseated anymore. On the plus side, I'll now have food for several days, food that I won't have to cook.
The weather forecast has changed throughout the day today, and for the worse -- apparently we're once more expected to get some severe storms and possible tornadoes tomorrow and tomorrow night, and 60mph+ winds and baseball-sized hail are, apparently, almost a certainty. Looks like the car's being put in the garage at the first sign of nastiness, which means that my plans to finish cleaning the garage are all but abandoned now. Oh well, I suppose. I've still got the rest of the weekend, of course, and now that I have Wednesdays off, I have Wednesday if I need it as well.
No, wait, actually I don't -- Wednesday I'll be grading my 102 students' papers and practice exams all day, as they take their final on Thursday and I have to get all of those back to them. Shit. Oh well. Guess Sunday or Monday it is.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Thunderbolts and Lightning
...very very frightening, me.
Spring semester: day sixty-eight
I awoke this morning to heavy rain and thunderstorms just as I was getting out of bed. It's like they waited for me to wake up so that I could enjoy them. Most of it has moved off now, but it's nice and cool outside (I can feel the breeze through my windows), and I love driving in weather like this.
I do have to drive this morning, of course -- I have to teach my last real 102 morning class. Next week they take their practice exam, turn in their last paper, and take their final...and once their final is done a week from today, the class is over.
Everything's coming up so quickly. Daisy signed the lease to the new place yesterday (I thought she was signing it on the 1st, but apparently not) and paid May's rent and the pet deposit for the cats. She will begin moving her stuff in there during the first week of the month. She also set up the electric service to be turned on as well as the water and trash pickup. I, in the meantime, will get paid tomorrow and will be sending out my own rent check with the 30 days' notice letter this weekend, as you know. There's a lot to do in the course of the next month or so, and I have to be able to keep myself from going crazy (or running out of money) while I do it.
My final 210 class last night was rather subdued, to be honest with you. My students did their presentations and defended their projects, and all of them did quite well. Many of them used handouts, one of them used PowerPoint and YouTube, two of them brought in cookies and snacks for everyone, and overall it was fun -- but it was also very low-key. I got the sense that most of these students were at least a little sad that the class was ending, as throughout the semester I'd definitely gotten the vibe from them that my class was by far the most interesting or otherwise fun class they were taking. Most of the department's instructors hate teaching 210 because they find it boring; I love it because it's easy to teach and the assignments are fun and interesting, and unlike some other classes I've taught, the 210 assignments tend to be actually useful and applicable to the students' lives.
At the end of the class, I gave a shortened version of my standard end-of-the-semester speech, which is basically me thanking the students for allowing me the privilege of teaching them for the semester, saying I hoped they had fun, saying that this may be the last 210 class (or even type of class) that I'll ever teach, and that it was a pleasure to have them, etc. Then I dismissed, and everyone dispersed.
It's always sad on some level for me to end a class; it doesn't matter how inconvenient it was for me or how much I loved/hated teaching it. I always make a connection with and association with some of my students, and as sappy as it may sound, I do make memories in my classes every semester -- memories I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. This was a good group of students; they came to class on time every week (I only had three absences total the entire semester long), they did their work, they asked questions when they had them, didn't pick fights with me (or one another) and didn't talk or sleep during class, and all of them were smart and mature. It's also the only class I've taught in recent memory where nobody has failed for any reason. I'm proud of and impressed with those students. Perhaps that's why, to me, that class ending is somewhat bittersweet.
I've put all of their final grades on Blackboard but haven't yet rolled them in the official Banner system. It doesn't matter anyway; grades on Banner can be put on there at any time, but they're not officially written to record until something like May 21st, after everything is officially done and over with for the semester. That changed last fall; it used to be that they'd be "rolled" at the end of day processes on whatever date they were entered, and if they needed to be changed after that, you had to do a paper "change of grade" form with the department and the registrar. I had to do like, three of those last spring for people who didn't show up for the final and ended up having to take their exams late.
Anyway.
Once class was done last night -- meaning that now, on Wednesdays, I never have to leave the house if I don't want to, and will save a day's worth of gas every week -- I drove home. Thunderstorms were rolling in from the west; because this is Kansas and everything is so goddamned flat, you can actually see the storms from probably twenty or thirty miles away if you're in an open area with no buildings or trees around...such as the interstate between here and campus. I watched them roll in out of the corner of my eye as I took the interstate back home, and by the time I got to Newton the lightning was getting closer. I couldn't help it, though; I still had to stop at Walmart and do my weekly shopping, since I'd skipped out on it on Tuesday night and thus was either almost out or completely out of many essentials around the house.
When I got to Walmart, it was actually somewhat busy (for it being, y'know, 10PM on a Wednesday). I followed my list and got everything on it I needed, wincing at the prices on some of it, but getting it anyway -- higher-end items like cleaning supplies, bleach, duct tape for packing, extra cat food and litter -- and was in and out of the store in about half an hour. When I left, the store was deserted and cleared out almost completely; it was weird. By the time I got home and got everything brought into the house, it was beginning to thunder a bit. It rained for maybe fifteen minutes, and there was a little pretty lightning and mild thunder, but no hail or anything like that. The storm we got this morning upon my awakening was much stronger.
After I messaged Daisy to tell her I was home safely, I ate and went to bed, got up, and here I am now -- dressed in shorts, sandals, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt -- ready to drive south to teach my students this morning how to take their final exam next week. Daisy got home and went to bed this morning around the same time I got up, so I didn't get to talk to her (and probably won't be able to until tonight), even though my class today will probably be somewhat short and I'll more than likely be home by 10:30 or a little after at the latest. That's less than three hours from now. My Thursday consists of three hours of work, of which roughly an hour will be spent driving back and forth.
Despite this, I have a soul-crushingly busy weekend ahead of me. While I no longer have any work to do for my 210s, I have a stack of papers to grade for my 011s and a stack of journals for the 102s I'll teach this morning. I will also be finishing up the cleaning of the garage, though I may wait until Sunday for that -- it's supposed to be 92 degrees on Saturday, and Saturday evening/night we're supposed to get some nasty storms, so I may have to put the car in the garage (which, of course, would stop me from being able to effectively sweep out said garage). I need to fully gut the rest of my closets and begin marking/pricing larger items for the yard sale next weekend, and if it's nice enough, with all of this rain we've gotten in the past 24 hours or so, I should probably mow the grass. I also want to use the rest of the boxes I have now to pack whatever I can in them so that I can clear out that space in the garage, and will more than likely go get more this weekend as well, probably in the middle of the night from Walmart. It's very evident at this point that I'll need a lot more than I currently have.
So, yes, it'll be another long, work-filled weekend, and to start it, I'll probably come home and crash early this afternoon so that I can recoup some of the rest I sorely need. While I'm relatively awake this morning, I'm also sure that by the time I get home and eat/decompress a bit, I'll be tired again. I didn't want to get up this morning when my alarm went off -- for once, I was in a deep sleep and the alarm scared me when it went off instead of me waking up a few minutes beforehand and expecting it.
On that note? Off I go to class.
Spring semester: day sixty-eight
I awoke this morning to heavy rain and thunderstorms just as I was getting out of bed. It's like they waited for me to wake up so that I could enjoy them. Most of it has moved off now, but it's nice and cool outside (I can feel the breeze through my windows), and I love driving in weather like this.
I do have to drive this morning, of course -- I have to teach my last real 102 morning class. Next week they take their practice exam, turn in their last paper, and take their final...and once their final is done a week from today, the class is over.
Everything's coming up so quickly. Daisy signed the lease to the new place yesterday (I thought she was signing it on the 1st, but apparently not) and paid May's rent and the pet deposit for the cats. She will begin moving her stuff in there during the first week of the month. She also set up the electric service to be turned on as well as the water and trash pickup. I, in the meantime, will get paid tomorrow and will be sending out my own rent check with the 30 days' notice letter this weekend, as you know. There's a lot to do in the course of the next month or so, and I have to be able to keep myself from going crazy (or running out of money) while I do it.
My final 210 class last night was rather subdued, to be honest with you. My students did their presentations and defended their projects, and all of them did quite well. Many of them used handouts, one of them used PowerPoint and YouTube, two of them brought in cookies and snacks for everyone, and overall it was fun -- but it was also very low-key. I got the sense that most of these students were at least a little sad that the class was ending, as throughout the semester I'd definitely gotten the vibe from them that my class was by far the most interesting or otherwise fun class they were taking. Most of the department's instructors hate teaching 210 because they find it boring; I love it because it's easy to teach and the assignments are fun and interesting, and unlike some other classes I've taught, the 210 assignments tend to be actually useful and applicable to the students' lives.
At the end of the class, I gave a shortened version of my standard end-of-the-semester speech, which is basically me thanking the students for allowing me the privilege of teaching them for the semester, saying I hoped they had fun, saying that this may be the last 210 class (or even type of class) that I'll ever teach, and that it was a pleasure to have them, etc. Then I dismissed, and everyone dispersed.
It's always sad on some level for me to end a class; it doesn't matter how inconvenient it was for me or how much I loved/hated teaching it. I always make a connection with and association with some of my students, and as sappy as it may sound, I do make memories in my classes every semester -- memories I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. This was a good group of students; they came to class on time every week (I only had three absences total the entire semester long), they did their work, they asked questions when they had them, didn't pick fights with me (or one another) and didn't talk or sleep during class, and all of them were smart and mature. It's also the only class I've taught in recent memory where nobody has failed for any reason. I'm proud of and impressed with those students. Perhaps that's why, to me, that class ending is somewhat bittersweet.
I've put all of their final grades on Blackboard but haven't yet rolled them in the official Banner system. It doesn't matter anyway; grades on Banner can be put on there at any time, but they're not officially written to record until something like May 21st, after everything is officially done and over with for the semester. That changed last fall; it used to be that they'd be "rolled" at the end of day processes on whatever date they were entered, and if they needed to be changed after that, you had to do a paper "change of grade" form with the department and the registrar. I had to do like, three of those last spring for people who didn't show up for the final and ended up having to take their exams late.
Anyway.
Once class was done last night -- meaning that now, on Wednesdays, I never have to leave the house if I don't want to, and will save a day's worth of gas every week -- I drove home. Thunderstorms were rolling in from the west; because this is Kansas and everything is so goddamned flat, you can actually see the storms from probably twenty or thirty miles away if you're in an open area with no buildings or trees around...such as the interstate between here and campus. I watched them roll in out of the corner of my eye as I took the interstate back home, and by the time I got to Newton the lightning was getting closer. I couldn't help it, though; I still had to stop at Walmart and do my weekly shopping, since I'd skipped out on it on Tuesday night and thus was either almost out or completely out of many essentials around the house.
When I got to Walmart, it was actually somewhat busy (for it being, y'know, 10PM on a Wednesday). I followed my list and got everything on it I needed, wincing at the prices on some of it, but getting it anyway -- higher-end items like cleaning supplies, bleach, duct tape for packing, extra cat food and litter -- and was in and out of the store in about half an hour. When I left, the store was deserted and cleared out almost completely; it was weird. By the time I got home and got everything brought into the house, it was beginning to thunder a bit. It rained for maybe fifteen minutes, and there was a little pretty lightning and mild thunder, but no hail or anything like that. The storm we got this morning upon my awakening was much stronger.
After I messaged Daisy to tell her I was home safely, I ate and went to bed, got up, and here I am now -- dressed in shorts, sandals, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt -- ready to drive south to teach my students this morning how to take their final exam next week. Daisy got home and went to bed this morning around the same time I got up, so I didn't get to talk to her (and probably won't be able to until tonight), even though my class today will probably be somewhat short and I'll more than likely be home by 10:30 or a little after at the latest. That's less than three hours from now. My Thursday consists of three hours of work, of which roughly an hour will be spent driving back and forth.
Despite this, I have a soul-crushingly busy weekend ahead of me. While I no longer have any work to do for my 210s, I have a stack of papers to grade for my 011s and a stack of journals for the 102s I'll teach this morning. I will also be finishing up the cleaning of the garage, though I may wait until Sunday for that -- it's supposed to be 92 degrees on Saturday, and Saturday evening/night we're supposed to get some nasty storms, so I may have to put the car in the garage (which, of course, would stop me from being able to effectively sweep out said garage). I need to fully gut the rest of my closets and begin marking/pricing larger items for the yard sale next weekend, and if it's nice enough, with all of this rain we've gotten in the past 24 hours or so, I should probably mow the grass. I also want to use the rest of the boxes I have now to pack whatever I can in them so that I can clear out that space in the garage, and will more than likely go get more this weekend as well, probably in the middle of the night from Walmart. It's very evident at this point that I'll need a lot more than I currently have.
So, yes, it'll be another long, work-filled weekend, and to start it, I'll probably come home and crash early this afternoon so that I can recoup some of the rest I sorely need. While I'm relatively awake this morning, I'm also sure that by the time I get home and eat/decompress a bit, I'll be tired again. I didn't want to get up this morning when my alarm went off -- for once, I was in a deep sleep and the alarm scared me when it went off instead of me waking up a few minutes beforehand and expecting it.
On that note? Off I go to class.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Spirits, Part II
Spring semester: day sixty-seven
Last night, as I was absolutely frazzled, had a bad headache (from fatigue, lack of caffeine, and probably because I hadn't really eaten much) and I was driving home from campus around 9PM, I kept thinking to myself things like only two more weeks of this, Brandon. Two more.
I don't know why yesterday was so difficult for me to get through. Again, I think I'm getting too old for this shit. I'd been starving all day, I had one of the worst headaches I've had in a while -- worst as in, a few shades short of a migraine -- and the entire day I was just...exhausted. For no real reason, really. I mean, I'd slept on Monday night and had slept relatively well. My allergies weren't bothering me that much (they've sort of tapered off for the time being, and are now a low-grade simple annoyance more than anything else). Physically, I looked good -- my hair looked great yesterday, my beard was near-perfect, and I was dressed relatively sharply for a teaching day. Why I felt like hell, then, is anyone's guess. By the time I got home -- skipping my planned Walmart trip because I was so tired -- I was mostly delirious. I quickly messaged Daisy to tell her I was safe, made food to eat so that I could feel a little bit better, and took headache pills. By the time I was done eating, I was so tired that I could barely sit up straight. I returned to the computer, told Daisy I was going to bed (so that she wouldn't worry about me) and went downstairs. I don't remember actually laying down or trying to sleep, as I'm fairly certain that as soon as I was on the bed, I was unconscious.
I slept for nine hours straight -- dreamless, blackout sleep -- and woke up this morning sometime after eight. I'm still groggy and a bit slow now, even after I've been awake and up for over an hour, even though I've been able to get coffee into me. Some coffee, anyway. This morning is off to a really slow start until I can fully wake up and be myself.
Yesterday was actually a pretty good day work-wise, to be honest with you. I did my final workshops in my morning 102 class, came to main campus, made copies of everything I needed between now and the end of the semester (with the exception of my 102's final exams) and collected my 011 students' papers before giving them their final assignment for the course. At this point my classes are definitely on autopilot for the rest of the semester -- there are no more lectures, no more readings to cover, no more necessary books to bring to class...nothing. It's all final papers, projects, and preparing for final exams. Tonight's the last night of my 210 class, and my students are doing their oral presentations in there before the class officially ends with the last presentation's conclusion. There are eight of them, so the class will take between eighty minutes and two hours, I'm guessing.
Yesterday was also a good day personally, despite my tiredness -- I brought in the groom's party gifts for Parker and Amanda, so that I wouldn't lose/break them in my packing and moving. I also got to see several people I don't normally get to see, primarily as we're getting close to the time of year where everyone crawls out of the woodwork to get their final projects/papers done (as well as do everything that needs to be done for their students). We're trying to solidify groom's party plans and travel stuff as it pertains to the wedding and the "bachelor party" beforehand. Parker is going to drive several of them up -- he calls it "the ascension" -- and most of them will probably room with him in the hotel for the duration of the stay. I told them not to go out of their way too much or to spend too much money on coming up for everything, and he told me "don't worry about it; this day is about you. We'll figure it out."
