Green Things, Part II

It is 8:16 PM. At this time I was originally expecting Daisy to have arrived, and we would be turning around by 9 or so to head back north.

Instead, in classic Daisy fashion, she just now left the house half an hour ago.

I cannot tell you folks how much this frustrates me. I can't even put it into words.

Daisy really has no concept of time other than that it passes at a constant rate. In this sense, she seems to care as much about time as my cats do. I've written about this before, as recently as this morning, referring to the concept of Daisy Standard Time. Daisy Standard Time consists of her being almost completely unable to keep a schedule or be punctual for anything unless she's absolutely forced to be (read: if someone told her to be somewhere at a certain time, you'd almost have to tie her up and drag her there yourself if you wanted her to be there on time). I think part of it is an unconscious sense of entitlement, whether she sees it that way or not -- she doesn't have to follow the rules of punctuality because "her sense of time differs from other people." Well no, that's a fallacy -- even if her "sense of time" differs from everyone else's, that doesn't mean the rules don't apply equally to her too. We all live in the same world, after all. It's akin to killing someone with a knife and saying that the charges of murder don't apply to you because you have a different concept of murder compared to everyone else -- whatever that concept may be.

Look, I may sound frustrated here, and it's because I am. I'm not trying to proverbially "shit all over Daisy" or anything like that, so don't get that impression -- I love her, very much, and I wouldn't be marrying her if I didn't or if this was something that was an "absolute dealbreaker" for me. However, I am biased, because I am an incredibly punctual person for absolutely everything I do. I'm the guy who shows up at the movie theater 45 minutes early, at least, to get popcorn, go pee, and get the first/best seats in the actual theater before the trailers start -- even if it means I sit there for twenty minutes before they do start. I'm the guy who can't leave the house without a watch on or my entire day is ruined. I set my alarm at 5AM even when I don't teach until 9:15 because I have to be able to sacrifice a bit of sleeping time in order to be able to be awake enough to take care of the responsibilities expected of me. If I have an engagement I have to be at by a certain time, I'm there twenty minutes early at least. I've gone to class -- whether I was teaching or attending -- late only once or twice in my entire seven-year academic career as a student. I've never shown up late to a class I'm teaching, for the record. I'm either there twenty minutes early or right as the class is supposed to begin, but never late. I often tell my students that my time is as valuable as theirs is, so I won't waste it. Logically, I believe everyone (and everything) in the world should operate this way.

Daisy's concept of time is drastically different. Even for appointments and evenings out with her friends when they're all meeting at the same place, she'll show up an hour late and act like that's normal or to be expected of her. She won't keep a clock in her room -- not even an alarm clock -- because she doesn't want to know what time it is. The only alarm clock she uses is her phone, and half the time she'll still get up an hour late. It's not just about her perception of time, of course, but everyone she may or may not be inconveniencing by it -- which she is either oblivious to or she will occasionally brush off by saying that set times are just "suggestions" or that "people need to stop taking everything so seriously."

Yes, I agree that some people should stop taking everything so seriously, but I think we can all agree that's not how the real world works. Suppose, for example, I started doing the same thing to Daisy that she does to me and everyone else in regard to time, and just, say, decided to show up to our wedding three hours late. She wouldn't be happy, would she? In fact, she'd probably be in hysterics, thinking I'd been kidnapped, murdered, my car had blown up on the side of the road, I'd been killed in a car accident, etc. It would inconvenience not only her, but everyone who had taken their own time out of their own schedules to attend our wedding, and when I finally did saunter in there on my own time, I'm guessing that most people there wouldn't be too happy with me, now would they?

Let's bring this down to a much smaller scale and discuss my trip to Omaha this week.

Daisy works night shifts, as you know. When she comes down here, she sleeps first, for usually a shorter amount of time than she normally would, as a "nap" of sorts so that she can still be able to turn her schedule around and sleep again at night once we arrive back in Omaha. While I'm sure this isn't incredibly easy for her, it's not unprecedented and not even out of the ordinary -- she'll frequently get up in the middle of the day after a few hours' sleep to go hang out with friends, spend time with her family if her sister(s) is/are in town, go shopping, work on stuff for the wedding, cook, etc. This is, actually, fairly normal for her, despite the fact that I tell her that she needs to get much more sleep than she does.

Of course, today she gets it at the worst possible time, but I digress.

That's always the plan for our trips, anyway -- Daisy gets off work, sleeps for several hours to rest, gets up, and then comes down here. Meanwhile, during the day that I'm usually awake and waiting on her, I try to nap and get the last of my tasks done around the house before she arrives, especially when we're planning to go back the same night (as we are tonight). I try to nap myself primarily because 2/3 of the drive back, I'm the one driving -- as she could use the downtime and rest. Most of the time, during my drive back, she falls asleep in the seat next to me. We make a stop at York to stretch our legs and use the bathroom if necessary (tonight I'll have to pick up cigarettes and a few other little things, more than likely, as well) before she once more drives for the last leg of the trip into Omaha proper, since I hate the highways and city streets there, and they confuse the shit out of me. Once we get back to the house, we go to bed and get up in the morning ready to start the day anew.

If she had left at 3PM as she'd said she was going to, she could've slept from 9 until 3 (a six-hour nap, when I don't even get six hours of sleep most nights), arrived here a little after 8, and we could've been back on the road by 9PM, arriving in Omaha a little after 2 and sleeping the rest of the night until around 9 or 10AM, ready to start the day and take care of all of our tasks on the docket.

She overslept until 4 because her phone died and the alarm didn't go off (which I can't/don't blame her for, of course), got up and decided to clean things (even though she knows I couldn't care less about the cleanliness status of the house) instead of leave when she already knew she was really late and behind schedule, and didn't leave the house until shortly before 8PM. This shifts everything else on that schedule back by a little more than five hours. She now won't arrive here until after 1, it'll be after 6 (or even 7, depending on how long we stop in York) before we get back to Omaha, and if we go to bed then, it'll more than likely be at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon tomorrow before we wake up, and at least another hour or two later before we're both awake and alert enough to be able to do anything outside the house. That throws a huge wrench into a lot of our plans for tomorrow, but it's even more stressful and strenuous on me, as it requires me to be up all night long to drive 2/3 of the way back there when I wasn't planning to be. I napped for about 90 minutes, but couldn't sleep any longer than that. I didn't want to sleep any longer than that, as I wouldn't have been able to go to sleep when we got to Omaha at the original time expected of around/shortly after 2AM.

Needless to say, I was really pissed off. And this happens almost every time we plan a trip. It shouldn't surprise or anger me at this point...except that we've talked about it. We've discussed it rationally. At length. I trust Daisy with absolutely everything else in the known universe, and I would (and do) trust her with my life...but I cannot ever take any of her timeframes or schedules seriously. Ever. A few nights ago when she said she'd Skype with me in ten minutes, and I waited here at my computer for over an hour before she actually did, I asked her if she planned to be an hour or more late to our own wedding, too, since everything else she says involving time you'll have to add an hour or more to if you want a more accurate representation of when she'll actually be somewhere or will do something.

"No, of course not," she said.

"So you do have the ability to do things on a set schedule at a set place and time, and be on time for certain things that you deem important, but most of the time for everything else, you choose actively to throw that concept to the wayside?"

In my mind, it's all equal. If you say you're going to be somewhere or do something at a certain time, you're there or you do it. If something comes up or there's an issue, you let the parties who will be affected by said issue know, and you get there or do what you said you'd do ASAP once that issue or problem is dealt with. In my mind there's no difference between a Skype call, the wedding, or the timeframe of a trip down here and back -- they're all equally important because your word is on the line, and because it's being honorable and keeping up your end of the bargain. I take great pains to never inconvenience anyone I don't absolutely have to in any way, shape, or form -- even to my own detriment. If I were to miss the shuttle bus back up to the parking lot where I park on main campus, I wouldn't call a friend and bug them to give me a ride up there -- I'd just suck it up and walk the three miles or so before I'd put anyone out.

Perhaps I'm harping on this too much, and that's not my intention. My overall intention, the over-reaching umbrella point I'm trying to make, is that most of the time in this world, your decisions and choices don't just affect you, but people around you who interact with you -- whether that interaction lasts a minute or two or a lifetime. Your actions have consequences that you may not consider, or, in some cases, be able to foresee. Ramifications and all that, etc. As a professor, I deal with this a lot, mainly in the form of sob stories from students using slippery-slope logic, even if that logic, to them, is sound. I'm doing so badly in your class. If I fail this paper, then I fail the class, and if I fail the class, I lose my financial aid. If I lose my financial aid, I'll have to drop out of college! Do you want me to drop out of college?

While all of those things may be true, and while that chain reaction may occur for that particular student, my response to these sorts of sob stories are usually along the lines of "Well, you'd better not fail that paper then, right?"

The point being that if I choose to fail that paper, it's not because I want to ruin the student's life -- it would be because it's a failing paper that the student didn't work hard enough on to pass. I'm not responsible for the consequences of said student's actions, that student is. I'll again repeat the best piece of teaching advice I ever heard, and I heard it on the first day of orientation as a GTA in 2010: "You don't fail your students; they fail themselves." That logic applies to many things in life. Would my action in giving a paper a failing grade affect that student's life? Well yes, it would, but I wouldn't be the cause. He or she fully earned that failing grade.

