The Great Cleansing, Part II

This morning I got two large boxes out of the garage -- long ones, though they were each only about a foot deep (I need much deeper ones) -- and fully cleaned out my closet up here in the Man Cave, as well as cleaning out everything on and in my DVD rack/bookcase I have up here. The only things left in my closet are the clothing that I will wear between now and the move. The only things left on top of the long bookcase are the things I'll use between now and the move (my wallet, checkbook, incense burner, clock, lamp, etc).

Those two boxes alone took about 90 minutes to pack. Based on 45 minutes per box, roughly, with the amount of boxes I have left now (fifteen), it'll take me 675 minutes to pack all of the boxes I have already -- or eleven hours and fifteen minutes. And those fifteen boxes I have remaining isn't nearly enough to pack up this whole house.

Sigh.

This afternoon -- in about half an hour, actually -- I will clean out the rest of the garage as much as possible, mostly the storage room. Then I will shower, eat, and watch another disc of Scrubs, because fuck it, I've worked a lot on this shit already this weekend and I need a bit of a break. I'll do more tomorrow, of course.

Last night, I graded through all of my students' projects and workshop copies, and made sure I had lesson plans for what I was doing this week in my classes. This took no less than five hours, as I sat down and did it all straight through -- no food, no getting up for breaks, no music or dancing. Just grading and student work. While the 210 projects signify the last assignments I'll have to grade for that class, I do have the two other courses which the work continues for. There are three more sessions of my 102 class before I give their final (so, really, four sessions) and the same applies to my 011s. Most of the 011s are doing well -- the ones who keep showing up and doing the work, anyhow. The last one who could've failed for absences did so during this week's class, so the ones who are there now are the students doing the work and taking care of every little thing I ask of them. Only one other student may fail my course due to absences alone, but I found out that he's in 013 anyway, so that class is what he needs to be in anyhow -- not mine. That's the enrollment system's fault; he shouldn't have been allowed to double-enroll in two courses that offer the same credit.

Anyway. The grading session was tiring, and I went through more than half a pen's worth of ink marking up everything. I'm not a bastard, but if something needs to be marked, I mark it -- especially for the 210 students who should know how to, say, format in-text citations and a works cited page, since they've theoretically done all of that before in English 101 and 102 (or their equivalents at other universities/colleges), not to mention that I've beaten it into their heads to go to Purdue OWL if they have questions about any of that. They don't have a handbook for MLA formatting in English 210 because they should already know all of it. The 101s and 102s at least have the excuse of not being fully acquainted with MLA rules yet.

It's warm and overcast again today, about 80 degrees. It's supposed to storm for the next three days, though, starting tonight. The ten-day forecast, however, is wonderful temperature-wise -- high temperatures in the mid-70s to 80s for the foreseeable future. I might be able to finally fully put away my pants, socks, and shoes for the rest of the semester, and migrate fully to the t-shirts/button-ups and shorts with sandals that I desperately want to migrate to at this time of the year.

Of course, I'm still wearing pants/socks/shoes and a long-sleeved shirt today with my gloves on for when I clean out the garage, because spiders. But I'm hoping this is the last time I have to fully clothe myself for a while.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Ahem.

Daisy did some research on one of the paintings I have in my garage, and apparently it's a famous painting. It's not an original, of course, but a print -- but the prints are going for $80 or something like that. I have no clue what it is and I've never heard of it -- at some point my ex must've picked it up at a yard sale, because I wouldn't have bought it myself. I salvaged another few pretty paintings from the garage and closets that have just been gathering dust; if any of them are worth anything, I may attempt to eBay them or something like that. Anything would be good for extra money, right?

"You just watch," I told her this afternoon, "watch the yard sale on May 3 get completely rained out after all of this planning and boxing of things I've put into it. Watch it happen."

"Well, if it does...will they reschedule it?" she asked.

"Nope. The city won't, anyway."

That doesn't mean I won't set up the stuff again during the next weekend and sell all of it I can then, weather permitting.

"Almost anything I don't sell at the yard sale is basically going directly into the trash and recycling," I told her. "Most of it's being sold just to get it out of here. Yeah, there's some stuff that I will keep, but the reason I'm trying to sell it is because I'd rather have money for it than find a place for it."

This is true. I know I'm not going to sell all of the books, CDs, DVDs, or Xbox/Playstation games, but I'd so much rather have the money for selling them than trying to find another box to stuff them into where they will go unused for another five years. I looked into places like Hastings to get rid of the ones I can't sell, but the nearest one to Daisy is an hour from her house. If I could find a good, independent used games store somewhere in Omaha who would actually give me a decent price for what I have, I might just box it up and make that be an afternoon's visit once I'm moved up there. Anything I can get money out of would help, honestly.

"I might try to sell the lawnmower if we won't have a use for it or have a place for it," I told her.

Her parents don't really need it, and we don't have a yard at the new place; it's a second-floor apartment. It's a good lawnmower, and has served me really well for the past five years...but if I don't have somewhere to put it or someone to use it, I can't keep it. I just can't. Again, we only have room for so much stuff, and what isn't absolutely essential must be sold, trashed, or given away. I plan to sell the electric weed-eater at the yard sale too, including a massive extension cord for it. I think $10 would be a fair price for that. Probably $20 for the lawnmower.

Please pay me and take my shit away. Please.

As for the weight bench set and weights I have but have never used? My friend Ryan (who wanted it before) can't take it, as he graduates and will be leaving Wichita, but another friend may bring up her boyfriend's truck and get it from me. Again, I just want it gone. I cannot take it with me no matter what.

There's not a whole lot else of value in and around the house, and not much else I want or need to keep. Anyone who actually comes to said yard sale will be getting good deals (and/or lots of "if you want it, it's free, please take it away" phrases) from me.

I keep forgetting that apparently it's Easter weekend. I didn't even remember until I got an Easter card (because, apparently, that's a thing) from my parents yesterday in the mail, and was reminded again today when one of my friends on Facebook said that she dreaded going out shopping this afternoon because people would be everywhere. Easter (and/or most other religious holidays) are way, way off my radar. It's not that I don't acknowledge they exist, but that I absolutely do not pay attention to them in the least. I don't care. If I have to go out shopping this weekend (and I don't think I will) I'll do it tomorrow night or Monday, and will possibly get discounted candy, but I so don't care one way or the other.