He's right, of course, but still. Everyone dropping everything to focus on me, in most situations, plays directly to the narcissist in me. In situations like this, though, they're all doing me a huge favor -- especially those folks who are in the wedding, and it just feels like...I don't know...like I should be doing everything in my power to make it easier for them. Focus on me is good when it comes to someone praising me or telling me that I'm intelligent and/or attractive, but otherwise? It generally feels awkward.
When my students compliment me, my teaching style, or (especially) when they thank me for all the work I've done and/or my willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to help them out in class...it's even more awkward. I thank them, of course, but for some reason I become extremely bashful and without words because I'm so not used to that; I'm so not used to anyone telling me that I've done a good job for anything, because I so rarely actually hear it. Adam Carolla (whose podcast I listen to almost religiously) always says that he grew up not with low self-esteem, but no self-esteem. I can definitely relate to that. I used to have decent self-esteem, but over the years it has been systematically beaten out of me by other people's apathy, doing grunt work jobs that were akin to slave labor, academia, and several failed relationships. Only now am I beginning to get a little of it back.
One of my students, a guy in his...oh, late 30s? Early 40s? Something like that, asked me last night if I could redo my academic career from start to finish if I choose the same path and do it again. I didn't have a solid yes or no answer for him. While I am, indeed, proud of my achievements, I'm also $40k in student loan debt and I only made about $12k in the past year. Total. When I told him I would probably end up with a job in Daisy's company once I moved to Omaha (fingers crossed, anyhow), he asked me why I didn't want a job in which I could use my degrees.
"I do," I said. "They're just not out there, and the ones that are have thousands of applicants."
Have I also mentioned before that I have incredibly shitty luck most of the time when it comes to job applications and interviews? Well, I do. One of the jobs I applied for at Daisy's company was filled, and I wasn't selected for it. I got the email this morning. At least they tell you, right?
Anyway.
I had two more people drop out of being able to come to the wedding, but one more who said she would be there and said she'd RSVP last night. Whether she did or not, I don't know -- all of the RSVPs go to Daisy. I don't know what our current guest count is, but the last I heard it was around 70 or so -- with most of those wedding guests being people Daisy knows, her family/extended family, and people she worked/currently works with (and probably some of her friends from college). People coming from "my side" is confined to my parents, my groom's party, and plus/minus ten friends or so from the department -- as well as probably my friend Jane from back home. I'm glad there's not going to be assigned seating or "sides" to sit on at the wedding, because if so it would be extremely lopsided.
Yesterday morning I wrote the 30 days' notice letter to my landlord. I haven't sent it yet, of course; I won't mail it until the weekend once I get paid again and write the rent check out. I have a few bills to pay this weekend in addition to that, and I need to book the moving truck as well. To add insult to injury, my electric bill should arrive this weekend also. No, I don't expect it to be high at all, seeing as I've run the furnace approximately four days or so during the past month, but eh. It's still money I'll have to spend. I had to order a new watch from Amazon yesterday morning as well, as the one I have now (which, admittedly, I did get on clearance at Walmart for like, $7) has a really weak battery and it's about to die. The one I wear now is both analog and digital, and the hands on the clock stopped moving. I reset it and they started moving again, but they don't keep the time and will occasionally stop for hours upon hours on end. The calendar function reset itself months ago as well, so I'm pretty sure the battery is almost dead. I just ordered another Casio Databank watch like I've worn for years (before this one, I mean); it'll be the third Databank I've owned, and it was only $15 when the same watch at Walmart is $30 or more.
Apparently, according to the weather forecasts I've seen, there's a risk of severe weather this afternoon and tonight...when I'll be out and about to go teach my class. The risk is much higher over the weekend, though. This means that before I leave this afternoon, whether I like it or not, I have to move the unused boxes out of the garage and into the basement/bedroom so that if I have to put my car in the garage upon my return home, I can do so. I can't use any of the boxes until I get more duct tape at Walmart tonight (when I plan to make my shopping trip) anyway.
I do, sadly, have a fair amount of stuff I need to get at Walmart tonight, not just the tape. I need to get the necessities of cat food and litter, coffee, cigarettes, some actual food that I can make quickly after I return home from my classes, cooking oil, sandwich stuff, etc. While I'd like to get some marked-down Easter candy, I'm guessing it's all gone by now. I really hope the storms can hold off until after I'm home, as having the Monte Carlo sit in a parking lot anywhere (whether that be Walmart or on West campus) makes said parking lot a shooting gallery if there's large hail. It's not like I can afford to replace a windshield right now, either.
As an aside, the Monte Carlo has been running/driving extremely well for the past few weeks. I'm getting really good gas mileage, I've noticed a big difference in the way the car accelerates and handles now that it's warm (and it isn't fighting the cold every morning and night), and it doesn't seem to be burning off or dripping any oil or coolant -- at least not like before. As I've said before, that car is a tank. She's got some life in her yet, apparently.
As mentioned, my classes are on autopilot. Tonight ends the 210, and tomorrow I cover the stuff for the final exam in my 102 and hold a Q&A session. Tuesday brings the same stuff for my 011s and the practice exam in my 102 (papers are also due in there then), and then next Thursday is the final exam in my 102. Two weeks from last night is the last day of my semester before finals. I have everything printed and copied; basically all I have to do for the rest of the semester for my classes is be present at the scheduled time and have a pulse. Of course, I have to grade all of their work that comes in, but still.
Still no state tax refund check in the mail yet; once I get it, I'll cash it and apply it to groceries and the like, and then save whatever's left afterwards. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.
This coming weekend -- regardless of the weather -- involves me doing (of course) more packing and cleaning. I have to finish emptying the garage of anything I no longer want or need, and then (weather permitting) sweeping it out and getting rid of all of the dirt/dust/grass/leaves, etc in there and around the garage, car, and doors. There's also grading I'll have to do as well, though it'll be somewhat lighter grading than usual. I'll have journals for my 102s and papers for my 011s. I have the papers now, but I won't get to them before the weekend.
For now, though? A shower and some food seems to be in order. It's time to start my day.
Last night, as I was absolutely frazzled, had a bad headache (from fatigue, lack of caffeine, and probably because I hadn't really eaten much) and I was driving home from campus around 9PM, I kept thinking to myself things like only two more weeks of this, Brandon. Two more.
I don't know why yesterday was so difficult for me to get through. Again, I think I'm getting too old for this shit. I'd been starving all day, I had one of the worst headaches I've had in a while -- worst as in, a few shades short of a migraine -- and the entire day I was just...exhausted. For no real reason, really. I mean, I'd slept on Monday night and had slept relatively well. My allergies weren't bothering me that much (they've sort of tapered off for the time being, and are now a low-grade simple annoyance more than anything else). Physically, I looked good -- my hair looked great yesterday, my beard was near-perfect, and I was dressed relatively sharply for a teaching day. Why I felt like hell, then, is anyone's guess. By the time I got home -- skipping my planned Walmart trip because I was so tired -- I was mostly delirious. I quickly messaged Daisy to tell her I was safe, made food to eat so that I could feel a little bit better, and took headache pills. By the time I was done eating, I was so tired that I could barely sit up straight. I returned to the computer, told Daisy I was going to bed (so that she wouldn't worry about me) and went downstairs. I don't remember actually laying down or trying to sleep, as I'm fairly certain that as soon as I was on the bed, I was unconscious.
I slept for nine hours straight -- dreamless, blackout sleep -- and woke up this morning sometime after eight. I'm still groggy and a bit slow now, even after I've been awake and up for over an hour, even though I've been able to get coffee into me. Some coffee, anyway. This morning is off to a really slow start until I can fully wake up and be myself.
Yesterday was actually a pretty good day work-wise, to be honest with you. I did my final workshops in my morning 102 class, came to main campus, made copies of everything I needed between now and the end of the semester (with the exception of my 102's final exams) and collected my 011 students' papers before giving them their final assignment for the course. At this point my classes are definitely on autopilot for the rest of the semester -- there are no more lectures, no more readings to cover, no more necessary books to bring to class...nothing. It's all final papers, projects, and preparing for final exams. Tonight's the last night of my 210 class, and my students are doing their oral presentations in there before the class officially ends with the last presentation's conclusion. There are eight of them, so the class will take between eighty minutes and two hours, I'm guessing.
Yesterday was also a good day personally, despite my tiredness -- I brought in the groom's party gifts for Parker and Amanda, so that I wouldn't lose/break them in my packing and moving. I also got to see several people I don't normally get to see, primarily as we're getting close to the time of year where everyone crawls out of the woodwork to get their final projects/papers done (as well as do everything that needs to be done for their students). We're trying to solidify groom's party plans and travel stuff as it pertains to the wedding and the "bachelor party" beforehand. Parker is going to drive several of them up -- he calls it "the ascension" -- and most of them will probably room with him in the hotel for the duration of the stay. I told them not to go out of their way too much or to spend too much money on coming up for everything, and he told me "don't worry about it; this day is about you. We'll figure it out."
He's right, of course, but still. Everyone dropping everything to focus on me, in most situations, plays directly to the narcissist in me. In situations like this, though, they're all doing me a huge favor -- especially those folks who are in the wedding, and it just feels like...I don't know...like I should be doing everything in my power to make it easier for them. Focus on me is good when it comes to someone praising me or telling me that I'm intelligent and/or attractive, but otherwise? It generally feels awkward.
When my students compliment me, my teaching style, or (especially) when they thank me for all the work I've done and/or my willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to help them out in class...it's even more awkward. I thank them, of course, but for some reason I become extremely bashful and without words because I'm so not used to that; I'm so not used to anyone telling me that I've done a good job for anything, because I so rarely actually hear it. Adam Carolla (whose podcast I listen to almost religiously) always says that he grew up not with low self-esteem, but no self-esteem. I can definitely relate to that. I used to have decent self-esteem, but over the years it has been systematically beaten out of me by other people's apathy, doing grunt work jobs that were akin to slave labor, academia, and several failed relationships. Only now am I beginning to get a little of it back.
One of my students, a guy in his...oh, late 30s? Early 40s? Something like that, asked me last night if I could redo my academic career from start to finish if I choose the same path and do it again. I didn't have a solid yes or no answer for him. While I am, indeed, proud of my achievements, I'm also $40k in student loan debt and I only made about $12k in the past year. Total. When I told him I would probably end up with a job in Daisy's company once I moved to Omaha (fingers crossed, anyhow), he asked me why I didn't want a job in which I could use my degrees.
"I do," I said. "They're just not out there, and the ones that are have thousands of applicants."
Have I also mentioned before that I have incredibly shitty luck most of the time when it comes to job applications and interviews? Well, I do. One of the jobs I applied for at Daisy's company was filled, and I wasn't selected for it. I got the email this morning. At least they tell you, right?
Anyway.
I had two more people drop out of being able to come to the wedding, but one more who said she would be there and said she'd RSVP last night. Whether she did or not, I don't know -- all of the RSVPs go to Daisy. I don't know what our current guest count is, but the last I heard it was around 70 or so -- with most of those wedding guests being people Daisy knows, her family/extended family, and people she worked/currently works with (and probably some of her friends from college). People coming from "my side" is confined to my parents, my groom's party, and plus/minus ten friends or so from the department -- as well as probably my friend Jane from back home. I'm glad there's not going to be assigned seating or "sides" to sit on at the wedding, because if so it would be extremely lopsided.
Yesterday morning I wrote the 30 days' notice letter to my landlord. I haven't sent it yet, of course; I won't mail it until the weekend once I get paid again and write the rent check out. I have a few bills to pay this weekend in addition to that, and I need to book the moving truck as well. To add insult to injury, my electric bill should arrive this weekend also. No, I don't expect it to be high at all, seeing as I've run the furnace approximately four days or so during the past month, but eh. It's still money I'll have to spend. I had to order a new watch from Amazon yesterday morning as well, as the one I have now (which, admittedly, I did get on clearance at Walmart for like, $7) has a really weak battery and it's about to die. The one I wear now is both analog and digital, and the hands on the clock stopped moving. I reset it and they started moving again, but they don't keep the time and will occasionally stop for hours upon hours on end. The calendar function reset itself months ago as well, so I'm pretty sure the battery is almost dead. I just ordered another Casio Databank watch like I've worn for years (before this one, I mean); it'll be the third Databank I've owned, and it was only $15 when the same watch at Walmart is $30 or more.
Apparently, according to the weather forecasts I've seen, there's a risk of severe weather this afternoon and tonight...when I'll be out and about to go teach my class. The risk is much higher over the weekend, though. This means that before I leave this afternoon, whether I like it or not, I have to move the unused boxes out of the garage and into the basement/bedroom so that if I have to put my car in the garage upon my return home, I can do so. I can't use any of the boxes until I get more duct tape at Walmart tonight (when I plan to make my shopping trip) anyway.
I do, sadly, have a fair amount of stuff I need to get at Walmart tonight, not just the tape. I need to get the necessities of cat food and litter, coffee, cigarettes, some actual food that I can make quickly after I return home from my classes, cooking oil, sandwich stuff, etc. While I'd like to get some marked-down Easter candy, I'm guessing it's all gone by now. I really hope the storms can hold off until after I'm home, as having the Monte Carlo sit in a parking lot anywhere (whether that be Walmart or on West campus) makes said parking lot a shooting gallery if there's large hail. It's not like I can afford to replace a windshield right now, either.
As an aside, the Monte Carlo has been running/driving extremely well for the past few weeks. I'm getting really good gas mileage, I've noticed a big difference in the way the car accelerates and handles now that it's warm (and it isn't fighting the cold every morning and night), and it doesn't seem to be burning off or dripping any oil or coolant -- at least not like before. As I've said before, that car is a tank. She's got some life in her yet, apparently.
As mentioned, my classes are on autopilot. Tonight ends the 210, and tomorrow I cover the stuff for the final exam in my 102 and hold a Q&A session. Tuesday brings the same stuff for my 011s and the practice exam in my 102 (papers are also due in there then), and then next Thursday is the final exam in my 102. Two weeks from last night is the last day of my semester before finals. I have everything printed and copied; basically all I have to do for the rest of the semester for my classes is be present at the scheduled time and have a pulse. Of course, I have to grade all of their work that comes in, but still.
Still no state tax refund check in the mail yet; once I get it, I'll cash it and apply it to groceries and the like, and then save whatever's left afterwards. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.
This coming weekend -- regardless of the weather -- involves me doing (of course) more packing and cleaning. I have to finish emptying the garage of anything I no longer want or need, and then (weather permitting) sweeping it out and getting rid of all of the dirt/dust/grass/leaves, etc in there and around the garage, car, and doors. There's also grading I'll have to do as well, though it'll be somewhat lighter grading than usual. I'll have journals for my 102s and papers for my 011s. I have the papers now, but I won't get to them before the weekend.
For now, though? A shower and some food seems to be in order. It's time to start my day.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Spirits
Spring semester: day sixty-six
I've mentioned here before that while everything is ramping up for my students, my own work (at least for teaching-related stuff) is beginning to wind down. Tomorrow, as you may know, is the last day of my 210 class, and therefore the last Wednesday I'll have to leave the house this semester. Today I do workshops in my 102 class and collect papers/introduce the last paper in my 011 class. Thursday is a Q&A day in my 102 class for final questions for their final papers (said papers are due one week from today), when I'll go over their final exam stuff/exam prep, and when I collect their journals. They take their exam in a week and a half, on May 1st. I have but eight classes total to teach for the rest of the semester between all three courses I'm teaching, not counting the final exam for my 011 students. Four this week, three next week, and the last one on May 6 for said 011s (as the other two classes will be finished by that point).