Anyway. I'm getting fairly off track.

Daisy doesn't necessarily have an easy life; she has debt and bills just like I do. She still lives with her parents, works long hours on a shitty schedule, and she's trying to plan a wedding and focus on our future and our survivability, which is incredibly commendable and much more than many other women would do in her situation -- and she and I so very rarely fight or have any disagreements about anything. But, the whole time thing is where we differ greatly, as her concept of time is so much different than mine, and when she chooses to ignore or shrug off the concepts of time or set schedules, it can and does affect me big time, especially if I'm part of those set schedules...hence why I'm drinking as much coffee as I can right now so that I can be awake enough to drive several hours through the night back north to Omaha due to her delay. Just because I love her doesn't mean I love everything she does or all of her little habits/quirks any more than she loves that I smoke and bite my nails. I don't love them, necessarily, but I do have to accept them to a certain extent, in much the way we both accept one another's choices or moral decisions, like how I accept and embrace her veganism and she accepts my smoking (though she doesn't embrace it, obviously).

The time thing has, however, remained the one constant that no matter how I try to push it aside and let it go, it keeps driving me up the wall whenever I have to deal with it. I can't help that as a person it is ingrained deep in my personality that time is very, very important, and it connects to and/or controls every major aspect of my life, like a big web with many strands in different directions. To come across someone for whom that is not necessarily the case, and who doesn't seem to be affected by the concept of time nearly at all is...well, it's baffling to me. I can't really wrap my mind around it. That part of Daisy's personality is somewhat alien to me. Do I wish I could flutter through life without worrying about keeping track of all of my responsibilities metered out one by one based on the time it would and does take to do them, not worrying about anyone else's interactions with time either? I don't know. I'm, again, not sure I could imagine that. I understand almost everything else there is to understand about Daisy. I know her personality and her mannerisms inside and out, and she knows mine just the same, but her concept (and perception) of time may be the one thing that I never fully understand about that woman.


On that note, I have to finish readying to leave the house. I've already taken care of all of the cat stuff and making sure everything's closed up/locked down, etc, so now I'm just waiting on her to show up. When she does, we'll go. I had to take sinus/pain pills because my allergies are bothering me, and because I have a headache from not only congestion but from forcing myself to stay awake much longer than I was originally expecting to do so.

Anyway. Off I go.

Green Things

St. Patrick's Day
My Spring Break: day four

I came to the sobering realization this morning that I really don't own that much green clothing. Or green anythings, really. So, because of that, St. Patrick's Day tends to be sort of awkward for me to a certain extent, at least when I go out in public.

I own a few Green Lantern t-shirts, though -- at least three of them -- so I'm wearing one of those today to sort of "fit in." Mind you, the only people who will see me are Daisy and whoever's running the register in the middle of the night in the York, Nebraska Walmart.

I've been busy over the past several hours; for example, I ordered my tuxedo t-shirt for the wedding (and an extra one in XL in case someone needs a backup, spills something on theirs, forgets to order one, etc). They'll take a few weeks to arrive -- yes, the website says they ship within two business days, and they probably do, but their shipping is really slow, and it usually takes about two or three weeks. I know this because I ordered a shirt for Daisy from the same company for Christmas, and it got here with nary a week to spare before I went up to Omaha for Christmas. The site is 6DollarShirts, and they're based out of Florida. Shipping to Kansas is going to be slow anyway since they use economy shipping methods. But, they're cheap, and their shirts are high-quality, so I like the company. We'll see how long it takes for them to arrive. I reminded my "raiding party" this week that they have to get theirs as well.

It's rather chilly here today but not uncomfortable -- it's 52 right now, with clouds and wind. The weather in Omaha is doing up/down shit all this week -- 62, 50, 52, 65 for its high temperatures -- so I changed around the contents of my suitcase earlier to reflect that. I'll wear shorts tonight (it'll be warm enough to where I won't freeze, and the shorts are long ones) but also have pants and long-sleeves in my suitcase. I took out a few t-shirts, my flip-flops, and other shorts I was originally planning to take with me up there. I'll probably do a little more "adjusting" of my wardrobe between now and when I leave tonight.

Daisy is sleeping right now; she said she wanted to leave the house there by 3 or so (though, as she operates on Daisy Standard Time, who knows if that will happen). If she does, she'll get here a little after 8, we'll be back on the road around 9, and will be in Omaha around 2AM (roughly). Again, it's easier to drive at night; there's never anyone on the roads, and as this year St. Patrick's Day falls on a Monday, I don't expect there to be a whole lot of people out getting shitfaced (that was what most of them did this past weekend). I've gotten enough sleep and have/will have had enough coffee before we leave, so I should be fine to drive back up there as per the usual. We'll probably stop in Concordia and again in York as always. I need to eat something this afternoon so that if I get tired after I eat, I can take a quick nap before she gets here to re-energize myself -- usually, however, I only eat once a day, which will throw my stomach rhythms and schedule off, especially if it makes me tired.

As for the rest of my day before I leave, I'm basically doing wrap-up stuff and trying to take care of what I can before I'll be gone. This involves waiting for the UPS guy (the next two seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will arrive today), making sure that the cats have enough clean litter and plenty of food and water, and locking up the house tight as a drum. I didn't bother to take the garbage down as I have so little of it to take out that it can wait until next week, and the mail hasn't come yet. I also have to shower and trim up my beard, as it's not just Daisy I have to impress when I'm up there -- we're going out for a big dinner at a Chinese place with her/our friends Wednesday night at 7. I know and/or have met everyone who's coming except for one person, one of Daisy's friends, but it's not like I want to look like a hobo (any more than I usually do, anyway), so I need to trim down the beard and, ahem, shape it a bit.

I don't think I'm an overly vain person, but I want to look like a respectable bearded guy with long hair instead of the guy on the Aqualung album cover.

Anyway. So there's that to do as well.

I'm taking things at a relatively leisurely pace today, even though I've been keeping busy, because it is, after all, Spring Break. My students have still been silent, all of the NCAA tournament brackets came out yesterday, and I'm just ignoring most of society right now. I mean, my bills are paid, and all of the important stuff for the moment has been taken care of, so I'm just trying to reach a zen-like state of non-responsibility. This is also because I know the next three days are going to be somewhat hectic, and I need some sort of balance or happy medium in there to balance things out and center myself. Once again, here's a short list of things that must be done and/or what we will do when I'm in Omaha:

1. Visit a vapor shop so that I can look at the vaporizer pen e-cig things
2. Find me a jacket for the wedding, in my size, that isn't $1,000
3. "Date night" with Daisy
4. Dinner with friends Wednesday night
5. Night Flight vegan pizza (of course; it's not only ritual, but amazing)
6. Working on the wedding music playlist (which I have on a flash drive)
7. Watching one of the Anne of Green Gables movies Daisy wants to show me
8. Stopping at a few little places around town to get stuff I can't get here, but can get there (mainly to stores like Gordman's and Hy-Vee)

Et cetera. That's not even the whole list; that's just stuff I can remember. There's more than that, obviously. I love going to Omaha and spending time with Daisy -- even though I know when I do, I'm going to be balls-to-the-wall busy and/or slightly sleep-deprived during that time. Luckily, when I return home, I have next weekend ahead of me with no more real responsibilities to take care of aside from minor lesson planning, so really I can sleep most of next weekend if I want to without worrying that I'm missing something or wasting time.

Dearth and Taxes

My Spring Break: day three

No, that's not a typo in the title.

I did my taxes this afternoon. As always, they weren't difficult to do (with the exception of the Kansas state tax forms, which suck), just time-consuming. Not much changes on the federal 1040s from year to year. There are occasionally a few little additions or they'll put a new, different line here or there, but for the most part, they're set up the same way every year, and all I have to do is open both forms -- last year's and this year's -- and use the old one as a guide, obviously updating my pay and taxable income info where necessary, re-calculating my earned income credit, etc. I do them all on my computer now; the IRS has fillable forms that you can download, fill out, and print out, making the process much easier than doing it with pen and paper.

Of course, because I make so little, that makes the process easier as well.

I made slightly over $11,000 last year. Yes, that's it. I know I have friends and family reading this who make 5-10 times that every year, or somewhere in that ballpark. Now do you people understand how poor I am and why I have to budget for everything?

I'm getting about $1,500 back in refunds from the feds and state combined. The federal refund, for the first time, is getting direct-deposited into my bank account so that I can get it faster and won't have to wait for a check. This is good, because I have bills to pay and will need money to survive on -- most of that refund is going directly into bills and living expenses, more than likely. The state refund doesn't offer that direct-deposit option on the mailed forms, so I still have to get a check for that.

With the taxes done and in the mail, I paid $100 of my Citi Card bill and mailed that as well, vacuumed the top floor of the house (as well as the stairs and landing, which is fucking hard to do), and ran the dishwasher again to clean everything I'd dirtied over the past two or three days. Aside from taking the trash down to the road in the morning and getting a fresh shower tomorrow afternoon, everything is done and finished before my trip up to Omaha.