Though it did make for a funny joke this week in my class -- one of my students who was absent last week was there on Wednesday night, and I said "He lives!" which is my go-to phrase when a student has been gone but has now returned to class. He looked at me and said "Of all weeks of the year to say that, you really can't say that this week."

And I had to think about it for a moment before I got his reference.

For good measure, I did circle a section on his paper and write "Good Lord" next to it. Because I do love me some blasphemy, mmhmm.

Call it an atheist's subtle payback.

Ahem.

So that's what's going on in my life right now. Now...I clean the rest of the garage.

The Great Cleansing, Part I

Spring semester: day sixty-four

I suppose I slept okay yesterday afternoon and last night. For the most part, anyway. I always feel as if I am playing catch-up when it comes to getting rest these days, and that's a feeling that's more than likely not going to go away for another few months until I can really get some true relaxation time after the move and after the wedding.

The thought is always in the back of my head that a month from today, I'll more than likely be mostly, or completely, moved out of this house. It's a feeling that, looking around and seeing everything where it is and where it has been for the past five years, makes me feel crushed and completely overwhelmed with stress. Again, I absolutely dread moving. I've always dreaded moving no matter how many times I've done it. It's always much harder than it looks or seems like it's going to be, it's always much more tiring and stressful, and it's always a task that is so terrible to me that I just have to put my head down and do it -- there's never any way out of it.

And it's so expensive.

I brought in one of the big boxes from the garage this morning so that I can keep packing throughout the day today. It will be filled quickly, I can tell you that. No matter how many boxes I have, it'll never seem like enough. I just feel dangerously, completely overwhelmed. I have so much -- so many things -- that I need to keep, but I don't know what to do with. I'm so tired. I can almost never get any real rest. I have a ton of grading and other student-oriented work to do. I have a ton of cleaning to do. I have tasks and responsibilities pulling at me from all angles, and all I want to do is curl up in a ball in bed with my blanket over my head and wish it all away, wish that everything would just stop, wish that I had an endless supply of money to just throw at all of my problems and make everyone else take care of them. The stress is crippling. It's terrifying. I don't like this feeling. It feels like I've been backed into a corner and I have no way out of being forced to do all of this work, spend all of this money I don't have, and I'm being told to do it with a gun to my head and a ticking clock in the corner with me. It never feels like I'm doing enough fast enough. I'm not sure I can accurately put into words the anxiety and panic I feel.

None of this has to do with the wedding, of course. It's more in the moving and the money and time and work involved, and the panic that comes from going into the unknown. I've done this before -- this will make the fourth time I have moved from one place to another without knowing what my future would hold in said place. All three previous times have been very stressful and I've been very poor and jobless once I've gotten to wherever I'm going. This time will be no exception. My lecturer contract with the university ends a month from today, basically. I'll only be paid three more times, at the most, before the wedding. I don't yet have a job in Omaha and probably won't until at least sometime in June. Once more I am flying blind into the jungle of uncertainty, into a situation where -- yes, while I'll have a wife and she has a good job -- I myself will again be thrown into financial chaos, thrown into the great unknown until I can proverbially "get back on my feet." Again, remember that I basically have no marketable skills except for teaching and writing. It's very, very tough to even get a phone call or an interview for any job I apply for that isn't an entry-level position or a retail position.

That being said, Daisy's company apparently does want me to work for them -- the HR guy emailed me twice over the past two weeks telling me to come to their hiring event/job fair thing up there this week. When I responded that I would love to except that I wasn't relocating to Omaha for more than another month, he replied to tell me to keep his info on file and contact him ASAP once I was settled in so that an interview could be scheduled.

None of the other applications I've filed -- for anything, anywhere -- have contacted me. All of them have HR websites, and every time I've logged in it says "application received." Only one of the jobs I've applied for says "applications currently being screened." They're either dragging their feet, or they're "dummy" positions posted on said HR sites for jobs they've already filled internally, to give the illusion that they're actually looking for someone outside the company/college/university when they're not.

Again, this is something I can't exactly stress about now. I have too many other pressing issues and tasks to worry about and take care of at the moment.

Friends and colleagues are still surprised I'm moving out of Kansas, like for some reason that was an unfathomable thought. The entire time I've lived here in Kansas, I've only had three things keeping me here:

1. My ex, who moved us here in the first place in 2009 (and broke up with me 18 months later; that reason ended then)

2. Graduate school, until last May.

3. Working at the university since then.

Literally nothing else has kept me here in this state. If I would've found somewhere else to live and work last summer (before I took the position at the university), I would've moved out of state then. Daisy and I were exploring all sorts of options even then. My position ends in a month, and I'm getting married shortly thereafter -- why is it automatically assumed by everyone that once I'm married I'll still want to live here and continue teaching to only make $12k a year, when for a full third the year I'm not even getting paid because I'm not teaching? Did people assume I was going to marry Daisy, and then we'd live separate lives in separate states, with her still living in Omaha and me returning to Kansas to live here alone with the cats? That's not how marriage works.

As the university is not offering me any more money for -- or any opportunities for advancement in -- what I do for a living, it was inevitable that I'd move on. I love my job there, and I love teaching, but I still have to pay the bills. And there will be more, higher bills after I'm married. It's simple finances. I'm struggling as it is now, and I have been for the better part of a year and a half. I live a pretty simple life, but that life can't be simplified financially more than it already has been; corners can't really be cut any more than they're being cut now. I have neither the time nor the ability to do so.

Some of you may be wondering if the upcoming end of my employment at the university is changing the way I do my work -- if, for example, I'd be the kind of guy who would be like "Pshhh, fuck it, let's give everyone A's and not care about anything anymore." The answer to that is no. It doesn't matter that my job will be ending soon. It doesn't matter that I may never teach a college class again after next month -- again, I take pride in my work, and my responsibilities as a professor don't change in my remaining time as one, nor do I take care of said responsibilities in any fashion any differently than I always have. I respect my job. I respect my profession. I respect my peers -- higher-ups and subordinates -- more than to completely fuck off for the next month. My job isn't done until my contract ends. I don't care that I am completely, brutally swamped with all of the other work I must spend countless hours doing -- I'm not a slacker and never have been. To brush it all off and stop caring about my duties would not only be disrespectful to the university and to my students, but it would be dishonorable, and above all things, I pride myself on being honorable.