While this sort of schedule will free up a considerable amount of time for me in the beginning of May, it's not like everything else in my life will be easy after that. I'm still packing, of course -- and I have to do everything else beforehand to prepare myself for the move, as things will start to seriously ramp up between now and then. Today is April 22nd; I'll have to send out my last rent check and written 30 days' notice to my landlord by the end of the week, and I'll have to begin plotting out days and times to turn off all the utilities and other services. Plus, the yard sale is coming up. Plus, I have to book the moving truck. Plus, I have bills to pay. Plus, there's still finals week and the timeframe needed to grade final exams with a "grading partner." Plus, I have to move everything out of my office on campus. It's all going to be a massive to-do list and none of the items on it can be put off or ignored.
Meanwhile, Daisy is plugging away at her new job within her company on a new schedule. She's been off since Sunday, but will go back to work tomorrow evening at about the same time I'll go to teach my final 210 class. She neither strongly dislikes or likes her new position; it's similar to her old one, though it carries what I call "bosslady duties." There are many things Daisy does well -- taking charge of a situation is one of them. After all, she put together most of the wedding stuff/planning herself, as you may recall. I got another email from her company HR guy yesterday for a job starting 5/5, second shift (3PM to midnight). Of course, I can't take that, but it's good to know I'm still on the mailing list for them. 6/5 I could do. 5/5 I can't. Soooo...yeah.
As for other positions I've applied for at other places? Again, I haven't heard anything yet. And that includes the paper-only, snail-mailed application to the university I applied to up there. I've basically resigned myself to the fact that I will more than likely not be teaching this summer or fall, anywhere, because almost all faculty positions have either been filled at this point or they've otherwise disappeared from higher education job boards. This is both good and bad, of course; I'd love to continue teaching, yes, but I'm pretty sure even in Nebraska or Iowa that an academic lecturer position (or equivalent) wouldn't pay enough for us to live on -- it might not even pay the same amount I'm making right now. That means, sadly, if I want to keep teaching I'll have to take at least a semester or two off first to assess financial needs and other issues -- and I may never be able to go back to the career which has been, for the past five semester years, the most fulfilling thing I've ever done with my life. The sad part is that teachers don't make any money, and I will soon have a wife to help support along with myself and the cats -- and probably, within a year, a child.
More than anything else, I'm excited to get this show on the road, so to speak. Yes, I dread moving. I dread the work, I dread the time and money which will be spent on it, and I dread the next several weeks of balls-to-the-wall busy-ness. However, I'm not so stressed out by it that I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel -- marrying Daisy, starting our life together, and starting over in a new home in a new state that's not fucking Kansas. Knowing what's ahead of me/us is calming, in a sense.
Daisy told me last night that one of my family friends back home sent us a very sweet card with a $35 check inside for the wedding. I found that incredibly nice. My parents are close with said family friend, so I asked my mother to forward me her email address so that I could drop her a line. Yes, we're going to send out a lot of thank-you cards anyway, but I'd like to thank her personally while I have the chance, before I'm bogged down by a ton of other shit to do.
Last night I slept rather well, actually, until the cats started fighting over who got to play in the boxes I have downstairs in the bedroom for packing the bedsheets and blankets. Despite that, I still went to bed before dark and slept most of the night. It's now about 5AM (the time where my alarm would normally go off on a Tuesday morning) and I'm awake and okay -- despite the fact that today is my long day. Aside from my normal school tasks, I don't have anything pressing that must be done this week aside from paying the rent and writing the 30 days' notice letter. I get paid again on Friday, I'll probably do the weekly shopping tonight or tomorrow night after class (depending on how tired I am), and overall, I'm in good spirits. Again, I'm excited and anxious to take care of everything I have to do. With every box I pack, I feel a little more accomplished. The same goes for when I wheel 200 pounds of trash and recycling from my cleaning down to the road every week and bring back the empty bins when it's taken away. I'm sure this doesn't mean a lot in the long run, but right now it feels good. Except, well, I'm running out of boxes (I have maybe five left, and they're all relatively small) and I've already burned through a roll and a half of tape on the ones I do have.
Daisy moves into the new place on the 6th, I think. She signs the lease on the 1st, but she will be working after that and won't be able to begin moving her stuff in until she's off for a few days. She's been packing her stuff as well, and has been doing a "great cleansing" of her own -- she said she has something like six bags of donation things for Goodwill from yesterday alone. I myself have two massive bags of donation stuff that I'll more than likely drop off at the Goodwill next to West campus next week when I'm down there for the last time this semester. I'll have more than that, of course, by the time I'm done cleaning and packing -- especially after the yard sale, when I'll either donate or trash whatever's left that I couldn't get rid of.
On the plus side, while doing her cleaning/packing, she found her Super Nintendo and the four games she has for it. She said it needs a new cable (probably a power cable or AV cable) to make it operational again. That's about $1.50 on Amazon. I never had a Super Nintendo growing up -- I was the Sega Genesis guy (sadly). I didn't even get an NES until high school, and that one (which I still have back home in West Virginia) I bought used and professionally rebuilt/refurbished. I still have my original Genesis, too, though all of that stuff has been boxed up in my closet back home for many, many years. All of my games for both systems were sold long, long ago to a used games store in Morgantown. Oh well.
While it has remained warm and pleasant outside for the past week or so (and my allergies have mostly subsided because of that), I've not been feeling that great physically. I do feel like an old man at times -- my body aches from packing/cleaning everything, my stomach has been bothering me off and on for the past several days, and while I've been sleeping okay (mostly), I never feel as if I can get enough solid rest. This is something I just have to get used to, I suppose. I mean, really, I have one super-long day every week -- the rest of the time I can generally sleep when I want and when I need to (provided that I'm not busting ass doing everything that needs to be done, of course). As if I didn't do it enough now, for the next month and a half I'm going to be surviving on little more than coffee and cigarettes and sleeping when I can just to be able to get through everything I need to do within the time I need to do it, so once all of that work gets serious, I'll be even more fried and frazzled than I normally am.
So that's the next few days for me, really. Here's hoping they go smoothly and swiftly.
I've mentioned here before that while everything is ramping up for my students, my own work (at least for teaching-related stuff) is beginning to wind down. Tomorrow, as you may know, is the last day of my 210 class, and therefore the last Wednesday I'll have to leave the house this semester. Today I do workshops in my 102 class and collect papers/introduce the last paper in my 011 class. Thursday is a Q&A day in my 102 class for final questions for their final papers (said papers are due one week from today), when I'll go over their final exam stuff/exam prep, and when I collect their journals. They take their exam in a week and a half, on May 1st. I have but eight classes total to teach for the rest of the semester between all three courses I'm teaching, not counting the final exam for my 011 students. Four this week, three next week, and the last one on May 6 for said 011s (as the other two classes will be finished by that point).
While this sort of schedule will free up a considerable amount of time for me in the beginning of May, it's not like everything else in my life will be easy after that. I'm still packing, of course -- and I have to do everything else beforehand to prepare myself for the move, as things will start to seriously ramp up between now and then. Today is April 22nd; I'll have to send out my last rent check and written 30 days' notice to my landlord by the end of the week, and I'll have to begin plotting out days and times to turn off all the utilities and other services. Plus, the yard sale is coming up. Plus, I have to book the moving truck. Plus, I have bills to pay. Plus, there's still finals week and the timeframe needed to grade final exams with a "grading partner." Plus, I have to move everything out of my office on campus. It's all going to be a massive to-do list and none of the items on it can be put off or ignored.
Meanwhile, Daisy is plugging away at her new job within her company on a new schedule. She's been off since Sunday, but will go back to work tomorrow evening at about the same time I'll go to teach my final 210 class. She neither strongly dislikes or likes her new position; it's similar to her old one, though it carries what I call "bosslady duties." There are many things Daisy does well -- taking charge of a situation is one of them. After all, she put together most of the wedding stuff/planning herself, as you may recall. I got another email from her company HR guy yesterday for a job starting 5/5, second shift (3PM to midnight). Of course, I can't take that, but it's good to know I'm still on the mailing list for them. 6/5 I could do. 5/5 I can't. Soooo...yeah.
As for other positions I've applied for at other places? Again, I haven't heard anything yet. And that includes the paper-only, snail-mailed application to the university I applied to up there. I've basically resigned myself to the fact that I will more than likely not be teaching this summer or fall, anywhere, because almost all faculty positions have either been filled at this point or they've otherwise disappeared from higher education job boards. This is both good and bad, of course; I'd love to continue teaching, yes, but I'm pretty sure even in Nebraska or Iowa that an academic lecturer position (or equivalent) wouldn't pay enough for us to live on -- it might not even pay the same amount I'm making right now. That means, sadly, if I want to keep teaching I'll have to take at least a semester or two off first to assess financial needs and other issues -- and I may never be able to go back to the career which has been, for the past five semester years, the most fulfilling thing I've ever done with my life. The sad part is that teachers don't make any money, and I will soon have a wife to help support along with myself and the cats -- and probably, within a year, a child.
More than anything else, I'm excited to get this show on the road, so to speak. Yes, I dread moving. I dread the work, I dread the time and money which will be spent on it, and I dread the next several weeks of balls-to-the-wall busy-ness. However, I'm not so stressed out by it that I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel -- marrying Daisy, starting our life together, and starting over in a new home in a new state that's not fucking Kansas. Knowing what's ahead of me/us is calming, in a sense.
Daisy told me last night that one of my family friends back home sent us a very sweet card with a $35 check inside for the wedding. I found that incredibly nice. My parents are close with said family friend, so I asked my mother to forward me her email address so that I could drop her a line. Yes, we're going to send out a lot of thank-you cards anyway, but I'd like to thank her personally while I have the chance, before I'm bogged down by a ton of other shit to do.
Last night I slept rather well, actually, until the cats started fighting over who got to play in the boxes I have downstairs in the bedroom for packing the bedsheets and blankets. Despite that, I still went to bed before dark and slept most of the night. It's now about 5AM (the time where my alarm would normally go off on a Tuesday morning) and I'm awake and okay -- despite the fact that today is my long day. Aside from my normal school tasks, I don't have anything pressing that must be done this week aside from paying the rent and writing the 30 days' notice letter. I get paid again on Friday, I'll probably do the weekly shopping tonight or tomorrow night after class (depending on how tired I am), and overall, I'm in good spirits. Again, I'm excited and anxious to take care of everything I have to do. With every box I pack, I feel a little more accomplished. The same goes for when I wheel 200 pounds of trash and recycling from my cleaning down to the road every week and bring back the empty bins when it's taken away. I'm sure this doesn't mean a lot in the long run, but right now it feels good. Except, well, I'm running out of boxes (I have maybe five left, and they're all relatively small) and I've already burned through a roll and a half of tape on the ones I do have.
Daisy moves into the new place on the 6th, I think. She signs the lease on the 1st, but she will be working after that and won't be able to begin moving her stuff in until she's off for a few days. She's been packing her stuff as well, and has been doing a "great cleansing" of her own -- she said she has something like six bags of donation things for Goodwill from yesterday alone. I myself have two massive bags of donation stuff that I'll more than likely drop off at the Goodwill next to West campus next week when I'm down there for the last time this semester. I'll have more than that, of course, by the time I'm done cleaning and packing -- especially after the yard sale, when I'll either donate or trash whatever's left that I couldn't get rid of.
On the plus side, while doing her cleaning/packing, she found her Super Nintendo and the four games she has for it. She said it needs a new cable (probably a power cable or AV cable) to make it operational again. That's about $1.50 on Amazon. I never had a Super Nintendo growing up -- I was the Sega Genesis guy (sadly). I didn't even get an NES until high school, and that one (which I still have back home in West Virginia) I bought used and professionally rebuilt/refurbished. I still have my original Genesis, too, though all of that stuff has been boxed up in my closet back home for many, many years. All of my games for both systems were sold long, long ago to a used games store in Morgantown. Oh well.
While it has remained warm and pleasant outside for the past week or so (and my allergies have mostly subsided because of that), I've not been feeling that great physically. I do feel like an old man at times -- my body aches from packing/cleaning everything, my stomach has been bothering me off and on for the past several days, and while I've been sleeping okay (mostly), I never feel as if I can get enough solid rest. This is something I just have to get used to, I suppose. I mean, really, I have one super-long day every week -- the rest of the time I can generally sleep when I want and when I need to (provided that I'm not busting ass doing everything that needs to be done, of course). As if I didn't do it enough now, for the next month and a half I'm going to be surviving on little more than coffee and cigarettes and sleeping when I can just to be able to get through everything I need to do within the time I need to do it, so once all of that work gets serious, I'll be even more fried and frazzled than I normally am.
So that's the next few days for me, really. Here's hoping they go smoothly and swiftly.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
The Great Cleansing, Part III
All that's left in the garage and storage area now is, basically, trash and other junk that wouldn't fit into the cans for this week. What I'm not keeping will go out next week.
I couldn't tell you how many...ahem... empty spider egg sacs I ran across, though. Luckily, none of them looked new. In fact, I'm quite sure many of them have been there for the five years or so everything's been down there in the garage. The cold winter has been wonderful for cleaning -- I've only seen one, single living spider throughout all of my cleaning down there, and it was a harmless orb weaver. Are there webs and cobwebs everywhere? Yes. Were there many years-old molts of brown recluse down there? Oh yes. But as for living spiders? Nope. Nothin'. That's a blessing, at least.
Once I get the majority of everything out of the garage, the garage swept clean and everything in its place and figured out, I'll use it as my new, ahem, holding area for everything I've packed thus far. Packed boxes are stacking up in both my Man Cave and in the spare room -- the spare room being literally half full of them, leaving little room for actual, y'know, movement in and out of there.
After cleaning out what I could of the garage yesterday, my back was positively killing me by the evening, to the point where I was so stiff I could barely move. It was not a pleasant experience. I took some aspirin and tried to relax, and eventually the screaming pain died down and went away. After it did, I packed two more huge boxes full of things -- mostly clothing and the like -- and this morning, I packed two more (despite my back pain still lingering somewhat).
I want to say that approximately 1/4 of the house has been packed up at this point. I'm not sure how accurate that is, actually, but it has to be something along those lines. Most of my important possessions and other things are already boxed. Most of the kitchen dishes (except what I'll use) is boxed. Most of my clothing is boxed. Most of the yard sale stuff is sorted and ready. Given the fact that I have close to a month to pack everything else, and given that the "everything else" (at least packing-wise) could be done in the span of about two days of pretty nonstop work, I'm rather proud of myself, actually. That doesn't mean I don't have a lot to do between now and then, but it does mean that I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting there, like I'm making headway. If I can feel like I'm making headway, I won't feel so overwhelmed or stressed.
As for the yard sale, If I even make a total of $20 during it, I'll be happy. If I can get someone to haul away a lot of the big stuff I have no use for and can't move, I'll be even happier, even if I make no money. It's in two weeks.
I have a lot of clerical tasks to do this week. Clerical as in, well, I have to write out my 30 days' notice to my landlord to send along with the rent check, I have to pay my Discover card bill (it came in the mail yesterday) and I will be spending a fair amount of time readying final exams and information sheets for my students -- not to mention grading their papers that will all be coming in at almost the same exact time(s). In addition to that, I have to start sending out my first sets of address change forms for magazines and other things I get via mail. And, as soon as I get my state tax refund check (which no, still has not arrived yet), I have to cash that too.
Still, yes, it would be fantastic to be able to get that money sooner rather than later. Writing a large check to Daisy last week to help cover wedding/living expenses has made my budget tighter than usual until I get paid on Friday.