As I told Daisy last night, I am also really surprised that I haven't had any students whining/bitching/moaning at me about their midterm grades and/or the latest grades on their papers/assignments. They've all been quiet, with the exception of two of them -- one asking if he could change his paper topic and the other emailing me an updated copy of her rewrite, since she'd given the the wrong one last week. Everyone else? Silent.

There are a few little things I've done this weekend, or things I will do, before I leave for Omaha for a few days. I still have to run another load of laundry, and I still have to re-pack my suitcase a little bit for Omaha as it is going to be a bit colder there than originally expected this week -- it's only supposed to be in the 50s or low 60s, which is generally too cold for shorts, so I'll have to pack pants instead and will have to bring a jacket or my bigger wool coat.

On the plus side, when we stop at the Walmart in York (the 2/3 point or so of our journey to Omaha) I'll be able to look and see if they have my boot socks and thermal pants/shirts on clearance there too, as they did here in Newton. I cleaned out all the boot socks the Walmart here had left (at $3 each for a two-pair set) and bought two $3 turtlenecks to wear as thermal undershirts. If you're curious about the boot socks, it's because if I'm wearing socks, I only wear boot socks because they're really thick and warm. Nothing else will do, and I usually wear two pairs at a time. Most of the ones I have are beginning to seriously wear out, too, no thanks to the fact that it was so cold last year that it was snowing in May, and because even this year it's struggling to be springlike even now.

As for the turtlenecks? They make me look more respectable when I wear them under sweaters or other shirts, and they're really warm. That's really my only reasoning for them.

Anyway.

In the past week, I received four different mailer packets from the Publisher's Clearing House. No, seriously. Four. I bought a book from them once for Daisy, and I bought a magazine subscription to Vegetarian Times for the two of us about, oh, six months ago. Because of that, I now get bombarded with their mailers every month, and I'm always compelled to fill them out and mail the forms back to them, because who knows -- I still hold on to some hope that maybe I'll be the next "$7,000 a week for life" winner or some shit like that. Usually, I just sort through all the forms and offers and find the stamps I need, seal up the return envelope, and stick it back in the mail. While this may just further encourage more mailers, it's better to be hopeful than without hope, right?

This time, however, I started looking through all of their offers, because I had gotten four of their mailers in one week and I was, admittedly, pretty bored. One of them had an offer that if I bought at least two items (usually of negligible cost; $10-20 each or so) I could send back a coupon they had enclosed that would get me $30 off my order. Hmmmm. That's interesting. Okay. This means that, basically, I could pick two items for (mostly) free and would only pay the shipping and handling on them -- which is actually a great deal.

So, I scoured through what they had. A lot of the PCH stuff is geared towards old people -- I can tell, seriously, by the stuff they include in their mailers that their primary clientele is the 55-85 age range, judging from the goofy shit they sell. I mean, I've seen everything in there from bible DVDs to ugly jewelry to peanut brittle in a tin to those grab-and-reach-things-from-high-shelves mechanisms. Usually there's nothing at all interesting or appealing to me as a 31-year-old male. Daisy may call me an old man due to my habits and mannerisms, but I'm not that old yet. I'm not "Publisher's Clearing House" old. Every once in a while, though, I'll find something interesting and will be like hmm, that's neat. And that's what I was looking for this time around, though not exactly for me.

Keep in mind that over the next few months, not only am I getting married but there are the late-spring holidays coming up -- Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc. I've always gotten my parents (and Daisy's parents, for the past two years now) something for those holidays. Well, not usually Easter, because I'm an atheist and don't care about Easter, but for the other ones I do. Last year I got my parents a huge selection of different Keurig cups -- something like 30 or 40 in all -- for their combined Mother's/Father's Day presents, and had them shipped back home. Last year I got Daisy's mother a beautiful blue/green wavy tie-dye shirt and had it shipped to her. I don't remember what I got Daisy's father last year for Father's Day, but I did get something. I'll have to ask Daisy if she remembers.

So, I wasn't in the mindset of looking for something for me, but for my/our parents. As those folks fall within the age range of PCH's wheelhouse, and as I would get something for them all anyway, I narrowed my focus to what they would like and/or use. By the time I was done, I had found three of the four parents Mother's/Father's Day presents and had found a three-tiered tabletop fruit basket for Daisy very similar to the hanging basket set she has on our wedding registry. With the coupon from one order and shipping and handling on everything, I'll pay about $40-45 for everything when it's all said and done -- which is roughly what I'd spend on all of them anyhow. The only one of them I didn't find a gift for was a Father's Day gift for my dad, though I tend to scour Amazon and get him something nerdy anyhow (despite our age difference, he and I have very similar tastes, which makes him easy to shop for).

All of them will be at the wedding, of course, so that even makes gift distribution amongst them really easy, even if the timing will be a bit (or a lot, by several weeks) off. I thought it was a rather brilliant plan, actually. So, along with my taxes and the Citi Card bill, all of those orders went into the mail as well. Yeah, I had a stack of mail to go into the box with the flag up this evening.

Rae told me earlier this evening that she got her wedding invitation (which is good because, y'know, she's in the wedding and all that), and I asked her if she liked it/if it was pretty enough. I still haven't seen the actual paper invites yet -- Daisy designed and printed them up herself at the house, and all I've seen is the graphic she made for them. I won't see the actual paper ones until I get the ones I'll give out by hand to friends and colleagues once I return from Spring Break, so I don't even know how big they are, what type of paper they were printed on, if they're all in color or black-and-white, etc. Daisy was so excited to do that herself that I told her that whatever she wanted to do for them was fine, and gave her free reign over them. Her design is really cute/sweet, but again, I've only seen the graphic and not the actual printed ones. If Rae's gotten hers, and at least a few of my own family members back home have gotten theirs, it's probably safe to say that most if not all of them have arrived by now.

By the way, Rae described the invite as "lovely." So that's a plus, right? I'm intensely curious to see them myself.

Daisy told me that the Fazoli's people (who will be doing the food/catering for the wedding) want to meet with her in person to discuss logistics and an estimated amount of what they'll need, instead of doing it all over the phone. I would assume that she'll wait another week or so on that until everyone who's going to RSVP for the wedding does so, and we have a more accurate number of family/guests who will be there. She asked me if I wanted to do it with her when I was up there this week, but it's not incredibly necessary (read: I don't want to), and until we have an accurate number of guests, setting up everything right this second would be pointless anyhow  since we're basing it on the number of expected guests. We're doing that because the price obviously differs by quite a bit.

"How many people have RSVPed thus far, based on receiving the invitations?"

Daisy put, on the invitations, various easy ways for people to RSVP, both via phone and electronically, to make it simple for them. No more mailing back a card or any of that shit. I thought that was an ingenious idea.

"No one," she said, laughing. "But it's not because they aren't coming, because I know some people are, but, it'll just take them a while to RSVP."

Well, that doesn't help us as we're trying to figure out the logistics of our last major task, does it? 

We'll have to give it time, I suppose -- we do know the "locks" of who's going to be there, of course, namely our parents, her sisters/families, the bridal/groom's parties, etc. It's everyone else who's up in the air right now, so to speak.

As for the house hunt, Daisy has found a few suitable places she's more than likely going to call and ask about over the next few weeks, which is fine for a timeframe as they're like...townhomes, I suppose? That's about the best way I can describe their setup. Townhomes in complexes, nice ones. However, right now the point may be moot because they're slightly out of our price range for the moment, but won't be if she gets a new job in the next month or so -- as she'd like to do, of course. There's a college in Omaha she sent an application to for an administrative job of some sort, and encouraged me to do the same ,as said position pays really well. I will do so either tonight or tomorrow before I leave town. Might as well start making contingency plans, right? Especially when said contingency plans may become my actual plans soon enough. 

"Do you want to go look at some places while you're here?" she asked me earlier tonight, in reference to some of the homes she'd found. 

"It's going to depend a lot on the time we have, babe," I said. "We have a packed schedule for most of the time I'm there, and I don't want everything to be scheduled out to the hour or minute without any actual time to relax and just be together."

This is true; we have at least three or four tasks we'll be doing on Tuesday and Wednesday, including Wednesday night as well, and on Thursday we'll have to sleep a fair amount of the day because we'll be coming back to Kansas in the overnight hours that night. And, again, there's no use to jump the gun here -- we can look at all the places we want, but most of those said places may be no longer available a month from now (or more) when we'd need them. 

"I trust you, babe," I added. "I know your aesthetic desires, I know you know our location needs and our budget. If you find someplace, yes, let me know. Yes, go look at it. Take [best friend and maid of honor] or mama with you to scope it out. But do it when it's going to actually mean something and not way in advance of us being able to afford it or know what's going on for certain as it pertains to our job situations." 

Note: This probably makes me sound like I'm lazy or that I don't care or that I'm making her do all the work, both with the catering thing and with our possible future home. That's not my intention, of course, and it couldn't be further from the truth. More than anything else, it's that she's there, and I'm not. Even if I were there 24/7, I'd still defer to her on everything like this even though we'd be doing this stuff together. She wants Fazoli's because they can and will do things vegan. I'm fine with that. Vegan is her arena, not mine -- I let her have complete control of that and do what she will with it. She wants certain things/amenities in places we might live, and I've told her that as long as we can get to and from it, don't have on-street parking (which we both agreed we'd never do), it's quiet and safe, and they take the cats, I'll be happy with whatever/wherever she wants us to be. I mean, hell, I live half an hour out of Wichita as it is now -- I wouldn't be opposed to us living half an hour away from Omaha proper if it meant our rent and bills would be drastically lower every month compared to within the city. And, obviously, wherever we live after the wedding isn't going to be a permanent residence anyhow -- we'll maybe live there for a year before we start looking for homes to buy, of course, if we want to stay in the area. We agreed on this long ago as well. 