To those ends I must keep working at basically a breakneck pace, metering out time for tasks. Tonight I'll be grading through all of my 210 students' projects one by one until I'm finished with them...and then I'll move on to the workshop copies for my 102 class, and lesson planning for my 011s, before eventually going to bed and getting up tomorrow morning to clean out the rest of the garage and storage room, pack more boxes full of clothes and around-the-house stuff, and then run the dishwasher and take care of all of the laundry that needs to be dealt with. My hair is greasy and looks crazy. My beard is dry and itchy. I haven't showered since Wednesday afternoon. I haven't eaten anything in eighteen hours. The cats are restless and keep getting under my feet as I move back and forth through the house, as they don't understand why there are so many boxes around everywhere or why I need them to move out of the way while I'm working all the time. They just want to be with me, and it's not like they understand the nuances of cleaning and packing things. I, meanwhile, just want to eat and sleep, but I can't.

I'm No Superman

Spring semester: day sixty-three

My 210 students last night were amusing.

"You mean this is it? A ten-minute oral presentation on our project, next week, and then we're done?"

Yes, students, that's your final assignment. Then you're done. Finished. Finito. Our class ends. 

I think it's somewhat amusing, actually. If this were a larger -- or full -- roster of students, there's no way we'd be finished yet, and more than likely wouldn't be anywhere this close to wrapping up. I had twenty students in my 210 class last semester, and because several of them failed for absences or couldn't get the project finished on time, they bowed out of class near the end. This freed up time for the presentations, and remarkably we were able to get through all of them in one night because we were able to get into a classroom about an hour earlier than usual and start early. The last three weeks of the semester in the syllabus/lesson plan are devoted to presentations. With a full class of twenty-five students, at a minimum of ten minutes per presentation, that's 250 minutes. As the class is but once a week from 7:05 to 9:45, if we started right at 7:05 and every student only used the minimum ten minutes, we'd be able to get through sixteen of them one week and would have to leave the remaining nine for the next week. That would still leave an extra week at the end of the semester as a "floating day" commonly used as a placeholder in case of weather cancellations or other issues.

That's if I had a full class. I don't. My 210 class this semester has eight students. Therefore, next week we're in there for eighty minutes as all eight of them do their presentations one after another, and we're done. For the semester. Period.

It will feel nice knowing that I won't have to return to West campus on Wednesday nights for the remainder of the semester after next week, but it will feel even nicer to not have to burn that extra 48 miles worth of gasoline in the car (as that's how much it is to make a round trip to and from West campus) for the rest of the semester. It also means that after next week, I'll have Wednesdays off. Completely. Which will be good as I have enough things to do for my classes and around the house anyway. When my final papers start rolling in for my other two classes (I have five sets of papers left to grade for all of my classes for the rest of the semester, not counting final exams), I'll need that extra time. The stack of 210 projects will be graded this weekend, but I still have two papers and a practice final coming in from my 011s, and the big final paper coming in for my 102s. All of those will take time to grade -- not to mention I will be collecting journals once again from those latter two classes as well.

While my teaching schedule appears to be clearing (and it is), the work involved with the end of the semester is not. The 102 students take their final exam in class, during normal class hours, on May 1. May 6 is the last day I have to be on campus for anything before finals week, and that's only for my night 011 class to collect final papers/rewrites and to give the practice final. I don't know when the final exam will be for that class yet. It could be a full week later for all I know, and I also don't know who I'll have as a grading partner for it.

I'm really just trying to take care of things as they come, as always. Certain days have certain tasks and blocks of time metered out to take care of said tasks. That's basically my organizational system. I meter out that time so that all other time remains my own to use as I see fit -- whether I use it sleeping, eating, decompressing by watching a DVD, packing/cleaning, or doing other household stuff, it's still my time. I have to be able to keep some things separate or I will go crazy and will feel even more swamped and overwhelmed than I already do.

To those ends (and because the DVD sets have been anywhere between $4 and $15 per season on Amazon), I've been watching Scrubs from the beginning -- usually while I eat my daily meals. I've already watched through everything else I have right now as it pertains to television -- I've watched seven seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, for example, and I'm waiting on the other season sets to drop dramatically in price (or, barring that, I'll just watch them on Netflix if they're on there once Daisy and I move in together). I watched season 4 of Archer last week during my meals and in between grading papers. Scrubs has the benefit of being a really long series (I think there were nine seasons? Ten?) that I've only seen parts of, and a series that is incredibly cheap to get and watch piece-by-piece -- again, between $4 and $15 for three-disc season sets, with each season being twelve or thirteen hours long based on the number of episodes.

I really don't spend a lot of time or money on myself because I can so rarely afford to -- this is about it, honestly. If there's a show I like, I'll get a few seasons of it and watch it, and it will allow me an escape from everything hanging over my head, if only for a short while. It's the same reason I play the Pokemon games and follow the series as well -- decompression. I apparently deal with stresses differently than a lot of other people do. This is my method. Well, that and cigarettes/coffee, anyway.

I stopped at Walmart last night on the way home, as I'd planned to do, and picked up the essentials only -- the aforementioned cigarettes, cat litter, bread and almond milk, cereal, etc. Much like Daisy, I am on a "spending freeze" at the moment, in order to channel as much money as possible into moving costs and cost of living expenses for after the move and after the wedding. Anything that isn't essential or can't wait a few weeks has been put on the back burner for the time being. I live cheaply; there's no reason to spend any money I don't have to, especially as I still haven't received my state tax refund yet (I sent it off a month ago today, on March 17), and after I've paid off the majority of debt on two of my three credit cards, clearing one off completely, I'd rather not run those back up. I'll need them this summer, more than likely. I'll need the Citi Card especially, as that's what I use to pay my car insurance. That comes due again at the end of June. While I'm sure we can count on some money as wedding gifts, we can't depend on that to "get us by," so to speak. Daisy and I both have bills. Some of those bills are expensive bills.