Over the course of the past week, people have been dropping off the guest list for the wedding like crazy -- mainly people from my side, and all of them locals. I've had three or four people tell me that they'll be unable to make it, and I have no doubt I'll hear the same from others. That's fine, of course; it was me who, in the beginning, wanted a much smaller affair than a larger one anyway. Again, I already view Daisy as my wife; the whole "ceremony" and "photos" and "reception" thing is just a formality to me more than anything else. And I understand that it's expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient at best to attend a wedding, let alone anything else involved with said wedding. Several of my friends, and possibly my parents, will be "bugging out" as soon as the reception is over, as they have tight travel schedules. Parker has already told me that he's probably returning home to Wichita the same night. My parents, of course, will have to return home quickly as well, as they're taking off basically a week of work to be able to be there, and are boarding the dog and the cats while they are here. April has already told me that she and her husband are going to be in-and-out on a tight schedule because of her new job.
I don't have any problems with this, of course; look, people have lives and responsibilities -- either business or personal -- and it's really flattering that many of these people would come at all. I can't help it if they can't come, or if they can't stay long (or at all) after the ceremony.
My brother, who -- as you'll remember -- was unable to come due to crushing financial and work responsibilities, told me that he wants to get us a nice gift to make up for it. I told him that wasn't necessary at all; I don't want anyone to spend a bunch of money on us, especially those who can't afford to. Daisy and I don't need gifts or fancy things; the registry is basically a formality because I know most people won't use it. It's not like Daisy and I have any rich relatives or friends who would swoop in and say, buy us a new car because mine's falling apart, or give us a wad of hundreds in a handshake, which are the things we really need. That's not going to happen. More than that, I don't want a bunch of gifts just because people feel obligated to get us things. It's not Christmas, after all, and we're not royalty -- we're just two normal people getting married.
Rae has apparently taken it upon herself to get us something, though what that something may be, who knows. I told her that it was extremely unnecessary; she's getting gifts from me because she's in my groom's party. The groom's party doesn't give gifts, they receive them; any gifts for us are really not necessary -- the fact that those people are in the wedding is enough of a gift to us. I'd assume the same thing goes for the bridal party as well, though I'm not sure. All of these wedding rules and formalities are weird, strange customs to me.
"Who do you want to be your witness?" Daisy asked me.
"My what?"
"Your witness," she said. "When we sign the marriage license we have to have two witnesses for it."
I shrugged. "Honestly, I don't care, babe."
She gave me a quizzical, shocked look. "You don't care?"
"...no...why would I? Does it matter? Your parents can do it, right?"
"...of course it matters," she said, then explained how her sisters had specifically asked certain people to be there and be their witnesses, and how she'd been one of the witnesses for one of them.
"I...I really just don't care, love," I said. "It makes absolutely no difference to me who does it. I've given it no thought whatsoever and have no desires for anyone specific to do it."
This is true. I really don't care. It doesn't matter to me in the least as long as it's done. People put so much metaphorical weight into these little rituals that have absolutely no meaning to me or any bearing on anything real. One of our nieces or nephews could be our witness, for all it matters to me. It's a signature on a piece of paper. It doesn't change anything by who does it. If I could get away with it, I'd sign it myself and write "Santa Claus" or "Dr. Ben Dover." I'm pretty sure nobody ever looks at it or cares -- it's just another piece of paperwork that gets filed away in a cabinet somewhere.
"You should ask your mother to do it," she said.
"Okay, well, if she wants to, she can. I'm fine with that," I said. "Or my dad. Or Rae. Or Parker. Or anyone. Whatever works."
Again, so much ritual, so much pomp and circumstance.
I love Daisy. I love her very, very much. And I'm glad that she's done this metaphorical dance before with her sisters and friends who have gotten married over the years, so she knows everything that has to be done and everything that must take place in a specific order. But it's all news to me. It's all completely alien, completely foreign. I'm along for the ride here; I do what she tells me to do.
I do think it is incredibly amusing that not a single one of my friends has asked me if we're doing a prenuptial agreement. We're not, obviously, because it's me and Daisy and I don't think anything could make us want to divorce, but I think it's amusing that nobody's asked about it. Yes, I know that most of my friends aren't as blunt and to-the-point as I am, but I think the larger part of it is that for those of them who have met Daisy, have seen us together, or know her well, they also know that it would be pointless to ask because they can tell we're really perfect for each other. I don't know how many times over the course of the past, oh, year or so that I've been told something along the lines of "good lord, you two really are the perfect couple." It's more than I can count on one hand, I'll say that. The actual subject of a prenup has come up between me and Daisy -- over the course of the past almost two years we've been together -- only once or twice, and we both agreed that it was unnecessary.
Besides, neither of us have anything of value to split anyhow...not that I think it would matter if we did.
Tonight comes more boxing and packing, mostly of large things that need large boxes. I have to go out into the garage and get another large box for the extra bedsheets and blankets, as well as the air mattress I have, so that I can get those packed up and ready to throw onto the truck...which I have yet to book as I am low on money right now. When I'm at Walmart next, I'll need to get as many large boxes as I can, get another roll of duct tape for said boxes (as boxing things this weekend used up most of the roll I had), as well as a large bag of non-clumping cat litter to soak up the oil spots from the car in my garage and driveway. I'll also need to stock up on essentials once more, though thankfully I can wait to do most of that stuff for another several days, I'm guessing. This probably means that (once more) I will be doing a shopping trip on Wednesday night after my 210 students' presentations finish, and will be doing another smaller one next weekend to get more boxes -- since I don't need them yet.
It's humid and stuffy today; it rained lightly for a while this afternoon, but the storms they were calling for haven't yet actually rolled in (and I don't think they will, honestly, unless some of them start firing up soon). Even if they do, I hope there's no large hail, as I can't pull the car into the garage with a large stack of broken-down boxes in there waiting to be used.
I couldn't tell you how many...ahem... empty spider egg sacs I ran across, though. Luckily, none of them looked new. In fact, I'm quite sure many of them have been there for the five years or so everything's been down there in the garage. The cold winter has been wonderful for cleaning -- I've only seen one, single living spider throughout all of my cleaning down there, and it was a harmless orb weaver. Are there webs and cobwebs everywhere? Yes. Were there many years-old molts of brown recluse down there? Oh yes. But as for living spiders? Nope. Nothin'. That's a blessing, at least.
Once I get the majority of everything out of the garage, the garage swept clean and everything in its place and figured out, I'll use it as my new, ahem, holding area for everything I've packed thus far. Packed boxes are stacking up in both my Man Cave and in the spare room -- the spare room being literally half full of them, leaving little room for actual, y'know, movement in and out of there.
After cleaning out what I could of the garage yesterday, my back was positively killing me by the evening, to the point where I was so stiff I could barely move. It was not a pleasant experience. I took some aspirin and tried to relax, and eventually the screaming pain died down and went away. After it did, I packed two more huge boxes full of things -- mostly clothing and the like -- and this morning, I packed two more (despite my back pain still lingering somewhat).
I want to say that approximately 1/4 of the house has been packed up at this point. I'm not sure how accurate that is, actually, but it has to be something along those lines. Most of my important possessions and other things are already boxed. Most of the kitchen dishes (except what I'll use) is boxed. Most of my clothing is boxed. Most of the yard sale stuff is sorted and ready. Given the fact that I have close to a month to pack everything else, and given that the "everything else" (at least packing-wise) could be done in the span of about two days of pretty nonstop work, I'm rather proud of myself, actually. That doesn't mean I don't have a lot to do between now and then, but it does mean that I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting there, like I'm making headway. If I can feel like I'm making headway, I won't feel so overwhelmed or stressed.
As for the yard sale, If I even make a total of $20 during it, I'll be happy. If I can get someone to haul away a lot of the big stuff I have no use for and can't move, I'll be even happier, even if I make no money. It's in two weeks.
I have a lot of clerical tasks to do this week. Clerical as in, well, I have to write out my 30 days' notice to my landlord to send along with the rent check, I have to pay my Discover card bill (it came in the mail yesterday) and I will be spending a fair amount of time readying final exams and information sheets for my students -- not to mention grading their papers that will all be coming in at almost the same exact time(s). In addition to that, I have to start sending out my first sets of address change forms for magazines and other things I get via mail. And, as soon as I get my state tax refund check (which no, still has not arrived yet), I have to cash that too.
Buuuuuuuuuuuullshit. They told me this last year as well. And I got the refund relatively quickly. Like, in six weeks or so. Sixteen weeks is four months -- nobody in any state waits four months for a tax return.
As I completed and sent my return earlier than usual this year I would imagine I'll get the check in a few weeks at the most. This is good, as I'm only going to be living here for another month.
Over the course of the past week, people have been dropping off the guest list for the wedding like crazy -- mainly people from my side, and all of them locals. I've had three or four people tell me that they'll be unable to make it, and I have no doubt I'll hear the same from others. That's fine, of course; it was me who, in the beginning, wanted a much smaller affair than a larger one anyway. Again, I already view Daisy as my wife; the whole "ceremony" and "photos" and "reception" thing is just a formality to me more than anything else. And I understand that it's expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient at best to attend a wedding, let alone anything else involved with said wedding. Several of my friends, and possibly my parents, will be "bugging out" as soon as the reception is over, as they have tight travel schedules. Parker has already told me that he's probably returning home to Wichita the same night. My parents, of course, will have to return home quickly as well, as they're taking off basically a week of work to be able to be there, and are boarding the dog and the cats while they are here. April has already told me that she and her husband are going to be in-and-out on a tight schedule because of her new job.
I don't have any problems with this, of course; look, people have lives and responsibilities -- either business or personal -- and it's really flattering that many of these people would come at all. I can't help it if they can't come, or if they can't stay long (or at all) after the ceremony.
My brother, who -- as you'll remember -- was unable to come due to crushing financial and work responsibilities, told me that he wants to get us a nice gift to make up for it. I told him that wasn't necessary at all; I don't want anyone to spend a bunch of money on us, especially those who can't afford to. Daisy and I don't need gifts or fancy things; the registry is basically a formality because I know most people won't use it. It's not like Daisy and I have any rich relatives or friends who would swoop in and say, buy us a new car because mine's falling apart, or give us a wad of hundreds in a handshake, which are the things we really need. That's not going to happen. More than that, I don't want a bunch of gifts just because people feel obligated to get us things. It's not Christmas, after all, and we're not royalty -- we're just two normal people getting married.
Rae has apparently taken it upon herself to get us something, though what that something may be, who knows. I told her that it was extremely unnecessary; she's getting gifts from me because she's in my groom's party. The groom's party doesn't give gifts, they receive them; any gifts for us are really not necessary -- the fact that those people are in the wedding is enough of a gift to us. I'd assume the same thing goes for the bridal party as well, though I'm not sure. All of these wedding rules and formalities are weird, strange customs to me.
"Who do you want to be your witness?" Daisy asked me.
"My what?"
"Your witness," she said. "When we sign the marriage license we have to have two witnesses for it."
I shrugged. "Honestly, I don't care, babe."
She gave me a quizzical, shocked look. "You don't care?"
"...no...why would I? Does it matter? Your parents can do it, right?"
"...of course it matters," she said, then explained how her sisters had specifically asked certain people to be there and be their witnesses, and how she'd been one of the witnesses for one of them.
"I...I really just don't care, love," I said. "It makes absolutely no difference to me who does it. I've given it no thought whatsoever and have no desires for anyone specific to do it."
This is true. I really don't care. It doesn't matter to me in the least as long as it's done. People put so much metaphorical weight into these little rituals that have absolutely no meaning to me or any bearing on anything real. One of our nieces or nephews could be our witness, for all it matters to me. It's a signature on a piece of paper. It doesn't change anything by who does it. If I could get away with it, I'd sign it myself and write "Santa Claus" or "Dr. Ben Dover." I'm pretty sure nobody ever looks at it or cares -- it's just another piece of paperwork that gets filed away in a cabinet somewhere.
"You should ask your mother to do it," she said.
"Okay, well, if she wants to, she can. I'm fine with that," I said. "Or my dad. Or Rae. Or Parker. Or anyone. Whatever works."
Again, so much ritual, so much pomp and circumstance.
I love Daisy. I love her very, very much. And I'm glad that she's done this metaphorical dance before with her sisters and friends who have gotten married over the years, so she knows everything that has to be done and everything that must take place in a specific order. But it's all news to me. It's all completely alien, completely foreign. I'm along for the ride here; I do what she tells me to do.
I do think it is incredibly amusing that not a single one of my friends has asked me if we're doing a prenuptial agreement. We're not, obviously, because it's me and Daisy and I don't think anything could make us want to divorce, but I think it's amusing that nobody's asked about it. Yes, I know that most of my friends aren't as blunt and to-the-point as I am, but I think the larger part of it is that for those of them who have met Daisy, have seen us together, or know her well, they also know that it would be pointless to ask because they can tell we're really perfect for each other. I don't know how many times over the course of the past, oh, year or so that I've been told something along the lines of "good lord, you two really are the perfect couple." It's more than I can count on one hand, I'll say that. The actual subject of a prenup has come up between me and Daisy -- over the course of the past almost two years we've been together -- only once or twice, and we both agreed that it was unnecessary.
Besides, neither of us have anything of value to split anyhow...not that I think it would matter if we did.
Tonight comes more boxing and packing, mostly of large things that need large boxes. I have to go out into the garage and get another large box for the extra bedsheets and blankets, as well as the air mattress I have, so that I can get those packed up and ready to throw onto the truck...which I have yet to book as I am low on money right now. When I'm at Walmart next, I'll need to get as many large boxes as I can, get another roll of duct tape for said boxes (as boxing things this weekend used up most of the roll I had), as well as a large bag of non-clumping cat litter to soak up the oil spots from the car in my garage and driveway. I'll also need to stock up on essentials once more, though thankfully I can wait to do most of that stuff for another several days, I'm guessing. This probably means that (once more) I will be doing a shopping trip on Wednesday night after my 210 students' presentations finish, and will be doing another smaller one next weekend to get more boxes -- since I don't need them yet.
It's humid and stuffy today; it rained lightly for a while this afternoon, but the storms they were calling for haven't yet actually rolled in (and I don't think they will, honestly, unless some of them start firing up soon). Even if they do, I hope there's no large hail, as I can't pull the car into the garage with a large stack of broken-down boxes in there waiting to be used.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
The Great Cleansing, Part II
This morning I got two large boxes out of the garage -- long ones, though they were each only about a foot deep (I need much deeper ones) -- and fully cleaned out my closet up here in the Man Cave, as well as cleaning out everything on and in my DVD rack/bookcase I have up here. The only things left in my closet are the clothing that I will wear between now and the move. The only things left on top of the long bookcase are the things I'll use between now and the move (my wallet, checkbook, incense burner, clock, lamp, etc).
Those two boxes alone took about 90 minutes to pack. Based on 45 minutes per box, roughly, with the amount of boxes I have left now (fifteen), it'll take me 675 minutes to pack all of the boxes I have already -- or eleven hours and fifteen minutes. And those fifteen boxes I have remaining isn't nearly enough to pack up this whole house.
Sigh.
This afternoon -- in about half an hour, actually -- I will clean out the rest of the garage as much as possible, mostly the storage room. Then I will shower, eat, and watch another disc of Scrubs, because fuck it, I've worked a lot on this shit already this weekend and I need a bit of a break. I'll do more tomorrow, of course.