So, it's not that I'm standoffish or don't give a shit/don't want to be involved -- I do. And she does involve me. It's just that this far out, with me still here and teaching, and without knowing what our job/financial situations are going to be like this far in advance, I'm of the "it's up to you, honey" mindset more than anything else.


On that note, folks, I have exhausted my mental abilities for the day. It's time for me to retreat to the bed with the cats.

Rude Awakenings

My Spring Break: day two

This morning at 10AM, I was awakened by someone pounding on my doors. Yes, both doors, top and bottom. I didn't answer; I looked out the window and saw that it was a group of traveling missionaries/mennonites/Jehovah's Witnesses/etc going door to door trying to talk to people, and gathered as much from the fact that they stopped at every house in the neighborhood, had a handful of brochures, and were dressed like idiots.

What savage wakes up before noon on a Saturday, let alone wanders through neighborhoods bothering other people?

If they didn't have children with them, I may have answered the door naked from the waist down with my gun in my hand -- because, yes, I own a handgun.

Ahem. Anyway.

Last night -- yesterday afternoon, actually, leading into the night -- I did all of my grading and midterm grade calculations. I had not one, but three stacks of papers and a stack of journals to grade through, which I then had to record in my gradebook and once that was done, tally up all of my students' points individually, one by one, to calculate their midterm grades -- before I could put them all on Blackboard and Banner and let them all know that said grades were up. This took, from beginning to end, approximately eight hours.

Of the nineteen students in my 011 class, only seven of them are passing -- and some of them barely passing at that. The rest have either failed for absences or quite literally have no points at all in the class (or, at the most, four points from being there for two 2-point quizzes) because they haven't done any of the work. Any of the work. As it stands, quite a few of those students who are failing right now will have to get perfect scores on everything else in the class from this point forward to be able to pass the course, and that's just not going to happen.

Again, I've never had a class like this where so many students just don't care, don't show up, or don't do the work even when they do show up -- the latter being something that I don't, and can't, understand at all. There are students in that class who are doing really well and have nearly perfect scores thus far...and then there are the rest. Because of that, I know it's not me; I'm not being obtuse, I'm not being difficult as an instructor, and I've made it very clear what must be done in the course. I even lay all of it out on Blackboard and put every handout up there in PDF format. If my good students can do it, so can they -- but it's still on them to actually show up and do the work.

As for my other classes, they're about average when it comes to midterms and midterm grades compared to past semesters and my experience with this sort of thing -- I've got the students who have done everything in the class perfectly up to this point, and I have the students who need to improve and/or buckle down hard if they want to pass my courses.

Regardless, all of that grading and school-related stuff is done now, and I don't have any of it left to do aside from some minor lesson-planning for when we all come back from break. My work for the remainder of the weekend will focus on cleaning up this house, doing my taxes, and taking care of any leftover chores and errands before I leave for Omaha. I have a list of things to do before I can leave, obviously, lest I get distracted and forget to do something big. My suitcase, as you know, is already packed, though I may adjust its contents a bit between now and Monday depending on need and weather forecasts -- as well as the foresight of needing space for anything I get and/or will bring home while I'm up there. As of right now, it doesn't look like it's going to be incredibly warm up there next week, with highs only in the 50s and low 60s while I'll be out and about with Daisy. That's right in the middle ground between needing pants and shorts, short-sleeves or long-sleeves, jacket or no jacket every day.

I myself, physically, am a mess right now -- I haven't showered since Wednesday night, though I meant to last night. I didn't because I was fucking exhausted after all of my grading, which always mentally tires me out, and instead just went to bed. I've been wearing the same clothes for three days. I've eaten maybe four times in those three days. It's apparently nice outside, judging from my windows and the somewhat warm breeze blowing through them, though the only "outside" experience I'll get in the next day or two is when I go outside for a few minutes to put my car in the garage to do my monthly maintenance on its fluids, and when I go check the mailbox at the end of my driveway. I'm not a fan of being outdoors any more than I have to be.

I'm actually motivated (for once) to do my taxes this weekend; more than anything else, I just want to get them done and sent off, as I'll need whatever refunds I can get from them, small or large, sooner rather than later. My mother told me she was doing her own taxes yesterday, which is usually the trigger for me to do my own anyway. I'll either do them tomorrow or Monday, depending on which day I have more time, calm, and mental focus at my disposal. Today is "the great cleansing," where I'll be spending hours metaphorically scrubbing down everything in this house that needs to be cleaned, and I'll probably take care of the car stuff as well, before once more passing out tonight. Daisy's working until Monday morning, so she won't be down here until Monday evening.

I got paid yesterday, as I mentioned a few posts back, so I can now cover my bills and the like. I only have one bill right now -- my Citi card bill, which arrived on Thursday -- that I haven't paid yet for this month, though of course more will be coming. For the moment, financially at least, I'm mostly okay. Living paycheck to paycheck, but okay. I'm not starving or hand-wringing over paying my bills is what I'm trying to say, even if the balance on my Discover card is higher than the amount of money that's actually in my bank account right now, and will go ever higher over the course of the next two or three months. Again, I can't really help that -- the only reason I'm not starving or hand-wringing right now is because of that card and it's incredibly high limit, and I do pay off more than 3x its minimum payment every month because I want to at least try to keep it in check somewhat.

On that note, I'm off to take care of the stuff I need to do for the day, as sitting here typing is doing little more than making me sleepy again (due to my, ahem, rude awakening this morning). I will update you on the goings-on of my life when I can.

Proverbials

Spring semester: day thirty-nine
My Spring Break: day one


Daisy has begun looking for houses for us to rent or purchase in Omaha. The reasoning here is that it looks -- more and more by the day, in fact -- like I will not be returning to the university here in the fall as an instructor or professor in any capacity, as I have not heard anything yet from any of the higher-ups in charge of what my status is/will be. Now, obviously, I could hear something today, tomorrow, over the break, or after I get back from break, but now is the time for some hard decisions to be made given the current situation. I can't just wait on pins and needles with my fingers crossed if nothing's going to come of it anyway -- and if any of those mysterious, shadowy plans that I can't talk about yet within the university fall through (as they are wont to do most of the time) I will have basically wasted all of this time I've been "waiting" to hear something about the fall when I could have been applying for new jobs or teaching positions in the Omaha area.

At this point it would take at least a $40k-a-year position to keep me here in Kansas. No, that's not an incredibly lucrative, incredibly high-paying position -- but it's leaps and bounds above what I make now, and is more than what Daisy makes now at her current job. I've never made even half that per year before in any of the numerous different jobs and positions I've held in the past, even the most high-paying ones. Yeah. If you think an academic lecturer like me, the lowest rank on the professor totem pole, is clearing even $20k a year? You're dreaming. It's not even close to that. There's a reason I have to budget tightly, drive an eighteen-year-old car, and worry about paying my electric bill every month, folks -- and it's not because I have extravagant tastes or "live beyond my means." It's because, at least in Kansas, choosing a career of doing what I do well and love to do (read: following my dream of being a university professor) pays fucking terribly. I love working in academia, but unless you've got a trust fund or you're otherwise independently wealthy, here is not the place to do it.

And, before my parents or friends back home chime in and tell me that I could probably make more doing the same thing back in West Virginia -- no, I can't. I've checked. WVU pays lecturers much less than I get paid here. What I get paid is about the "median rate," so to speak -- many schools pay more; 2x or 3x what I'm making right now tends to be the higher ends of the average, yes. Many schools also pay about half or less of what I'm making. WVU is in the latter category.

I've developed and re-developed curriculum for my classes from a base, skeleton-like lesson plan for each of them. I've designed and re-designed my classes almost from scratch in some cases, most notably for the Engineering English classes I taught for two years, and to a lesser extent the 210 Business Writing class I'm teaching right now. I could take those lesson plans anywhere and teach those classes with only slight modifications necessary to their syllabi and timeframes. I detail this in my vita, letting nothing fall to chance or speculation when I describe what the classes consist of, and am -- even now -- fully capable of producing those lesson plans as examples to any institution who would want to hire me on. I love my university, and I love working there not just for the experience of doing so, but because I am recognized as a valuable asset to my department and have been told as much by many people within that department. I'm one of very, very few instructors who are willing to teach on both the main campus and the West campus, I'm one of the very few instructors who have taught every composition class the department offers (with the exception of the ESL classes), and I am one of the only instructors there who seems to be able to exhibit levelheadedness and common sense when problems and issues pop up, and can deal with them appropriately without running/crying to one of the directors and/or administrators for help most of the time -- mainly because at this point I'm a "veteran" when it comes to teaching and student issues, and can take care of most of them myself.

No, this doesn't mean I don't ask for help or advice when I need it, because I do and I will, when appropriate and necessary. I was just making a point.