Speaking of Daisy, apparently her first night at her "new job" within her company last night went really well, though she didn't get really any sleep beforehand. I had messages from her this morning when I woke up, but she didn't offer any details as she was going directly to bed (and it's not like I blame her, honestly). I'll talk to her about it tonight, more than likely, though I myself will more than likely be going to bed again once I come home and eat lunch. It's a chilly, dreary grey day outside, and it's supposed to rain all day. Good sleeping weather, I say. I'm tired already, and haven't really had the chance to get any good, solid rest all week (as I've mentioned here before).

So that's what's going on. I will update you, of course, with anything else that happens, over the weekend. For now, though, I'm going to hop into the Monte Carlo and head off to campus.

In The Works, Part II

Spring semester: day sixty-two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Works, Part I

Spring semester: day sixty-one
Tax Day

Day sixty-one. Oh yes, the home stretch. I can see the light.

My past few days have been, understandably, pretty busy. On Saturday, I cleaned out the garage (or most of it, anyhow). On Sunday, Daisy came down in the afternoon, we spent a little time together, and then she passed out for about twelve hours. Yesterday we spent the day together doing the shopping that needed to be done, and then went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Today, Daisy goes home and I go back to work for my normal week of teaching, starting with my abysmally long day that I'll be out of the house for 12+ hours.

Ironically, while Daisy has slept well while she's been here, I really haven't -- her coming down basically in the middle of my weekend (instead of in the middle of my work week when she normally does) threw off my sleeping schedule big time. This isn't her fault, of course, as she starts her new position at her company tomorrow, but the weekend is generally the only time I can really get the rest I need, can sleep on my own schedule when I'm tired, and get up when I want to in order to do what I need to do. This weekend was very different for me, as it basically afforded me no real downtime -- I graded papers and did lesson-planning stuff on Friday, I cleaned the garage on Saturday, I cleaned the house as much as I could on Sunday before she arrived, and yesterday we were out and about all day to the point where I couldn't even go to bed until 10PM.

As most of you know, on Monday nights I usually go to bed before 6 so that I can sleep the whole night through and be rested and alert enough all day to be out of the house for over twelve hours, teaching two classes on each end of my day on two different campuses.

Eh. I'll manage.

Daisy got up with me this morning and ate some cereal before going back to bed a little while ago. I'll wake her in about an hour, as she plans to leave when I do (since I'm going to be gone all day/night anyhow, there's no point for her to stick around here needlessly).

The weather got cold. Very cold. On Saturday, it was 88 degrees. No, that's not a typo. It was actually 88 degrees. When I got up on Sunday, it was 75. And then it stormed, with pea-sized hail out of the blue, and rapidly got colder. By the time Daisy got here on Sunday afternoon, it was below 50. By the time I went to bed on Sunday night (eh, 4AM or so?) it was below 40. Yesterday morning when we got up there was half an inch of snow on the ground and on our cars.

No, I'm not making this up. Welcome to Kansas.

The snow melted off by yesterday afternoon and it was actually somewhat pleasant yesterday, but pretty windy. Right now it's 25 in Newton -- colder here than it's been in weeks. I had to turn on the furnace again yesterday, regrettably, because while the house holds warmth well most of the time, it doesn't hold it well enough to where it won't be in the 40s in the basement bedroom if I didn't turn it on. And, of course, as I already packed and put away the electric blanket and most of my winter clothes because temperature drops of over sixty degrees in the span of two days is not supposed to fucking happen, I've been cold and rather unhappy about this change of weather.

The sudden cold snap has wrecked my allergies, too, allergies which were almost completely gone by last week as the weather had basically normalized. Not anymore, oh no.

Anyway.

Most of the garage is clean now; most of it, anyway. There's some stuff I need to clean up and ready for the move, such as a spare bookcase, table, and file cabinet, but most everything else I had no use for was either trashed or recycled. I'm still not done with the garage, though -- again, I only have so much space in my trash/recycling cans every week, and once they were full, I had to stop. I still have the storage room to clean out, which will take a lot less time to clean and empty, and there are some things in the garage which were too large to simply trash last week as I didn't have the room then. That stuff I'll take care of this coming weekend, and then all that will really be left to do is sweep out the garage to get all of the leaves, dust/dirt, and spiderwebs gone from it. Anything left in there that I can't trash will either be sold/given away at the yard sale in three weeks, or it'll be thrown out when I move out.

Daisy got me seventeen boxes from Walmart on her way down here this weekend, as well.

"That should be enough, right?" she asked, in reference to those boxes being all I needed to move everything with.

I laughed.

"No, babe, I'll probably need two or three times that to get everything out of this house that I need to keep and move. Seriously."

She gave me a shocked look.

"Not kidding; my clothing and room stuff alone will probably be five of those boxes, easily. Then there's all of the kitchen stuff, living room stuff, spare room stuff, bathroom stuff, pots and pans, dishes and other kitchen stuff, dry food in the cupboard..."

I could've kept going, listing another five or six things/places, but I'm sure she got the point. Once again I stress that Daisy has but a bedroom full of stuff and some stuff in her parents' basement like small furniture and the like to move -- I have an entire house full of stuff that I have to figure out how to organize, pack, and get out of here while still keeping the stuff that I need.

"But some of them are really big boxes," she said.

And she's right, some of them are -- but that doesn't change the fact that I'll need more, and it doesn't change the fact that when we get the moving truck here to get everything out of this house, it will be full. That can't really be avoided. There's only so many things I can throw away, recycle, sell, or donate to charity -- and there's only so much time I have with which to do that. A lot of stuff I can get rid of...a lot of stuff I can't.

"Do we really need to steam-clean the carpets?" she asked.

"...absolutely," I said, "if we want to ensure I get my deposit back."

These carpets have five years' worth of dirt, cat hair, cat vomit, and smoke all in them that a simple vacuuming, even with a good vacuum, will not get out. Everything has to be cleaned; this is a task that will take just as long as it will to pack everything up and move it out.

"Do you think you'll get your full deposit back?" she asked.

"I should get most, if not all of it back," I said. "The landlord and his wife really like me; I pay my rent on time in full, I don't cause any trouble, if there's ever been an issue I needed them to work on or fix, I called them, etc. They've always been really sweet to me. But it's because of that why I want to make sure this house is basically impeccable when I leave it."

Besides, we could use the deposit money -- obviously -- to help pay rent and bills in our new place, and/or cover any outstanding wedding costs.