Last night, I graded through all of my students' projects and workshop copies, and made sure I had lesson plans for what I was doing this week in my classes. This took no less than five hours, as I sat down and did it all straight through -- no food, no getting up for breaks, no music or dancing. Just grading and student work. While the 210 projects signify the last assignments I'll have to grade for that class, I do have the two other courses which the work continues for. There are three more sessions of my 102 class before I give their final (so, really, four sessions) and the same applies to my 011s. Most of the 011s are doing well -- the ones who keep showing up and doing the work, anyhow. The last one who could've failed for absences did so during this week's class, so the ones who are there now are the students doing the work and taking care of every little thing I ask of them. Only one other student may fail my course due to absences alone, but I found out that he's in 013 anyway, so that class is what he needs to be in anyhow -- not mine. That's the enrollment system's fault; he shouldn't have been allowed to double-enroll in two courses that offer the same credit.
Anyway. The grading session was tiring, and I went through more than half a pen's worth of ink marking up everything. I'm not a bastard, but if something needs to be marked, I mark it -- especially for the 210 students who should know how to, say, format in-text citations and a works cited page, since they've theoretically done all of that before in English 101 and 102 (or their equivalents at other universities/colleges), not to mention that I've beaten it into their heads to go to Purdue OWL if they have questions about any of that. They don't have a handbook for MLA formatting in English 210 because they should already know all of it. The 101s and 102s at least have the excuse of not being fully acquainted with MLA rules yet.
It's warm and overcast again today, about 80 degrees. It's supposed to storm for the next three days, though, starting tonight. The ten-day forecast, however, is wonderful temperature-wise -- high temperatures in the mid-70s to 80s for the foreseeable future. I might be able to finally fully put away my pants, socks, and shoes for the rest of the semester, and migrate fully to the t-shirts/button-ups and shorts with sandals that I desperately want to migrate to at this time of the year.
Of course, I'm still wearing pants/socks/shoes and a long-sleeved shirt today with my gloves on for when I clean out the garage, because spiders. But I'm hoping this is the last time I have to fully clothe myself for a while.
Wait, that came out wrong.
Ahem.
Daisy did some research on one of the paintings I have in my garage, and apparently it's a famous painting. It's not an original, of course, but a print -- but the prints are going for $80 or something like that. I have no clue what it is and I've never heard of it -- at some point my ex must've picked it up at a yard sale, because I wouldn't have bought it myself. I salvaged another few pretty paintings from the garage and closets that have just been gathering dust; if any of them are worth anything, I may attempt to eBay them or something like that. Anything would be good for extra money, right?
"You just watch," I told her this afternoon, "watch the yard sale on May 3 get completely rained out after all of this planning and boxing of things I've put into it. Watch it happen."
"Well, if it does...will they reschedule it?" she asked.
"Nope. The city won't, anyway."
That doesn't mean I won't set up the stuff again during the next weekend and sell all of it I can then, weather permitting.
"Almost anything I don't sell at the yard sale is basically going directly into the trash and recycling," I told her. "Most of it's being sold just to get it out of here. Yeah, there's some stuff that I will keep, but the reason I'm trying to sell it is because I'd rather have money for it than find a place for it."
This is true. I know I'm not going to sell all of the books, CDs, DVDs, or Xbox/Playstation games, but I'd so much rather have the money for selling them than trying to find another box to stuff them into where they will go unused for another five years. I looked into places like Hastings to get rid of the ones I can't sell, but the nearest one to Daisy is an hour from her house. If I could find a good, independent used games store somewhere in Omaha who would actually give me a decent price for what I have, I might just box it up and make that be an afternoon's visit once I'm moved up there. Anything I can get money out of would help, honestly.
"I might try to sell the lawnmower if we won't have a use for it or have a place for it," I told her.
Her parents don't really need it, and we don't have a yard at the new place; it's a second-floor apartment. It's a good lawnmower, and has served me really well for the past five years...but if I don't have somewhere to put it or someone to use it, I can't keep it. I just can't. Again, we only have room for so much stuff, and what isn't absolutely essential must be sold, trashed, or given away. I plan to sell the electric weed-eater at the yard sale too, including a massive extension cord for it. I think $10 would be a fair price for that. Probably $20 for the lawnmower.
Please pay me and take my shit away. Please.
As for the weight bench set and weights I have but have never used? My friend Ryan (who wanted it before) can't take it, as he graduates and will be leaving Wichita, but another friend may bring up her boyfriend's truck and get it from me. Again, I just want it gone. I cannot take it with me no matter what.
There's not a whole lot else of value in and around the house, and not much else I want or need to keep. Anyone who actually comes to said yard sale will be getting good deals (and/or lots of "if you want it, it's free, please take it away" phrases) from me.
I keep forgetting that apparently it's Easter weekend. I didn't even remember until I got an Easter card (because, apparently, that's a thing) from my parents yesterday in the mail, and was reminded again today when one of my friends on Facebook said that she dreaded going out shopping this afternoon because people would be everywhere. Easter (and/or most other religious holidays) are way, way off my radar. It's not that I don't acknowledge they exist, but that I absolutely do not pay attention to them in the least. I don't care. If I have to go out shopping this weekend (and I don't think I will) I'll do it tomorrow night or Monday, and will possibly get discounted candy, but I so don't care one way or the other.
Though it did make for a funny joke this week in my class -- one of my students who was absent last week was there on Wednesday night, and I said "He lives!" which is my go-to phrase when a student has been gone but has now returned to class. He looked at me and said "Of all weeks of the year to say that, you really can't say that this week."
And I had to think about it for a moment before I got his reference.
For good measure, I did circle a section on his paper and write "Good Lord" next to it. Because I do love me some blasphemy, mmhmm.
Call it an atheist's subtle payback.
Ahem.
So that's what's going on in my life right now. Now...I clean the rest of the garage.
Those two boxes alone took about 90 minutes to pack. Based on 45 minutes per box, roughly, with the amount of boxes I have left now (fifteen), it'll take me 675 minutes to pack all of the boxes I have already -- or eleven hours and fifteen minutes. And those fifteen boxes I have remaining isn't nearly enough to pack up this whole house.
Sigh.
This afternoon -- in about half an hour, actually -- I will clean out the rest of the garage as much as possible, mostly the storage room. Then I will shower, eat, and watch another disc of Scrubs, because fuck it, I've worked a lot on this shit already this weekend and I need a bit of a break. I'll do more tomorrow, of course.
Last night, I graded through all of my students' projects and workshop copies, and made sure I had lesson plans for what I was doing this week in my classes. This took no less than five hours, as I sat down and did it all straight through -- no food, no getting up for breaks, no music or dancing. Just grading and student work. While the 210 projects signify the last assignments I'll have to grade for that class, I do have the two other courses which the work continues for. There are three more sessions of my 102 class before I give their final (so, really, four sessions) and the same applies to my 011s. Most of the 011s are doing well -- the ones who keep showing up and doing the work, anyhow. The last one who could've failed for absences did so during this week's class, so the ones who are there now are the students doing the work and taking care of every little thing I ask of them. Only one other student may fail my course due to absences alone, but I found out that he's in 013 anyway, so that class is what he needs to be in anyhow -- not mine. That's the enrollment system's fault; he shouldn't have been allowed to double-enroll in two courses that offer the same credit.
Anyway. The grading session was tiring, and I went through more than half a pen's worth of ink marking up everything. I'm not a bastard, but if something needs to be marked, I mark it -- especially for the 210 students who should know how to, say, format in-text citations and a works cited page, since they've theoretically done all of that before in English 101 and 102 (or their equivalents at other universities/colleges), not to mention that I've beaten it into their heads to go to Purdue OWL if they have questions about any of that. They don't have a handbook for MLA formatting in English 210 because they should already know all of it. The 101s and 102s at least have the excuse of not being fully acquainted with MLA rules yet.
It's warm and overcast again today, about 80 degrees. It's supposed to storm for the next three days, though, starting tonight. The ten-day forecast, however, is wonderful temperature-wise -- high temperatures in the mid-70s to 80s for the foreseeable future. I might be able to finally fully put away my pants, socks, and shoes for the rest of the semester, and migrate fully to the t-shirts/button-ups and shorts with sandals that I desperately want to migrate to at this time of the year.
Of course, I'm still wearing pants/socks/shoes and a long-sleeved shirt today with my gloves on for when I clean out the garage, because spiders. But I'm hoping this is the last time I have to fully clothe myself for a while.
Wait, that came out wrong.
Ahem.
Daisy did some research on one of the paintings I have in my garage, and apparently it's a famous painting. It's not an original, of course, but a print -- but the prints are going for $80 or something like that. I have no clue what it is and I've never heard of it -- at some point my ex must've picked it up at a yard sale, because I wouldn't have bought it myself. I salvaged another few pretty paintings from the garage and closets that have just been gathering dust; if any of them are worth anything, I may attempt to eBay them or something like that. Anything would be good for extra money, right?
"You just watch," I told her this afternoon, "watch the yard sale on May 3 get completely rained out after all of this planning and boxing of things I've put into it. Watch it happen."
"Well, if it does...will they reschedule it?" she asked.
"Nope. The city won't, anyway."
That doesn't mean I won't set up the stuff again during the next weekend and sell all of it I can then, weather permitting.
"Almost anything I don't sell at the yard sale is basically going directly into the trash and recycling," I told her. "Most of it's being sold just to get it out of here. Yeah, there's some stuff that I will keep, but the reason I'm trying to sell it is because I'd rather have money for it than find a place for it."
This is true. I know I'm not going to sell all of the books, CDs, DVDs, or Xbox/Playstation games, but I'd so much rather have the money for selling them than trying to find another box to stuff them into where they will go unused for another five years. I looked into places like Hastings to get rid of the ones I can't sell, but the nearest one to Daisy is an hour from her house. If I could find a good, independent used games store somewhere in Omaha who would actually give me a decent price for what I have, I might just box it up and make that be an afternoon's visit once I'm moved up there. Anything I can get money out of would help, honestly.
"I might try to sell the lawnmower if we won't have a use for it or have a place for it," I told her.
Her parents don't really need it, and we don't have a yard at the new place; it's a second-floor apartment. It's a good lawnmower, and has served me really well for the past five years...but if I don't have somewhere to put it or someone to use it, I can't keep it. I just can't. Again, we only have room for so much stuff, and what isn't absolutely essential must be sold, trashed, or given away. I plan to sell the electric weed-eater at the yard sale too, including a massive extension cord for it. I think $10 would be a fair price for that. Probably $20 for the lawnmower.
Please pay me and take my shit away. Please.
As for the weight bench set and weights I have but have never used? My friend Ryan (who wanted it before) can't take it, as he graduates and will be leaving Wichita, but another friend may bring up her boyfriend's truck and get it from me. Again, I just want it gone. I cannot take it with me no matter what.
There's not a whole lot else of value in and around the house, and not much else I want or need to keep. Anyone who actually comes to said yard sale will be getting good deals (and/or lots of "if you want it, it's free, please take it away" phrases) from me.
I keep forgetting that apparently it's Easter weekend. I didn't even remember until I got an Easter card (because, apparently, that's a thing) from my parents yesterday in the mail, and was reminded again today when one of my friends on Facebook said that she dreaded going out shopping this afternoon because people would be everywhere. Easter (and/or most other religious holidays) are way, way off my radar. It's not that I don't acknowledge they exist, but that I absolutely do not pay attention to them in the least. I don't care. If I have to go out shopping this weekend (and I don't think I will) I'll do it tomorrow night or Monday, and will possibly get discounted candy, but I so don't care one way or the other.
Though it did make for a funny joke this week in my class -- one of my students who was absent last week was there on Wednesday night, and I said "He lives!" which is my go-to phrase when a student has been gone but has now returned to class. He looked at me and said "Of all weeks of the year to say that, you really can't say that this week."
And I had to think about it for a moment before I got his reference.
For good measure, I did circle a section on his paper and write "Good Lord" next to it. Because I do love me some blasphemy, mmhmm.
Call it an atheist's subtle payback.
Ahem.
So that's what's going on in my life right now. Now...I clean the rest of the garage.
Friday, April 18, 2014
The Great Cleansing, Part I
Spring semester: day sixty-four
I suppose I slept okay yesterday afternoon and last night. For the most part, anyway. I always feel as if I am playing catch-up when it comes to getting rest these days, and that's a feeling that's more than likely not going to go away for another few months until I can really get some true relaxation time after the move and after the wedding.
The thought is always in the back of my head that a month from today, I'll more than likely be mostly, or completely, moved out of this house. It's a feeling that, looking around and seeing everything where it is and where it has been for the past five years, makes me feel crushed and completely overwhelmed with stress. Again, I absolutely dread moving. I've always dreaded moving no matter how many times I've done it. It's always much harder than it looks or seems like it's going to be, it's always much more tiring and stressful, and it's always a task that is so terrible to me that I just have to put my head down and do it -- there's never any way out of it.
And it's so expensive.
I brought in one of the big boxes from the garage this morning so that I can keep packing throughout the day today. It will be filled quickly, I can tell you that. No matter how many boxes I have, it'll never seem like enough. I just feel dangerously, completely overwhelmed. I have so much -- so many things -- that I need to keep, but I don't know what to do with. I'm so tired. I can almost never get any real rest. I have a ton of grading and other student-oriented work to do. I have a ton of cleaning to do. I have tasks and responsibilities pulling at me from all angles, and all I want to do is curl up in a ball in bed with my blanket over my head and wish it all away, wish that everything would just stop, wish that I had an endless supply of money to just throw at all of my problems and make everyone else take care of them. The stress is crippling. It's terrifying. I don't like this feeling. It feels like I've been backed into a corner and I have no way out of being forced to do all of this work, spend all of this money I don't have, and I'm being told to do it with a gun to my head and a ticking clock in the corner with me. It never feels like I'm doing enough fast enough. I'm not sure I can accurately put into words the anxiety and panic I feel.
None of this has to do with the wedding, of course. It's more in the moving and the money and time and work involved, and the panic that comes from going into the unknown. I've done this before -- this will make the fourth time I have moved from one place to another without knowing what my future would hold in said place. All three previous times have been very stressful and I've been very poor and jobless once I've gotten to wherever I'm going. This time will be no exception. My lecturer contract with the university ends a month from today, basically. I'll only be paid three more times, at the most, before the wedding. I don't yet have a job in Omaha and probably won't until at least sometime in June. Once more I am flying blind into the jungle of uncertainty, into a situation where -- yes, while I'll have a wife and she has a good job -- I myself will again be thrown into financial chaos, thrown into the great unknown until I can proverbially "get back on my feet." Again, remember that I basically have no marketable skills except for teaching and writing. It's very, very tough to even get a phone call or an interview for any job I apply for that isn't an entry-level position or a retail position.
That being said, Daisy's company apparently does want me to work for them -- the HR guy emailed me twice over the past two weeks telling me to come to their hiring event/job fair thing up there this week. When I responded that I would love to except that I wasn't relocating to Omaha for more than another month, he replied to tell me to keep his info on file and contact him ASAP once I was settled in so that an interview could be scheduled.
None of the other applications I've filed -- for anything, anywhere -- have contacted me. All of them have HR websites, and every time I've logged in it says "application received." Only one of the jobs I've applied for says "applications currently being screened." They're either dragging their feet, or they're "dummy" positions posted on said HR sites for jobs they've already filled internally, to give the illusion that they're actually looking for someone outside the company/college/university when they're not.
Again, this is something I can't exactly stress about now. I have too many other pressing issues and tasks to worry about and take care of at the moment.
Friends and colleagues are still surprised I'm moving out of Kansas, like for some reason that was an unfathomable thought. The entire time I've lived here in Kansas, I've only had three things keeping me here:
Literally nothing else has kept me here in this state. If I would've found somewhere else to live and work last summer (before I took the position at the university), I would've moved out of state then. Daisy and I were exploring all sorts of options even then. My position ends in a month, and I'm getting married shortly thereafter -- why is it automatically assumed by everyone that once I'm married I'll still want to live here and continue teaching to only make $12k a year, when for a full third the year I'm not even getting paid because I'm not teaching? Did people assume I was going to marry Daisy, and then we'd live separate lives in separate states, with her still living in Omaha and me returning to Kansas to live here alone with the cats? That's not how marriage works.