My overall point is that even though at times it may be stressful, and even though my schedule will change every semester, and even though it pays terribly, I still do my job because I love it and because I want to do it.  But, as an adjunct and academic lecturer, I'm still at the bottom of that proverbial totem pole for any sort of career advancement, and I'm not the only one -- I'm not even the only one in the department (quite obviously) in this position. There are adjuncts, academic lecturers, and other "not quite full professors" in the department with the same or equivalent degrees as me who have been there for many years doing the same thing I'm doing now, semester-in, semester-out. I would not, of course, rank myself or my own skills and abilities over them -- all of us have different experiences and skills, and it's not like they can or should be "ranked" anyway.

We all come and go, some sticking around shorter/longer than others due to luck, ability, experience, politics, or the lack of those things. Many of us, more than anything else, seem to be -- whether it's true or not -- simply killing time in our positions as lecturers. After a while, I wonder if to some of us, it becomes like any other office job that people work just to tread proverbial water and pay the bills, if all of us will eventually get so deep into that proverbial rut that it just becomes rote, becomes life, becomes who we are and what defines us as people. There are people who are adjuncts or lecturers for thirty years until they either get too old to work (or, well, die), and I think to myself why? why do that to yourself? Or I think things like at what point, exactly, did you decide to give up and "accept your fate," and why? Did you not have dreams and goals? Did you just not care about making a live-able wage or advancing upward through the academic system? I can't fathom it; to some extent, it must be some form of collective brainwashing, or groupthink, that sets in after so many years of doing the same thing, a collective defeatist viewpoint. I often wonder how many long-time adjuncts/lecturers keep looking for new work, higher work, more fulfilling work, either at their own university or other ones. How many of them fear change, or fear failure or rejection so much that their own rut/groove/what-have-you is the only security they know, even if it's not exactly secure and offers little to no benefits?

At age 31, I am at a crossroads in my life -- quite possibly the biggest one I've been at in almost ten years. At age 31, with two degrees, almost five semester-years worth of teaching experience under my belt, and my marriage about to start in a few months, I no longer fear or dread change. I have choices and decisions I must make whether I want to make them or not -- there's no more proverbial treading of water. Where I go or end up doing after May 16th (the end of the semester) may not define me as a person or be what I want to spend the rest of my life doing, but that's not what's important -- what is important is that I'll no longer be thinking for and taking care of simply myself after that point, but a wife as well and a household, quite possibly with a child in the next year or two. I have to be able not only to survive, but to survive and support. I have to examine situations carefully in able to pick a route that will make that marriage and household not only financially stable, but emotionally and spiritually stable. Perhaps it's a bit of naivete, but I still have goals. I still have dreams. I still have a drive to make those things happen, and that drive is only made stronger by me getting married and starting a family -- not dampened or burdened by it. I want my wife, my children, and our families to be able to look at me and be proud of what I did with my life, even if it wasn't glamorous all the time, because I never gave up my goals, and even if I didn't achieve all of them, I tried, and encouraged my loved ones to do the same.

I'm at a crossroads because after May 16, I don't know what I'm going to be doing with my life. I said the same thing last year, as well. But, this time around, unlike last year, I can say one thing for certain: I will not be a simple adjunct, a simple academic lecturer barely scraping by for pennies on the dollar at this university in the fall. If Daisy and I live in Kansas, it will be because I've been offered a much more lucrative, important position at the university within my department. If that doesn't happen or falls through one way or another, as it (again) seems to look more and more by the day, I will simply move on -- pull up my proverbial stakes and move to yet another state to begin what amounts to, really, a new life. But I can't survive and support a wife and family on the lowest-of-the-low adjunct professor's salary -- which is why, as I wrote above, that I'd need at least $40k a year to stick around.

It's a tricky situation. Even if everything comes through at the university as I'd like it to, or as I've been told repeatedly every year now that it should, it's a toss-up as to whether or not it would give me a live-able wage. I say $40k because, unless Daisy is working full-time here as well (and even if she is), that's about the minimum of what we'd need to survive and live comfortably. Not extravagantly, just comfortably. For example, I will soon need a new (or newer) car. We'll need to be able to move into a different house, whether we rent or buy, closer to the city of Wichita or within it. Both she and I have bills, and both she and I have student loans that we'll have to pay down once both of our forbearances end. If we end up having a child within the next year or two, that would require more money and more time. Simply put, there are things that a married couple needs to survive that a single guy living alone in his house with three cats does not. I'd need something stable, not a semester-to-semester contract with no paychecks (and, additionally, no ability to pick up extra ones by teaching extra classes) in the summer. I'd need something dependable, not a position that's going to evaporate or be eliminated in a year or two when budgets change. And I'm not sure, even if everything goes as planned or as wanted within that department and within that university, that they'll be able to offer what I need. I had but one (private) request for the position/program if it does come to fruition, and that's that I would be in charge of its overall design and implementation -- which again, if it happens, was basically agreed upon long ago. I did not give them salary requirements for what my position would be, because none of that was laid out in the sweeping overall budget. Suffice it to say, however, I would not be this patient and waiting this long on any news -- good or bad -- on this project were it not a massive and important undertaking for the school of arts and sciences as a whole. But even if it does work, there's no guarantee it would provide me with the stability I need for me and Daisy. Because of that, I have to explore other options -- or at least attempt to -- before I hear any word on anything.

Daisy told me tonight that ideally, she wants to find a new job in the next thirty days. Meaning, a job that can support us both, at least through part of the summer, and can finance my move up to Omaha until I am employed in some capacity up there somewhere, if even on a temporary basis until the fall (when, hopefully, I'd at least be able to get an adjunct or other professorial position there somewhere, if only for a semester, as we start our lives together and slowly stabilize). To be able to do that, yes, she'd also need something in the realm of $40k a year as well. She doesn't make that now. Again, not even close. But she does make more than double what I make right now, which, if you're following along with the math here, should tell you just how little I do make. Do either of us think she's going to find a $40k job in the next thirty days? I doubt it. I don't know if she does, but I doubt it. I'm not being defeatist here, just realistic -- most of the time, things take longer than that. She has been looking and has been applying for many different positions, and tonight I gave her some resume pointers and tips (since, y'know, I teach a class on that sort of thing). However, despite the best intentions from each of us when it comes to the job-and-survival front, there is the very real possibility that after May 16, I'm going to be unemployed for a month or two at least, and she'll still be stuck in her current, mostly miserable job. Again, realism, not defeatism. We have to hope for the best, but also plan for the worst. And I would imagine that while some people may give us some money for the wedding in lieu of gifts or anything else, it's obviously not going to be enough to live on.

Call all of this a sobering realization, a moment of clarity, a "laying all the cards on the table" sort of discussion -- call it whatever you want, but these are the issues looming over our heads which will have to be dealt with one by one over the next several weeks and months.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that Daisy is looking at houses because there is a timeframe at work here: she wants to be in a new place by May 1, which would give her time to move all of her stuff in, give me time to finish the semester and begin the moving-up-there process myself, and would eliminate the need for us personally to do back-and-forth travel between Kansas and Nebraska in the days/weeks leading up to the wedding. It would give us a base of operations, so to speak. In the aftermath of the wedding, we'd close everything down here and I'd leave this house for good, moving everything else (as well as the cats) up there, together, at a slower pace over the course of a few weeks or so. Regardless of when I do leave this house and move, it's going to take at least a month (logistically) to be able to do everything that involves, including giving my notice to my landlord, packing/cleaning/trashing the stuff I no longer need, want, or have room for, and closing out all of my accounts with the various utility companies. Not to mention the moving itself, which will be no small chore. I've accumulated a lot of stuff in this house over the course of the past five years I've lived here. While some of it can and will be donated to various charities or given to anyone who wants it, a large amount of it will just be trashed/recycled, and an even larger amount will be coming with me to our new home. There are a lot of big things that we'll have to move, such as furniture, the massive king-size bed (and its frame), the washer and dryer (both of which I own, and there's no way in hell I'm leaving those behind), etc. It's a bigger/tougher job than one might think offhand.

My Spring Break was originally going to be the time where, hopefully, I had the news from the department one way or the other and both of us could begin planning for after the wedding, the time when we could start setting things in proverbial stone and moving forward. Because I don't have that news, because even now we still don't know what's going to happen, it's more proverbial treading water and planning for the worst. It's like we're an airplane in a holding pattern waiting to be given clearance to land. If you've never been in this sort of situation yourself, it's difficult to explain what it's like, or how stressful it is when you know the clock is ticking, yet you can't do anything about it. And again, if it wasn't a very lucrative, important position/program I was waiting to hear news about, I wouldn't bother. Working for the university is good, yes, and I love what I do, yes, but what I do now would never be enough to keep me in this miserable, backwards, incredibly right-wing red state any longer than absolutely necessary. The fact that I'd be willing to not only remain here, but move Daisy here as well, should tell you how big and important it is to me, and why I so desperately want to hear something soon.