I wrote Daisy a check for $450 to cover the security and the photographer for the wedding in order to clear that from the list of outstanding expenses; I'll have to put about the same amount on my Discover card in a week or two in order to be able to reserve the moving truck in advance as well. I have the money to pay for this stuff, though that also means that my federal tax refund is now completely gone and used up, used to pay bills, credit cards, pay for groom's party gifts and to write the check to Daisy. I am, essentially, exactly where I was before, plus my paycheck from Friday. This isn't necessarily bad, of course -- I will be getting my state refund soon, after all -- but it hasn't arrived yet. As a plus, though, all of those bills I needed to pay have been paid for the moment, with the exception of my Discover card bill (which will arrive this week) and the electric bill (which will arrive next week).

Today is a medium-difficulty day for me; I don't have a ton to do in my classes, but I do have some stuff. I'm covering an article and a research paper out of my 102 textbook for that class, then going to main campus to teach my nigh 011 class, which involves two short lessons out of the book and conferencing with my students over their papers which are due next week. I surely have enough energy to be able to handle and take care of that stuff, I'm guessing, before I come home tonight and crash out. I'm not sure what Daisy's plans are for when she gets home; she'll get back to Omaha around the middle of my day, and doesn't start her new position at her job until tomorrow evening -- shortly before I leave for my evening 210 class.

At least it's supposed to warm up today -- in the 60s by this afternoon, and 70 or so tomorrow.

Best Men

Last night, my brother told me he would not be able to make it to my wedding.

My brother, as you may remember, was my best man. He has his reasons, obviously, and all of them are good ones and important financially-based ones more than anything else.

No, I'm not mad at him. I have no reason to be mad at him; I knew long ago that asking him to be able to come to the wedding and participate in it would put him in a rather tight spot both personally and financially, and in the months since, that spot has gotten tighter and tighter until it basically disappeared, making the trip out here pretty much infeasible and impossible. I'm disappointed, yes, that my brother won't be there, but I'm not disappointed in him at all -- my brother knows how much I admire and respect him for what he's done both family-wise and life-wise, and if anyone understands really rough financial situations and time/work constraints, believe me, it's me.

My dad has agreed to take on the role of best man in my wedding in my brother's stead, as my rule with that has been "family first"; I want someone in my family in, or otherwise involved with, the wedding. I linked my dad to the tuxedo t-shirt we are all wearing so that he could get one (his response: "you're still doing that?") and my parents plan to arrive in Omaha on the night of the 29th, more than likely shortly before or during the time Daisy is having her bridal shower and I'm having my very loosely-defined "bachelor party." This isn't a big deal as I'm pretty sure my 64-year-old dad doesn't want to go out drinking and partying with us in and around Omaha.

As an aside, we really have no major plans for the "bachelor party" as of right now; I might suggest something simple like Dave & Buster's with a buffet dinner somewhere beforehand, but who knows. I'd rather not be hung over or otherwise incapacitated the next day -- I have shit to do, so to speak, once everyone gets to town. Rae asked me a few days ago about what we plan to do for it, and I had no real answer for her.

I'm waiting on a few things in the mail still; today I should receive my Citi Card statement, and hopefully I'll get my state tax refund either today or Monday so that I can give Daisy some actual cash while she's here. Yesterday I received everything from Amazon, including my backup external HD and groom's party gifts. The external HD is smaller than Daisy's cell phone -- it's tiny. And it's 500GB. That's crazy to me. I remember when I was in undergrad and 512mb flash drives were $50 or more, and were in super-high-demand. This thing is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and was a little more than the same price, but holds almost 1,000 times more data.

The case for said drive (which I had to order separately, for about $6) will arrive at some point next week, as it wasn't Prime shipping and was from a private seller. I'm fine with that. It's going to be a good week or so before I use it anyhow.

Last night I sat down and did all of my grading of my students' papers, and did all of my lesson planning for the week, before posting said grades online and emailing all of my students with their weekly updates of what's coming up. Then I ran the dishwasher and folded all the laundry, took a shower, cleaned the cats' box and gave them more food, and baked a big dish of penne. I organized and boxed more things for the yard sale at the beginning of next month.

Today I clean the garage -- that's my big, major task for the afternoon and evening. It involves gloves and actual pants and shoes (so that I can avoid any spider bites or anything like that) and a lot of trashing/recycling things. Once my trash/recycling cans are full, I have to stop whether I'm done or not, as I don't have much choice there. They can only hold so much, and I have so much shit to throw out one way or the other. Once they're full, the rest has to wait another week until they're emptied by the trucks. My recycling can is already half full as it is, since I've been cleaning and tossing basically everything I could over the course of the past several days.

Good Day, Sir

Spring semester: day fifty-nine

Daisy is coming down on Sunday instead of Tuesday. Tonight she was officially offered (and she accepted) the promotion she'd been trying to get, and with it comes different hours and a different work schedule. She will now work Wednesday through Saturday nights, from 6PM to 5AM, and that schedule starts next week -- she still works her normal shifts on Friday and Saturday night this week. That means, obviously, she has to come down between Sunday and Tuesday.

As of right now, it's the same hourly pay she's been making at that job for well over a year; it's an interim position that makes her a supervisor on the shifts she'll be working (which, basically, is what she did anyway, with the bonus that she'll have to do a lot less of her current job's duties) with the bonus that she's in this as a placeholder until the position gets "officially" created and posted, more than likely with a substantially higher salary. And she'd already be in line for and primed for that position if she wants it and they choose her for it.

The entire transition is bittersweet for both of us. I'm extremely proud of her -- kickin' ass and takin' names and whatnot -- and while the number of hours worked are the same and the schedule is marginally better, right now (and probably continuing for a while after we're married) all that's really changed are the days she works. She'll have somewhat different duties, yes; she'll be in charge of keeping everyone else on her shift in line and doing their work, but in the big picture finances-and-time-wise not a whole lot is really changing here.