As the university is not offering me any more money for -- or any opportunities for advancement in -- what I do for a living, it was inevitable that I'd move on. I love my job there, and I love teaching, but I still have to pay the bills. And there will be more, higher bills after I'm married. It's simple finances. I'm struggling as it is now, and I have been for the better part of a year and a half. I live a pretty simple life, but that life can't be simplified financially more than it already has been; corners can't really be cut any more than they're being cut now. I have neither the time nor the ability to do so.
Some of you may be wondering if the upcoming end of my employment at the university is changing the way I do my work -- if, for example, I'd be the kind of guy who would be like "Pshhh, fuck it, let's give everyone A's and not care about anything anymore." The answer to that is no. It doesn't matter that my job will be ending soon. It doesn't matter that I may never teach a college class again after next month -- again, I take pride in my work, and my responsibilities as a professor don't change in my remaining time as one, nor do I take care of said responsibilities in any fashion any differently than I always have. I respect my job. I respect my profession. I respect my peers -- higher-ups and subordinates -- more than to completely fuck off for the next month. My job isn't done until my contract ends. I don't care that I am completely, brutally swamped with all of the other work I must spend countless hours doing -- I'm not a slacker and never have been. To brush it all off and stop caring about my duties would not only be disrespectful to the university and to my students, but it would be dishonorable, and above all things, I pride myself on being honorable.
To those ends I must keep working at basically a breakneck pace, metering out time for tasks. Tonight I'll be grading through all of my 210 students' projects one by one until I'm finished with them...and then I'll move on to the workshop copies for my 102 class, and lesson planning for my 011s, before eventually going to bed and getting up tomorrow morning to clean out the rest of the garage and storage room, pack more boxes full of clothes and around-the-house stuff, and then run the dishwasher and take care of all of the laundry that needs to be dealt with. My hair is greasy and looks crazy. My beard is dry and itchy. I haven't showered since Wednesday afternoon. I haven't eaten anything in eighteen hours. The cats are restless and keep getting under my feet as I move back and forth through the house, as they don't understand why there are so many boxes around everywhere or why I need them to move out of the way while I'm working all the time. They just want to be with me, and it's not like they understand the nuances of cleaning and packing things. I, meanwhile, just want to eat and sleep, but I can't.
I suppose I slept okay yesterday afternoon and last night. For the most part, anyway. I always feel as if I am playing catch-up when it comes to getting rest these days, and that's a feeling that's more than likely not going to go away for another few months until I can really get some true relaxation time after the move and after the wedding.
The thought is always in the back of my head that a month from today, I'll more than likely be mostly, or completely, moved out of this house. It's a feeling that, looking around and seeing everything where it is and where it has been for the past five years, makes me feel crushed and completely overwhelmed with stress. Again, I absolutely dread moving. I've always dreaded moving no matter how many times I've done it. It's always much harder than it looks or seems like it's going to be, it's always much more tiring and stressful, and it's always a task that is so terrible to me that I just have to put my head down and do it -- there's never any way out of it.
And it's so expensive.
I brought in one of the big boxes from the garage this morning so that I can keep packing throughout the day today. It will be filled quickly, I can tell you that. No matter how many boxes I have, it'll never seem like enough. I just feel dangerously, completely overwhelmed. I have so much -- so many things -- that I need to keep, but I don't know what to do with. I'm so tired. I can almost never get any real rest. I have a ton of grading and other student-oriented work to do. I have a ton of cleaning to do. I have tasks and responsibilities pulling at me from all angles, and all I want to do is curl up in a ball in bed with my blanket over my head and wish it all away, wish that everything would just stop, wish that I had an endless supply of money to just throw at all of my problems and make everyone else take care of them. The stress is crippling. It's terrifying. I don't like this feeling. It feels like I've been backed into a corner and I have no way out of being forced to do all of this work, spend all of this money I don't have, and I'm being told to do it with a gun to my head and a ticking clock in the corner with me. It never feels like I'm doing enough fast enough. I'm not sure I can accurately put into words the anxiety and panic I feel.
None of this has to do with the wedding, of course. It's more in the moving and the money and time and work involved, and the panic that comes from going into the unknown. I've done this before -- this will make the fourth time I have moved from one place to another without knowing what my future would hold in said place. All three previous times have been very stressful and I've been very poor and jobless once I've gotten to wherever I'm going. This time will be no exception. My lecturer contract with the university ends a month from today, basically. I'll only be paid three more times, at the most, before the wedding. I don't yet have a job in Omaha and probably won't until at least sometime in June. Once more I am flying blind into the jungle of uncertainty, into a situation where -- yes, while I'll have a wife and she has a good job -- I myself will again be thrown into financial chaos, thrown into the great unknown until I can proverbially "get back on my feet." Again, remember that I basically have no marketable skills except for teaching and writing. It's very, very tough to even get a phone call or an interview for any job I apply for that isn't an entry-level position or a retail position.
That being said, Daisy's company apparently does want me to work for them -- the HR guy emailed me twice over the past two weeks telling me to come to their hiring event/job fair thing up there this week. When I responded that I would love to except that I wasn't relocating to Omaha for more than another month, he replied to tell me to keep his info on file and contact him ASAP once I was settled in so that an interview could be scheduled.
None of the other applications I've filed -- for anything, anywhere -- have contacted me. All of them have HR websites, and every time I've logged in it says "application received." Only one of the jobs I've applied for says "applications currently being screened." They're either dragging their feet, or they're "dummy" positions posted on said HR sites for jobs they've already filled internally, to give the illusion that they're actually looking for someone outside the company/college/university when they're not.
Again, this is something I can't exactly stress about now. I have too many other pressing issues and tasks to worry about and take care of at the moment.
Friends and colleagues are still surprised I'm moving out of Kansas, like for some reason that was an unfathomable thought. The entire time I've lived here in Kansas, I've only had three things keeping me here:
1. My ex, who moved us here in the first place in 2009 (and broke up with me 18 months later; that reason ended then)
2. Graduate school, until last May.
3. Working at the university since then.
Literally nothing else has kept me here in this state. If I would've found somewhere else to live and work last summer (before I took the position at the university), I would've moved out of state then. Daisy and I were exploring all sorts of options even then. My position ends in a month, and I'm getting married shortly thereafter -- why is it automatically assumed by everyone that once I'm married I'll still want to live here and continue teaching to only make $12k a year, when for a full third the year I'm not even getting paid because I'm not teaching? Did people assume I was going to marry Daisy, and then we'd live separate lives in separate states, with her still living in Omaha and me returning to Kansas to live here alone with the cats? That's not how marriage works.
As the university is not offering me any more money for -- or any opportunities for advancement in -- what I do for a living, it was inevitable that I'd move on. I love my job there, and I love teaching, but I still have to pay the bills. And there will be more, higher bills after I'm married. It's simple finances. I'm struggling as it is now, and I have been for the better part of a year and a half. I live a pretty simple life, but that life can't be simplified financially more than it already has been; corners can't really be cut any more than they're being cut now. I have neither the time nor the ability to do so.
Some of you may be wondering if the upcoming end of my employment at the university is changing the way I do my work -- if, for example, I'd be the kind of guy who would be like "Pshhh, fuck it, let's give everyone A's and not care about anything anymore." The answer to that is no. It doesn't matter that my job will be ending soon. It doesn't matter that I may never teach a college class again after next month -- again, I take pride in my work, and my responsibilities as a professor don't change in my remaining time as one, nor do I take care of said responsibilities in any fashion any differently than I always have. I respect my job. I respect my profession. I respect my peers -- higher-ups and subordinates -- more than to completely fuck off for the next month. My job isn't done until my contract ends. I don't care that I am completely, brutally swamped with all of the other work I must spend countless hours doing -- I'm not a slacker and never have been. To brush it all off and stop caring about my duties would not only be disrespectful to the university and to my students, but it would be dishonorable, and above all things, I pride myself on being honorable.
To those ends I must keep working at basically a breakneck pace, metering out time for tasks. Tonight I'll be grading through all of my 210 students' projects one by one until I'm finished with them...and then I'll move on to the workshop copies for my 102 class, and lesson planning for my 011s, before eventually going to bed and getting up tomorrow morning to clean out the rest of the garage and storage room, pack more boxes full of clothes and around-the-house stuff, and then run the dishwasher and take care of all of the laundry that needs to be dealt with. My hair is greasy and looks crazy. My beard is dry and itchy. I haven't showered since Wednesday afternoon. I haven't eaten anything in eighteen hours. The cats are restless and keep getting under my feet as I move back and forth through the house, as they don't understand why there are so many boxes around everywhere or why I need them to move out of the way while I'm working all the time. They just want to be with me, and it's not like they understand the nuances of cleaning and packing things. I, meanwhile, just want to eat and sleep, but I can't.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
I'm No Superman
Spring semester: day sixty-three
My 210 students last night were amusing.
"You mean this is it? A ten-minute oral presentation on our project, next week, and then we're done?"
Yes, students, that's your final assignment. Then you're done. Finished. Finito. Our class ends.
I think it's somewhat amusing, actually. If this were a larger -- or full -- roster of students, there's no way we'd be finished yet, and more than likely wouldn't be anywhere this close to wrapping up. I had twenty students in my 210 class last semester, and because several of them failed for absences or couldn't get the project finished on time, they bowed out of class near the end. This freed up time for the presentations, and remarkably we were able to get through all of them in one night because we were able to get into a classroom about an hour earlier than usual and start early. The last three weeks of the semester in the syllabus/lesson plan are devoted to presentations. With a full class of twenty-five students, at a minimum of ten minutes per presentation, that's 250 minutes. As the class is but once a week from 7:05 to 9:45, if we started right at 7:05 and every student only used the minimum ten minutes, we'd be able to get through sixteen of them one week and would have to leave the remaining nine for the next week. That would still leave an extra week at the end of the semester as a "floating day" commonly used as a placeholder in case of weather cancellations or other issues.
That's if I had a full class. I don't. My 210 class this semester has eight students. Therefore, next week we're in there for eighty minutes as all eight of them do their presentations one after another, and we're done. For the semester. Period.
It will feel nice knowing that I won't have to return to West campus on Wednesday nights for the remainder of the semester after next week, but it will feel even nicer to not have to burn that extra 48 miles worth of gasoline in the car (as that's how much it is to make a round trip to and from West campus) for the rest of the semester. It also means that after next week, I'll have Wednesdays off. Completely. Which will be good as I have enough things to do for my classes and around the house anyway. When my final papers start rolling in for my other two classes (I have five sets of papers left to grade for all of my classes for the rest of the semester, not counting final exams), I'll need that extra time. The stack of 210 projects will be graded this weekend, but I still have two papers and a practice final coming in from my 011s, and the big final paper coming in for my 102s. All of those will take time to grade -- not to mention I will be collecting journals once again from those latter two classes as well.
While my teaching schedule appears to be clearing (and it is), the work involved with the end of the semester is not. The 102 students take their final exam in class, during normal class hours, on May 1. May 6 is the last day I have to be on campus for anything before finals week, and that's only for my night 011 class to collect final papers/rewrites and to give the practice final. I don't know when the final exam will be for that class yet. It could be a full week later for all I know, and I also don't know who I'll have as a grading partner for it.
I'm really just trying to take care of things as they come, as always. Certain days have certain tasks and blocks of time metered out to take care of said tasks. That's basically my organizational system. I meter out that time so that all other time remains my own to use as I see fit -- whether I use it sleeping, eating, decompressing by watching a DVD, packing/cleaning, or doing other household stuff, it's still my time. I have to be able to keep some things separate or I will go crazy and will feel even more swamped and overwhelmed than I already do.
To those ends (and because the DVD sets have been anywhere between $4 and $15 per season on Amazon), I've been watching Scrubs from the beginning -- usually while I eat my daily meals. I've already watched through everything else I have right now as it pertains to television -- I've watched seven seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for example, and I'm waiting on the other season sets to drop dramatically in price (or, barring that, I'll just watch them on Netflix if they're on there once Daisy and I move in together). I watched season 4 of Archer last week during my meals and in between grading papers. Scrubs has the benefit of being a really long series (I think there were nine seasons? Ten?) that I've only seen parts of, and a series that is incredibly cheap to get and watch piece-by-piece -- again, between $4 and $15 for three-disc season sets, with each season being twelve or thirteen hours long based on the number of episodes.
I really don't spend a lot of time or money on myself because I can so rarely afford to -- this is about it, honestly. If there's a show I like, I'll get a few seasons of it and watch it, and it will allow me an escape from everything hanging over my head, if only for a short while. It's the same reason I play the Pokemon games and follow the series as well -- decompression. I apparently deal with stresses differently than a lot of other people do. This is my method. Well, that and cigarettes/coffee, anyway.
I stopped at Walmart last night on the way home, as I'd planned to do, and picked up the essentials only -- the aforementioned cigarettes, cat litter, bread and almond milk, cereal, etc. Much like Daisy, I am on a "spending freeze" at the moment, in order to channel as much money as possible into moving costs and cost of living expenses for after the move and after the wedding. Anything that isn't essential or can't wait a few weeks has been put on the back burner for the time being. I live cheaply; there's no reason to spend any money I don't have to, especially as I still haven't received my state tax refund yet (I sent it off a month ago today, on March 17), and after I've paid off the majority of debt on two of my three credit cards, clearing one off completely, I'd rather not run those back up. I'll need them this summer, more than likely. I'll need the Citi Card especially, as that's what I use to pay my car insurance. That comes due again at the end of June. While I'm sure we can count on some money as wedding gifts, we can't depend on that to "get us by," so to speak. Daisy and I both have bills. Some of those bills are expensive bills.
Speaking of Daisy, apparently her first night at her "new job" within her company last night went really well, though she didn't get really any sleep beforehand. I had messages from her this morning when I woke up, but she didn't offer any details as she was going directly to bed (and it's not like I blame her, honestly). I'll talk to her about it tonight, more than likely, though I myself will more than likely be going to bed again once I come home and eat lunch. It's a chilly, dreary grey day outside, and it's supposed to rain all day. Good sleeping weather, I say. I'm tired already, and haven't really had the chance to get any good, solid rest all week (as I've mentioned here before).
So that's what's going on. I will update you, of course, with anything else that happens, over the weekend. For now, though, I'm going to hop into the Monte Carlo and head off to campus.
My 210 students last night were amusing.
"You mean this is it? A ten-minute oral presentation on our project, next week, and then we're done?"
Yes, students, that's your final assignment. Then you're done. Finished. Finito. Our class ends.
I think it's somewhat amusing, actually. If this were a larger -- or full -- roster of students, there's no way we'd be finished yet, and more than likely wouldn't be anywhere this close to wrapping up. I had twenty students in my 210 class last semester, and because several of them failed for absences or couldn't get the project finished on time, they bowed out of class near the end. This freed up time for the presentations, and remarkably we were able to get through all of them in one night because we were able to get into a classroom about an hour earlier than usual and start early. The last three weeks of the semester in the syllabus/lesson plan are devoted to presentations. With a full class of twenty-five students, at a minimum of ten minutes per presentation, that's 250 minutes. As the class is but once a week from 7:05 to 9:45, if we started right at 7:05 and every student only used the minimum ten minutes, we'd be able to get through sixteen of them one week and would have to leave the remaining nine for the next week. That would still leave an extra week at the end of the semester as a "floating day" commonly used as a placeholder in case of weather cancellations or other issues.
That's if I had a full class. I don't. My 210 class this semester has eight students. Therefore, next week we're in there for eighty minutes as all eight of them do their presentations one after another, and we're done. For the semester. Period.