Now, of course, my Spring Break is just like any other week, except that I don't have to teach. I still have to pay my bills, I still have to do all of my grading and midterm grade calculations, and I still have to go about my life in a somewhat stressful, knowing-the-clock-is-ticking fashion. I'm now only going to Omaha over part of my break because I cleared my schedule enough to do it months ago (and to see Daisy, of course) but we'd planned it -- a long time ago -- to be the time where we got all of our post-wedding affairs in order, where we'd set the schedule of moving one place or the other, where we'd wrap up everything necessary for the actual wedding and would be able to relax, knowing that we had all of our ducks in a row and -- once the semester ended -- could begin shooting those ducks one by one.

...probably not the best metaphor, as one of us is vegan, but you get the point.


Daisy, while everything is basically done for the wedding, is still stressed about it, and she's been having wedding nightmares on a semi-frequent basis. The last thing that needs to be done is that we need to finalize and schedule the catering -- which I reminded her, earlier this week, that we need to get the ball rolling on that. Almost everything else is done, and what isn't will be last minute or last-few-days things right before the wedding actually happens. I've even compiled most of the music playlist for the reception, and she'll be adding her own selections to it whenever we're together this week so that we can finalize that and get it ready -- even if we play it off of my laptop instead of a dedicated music player. Parker was supposed to give me his old iPad, as he told me last semester he'd wipe it and I could take it off his hands (since he got at least one new one), but as I've not seen Parker in person since December, that hasn't happened. From what I've been told, iPads don't have a USB port on them anyhow, so I don't know how I'd get the music onto the thing anyway even if I had gotten it from him. It's not like I have wifi here at home, or any other Apple devices to help facilitate that transition. My side of the wedding planning is actually very light; I'm apparently doing little more than taking care of the music in whatever fashion I can, and showing up with a list of vows and my ring. I've offered to do more and I've offered to help pay for things when I can, but Daisy's parents (as well as Daisy's tax refund) have already taken care of almost everything we'll need. My own parents are completely out of the loop; I have not asked them for any "wedding help" and wouldn't, as they're so far removed from the situation and it's enough, to me, that they're actually coming to my wedding.

The invitations went out last week; by now, most -- if not all of them -- have likely been received by their intended recipients. I know that most of my extended family and friends back home (y'know, the ones who will never come anyway, but get courtesy invitations regardless) have received theirs, as my little cousin left me a message on Facebook saying my aunt and uncle received theirs but they wouldn't be able to come (obviously) and wished us the best. Most of those "courtesy" invitations went out because, and I won't lie here, at least some of those people may send us money or get us something off one of the wedding registries we've set up via Amazon and Target, which are listed on our wedding webpage that Daisy linked everyone to on the invite. Again, most of my extended family and friends back home could give less than a shit that I'm getting married, so it's not like that will probably happen anyhow.

The invites are pretty, by the way; Daisy spent hours designing them and getting the colors/borders and everything set up nicely. But, when half of them are going to people who couldn't care less and will probably throw them in the trash or recycle bin after glancing at them briefly, well...

I'll pick up all of the invites I'll hand-deliver this week when I go to Omaha, or she'll bring them down here with her when she arrives on Monday. I'll distribute them next week when I get back to campus.

So, that's the current situation. In the meantime, we wait, wait, and wait some more. We try to plan for the worst and set up contingency plans for after the semester ends. We live our lives as normally as possible. I myself will be cleaning the house and will be doing my grading and my taxes this weekend.

Life goes on.

The End is Near

Spring semester: day thirty-eight

In four hours, I will be done teaching for twelve straight days. I will load my belongings back into the Monte Carlo. I will drive back north, back to Newton. I will stop at Walmart to do my shopping-for-essentials, for which I have already made a list and put said list inside my class folder for this morning so I won't forget it. I will bring said essentials home and put them away, before basically locking myself inside my house like a hermit until Daisy arrives in four and a half days.

This is my plan. It's a good plan. I like this plan. I'm excited.

Depending on my energy levels, allergies, and ability to stay awake, I'll either start my grading and midterm grade calculations tonight or tomorrow. Regardless, I plan to have them finished by tomorrow evening. There's a lot I have to do between now and when I leave for Omaha, and I'm not leaving all of it for after I get back (as when I get back, I'll more than likely once more be exhausted after all of the running around we'll do while I'm up there, and won't be motivated to do much of anything). The house desperately needs to be vacuumed, the kitchen and counters need to be cleaned, the oven scrubbed. I really need to make time to do my taxes. I'll have bills that come in this weekend that will need to be paid before I leave (my Citi card bill, for example, came in yesterday, and my internet bill should arrive right around the time I leave). I need to put the car in the garage and check/replenish its fluids, as it will be sitting for well over a week. As it's now warm again on a daily basis and looks like it'll stay that way, I should probably replace all of the old spider traps in the downstairs and garage with new ones. Stuff like that. My grading and student-related responsibilities are but a small slice of the overall pie.

After a few days of having the furnace off, it got cold enough last night to where I needed to put it on this morning for a while when I got up, as it was pretty chilly in the house. It's supposed to reach 70 or higher this afternoon and be gorgeous outside. I probably won't be awake long enough to enjoy it that much; my insomnia that used to bother me big time on Monday nights (until I started taking sleeping pills and going to bed in the evening) has now switched to Wednesday nights, it seems. I don't generally sleep that well on Wednesday nights, because I'll get home well after 9PM, will eat something, and then will have to wind myself down and basically force myself to try to sleep in order to get up early on Thursday mornings to go teach again (such as, ahem, today). Sometimes this works better than others, obviously. Last Wednesday night I barely slept more than two or maybe three hours total, as the rest of the night I was tossing and turning and couldn't get comfortable. Last night I was tired, yes, but not tired enough to completely fall asleep until after 1AM...when my alarm goes off at 5. I hit the snooze four times this morning.

I've found that my "natural" sleep cycles are for me to want to go to bed at about 4 or 5AM and then get up between 1 and 3PM. That's just the way I've always been wired, really. I've been like that since I was a teenager -- those are just the hours where I get the best sleep. Real life, jobs, and other responsibilities have been continually fucking up that ideal sleep cycle for me since I was about fourteen years old. I've always done my best work, and I've always been most productive as a writer in the middle of the night. I like to clean and cook in the middle of the night. Being awake in the middle of the night means that all of the idiots in the world are asleep and I don't have to deal with them. In the summers, the middle of the night tends to be the coolest, most comfortable time to be awake because there's no blazing Kansas sun melting/scorching everything it touches. The middle of the night is the best time to go shopping at 24-hour stores like Walmart, since nobody is there. There are many, many advantages to that sleep schedule that cannot be taken advantage of when things like jobs and responsibilities keep me from doing it, and because I cannot sleep my ideal hours/schedule most of the time, I find myself almost constantly fatigued, sleeping when I can, and wanting to sleep when I can't. Hence, wrapping back around to my original point, why I tend to have insomnia during certain nights of the week.

In other news, I've been really getting into these guys as of late:

)

Yes, the video is goofy, but the song is great. I've never heard of them before (nor have I heard them on the radio anywhere) but their Vevo channel on YouTube has a ton of their songs/videos. This song in particular has been stuck in my head off and on for the better part of a month, similar to how the "Dayman" song from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was stuck in my head for days on end after I watched that episode.

I don't really have the time to listen to much new music anymore. Music used to be a huge, huge part of my life -- in undergrad, I followed record release dates and the like, plotted them out, and then went to the record store on campus (which, I've been told, no longer exists) to pick up new albums once or twice a month for the artists I liked. It was during that time when I discovered artists like Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Strokes, Clinic, Radiohead, and The White Stripes for the first time -- back before YouTube, back before iTunes was a "thing." Yeah, I know, I'm old. I wanted to cry when many of my students told me they were born after Kurt Cobain died. My car is a 1996 model, which means it came out in late 1995. Even my car is older than some of my students. Now, though? I really don't have the time or patience to sift through a lot of the (rather shitty) new music out there, and of course have no money to be taking to record stores -- the few that exist now -- to pick up new albums once or twice a month. While I have been able to get into a few new bands over the past few years, it's only been a handful at best, and the state of radio -- even for the music I like -- is fucking terrible now and has been for many years.

Speaking of State Radio...

)

You'll almost never hear stuff like this on the radio. Not even on "alternative" stations, because most of those stations are like "let's throw on another shitty Coldplay or Mumford & Sons record!"

For the record, I can only tolerate Coldplay in very small doses, and I fucking hate Mumford & Sons. Call me a heretic if you want. The station I listen to out of Kansas City (and really like) even plays too much crap for me. They do play these guys, though, who are probably the best thing to come out of St. Joseph, Missouri since...well, ever:

)

...and I should know, as I lived in that shithole of a town for over three years.

I think a big part of why I like these guys so much is because their vocalist sounds like Misfits-era Glenn Danzig. 

Anyway. Wow, I'm way off track.

Today in my 102 class I'm collecting journals and we're doing a fun exercise out of the workbook as we run headlong into Spring Break. Will it take the whole class? Eh, I don't know. I doubt it. It'll probably take a good chunk of it, though. I have a brief discussion of midterm grading and then a Q&A session scheduled for their current essay first, so that they'll actually ask me questions if they have them -- if I schedule that for the end of the class, nobody will say anything because they'll just want to leave. I'm not stupid, obviously. As half of the class didn't follow the directions on their first paper and will more than likely do rewrites on it (I've already gotten/graded one), some of them definitely should be asking questions on this one if they have any issues whatsoever, otherwise they'll have a good shot at mathematically failing the course because they don't pay attention to what I tell them.