I, meanwhile, am still teaching through most of May, or at least will be doing teaching-related duties for the majority of the month while I clean and pack this house, so I'm going to be busy as well. Her coming down on Sunday instead of Tuesday evening means I'm shuffling around all of the work I'd be doing this weekend -- lesson planning, grading a stack of papers, etc -- to today and tomorrow at the latest. I clear my docket when Daisy visits, so that I don't have anything hanging over my head or any other pressing, somewhat concerning responsibilities I need to take care of. This means that most of my grading I'll have to do in the morning/afternoon hours today, and if I'm going to clean out the garage (or most of it) this weekend, that has to be done on Saturday at the latest. That can be done, yes, but it also completely fills my weekend and time off with tasks to do, so I'm not even getting any real downtime.

More than that, it also gives me a short window to pay whatever bills I need to pay and (hopefully) receive my state tax refund check in the mail to cash so that I can use that for our activities and give her most of the rest of it, in addition to whatever other money I can afford to give her to cover some expenses for the wedding and apartment stuff. That money will primarily go to the cost of the wedding photographer and the security guard at the venue, as mentioned before. Most of everything else is covered or will be covered without much issue. On the plus side, though, she's going to do me a big favor and pick up/bring down some extra boxes so that I can kick my packing into overdrive in the next few weeks. I asked her to, because apparently it's like pulling teeth to get boxes from the places here unless I want to get up or be awake at dawn on the weekends.

My conferences for my 102 students yesterday morning went well; those kids tend to be pretty bright and on-the-ball, and all of them showed up and got their requisite points and feedback on their upcoming essays based on their Proposal/Annotated Bibliography assignment. Some of them have great paper topics, topics that I'm really excited to read about. They can now sort of rest easy for most of the weekend; next week we're covering a few articles out of their textbook, and for the rest of the semester they're simply writing their papers and finishing up their journals.

As the semester ramps up for all of my students, it winds down for me -- my classes all know at this point what's coming up between now and the end of classes, and they're all working on those things. My 210s turn in their final papers on Wednesday, and then have their oral presentations in two weeks. My 011s have one more paper after the one they're working on now, then their practice final and final exam. My 102s are hip-deep in their final papers now as it is before their own practice final and final exam. I will be doing my last bit of lesson planning for the entire semester this week and next week, and after that? They just have to do their work, and I just have to show up to get it and cover what needs to be covered. It's really freeing for me, to be honest with you, especially with the upcoming move and the like when I'll have to carefully meter out all of my time anyhow. The more I can get out of the way now, the better.

I get paid today, as I mentioned in my last post, and said pay is on par with normal paychecks -- so that certainly helps me when it comes to bills and the like along with my tax refund. I'll also get my Amazon order today, which contains my external HD for backup and several of my groom's party gifts. The rest of the party gifts come next week, as they were somewhat, ahem, custom creations that need extra time. I need to get one more thing for one of the members of my party, but everything else is done on that end.

Last night I did all of my laundry and washed the bedsheets/blankets as well. I removed the electric blanket from the bed, unhooked it, and washed it (since it can be washed and dried) to put it away for the summer in its bag with its controls, which I found in the upstairs spare room closet. I was also able to pack another box full of clothes -- the clothes I'd washed, in the one box I got from Walmart last weekend -- so that's out of the way, at least. Well, it's still in the way, as all of the boxes in the spare room are, but at least it's packed up. This is why I can't wait for Daisy to bring down more boxes -- there's something purifying and centering about packing everything up and eliminating as much clutter as possible. There's at least one or two boxes in the garage, along with a tub, that I'll be able to reclaim when I clean out the garage/storage room tomorrow, provided that they aren't all full of spider eggs/nests. Because that would be bad.

And, of course, over the next few weeks I'll be saving paper boxes from West campus as well, provided I can get them to save them for me. I need to email the sweet administrator lady over there this afternoon to see if she can save whatever comes available. If she can't or they don't really have any, eh, no biggie -- but it would be helpful, at least, if even in a small way.

The weather is gorgeous and has been for several days now -- right now it's 77, and tomorrow the temperature could reach 85 according to the Weather Channel...and then it will rain (possibly even snow) and be cold and shitty for most of the next several days afterwards -- basically the entire time Daisy is here. I mean, that can't really be helped, but it'll seriously piss me off if it gets so cold I have to kick on the furnace again, since I've not had to do that at all since basically the week after Spring Break. My electric bill for April should be really low -- less than $60, I'm guessing. The lowest bill I've ever had was $40-something, and that was about this time last year, soooo...

Ahem. Anyway.

I slept until around noon today, despite the neighborhood wild turkeys (because yes, I do have those; welcome to semi-rural Kansas) gobbling loudly outside my window in the yard for about an hour at 8AM.

The rest of my day will be spent grading and getting a shower, as well as possibly ordering a pizza -- I haven't decided yet. I need to do my normal weekend chores as per the usual over the course of the next day or two, which includes emptying the cat box, vacuuming, and doing other minor cleanup before Daisy gets here on Sunday. Tomorrow? Again, cleaning the garage as much as I can; it'll be somewhat long and dirty, as I told Daisy, but maybe I'll find some interesting stuff down there that I can "reclaim," so to speak, that I've forgotten about.

It feels good to be getting things done, to be cleaning and packing and getting all of my affairs in order. Daisy asked me this morning if there was anything I was nervous about regarding the move or the wedding.

"Money," I said. "Being able to pay for everything without us basically needing to fight for survival."

"Aside from money."

"Nope. Not really, anyway."

And there's not. I'm not nervous about anything, especially not anything involving the wedding -- I can't wait to marry her. However, I do dread all of the work and physical labor that will be involved with the move and cleaning this house -- as that will more than likely make me sore and fatigued for days, but I'm not nervous about it. Not in the least.

On that note? Time to go take care of my Friday tasks. I'll keep you updated on everything as it happens.

Cha-ching, Part II

Spring semester: day fifty-eight

Yesterday was an incredibly productive day for me, even if the work I got accomplished wasn't that physical, monumental, or otherwise mind-blowing. What I did was more...spiritually fulfilling, I suppose you could say, more than anything else.

I got up early -- probably around 9AM -- and immediately started taking care of tasks that needed to be done. With my federal tax refund in hand (so to speak), I paid the two Publishers Clearing House orders that I'd had waiting for me, and completely paid off my Chase card bill, zeroing out its balance. One card down, two to go, right?