It will feel nice knowing that I won't have to return to West campus on Wednesday nights for the remainder of the semester after next week, but it will feel even nicer to not have to burn that extra 48 miles worth of gasoline in the car (as that's how much it is to make a round trip to and from West campus) for the rest of the semester. It also means that after next week, I'll have Wednesdays off. Completely. Which will be good as I have enough things to do for my classes and around the house anyway. When my final papers start rolling in for my other two classes (I have five sets of papers left to grade for all of my classes for the rest of the semester, not counting final exams), I'll need that extra time. The stack of 210 projects will be graded this weekend, but I still have two papers and a practice final coming in from my 011s, and the big final paper coming in for my 102s. All of those will take time to grade -- not to mention I will be collecting journals once again from those latter two classes as well.
While my teaching schedule appears to be clearing (and it is), the work involved with the end of the semester is not. The 102 students take their final exam in class, during normal class hours, on May 1. May 6 is the last day I have to be on campus for anything before finals week, and that's only for my night 011 class to collect final papers/rewrites and to give the practice final. I don't know when the final exam will be for that class yet. It could be a full week later for all I know, and I also don't know who I'll have as a grading partner for it.
I'm really just trying to take care of things as they come, as always. Certain days have certain tasks and blocks of time metered out to take care of said tasks. That's basically my organizational system. I meter out that time so that all other time remains my own to use as I see fit -- whether I use it sleeping, eating, decompressing by watching a DVD, packing/cleaning, or doing other household stuff, it's still my time. I have to be able to keep some things separate or I will go crazy and will feel even more swamped and overwhelmed than I already do.
To those ends (and because the DVD sets have been anywhere between $4 and $15 per season on Amazon), I've been watching Scrubs from the beginning -- usually while I eat my daily meals. I've already watched through everything else I have right now as it pertains to television -- I've watched seven seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for example, and I'm waiting on the other season sets to drop dramatically in price (or, barring that, I'll just watch them on Netflix if they're on there once Daisy and I move in together). I watched season 4 of Archer last week during my meals and in between grading papers. Scrubs has the benefit of being a really long series (I think there were nine seasons? Ten?) that I've only seen parts of, and a series that is incredibly cheap to get and watch piece-by-piece -- again, between $4 and $15 for three-disc season sets, with each season being twelve or thirteen hours long based on the number of episodes.
I really don't spend a lot of time or money on myself because I can so rarely afford to -- this is about it, honestly. If there's a show I like, I'll get a few seasons of it and watch it, and it will allow me an escape from everything hanging over my head, if only for a short while. It's the same reason I play the Pokemon games and follow the series as well -- decompression. I apparently deal with stresses differently than a lot of other people do. This is my method. Well, that and cigarettes/coffee, anyway.
I stopped at Walmart last night on the way home, as I'd planned to do, and picked up the essentials only -- the aforementioned cigarettes, cat litter, bread and almond milk, cereal, etc. Much like Daisy, I am on a "spending freeze" at the moment, in order to channel as much money as possible into moving costs and cost of living expenses for after the move and after the wedding. Anything that isn't essential or can't wait a few weeks has been put on the back burner for the time being. I live cheaply; there's no reason to spend any money I don't have to, especially as I still haven't received my state tax refund yet (I sent it off a month ago today, on March 17), and after I've paid off the majority of debt on two of my three credit cards, clearing one off completely, I'd rather not run those back up. I'll need them this summer, more than likely. I'll need the Citi Card especially, as that's what I use to pay my car insurance. That comes due again at the end of June. While I'm sure we can count on some money as wedding gifts, we can't depend on that to "get us by," so to speak. Daisy and I both have bills. Some of those bills are expensive bills.
Speaking of Daisy, apparently her first night at her "new job" within her company last night went really well, though she didn't get really any sleep beforehand. I had messages from her this morning when I woke up, but she didn't offer any details as she was going directly to bed (and it's not like I blame her, honestly). I'll talk to her about it tonight, more than likely, though I myself will more than likely be going to bed again once I come home and eat lunch. It's a chilly, dreary grey day outside, and it's supposed to rain all day. Good sleeping weather, I say. I'm tired already, and haven't really had the chance to get any good, solid rest all week (as I've mentioned here before).
So that's what's going on. I will update you, of course, with anything else that happens, over the weekend. For now, though, I'm going to hop into the Monte Carlo and head off to campus.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
In The Works, Part II
Spring semester: day sixty-two
Yesterday went very slowly. And today is going about the same.
I taught my classes yesterday just fine, came home last night, ate, and went to bed almost immediately afterwards. I was exhausted. I didn't get up until around 9 this morning, meaning I slept for eleven hours or so, roughly.
Yes, I'm still tired. It's mainly because, as mentioned in my previous post, I really didn't get much (or any, really) downtime over the weekend -- there was always something to be done, such as cleaning the garage or grading papers, and then Daisy came down and we were busy from that point forward as well.
Daisy left yesterday morning shortly before I left the house myself, and by the time I'd gotten to my computer and booted it up on main campus in the afternoon, she had arrived home safely.
I have a stack of 210 final projects that I'll collect tonight, and a few workshop copies I'll collect tomorrow. I'll be busy this weekend again not only with those, but with packing and finishing up the garage cleaning and cleaning some of the other stuff around the house that needs to be washed or otherwise scrubbed down/cleaned out. I have to work on the closets, for example, to clear stuff out for the garage sale and to pack up what isn't going to be sold.
Daisy and I are trying to plot out the days for my move; we got the final approval for the apartment yesterday. She signs the lease on the 1st and starts moving her own stuff in on the 6th. We plan to get everything out of here and up there as soon as the semester ends (a month from today, basically) so that we can be done and I won't have to pay another month's rent for June here. This means that in the next month I have a lot of administrative shit I have to do as well, including changing addresses for basically...well...everything I have which has me listed as living here for the past five years. Employers, my bank account, my credit card bills, my student loan stuff, etc. All of that will have to be updated. I'll have to schedule days to stop the electric and water/trash in my name. I'll have to schedule large item pickup for the stuff I can't trash and can't sell at the yard sale. I'll have to figure out what to do with my car's license/registration, and how to get my title back (in Kansas, official car titles are kept in the DOR's offices in Topeka), to transfer it to being registered in Nebraska. I'll have to figure out how to transfer the cable service for the internet to our new place, or if I'll have to open an entirely new account there. There's a ton of stuff like that I have to do, and if I forget anything it'll be a huge pain in the ass.
On top of all of that, I have to rent and pay for the moving truck myself (obviously), which I must put on my credit card because I don't otherwise have the money for it. It's not cheap. Just in case you were wondering. And I have to wait on that for at least a few more days until I can pay that credit card bill down a bit first, since I've not yet gotten the bill for it this month.
Needless to say, all of this is pretty stressful and not that fun -- and I'm liable to go offline for a few days or weeks while all of it's being done and taken care of, especially stuff pertaining to the move and the moving itself. Add to that the fact that I'll be teaching and proctoring/grading finals all the way up until the move, and in about a week and a half will have to give my 30 days' notice to my landlord (who I'm sure already knows that next month will be my last month, as he's been called by the new apartment's people for a reference) when I write my rent check, and I'm going to be constantly swamped. I now have specific, sometimes very difficult or tiring tasks to do every single day whether I'm teaching or not, tasks that take energy and time. I sometimes wonder how I'm going to get everything done.
After a discussion with Parker yesterday (the first time I've seen the man in about four months or so, actually) we've set up a lot of the, ahem, "bachelor party" stuff. That is in quotes because again, it is a term I use very loosely. With my parents not getting here until the night of said party (I assume, anyway), and with my dad not being the type (generally) to want to attend said parties, I doubt he'll be in attendance -- though, of course, he is certainly welcome to come. The tentative plans are to do it at Dave & Buster's (because, of course, why not have a group outing at a place which serves not only good food, but has a ton of alcohol and video games?) with a possible trip to a dive bar somewhere afterwards. It'll be on a Thursday night, so it's not like everyone in the city will be out and about everywhere during the work week.
Whether we end up doing this or not remains to be seen, but there's a Dave & Buster's like two miles from Daisy's parents' house. Parker has vowed to destroy me with shots wherever we end up going anyway. My liver will hate him the next day.
As for tonight and for the rest of this week/weekend, it's work and life per the usual. As mentioned before, I'm collecting my 210 students' final projects tonight and will be prepping them on their oral presentations -- it'll be a rather short class, though my professor evaluations will be happening in there beforehand. I have to stop at Walmart on the way home as well, as I'd rather not do it tomorrow and because I didn't get the weekly necessities and the like that I needed when I was there with Daisy over the weekend -- just the stuff we needed then. I only have five or six things I need, so that should be a rather quick in-and-out trip as well. I'll then come home, eat something (if I'm hungry) and go to bed.
In the morning I have my professor evaluations in my 102 class, then I'm covering the last two readings of the semester in their textbook (well, as much as we'll have time for, anyway, after those evaluations finish) before collecting workshop copies and coming home. I might order pizza tomorrow if I'm awake and hungry enough, but I don't know. I may save that for the weekend, when I'll be grading, packing and cleaning, and won't really want to cook.
It's warm and overcast today; 72 right now with clouds. Perfect early-evening driving weather for when I'll leave in about an hour to go teach my class. It's supposed to be cooler and rainy tomorrow, so I'm enjoying this unusually-pleasing Kansas weather while I currently have it -- as this kind of weather is my ideal weather, and the climate I wish it would be year-round.
Next week it'll probably snow again, because Kansas.
Tonight Daisy starts her new position at her company, where she'll be supervising twenty employees (though not all at the same time). It'll be a new situation for her, and I wish I could say it was an easy job, but it probably won't be. She's very strong and is cool under pressure, though; I know she can do this job well. And it goes without saying that I am very proud of her and excited for her. Her hours are much different than before, and she's working different days of the week, but aside from that it's not terribly different than what she was doing before anyhow.
As an aside, so many people are surprised that I'm leaving Kansas behind after the semester ends, even though everyone knows that Daisy is in Omaha and that the wedding is there. Did they think we were going to get married there, then she'd leave her well-paying job and move here where neither of us would have a job or be able to pay bills this summer, only to both live on the (small) professorial salary I receive once classes start up again in the fall? I don't know, really. While for the most part I have enjoyed my time here in Kansas, and have loved my teaching job despite the low pay, it's time to move on. This is a huge transition phase in not only my own life, but in hers as well. Marriage is, ahem, a big deal.
Anyway, that's pretty much my life right now. Even though I'll be busy over my weekend, I'm looking forward to getting some very restful sleep for about the first time in five or six days -- because even though I slept well last night, I wouldn't call it completely "restful." Restful sleep comes when I don't have to worry about anything pressing hanging over my head, when I can go to bed when I'm tired and get up naturally when I'm no longer tired, regardless of how many hours that entails. That sort of sleep only comes on Thursday afternoons/evenings and Friday nights, really, as the rest of my weekends are generally devoted to tasks and work -- and even more so now.
Yesterday went very slowly. And today is going about the same.
I taught my classes yesterday just fine, came home last night, ate, and went to bed almost immediately afterwards. I was exhausted. I didn't get up until around 9 this morning, meaning I slept for eleven hours or so, roughly.
Yes, I'm still tired. It's mainly because, as mentioned in my previous post, I really didn't get much (or any, really) downtime over the weekend -- there was always something to be done, such as cleaning the garage or grading papers, and then Daisy came down and we were busy from that point forward as well.
Daisy left yesterday morning shortly before I left the house myself, and by the time I'd gotten to my computer and booted it up on main campus in the afternoon, she had arrived home safely.
I have a stack of 210 final projects that I'll collect tonight, and a few workshop copies I'll collect tomorrow. I'll be busy this weekend again not only with those, but with packing and finishing up the garage cleaning and cleaning some of the other stuff around the house that needs to be washed or otherwise scrubbed down/cleaned out. I have to work on the closets, for example, to clear stuff out for the garage sale and to pack up what isn't going to be sold.
Daisy and I are trying to plot out the days for my move; we got the final approval for the apartment yesterday. She signs the lease on the 1st and starts moving her own stuff in on the 6th. We plan to get everything out of here and up there as soon as the semester ends (a month from today, basically) so that we can be done and I won't have to pay another month's rent for June here. This means that in the next month I have a lot of administrative shit I have to do as well, including changing addresses for basically...well...everything I have which has me listed as living here for the past five years. Employers, my bank account, my credit card bills, my student loan stuff, etc. All of that will have to be updated. I'll have to schedule days to stop the electric and water/trash in my name. I'll have to schedule large item pickup for the stuff I can't trash and can't sell at the yard sale. I'll have to figure out what to do with my car's license/registration, and how to get my title back (in Kansas, official car titles are kept in the DOR's offices in Topeka), to transfer it to being registered in Nebraska. I'll have to figure out how to transfer the cable service for the internet to our new place, or if I'll have to open an entirely new account there. There's a ton of stuff like that I have to do, and if I forget anything it'll be a huge pain in the ass.
On top of all of that, I have to rent and pay for the moving truck myself (obviously), which I must put on my credit card because I don't otherwise have the money for it. It's not cheap. Just in case you were wondering. And I have to wait on that for at least a few more days until I can pay that credit card bill down a bit first, since I've not yet gotten the bill for it this month.
Needless to say, all of this is pretty stressful and not that fun -- and I'm liable to go offline for a few days or weeks while all of it's being done and taken care of, especially stuff pertaining to the move and the moving itself. Add to that the fact that I'll be teaching and proctoring/grading finals all the way up until the move, and in about a week and a half will have to give my 30 days' notice to my landlord (who I'm sure already knows that next month will be my last month, as he's been called by the new apartment's people for a reference) when I write my rent check, and I'm going to be constantly swamped. I now have specific, sometimes very difficult or tiring tasks to do every single day whether I'm teaching or not, tasks that take energy and time. I sometimes wonder how I'm going to get everything done.
After a discussion with Parker yesterday (the first time I've seen the man in about four months or so, actually) we've set up a lot of the, ahem, "bachelor party" stuff. That is in quotes because again, it is a term I use very loosely. With my parents not getting here until the night of said party (I assume, anyway), and with my dad not being the type (generally) to want to attend said parties, I doubt he'll be in attendance -- though, of course, he is certainly welcome to come. The tentative plans are to do it at Dave & Buster's (because, of course, why not have a group outing at a place which serves not only good food, but has a ton of alcohol and video games?) with a possible trip to a dive bar somewhere afterwards. It'll be on a Thursday night, so it's not like everyone in the city will be out and about everywhere during the work week.
Whether we end up doing this or not remains to be seen, but there's a Dave & Buster's like two miles from Daisy's parents' house. Parker has vowed to destroy me with shots wherever we end up going anyway. My liver will hate him the next day.
As for tonight and for the rest of this week/weekend, it's work and life per the usual. As mentioned before, I'm collecting my 210 students' final projects tonight and will be prepping them on their oral presentations -- it'll be a rather short class, though my professor evaluations will be happening in there beforehand. I have to stop at Walmart on the way home as well, as I'd rather not do it tomorrow and because I didn't get the weekly necessities and the like that I needed when I was there with Daisy over the weekend -- just the stuff we needed then. I only have five or six things I need, so that should be a rather quick in-and-out trip as well. I'll then come home, eat something (if I'm hungry) and go to bed.
In the morning I have my professor evaluations in my 102 class, then I'm covering the last two readings of the semester in their textbook (well, as much as we'll have time for, anyway, after those evaluations finish) before collecting workshop copies and coming home. I might order pizza tomorrow if I'm awake and hungry enough, but I don't know. I may save that for the weekend, when I'll be grading, packing and cleaning, and won't really want to cook.