So. On that note, folks, I shall take my leave of you. I will, of course, update you over the weekend on the progress of my tasks, of which there are many, and the status of the trip to Omaha. Right now, however, I'm really, really looking forward to ending the first half of my semester and diving into Spring Break.

Mutations

Spring semester: day thirty-seven (in a row?)

This is quite possibly one of the strangest semesters I've ever had to deal with. Like, ever.

Let's put aside, for the moment, the issues I've had with paychecks and health insurance and sleeping issues. Let's put aside for the moment the extreme differences in weather, where it can be nearly 80 one day, in the 20s that night, and 40 the next day, or when we get a snowstorm four days after it's been in the 60s for the better part of a week. I'm even willing to brush aside, for the moment, that our department lost one of its administrators, I have no clue what's going on for the fall, and I'm getting married before the fall semester happens anyway. No, I'd like to focus on the "nobody gives a shit anymore" mentality.

Case in point: last night, I taught my 011 night class. That class has nineteen students on the roster, almost a full section (the class caps at 20). Of those nineteen students, only ten showed up. They had a new paper due, as well as any rewrites and leftover journals I needed to collect for a grade (if they wanted them graded at all before the end of the semester, when I collect them again). From those ten students, I received about six papers, zero rewrites, and zero new journals. My grade book for that class looks like it's been riddled with bullet holes because of all of the zeroes in it for people enrolled in my class who either show up and still don't do the work, or don't show up and don't do it. At least one more student auto-failed due to absences last night, and of the ones who haven't auto-failed yet, some will sooner or later -- if not for absences, they'll mathematically fail from not doing the work.

No matter what the class is, I've never taught a class where almost half the class doesn't show up, doesn't do the work, or both. I've never seen this before at the university level in my going on five semester years of teaching now. In every class, I'll usually have a few stragglers who slack off a bit, and those stragglers will either drop, auto-fail, or they'll buckle down after midterms and work their asses off enough to pass with their C-minus. Never have I seen so many students so nonchalantly just skip class, show up a week or two later without having done any work, never ask me any questions, and then skip another week or two after that until I email them, tell them they're about to fail the course if they miss another day, then they show up the next week still with no work done to turn in to me, still never talk to me or ask me any questions, and then disappear for good.

Yes, this happens. This has actually happened at least twice this semester.

I don't get it. I really don't. There are students who have been there every week, students I've given assignments to by hand, students who have listened to every lecture and know exactly what they're supposed to do for their papers and journals, and still haven't turned in a single piece of work to me. Ever. As I've mentioned before, this is a remedial English class -- at best, it's teaching them...10th grade English? At the hardest? And at its easiest, the core of the class where we work on sentence structure and grammar, it's probably 4th to 6th grade English. I really can't simplify the course any more than it already is, especially since I give them templates telling them how to write every paper in the class and email them frequently to tell them what we're covering and when, how we'll go about covering it, and what the due dates are for the assignments. Short of literally making them sit there for three hours every week to cover forty minutes' worth of material, which I refuse to do, there's nothing else I can really do to make the course any different than the last 011 course I taught, and nothing I can do to make it easier on them since it's a credit/noncredit course.

Of course, I do have the good students, which make up a little more than a third of the class -- the students who ask me questions, who email me when they need guidance on something, who turn in every paper and assignment on time and conference with me first before every paper comes due so that they can get my feedback and can do better on the final copies of said papers. Not all of those students are native speakers, either -- two or three of them are international ESL students. Most of them are doing quite well in the course.

I had to have the midterms discussion with them last night, as the midterm date is today. For a credit/concredit course, midterms are even more meaningless than usual. There are only 34 of the 100 points in the class calculated thus far anyway -- they've turned in but two papers, had two quizzes, and I've collected their journals for the first time and calculated the first half of their participation grades. That's it. They've still got three more papers to write, a practice final exam we'll do on the last day of class that counts as much as a paper does, the actual final exam, three more quizzes, and the other half of their journals and participation points. The semester may be half over, but their work isn't. They're doing papers once every two weeks or so when we return from break at the end of this month -- because that's the way the class has to be scheduled for a once-a-week night class. The bare minimum these students need to receive the currently passing "CR" score on their midterm grade is 24 of those 34 points. Some of the students have it, but the vast majority of them do not, either due to absenteeism or not doing their work. I still stressed to them that it was meaningless anyway, and is doubly meaningless for our class, since it's just something they make us professors do and it's not generally an accurate representation of anything when it comes to one's final grade in the class.

Still, I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do with that class for the rest of the semester. I can't really change any of the lesson plans or assignments, so it's fairly certain that if people stop showing up and auto-fail due to those absences or due to mathematics, by the time May rolls around I'll only have a handful of students left who can pass the course.

By comparison, my other two classes are going extremely well. They show up, they do their work, they don't give me any shit, and all of them do what they need to do in said classes. I'll have to spend a few hours or so over the weekend, probably on Friday or Saturday, to calculate everyone's midterm grades and post them, and that involves spending the time I need to make sure everything's actually graded and recorded as well. I have to do that before I leave for Omaha, as the window for posting midterm grades is only open until Monday, I believe. It may be open longer than that, but I'd rather not push it, and I'd like to get everything taken care of and out of the way before then.

My pay stub info is now available online, so I can see how much my check on Friday will be. It's less than it was this time last semester, but with all of the adjustments and re-adjustments that's been made over the course of the past two months, I can see why and it's understandable, I suppose. For the rest of the semester it'll be even a little more less once my insurance benefits kick in and they take that out of the check every two weeks. It's not a huge issue, however -- I'll still be able to pay my bills and rent just fine as per the usual, and I need to remain on some semblance of a budget anyway to be able to save as much as I can for the wedding and after the wedding. But, of course, let's just say that I definitely have more motivation to get my taxes done now so that I can get my refunds processed.

As for those insurance benefits, all of the paperwork was sent over to the HR office yesterday, including the life insurance beneficiary form -- on which I listed Daisy as my primary (and only) beneficiary. Each beneficiary listed needs their SSN on the form, and as I don't have either of my parents' SSNs on hand (it would be weird if I did, of course) she's the only one I listed. The policy only lasts until the end of May anyhow, so if, for some reason, I die between now and then, she makes about forty bucks. Woohoo, right?

Daisy and I were discussing last night about how we'll do the visit this time around -- and we'll get a lot of alone time when we're there, some quiet downtime that will allow us to spend more time together in peace in a place that's not this house or this state. She plans to come down on Monday night after she sleeps (she works until Monday morning) and then we plan to turn around and go back, with me driving most of the way, of course, in the overnight hours before we sleep for some of the day on Tuesday. She wants to take me to a vapor shop so that I can look through some of the e-cig vaporizers and possibly get one, and then we need to look for a jacket for me for the wedding -- and purchase one if possible, regardless of cost. The time has passed to be choosy, and I have to find something, like, now so that we no longer have to stress about it. Every time I've gone to Omaha I've always checked the thrift stores for jackets, and none of them -- not a one -- have been in my size (or most of the time, even close to my size). The jackets people donate to places like Goodwill are worn by people with 29-inch waists and arms eight inches shorter than mine.

I may be a large man, but I'm not that large or disproportionately-sized. I wear an XL or 2XL t-shirt. I have a 42-inch waist and a 30-32-inch inseam (depending on what shoes/boots I'm wearing). These have been my sizes since middle school, despite any weight gain (or, in recent times, loss) over the years. But I have broad shoulders, a broad back, and long arms, and because of that it is incredibly hard to find a suit jacket that is not only in my size, but would be comfortable to wear all day/night in a formal setting such as my wedding, short of going to a tailor and having one custom made -- which, of course, in no way in hell could we afford. I'm not a dressy person, so it's not like I have my measurements on hand and memorized. For me it's enough that I get out of bed and out of my bathrobe/slippers once a day, and if I can avoid it, I don't even do that.

So those are the first two things we plan to do. We'll probably go see the new Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie, and we'll probably go out to eat at a Chinese place where they serve vegan food/appetizers/etc at some point, but the trip will be fairly short overall anyway. We'll have to come back Thursday night, as Daisy works on Friday night -- and she'll need time to sleep and drive back to Omaha before that, obviously.

As for the title of this post, it not only refers to the massive differences between this semester and other semesters I've taught, but (again) to my allergies. Monday it was almost 80 degrees here. Yesterday it was 72, before a strong cold front rolled in and brought with it 40mph cold winds, dropping the temperature last night down into the 30s (if not 20s in some places). Today it's 55 right now. This has confused my seasonal allergies -- they don't know where to go or what to do, so it appears that they're mutating and are finding new ways to annoy me. I'm not overly tired or fatigued -- I slept for ten hours last night -- but my jaw is bothering me where it connects to the skull on my right side, which is usually a sure sign that my eustachian tube is clogged and draining poorly. My ears and sinuses are clogged up anyway, and my ears are popping like crazy and have been for two days now. There's a lot of post-nasal drainage down my throat, and my lungs have filled with invisible pollen and other allergens, giving me a slight ache in them and in my throat when I cough -- all big-time spring allergy signs for me. Once my body adapts to the weather and the allergens in the air, these things no longer bother me and I can go about my normal life for the next, oh, four months or so. Of course, if we get another cold snap or snowstorm, all of my allergies reset themselves again, and I'm in for another week or two of misery and hating the weather because of it. It appears, at least, that the weather is going to remain mostly stable for the foreseeable future, with highs in the 60s and lows in the high 30s/low 40s at night, at least here anyway. As of the forecast right now, the weather is going to be similar in Omaha while I'm there.