I then took to Amazon to get some of the things I need but had been putting off -- for example, I finally got the external HD I needed for backing up my files, a few other small things, and three of my small groomspeople's gifts. I went to another site later in the day (I won't say which, as it'll give away the surprise) to get the remaining gifts. The Amazon stuff arrives tomorrow; the other stuff arrives next week; the latter two items I was able to get for basically free.

It also helped immensely that yesterday was the most beautiful day possible, I think -- the temperature reached 83 in the afternoon and it was breezy and sunny. It was, simply put, the nicest day Kansas has had since last fall six or seven months ago. When it's really nice like that and my allergies aren't killing me (as they are right now, this morning), I tend to have more energy and ability to take care of tasks -- or at least more motivation, anyway.

By the time I left the house last night to teach my 210 class, I was in a great mood and great spirits -- I'd taken care of everything I'd needed/wanted to do, had cleared off one entire card's worth of credit card debt, and for once, I didn't feel overwhelmed or overly stressed about everything going on in my life. To top it off, my electronic pay stub for tomorrow's paycheck had been posted, and since the payroll lady fixed the insurance stuff, it's all correct and roughly normal/what I was expecting after said insurance was taken out. That paycheck will give me a good bump in my finances and will allow me to assess my monetary situation a little more fully by the time Daisy comes down here next week, so that I can give her some of the money she needs to pay for the deposit on the apartment, the rent, the wedding photographer and security guy at the venue, her wedding band (because she hasn't picked one yet), etc. 

So, clad in a tie-dye t-shirt and board shorts with flip-flops (as one of my close friends told me, "Brandon's back!"), I brushed my hair back, threw on the aviators, and rocketed down the highway in the Monte Carlo to teach my night class.

As an aside, when you're going 75 down the interstate with the windows down and no traffic around you, and when you're driving a car with a powerful and responsive 215hp, DOHC 3.4L V6 that will go 0-to-60 in about four seconds...when Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" comes on the radio, it's really, really hard not to speed.

For future reference. Ahem.

Anyway.

My 210 class was fine; they're finishing up their projects and brought in their entire project drafts with them last night. Most of them are nearly finished. Some of them, yes, still have some considerable work to do, but they also have a full week before it's due, and many of the drafts I looked over this weekend were very rough in comparison to the more polished, nearly-finished versions of a lot of them that I saw last night.

Next week is their last week of instruction in the course -- they turn in those final projects and I instruct them on what they need to do for the oral presentation, which is their last course assignment. Those presentations are on April 23. For a class with a full 25 students, those presentations could and would take two full weeks or more, which is why they start working on them next week. With a class of but eight students, such as the class I have, we're in and out on one night for those presentations. Even if all eight students took twenty minutes each (instead of the hard-out I give them at ten), it would still only take 160 minutes -- the timeframe of a normal weekly class.

As an aside, those students are really fun to have in class. I'm definitely going to miss that class when it ends, simply because they all know how the game is played, they all do their work and we all have fun.

Anyway.

My 011 class I teach on Tuesday nights, of course, is another story. As always. I think I've basically cemented the group of students I'll have between now and the end of the semester, though -- because at this point, all of the others but one have failed either mathematically or due to absences. I had four more fail for one or both reasons on Tuesday night, and the emails went out yesterday afternoon to let them know. I have eight or nine remaining out of my nineteen-person class, and of those remaining students, most of them are doing just fine -- they're following directions, they're doing the assignments, they're writing in their journals, and they're asking questions when necessary. Most of them will more than likely pass the course with no issue. Some of them don't need 011 at all, as they're good writers on their own already. Others? Well...

The rest of Tuesday went fine. Nothing of note or consequence happened, really. I spent most of the day grading through my 102 students' proposals and annotated bibliographies, and/or actively stalling for time so that I wouldn't do that and nothing but that all day long. Most of my friends, as we're hip-deep in April, are frantically trying to do everything they can in their own classes (as most of them are still grad students) to wrap up the semester, as well as take care of their own students' work. They don't have much time for socialization these days...if they're even there when I'm there.

I did, however (as mentioned in my last post) fax all of the apartment application and information stuff to the apartment manager in Omaha, including a pay stub and photocopy of both sides of my driver's license, so that the ball can get rolling on that for processing and the like. Said manager called me shortly thereafter to confirm some of the numbers on the form, as the fax had scrunched it down and made them hard to read in a few places. She seems sweet and helpful, and was really nice.

Daisy does her walkthrough of an identical place in that complex tomorrow, with said manager, I'm guessing -- not our place, but an identical one, as all of the buildings are set up the same and because ours won't be open until May 1. I reminded her to take measurements of not only the apartment itself, but of stairways and doorways leading up to and into the apartment, as knowing those widths and heights will make moving in easier. The mattress for the bed, for example, can bend -- but the pieces of the frame and the box springs can't...in addition to whatever other large, inflexible furniture/appliances and the like we have to move in there, such as my washer and dryer.

She did tell me that there's an elevator, though, which will absolutely make moving those large, cumbersome things much easier.


This morning (and I'm about to leave in a few minutes) I have my conferences with my 102 students in lieu of actual class. Each of them will sit down with me for ten minutes or so, sometimes less (depending on how well the student is doing in the class) and we do a little one-on-one chat. 102 classes are required to do this, though I almost wish I'd done it on Tuesday afternoon instead of this morning during normal class time. Still, it's pretty painless, if a little longer than my class would normally run. I probably won't be home before noon, as the last conference is at 11:05. I don't have to stop anywhere on my way home, though -- I went to Walmart to get cat litter and other necessities on my way home after class last night, since it was still so nice and warm.

Anyway. Off I go. I'll fill you in on other happenings later.

Cha-ching, Part I

Spring semester: day fifty-six

My federal tax refund posted to my bank account last night while I was asleep, thereby increasing the amount of money I had in there by 4X or so. This is good for multiple reasons, obviously, the least of which being that I just got my Chase (Amazon) card bill last night before I went to bed. One of my first duties will be to pay that card off completely and zero out its balance. That's the card I use, primarily anyway, for gas in the car.

About half of the rest will go to other bills and the like, and then the remainder will go to Daisy. I'll also remind you once more that I get paid again in three days, so this isn't the only money I have coming to me. Finally I feel like I have a little breathing space again, and enough actual money to get some things taken care of both for now and in the future. The federal return alone is more than a month's worth of my normal pay deposited into my account all at once, for reference there.