It's warm and overcast today; 72 right now with clouds. Perfect early-evening driving weather for when I'll leave in about an hour to go teach my class. It's supposed to be cooler and rainy tomorrow, so I'm enjoying this unusually-pleasing Kansas weather while I currently have it -- as this kind of weather is my ideal weather, and the climate I wish it would be year-round.
Next week it'll probably snow again, because Kansas.
Tonight Daisy starts her new position at her company, where she'll be supervising twenty employees (though not all at the same time). It'll be a new situation for her, and I wish I could say it was an easy job, but it probably won't be. She's very strong and is cool under pressure, though; I know she can do this job well. And it goes without saying that I am very proud of her and excited for her. Her hours are much different than before, and she's working different days of the week, but aside from that it's not terribly different than what she was doing before anyhow.
As an aside, so many people are surprised that I'm leaving Kansas behind after the semester ends, even though everyone knows that Daisy is in Omaha and that the wedding is there. Did they think we were going to get married there, then she'd leave her well-paying job and move here where neither of us would have a job or be able to pay bills this summer, only to both live on the (small) professorial salary I receive once classes start up again in the fall? I don't know, really. While for the most part I have enjoyed my time here in Kansas, and have loved my teaching job despite the low pay, it's time to move on. This is a huge transition phase in not only my own life, but in hers as well. Marriage is, ahem, a big deal.
Anyway, that's pretty much my life right now. Even though I'll be busy over my weekend, I'm looking forward to getting some very restful sleep for about the first time in five or six days -- because even though I slept well last night, I wouldn't call it completely "restful." Restful sleep comes when I don't have to worry about anything pressing hanging over my head, when I can go to bed when I'm tired and get up naturally when I'm no longer tired, regardless of how many hours that entails. That sort of sleep only comes on Thursday afternoons/evenings and Friday nights, really, as the rest of my weekends are generally devoted to tasks and work -- and even more so now.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
In The Works, Part I
Spring semester: day sixty-one
Tax Day
Day sixty-one. Oh yes, the home stretch. I can see the light.
My past few days have been, understandably, pretty busy. On Saturday, I cleaned out the garage (or most of it, anyhow). On Sunday, Daisy came down in the afternoon, we spent a little time together, and then she passed out for about twelve hours. Yesterday we spent the day together doing the shopping that needed to be done, and then went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Today, Daisy goes home and I go back to work for my normal week of teaching, starting with my abysmally long day that I'll be out of the house for 12+ hours.
Ironically, while Daisy has slept well while she's been here, I really haven't -- her coming down basically in the middle of my weekend (instead of in the middle of my work week when she normally does) threw off my sleeping schedule big time. This isn't her fault, of course, as she starts her new position at her company tomorrow, but the weekend is generally the only time I can really get the rest I need, can sleep on my own schedule when I'm tired, and get up when I want to in order to do what I need to do. This weekend was very different for me, as it basically afforded me no real downtime -- I graded papers and did lesson-planning stuff on Friday, I cleaned the garage on Saturday, I cleaned the house as much as I could on Sunday before she arrived, and yesterday we were out and about all day to the point where I couldn't even go to bed until 10PM.
As most of you know, on Monday nights I usually go to bed before 6 so that I can sleep the whole night through and be rested and alert enough all day to be out of the house for over twelve hours, teaching two classes on each end of my day on two different campuses.
Eh. I'll manage.
Daisy got up with me this morning and ate some cereal before going back to bed a little while ago. I'll wake her in about an hour, as she plans to leave when I do (since I'm going to be gone all day/night anyhow, there's no point for her to stick around here needlessly).
The weather got cold. Very cold. On Saturday, it was 88 degrees. No, that's not a typo. It was actually 88 degrees. When I got up on Sunday, it was 75. And then it stormed, with pea-sized hail out of the blue, and rapidly got colder. By the time Daisy got here on Sunday afternoon, it was below 50. By the time I went to bed on Sunday night (eh, 4AM or so?) it was below 40. Yesterday morning when we got up there was half an inch of snow on the ground and on our cars.
No, I'm not making this up. Welcome to Kansas.
The snow melted off by yesterday afternoon and it was actually somewhat pleasant yesterday, but pretty windy. Right now it's 25 in Newton -- colder here than it's been in weeks. I had to turn on the furnace again yesterday, regrettably, because while the house holds warmth well most of the time, it doesn't hold it well enough to where it won't be in the 40s in the basement bedroom if I didn't turn it on. And, of course, as I already packed and put away the electric blanket and most of my winter clothes because temperature drops of over sixty degrees in the span of two days is not supposed to fucking happen, I've been cold and rather unhappy about this change of weather.
The sudden cold snap has wrecked my allergies, too, allergies which were almost completely gone by last week as the weather had basically normalized. Not anymore, oh no.
Anyway.
Most of the garage is clean now; most of it, anyway. There's some stuff I need to clean up and ready for the move, such as a spare bookcase, table, and file cabinet, but most everything else I had no use for was either trashed or recycled. I'm still not done with the garage, though -- again, I only have so much space in my trash/recycling cans every week, and once they were full, I had to stop. I still have the storage room to clean out, which will take a lot less time to clean and empty, and there are some things in the garage which were too large to simply trash last week as I didn't have the room then. That stuff I'll take care of this coming weekend, and then all that will really be left to do is sweep out the garage to get all of the leaves, dust/dirt, and spiderwebs gone from it. Anything left in there that I can't trash will either be sold/given away at the yard sale in three weeks, or it'll be thrown out when I move out.
Daisy got me seventeen boxes from Walmart on her way down here this weekend, as well.
"That should be enough, right?" she asked, in reference to those boxes being all I needed to move everything with.
I laughed.
"No, babe, I'll probably need two or three times that to get everything out of this house that I need to keep and move. Seriously."
She gave me a shocked look.
"Not kidding; my clothing and room stuff alone will probably be five of those boxes, easily. Then there's all of the kitchen stuff, living room stuff, spare room stuff, bathroom stuff, pots and pans, dishes and other kitchen stuff, dry food in the cupboard..."
I could've kept going, listing another five or six things/places, but I'm sure she got the point. Once again I stress that Daisy has but a bedroom full of stuff and some stuff in her parents' basement like small furniture and the like to move -- I have an entire house full of stuff that I have to figure out how to organize, pack, and get out of here while still keeping the stuff that I need.
"But some of them are really big boxes," she said.
And she's right, some of them are -- but that doesn't change the fact that I'll need more, and it doesn't change the fact that when we get the moving truck here to get everything out of this house, it will be full. That can't really be avoided. There's only so many things I can throw away, recycle, sell, or donate to charity -- and there's only so much time I have with which to do that. A lot of stuff I can get rid of...a lot of stuff I can't.
"Do we really need to steam-clean the carpets?" she asked.
"...absolutely," I said, "if we want to ensure I get my deposit back."
These carpets have five years' worth of dirt, cat hair, cat vomit, and smoke all in them that a simple vacuuming, even with a good vacuum, will not get out. Everything has to be cleaned; this is a task that will take just as long as it will to pack everything up and move it out.
"Do you think you'll get your full deposit back?" she asked.
"I should get most, if not all of it back," I said. "The landlord and his wife really like me; I pay my rent on time in full, I don't cause any trouble, if there's ever been an issue I needed them to work on or fix, I called them, etc. They've always been really sweet to me. But it's because of that why I want to make sure this house is basically impeccable when I leave it."
Besides, we could use the deposit money -- obviously -- to help pay rent and bills in our new place, and/or cover any outstanding wedding costs.
I wrote Daisy a check for $450 to cover the security and the photographer for the wedding in order to clear that from the list of outstanding expenses; I'll have to put about the same amount on my Discover card in a week or two in order to be able to reserve the moving truck in advance as well. I have the money to pay for this stuff, though that also means that my federal tax refund is now completely gone and used up, used to pay bills, credit cards, pay for groom's party gifts and to write the check to Daisy. I am, essentially, exactly where I was before, plus my paycheck from Friday. This isn't necessarily bad, of course -- I will be getting my state refund soon, after all -- but it hasn't arrived yet. As a plus, though, all of those bills I needed to pay have been paid for the moment, with the exception of my Discover card bill (which will arrive this week) and the electric bill (which will arrive next week).
Today is a medium-difficulty day for me; I don't have a ton to do in my classes, but I do have some stuff. I'm covering an article and a research paper out of my 102 textbook for that class, then going to main campus to teach my nigh 011 class, which involves two short lessons out of the book and conferencing with my students over their papers which are due next week. I surely have enough energy to be able to handle and take care of that stuff, I'm guessing, before I come home tonight and crash out. I'm not sure what Daisy's plans are for when she gets home; she'll get back to Omaha around the middle of my day, and doesn't start her new position at her job until tomorrow evening -- shortly before I leave for my evening 210 class.
At least it's supposed to warm up today -- in the 60s by this afternoon, and 70 or so tomorrow.
Tax Day
Day sixty-one. Oh yes, the home stretch. I can see the light.
My past few days have been, understandably, pretty busy. On Saturday, I cleaned out the garage (or most of it, anyhow). On Sunday, Daisy came down in the afternoon, we spent a little time together, and then she passed out for about twelve hours. Yesterday we spent the day together doing the shopping that needed to be done, and then went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Today, Daisy goes home and I go back to work for my normal week of teaching, starting with my abysmally long day that I'll be out of the house for 12+ hours.
Ironically, while Daisy has slept well while she's been here, I really haven't -- her coming down basically in the middle of my weekend (instead of in the middle of my work week when she normally does) threw off my sleeping schedule big time. This isn't her fault, of course, as she starts her new position at her company tomorrow, but the weekend is generally the only time I can really get the rest I need, can sleep on my own schedule when I'm tired, and get up when I want to in order to do what I need to do. This weekend was very different for me, as it basically afforded me no real downtime -- I graded papers and did lesson-planning stuff on Friday, I cleaned the garage on Saturday, I cleaned the house as much as I could on Sunday before she arrived, and yesterday we were out and about all day to the point where I couldn't even go to bed until 10PM.
As most of you know, on Monday nights I usually go to bed before 6 so that I can sleep the whole night through and be rested and alert enough all day to be out of the house for over twelve hours, teaching two classes on each end of my day on two different campuses.
Eh. I'll manage.
Daisy got up with me this morning and ate some cereal before going back to bed a little while ago. I'll wake her in about an hour, as she plans to leave when I do (since I'm going to be gone all day/night anyhow, there's no point for her to stick around here needlessly).
The weather got cold. Very cold. On Saturday, it was 88 degrees. No, that's not a typo. It was actually 88 degrees. When I got up on Sunday, it was 75. And then it stormed, with pea-sized hail out of the blue, and rapidly got colder. By the time Daisy got here on Sunday afternoon, it was below 50. By the time I went to bed on Sunday night (eh, 4AM or so?) it was below 40. Yesterday morning when we got up there was half an inch of snow on the ground and on our cars.
No, I'm not making this up. Welcome to Kansas.
The snow melted off by yesterday afternoon and it was actually somewhat pleasant yesterday, but pretty windy. Right now it's 25 in Newton -- colder here than it's been in weeks. I had to turn on the furnace again yesterday, regrettably, because while the house holds warmth well most of the time, it doesn't hold it well enough to where it won't be in the 40s in the basement bedroom if I didn't turn it on. And, of course, as I already packed and put away the electric blanket and most of my winter clothes because temperature drops of over sixty degrees in the span of two days is not supposed to fucking happen, I've been cold and rather unhappy about this change of weather.
The sudden cold snap has wrecked my allergies, too, allergies which were almost completely gone by last week as the weather had basically normalized. Not anymore, oh no.
Anyway.
Most of the garage is clean now; most of it, anyway. There's some stuff I need to clean up and ready for the move, such as a spare bookcase, table, and file cabinet, but most everything else I had no use for was either trashed or recycled. I'm still not done with the garage, though -- again, I only have so much space in my trash/recycling cans every week, and once they were full, I had to stop. I still have the storage room to clean out, which will take a lot less time to clean and empty, and there are some things in the garage which were too large to simply trash last week as I didn't have the room then. That stuff I'll take care of this coming weekend, and then all that will really be left to do is sweep out the garage to get all of the leaves, dust/dirt, and spiderwebs gone from it. Anything left in there that I can't trash will either be sold/given away at the yard sale in three weeks, or it'll be thrown out when I move out.
Daisy got me seventeen boxes from Walmart on her way down here this weekend, as well.
"That should be enough, right?" she asked, in reference to those boxes being all I needed to move everything with.
I laughed.
"No, babe, I'll probably need two or three times that to get everything out of this house that I need to keep and move. Seriously."
She gave me a shocked look.
"Not kidding; my clothing and room stuff alone will probably be five of those boxes, easily. Then there's all of the kitchen stuff, living room stuff, spare room stuff, bathroom stuff, pots and pans, dishes and other kitchen stuff, dry food in the cupboard..."
I could've kept going, listing another five or six things/places, but I'm sure she got the point. Once again I stress that Daisy has but a bedroom full of stuff and some stuff in her parents' basement like small furniture and the like to move -- I have an entire house full of stuff that I have to figure out how to organize, pack, and get out of here while still keeping the stuff that I need.
"But some of them are really big boxes," she said.
And she's right, some of them are -- but that doesn't change the fact that I'll need more, and it doesn't change the fact that when we get the moving truck here to get everything out of this house, it will be full. That can't really be avoided. There's only so many things I can throw away, recycle, sell, or donate to charity -- and there's only so much time I have with which to do that. A lot of stuff I can get rid of...a lot of stuff I can't.
"Do we really need to steam-clean the carpets?" she asked.
"...absolutely," I said, "if we want to ensure I get my deposit back."
These carpets have five years' worth of dirt, cat hair, cat vomit, and smoke all in them that a simple vacuuming, even with a good vacuum, will not get out. Everything has to be cleaned; this is a task that will take just as long as it will to pack everything up and move it out.
"Do you think you'll get your full deposit back?" she asked.
"I should get most, if not all of it back," I said. "The landlord and his wife really like me; I pay my rent on time in full, I don't cause any trouble, if there's ever been an issue I needed them to work on or fix, I called them, etc. They've always been really sweet to me. But it's because of that why I want to make sure this house is basically impeccable when I leave it."
Besides, we could use the deposit money -- obviously -- to help pay rent and bills in our new place, and/or cover any outstanding wedding costs.
I wrote Daisy a check for $450 to cover the security and the photographer for the wedding in order to clear that from the list of outstanding expenses; I'll have to put about the same amount on my Discover card in a week or two in order to be able to reserve the moving truck in advance as well. I have the money to pay for this stuff, though that also means that my federal tax refund is now completely gone and used up, used to pay bills, credit cards, pay for groom's party gifts and to write the check to Daisy. I am, essentially, exactly where I was before, plus my paycheck from Friday. This isn't necessarily bad, of course -- I will be getting my state refund soon, after all -- but it hasn't arrived yet. As a plus, though, all of those bills I needed to pay have been paid for the moment, with the exception of my Discover card bill (which will arrive this week) and the electric bill (which will arrive next week).
Today is a medium-difficulty day for me; I don't have a ton to do in my classes, but I do have some stuff. I'm covering an article and a research paper out of my 102 textbook for that class, then going to main campus to teach my nigh 011 class, which involves two short lessons out of the book and conferencing with my students over their papers which are due next week. I surely have enough energy to be able to handle and take care of that stuff, I'm guessing, before I come home tonight and crash out. I'm not sure what Daisy's plans are for when she gets home; she'll get back to Omaha around the middle of my day, and doesn't start her new position at her job until tomorrow evening -- shortly before I leave for my evening 210 class.
At least it's supposed to warm up today -- in the 60s by this afternoon, and 70 or so tomorrow.
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