This afternoon, I have to get a shower and prepare for my evening 210 class tonight. It's beautiful but still a bit windy, making it a bit chilly outside even though it's 55. I didn't even wear a coat to campus yesterday, just a light jacket, because even by the time I got home last night long after dark, it was still in the high 40s. Tonight, since I have no one to particularly impress on West campus and only teach a class of eight students, I'll probably just wear the Flash hoodie that Daisy bought me for Christmas as it's thick enough to keep me warm just fine, and the heater in the Monte Carlo actually works (and works well) when it's well above freezing outside.

Interesting side-note: I have two Flash hoodies. The first one, which is probably six or seven years old at this point, is old and faded, and I can only wear it around the house because the zipper slider on it broke off, meaning I can no longer close it. I really need to find some way to repair it by putting a new zipper slider on it, because I really like that hoodie and it's just been sitting in my closet for the past two years or so since the zipper broke. Daisy got me the new one because of that. I love the new one, but it fits differently than the many-years-old, broken-in old one. The new one is also a lot slimmer in its fashion and is more form-fitting, despite the fact that it's a size larger. Daisy told me that it's not something mama can do, but she'd work on it eventually and try to fix it herself.

So that's the rest of my day for you. Showering, teaching tonight, coming home, eating something (more than likely, anyway) and going back to bed so that I can end my week -- and the first half of my semester before Spring Break -- tomorrow morning when I finish teaching my 102 class. I have to stop by Walmart tomorrow afternoon on my way home to do some shopping for essentials, but other than that, despite my allergies and grading I'll have to do over the course of the next few days, I am slowly coasting into my Spring Break.

Balminess

Spring semester: day thirty-six

Well.

I can now safely say that the vast majority of my weekend, more than anything else, was spent sleeping. My eye, which bothered me big time until Sunday night at the least, kept me tired and achy enough to sleep for long hours almost every day I was off, only being awake long enough in the interim times to take care of my household and student-related tasks like cleaning, cooking, laundry, grading, and creating lesson plans for this week. Once more, I did not do my taxes -- again, a failure on my part, but not one without reason.

My eye is fine now, by the way, and has been since at least yesterday morning. Whatever was "infecting" it and was giving me pinkeye-like symptoms is now gone, and I have my normal eye back again. It's still a tad blurry, but even that is rapidly fading by the day. I'm just glad that it's no longer burning, itching, aching, and watering all the time -- a little blurriness I can handle, as I got used to that after the pineapple incident six months ago (until my eyesight finally returned to complete normality around Christmas or so). Whatever caused the "infection" remains a mystery, though I'm leaning more towards allergies coupled with a new scratch that needed to heal.

Over the weekend, despite my massive amounts of sleeping, I did get a fair amount of things done -- I graded everything I had to grade, I did all of the laundry (as well as washed/packed all of my clothes for the Omaha trip, which I have to wash and then put directly into my suitcase out of the dryer so no cat hair/dander gets on them and makes Mama sick when I visit), I cooked a few meals, I paid all of the bills I have now -- officially cutting my bank account's balance in half -- and I wrote up all of my lesson plans for the week so that I know exactly what I'm going to cover in class and how I will do it.

Tomorrow is the "midterm date" for the semester -- midterm grading opened up for all of us instructors/professors yesterday. As I'm collecting work from students this week which will count towards that midterm grade, I cannot calculate midterm grades for everyone until those assignments are graded and tallied. I collect another set of papers tonight (011), a second set tomorrow (210), and another bunch of journals on Thursday (102). Until that stuff's graded, I don't have set-in-stone scores for anyone in my classes. Again, midterms are meaningless anyway, and all students can drop a class anytime until April 4, so again, it's just busywork we have to do as professors -- as much of the work we do every semester is anyway.

We've changed our break travel plans slightly; Daisy is planning to come down on Monday night now (the 17th), taking that night off of work, so that we can get a little more time together. We'll either go back up that night or in the morning on Tuesday, spend a few days there in Omaha, and then come back Thursday night in the overnight hours (as she has work on Friday night, and would have to get back up there on Friday morning. As I have the time off regardless, I'll be happy to do whatever she wants to do or can do -- I'll be doing most, if not all, of my grading and other class-related work (like midterm posting) before I head up to Omaha anyway, as I don't want it hanging over my head in case something happens. I've always been that kind of work before play person anyhow, and these next two weeks are no exception to that rule. If I can time everything right, all I will have to do once I return from Omaha will be my taxes and, unless I do them beforehand (and I must do them soon), and the paying of whatever bills come in while I'm gone. As I get paid again in three days, this shouldn't be a problem.

I sent an email yesterday to the insurance guy in HR, telling him that I'd send the forms over today via campus mail, as I can't submit them electronically (and have to send the life insurance beneficiary form over there anyhow). I've listed Daisy as that beneficiary, for obvious reasons (such as, y'know, I'm marrying the woman) but I have to have a witness sign it with me before I can send it. That can basically be anyone, I suppose, though I'll have a higher-up in the department around when I do it -- possibly the department administrator, the director, or the director's wife (whoever is around). I received a reply from the HR guy telling me that was fine, and that we'd still get everything in before the cutoff date (whatever that would be).

So yes, I have lots of little things to do over the next few days. This morning, as per the usual on Tuesdays now, I have to put gas in the car. Luckily, I won't freeze this time, because the weather has been gorgeous over the past several days -- yesterday, it reached 79 outside. It's almost 50 degrees outside right now as I type this. Today is the first day in a long time where I'll be able to leave the house without wearing multiple layers -- just a light jacket. This is downright balmy, summer-like weather after the single-digit temperatures, crazy-low wind chill, and snowstorms of the past several weeks. Perhaps this means that we'll actually get a spring this year, instead of four months of winter, a week of temperatures in the 60s, and then 90-105 every day until late September. My furnace has been turned off for three days straight now, saving me who knows how much money on my next electric bill. It's wonderful.

It's also a sure sign that spring is coming when I kill my first spider in the house, which I did yesterday afternoon. It wasn't a recluse, but one of those little black furry spiders. Maggie was chasing it, and I paid attention to her, shooed it away, and stomped it. I'm hoping the recluse were all killed by the super-cold snaps we've had off and on all winter long.

As always, today is my long day on two different campuses. Last night I went to bed around 7PM and got up this morning at about 5:15 or so, giving me enough sleep and rest to get through my day without any issues. The much nicer weather will help with that as well -- because it was warm and has remained warm, my allergies aren't even bothering me this morning. As I don't have any grading to do this afternoon before my evening class, I plan to take the 2DS with me to keep me occupied. I have, of course, already beaten Pokemon X, but there's still some post-game stuff to do in the game itself. Mainly, though, I just want to relax and hang out with my friends and colleagues, as it'll be the last time I get to do so until at least the 25th (due to Spring Break being next week).

As for other things? Eh. I'll have to go shopping Thursday afternoon when I get done teaching, more than likely, as I'll need to pick up the essentials by then, but there's not a whole lot else on the docket this week aside from wrapping up everything as neatly as I can as my students and I coast into Spring Break. Even my 011 night class tonight should be fairly short, as I'm doing little more than collecting papers and giving them their next assignment, telling them how to do it, and will be talking briefly about midterms/midterm grading and upcoming reading assignments/chapter coverage in the books for when we get back. My 102 classes this week will be the longest ones, as we're covering different argumentative tactics and logical fallacies (since there are a ton of those to go through one by one). My 210s tomorrow night won't even have an incredibly long class, as we're covering their final large assignment and I'm showing them examples/giving them tactics on how to go about doing it. They also have over a month to work on said assignment, spread out in two chunks and two different peer-review and editing days to help lessen confusion and to address any issues involved with it.

I'm actually excited to plow through this week and get it over with, so that I can have the time off to spend with Daisy and her parents and the time off to sleep and relax somewhere other than this house and/or state for once. We don't have a ton of plans for when I'm in Omaha -- I have to find a jacket for the wedding if possible, and Daisy and Mama want us to eat at a Chinese place they both love, but really, that's about all. I'd imagine the two of us will have a "date night" of sorts, as we usually do, but I don't really think anything else is planned. In packing for that trip, I packed clothing for both warm and cold weather -- because weather forecasts can and do change, of course, over any given week -- so there's pants and shorts, short-sleeve and long-sleeve shirts, socks and sandals, etc. It's always a bit cooler, if not a lot colder, in Omaha than it is here anyway. The differences in weather patterns between here and there are crazy sometimes, so I want to be prepared for any eventuality.

On that note, I'm going to ready myself to leave the house for the day, which translates to "I'm going to drink the majority of a pot of coffee, comb/brush my hair and brush my teeth, and get dressed."