Now to wait on the state of Kansas return, which has to be a paper check for me as I didn't file it online (and there's no direct-deposit option on the paper forms). If I've already gotten the federal return, the state return can't be far behind.

If I were a wealthier man, I'd put the tax refunds into professional car maintenance or repairs, or get another vehicle. I'm not a wealthier man. I have bills to pay and a wedding/living situation to help fund coming up in the next few months.

I slept relatively well last night, for once; I didn't use my standard sleeping pills, but took melatonin instead. Three melatonin pills (not even 1mg total) may be what does the trick for me from this point forward. The problem with melatonin is that sometimes it works really well for me, and sometimes it doesn't work at all -- and I never know which time will be which. Overall, I'm fine with this; I only have about another month (almost exactly another month, actually) of teaching and needing to keep a teaching sleeping schedule during the week anyhow. After that, all of my focus goes to sleeping when and how I can or need to as I ready for the move, packing and cleaning everything possible, etc, and the wedding following that, until I secure another job in Omaha.

Daisy has taken an interim supervisor position at her job, which puts her in direct charge of several of her fellow employees, but not on a permanent basis, and with no apparent other changes to her actual duties (or pay raise, as of right now). It will also change her shifts from Friday-through-Monday nights to Wednesday-through-Saturday, and doesn't affect the time she has on the docket to take off for moving or for the wedding. To be blunt about it, it's probably worth it just to be able to get off the godawful weekend shifts, though the new hours for her aren't much better -- 6PM to 5AM. Right now she works 8:30PM to 7:30AM. She doesn't know when it's going to start yet, either.

"It means I wouldn't get to see you for a good period of time," she said, in reference to after the move and the wedding.

That really depends on when and where I'm working once I get up there and once we're married. As you may recall, I've applied for several positions within said company as well. I've not been contacted about any of them yet, but I have applied for them. Working similar shifts, or staggered shifts even would make it much easier. Otherwise she's right -- if I'm working a daytime job someplace, teaching or otherwise, I'd more than likely be getting home at the time she was getting ready for work, and vice-versa. Half the week we'd be on opposite schedules again. This isn't a huge problem now, as we make it work when I'm here in Kansas and she's there in Omaha, but once we're married it may be a much more stressful issue if we're still barely getting any time together even though we live together.

Of course, I've done this before -- I worked nights in the grocery store many years ago while my ex worked and went to class during the day. It's not exactly pleasant or convenient for anyone involved. If I worked a Monday-through-Friday daytime schedule of 8AM to 5PM, Daisy would be sleeping in the daytime the latter half of the week, and I'd be working on two of her three days off. We'd only have Sunday together when neither of us had to work, and with her working until 5AM Sunday morning, she'd be sleeping all day when I wasn't. If I worked nights somewhere, I'd more than likely have a similar schedule to hers (four days instead of five, probably) but unless our schedules matched up pretty closely, we'd still have trouble getting time together. No, obviously, it's not ideal no matter which way you slice it.

We'll just have to play it by ear and figure it out as it happens, I suppose. Because of my applications to her company, there is a good chance that for at least part of the week, I would or could be working with her if I'm hired on there. I have, though, applied for many other different jobs with different hours and locations -- something that I shall keep doing over the course of the next two or three months until I can get some interviews and the like set up, and possibly get hired on someplace.

The rain and storms that were supposed to happen yesterday never came; it sprinkled for a few minutes yesterday afternoon, and that was about it. It would be nice to get a torrential downpour for about half an hour or so one day I was out and about so that my car could get all the dust rinsed off of it while in one of the parking lots at school. I need to take it over to the car wash at some point soon, once the weather gets into the mid-to-high 70s every day and stays there, but I'm not going to do that while it's still relatively chilly outside and when highs/lows are still in the 30s-50s. Plus, I have to have quarters for that, and I don't have those right now. I never have, nor do I carry, any cash on me. Ever. The car looks so good when it's been freshly-washed, even though a fair amount of its paint is chipped and faded (mostly on the hood; the black paint on the hood has faded so much that it's almost grey). I take the car over to the car wash about twice a year, roughly.

Today it's only supposed to reach the mid-60s, but I'm still wearing shorts because fuck it, I want to wear shorts.

Daisy and I have scheduled for her to come down here for her days off next week; she can't do it this week because she's doing the walk-through of the apartment on Friday morning, and has plans with her friends for tomorrow and for Friday night. This also allows me to give her whatever tax money is left over in person instead of needing to mail the check to her, and gives me time between now and then to use the refund money for the stuff I need to use it for beforehand, such as paying bills and the like. We originally weren't planning on her to come down here again until around the end of the semester, when we'd be doing the bulk of the packing/moving work -- but I'd rather not have to wait more than another month to see her again, obviously. I desperately need some decompression time -- time where, just for a few days, I don't have to be stressed about the packing and moving and wedding, time where Daisy and I can relax together, cook some actual meals, go out to a movie, and just be comfortable around each other -- shutting the rest of the world out. No, my responsibilities don't stop; I'll still have papers to grade next week and lesson planning to do, but I can shuffle that around when necessary (especially as she'd have to leave on Friday morning at the latest) to deal with it when she's not here. We don't like to go any longer than possible without seeing each other, obviously -- long-distance relationships, even long-term ones that will end in marriage in a few months -- can be really stressful and taxing if you don't at least get some time together fairly often. That's why she always comes down here, or I've gone up there, about once a month or so for a few days at a time.

Today, as you probably know, is my long day -- and most of it will be spent holed up in my office on main campus, working on things that need to be done while I'm there. I long for a Tuesday where I don't have a ton of things to do on campus, but those days are done now -- it's basically all business for the hours I'm stuck there from this point forward, and today I have the bonus task of making sure the application and info for the apartment, along with a copy of my driver's license, are faxed to the apartment manager in Omaha for everything to progress smoothly. I need to call said manager once the documents are faxed to make sure she gets them, as well. Then, of course, I have to teach my 011 class tonight, which will run longer than usual as I have a lot to cover in there. I just know that by the time I get home tonight, I will be looking forward to going back to bed -- even though I did sleep well last night. It'll probably be mental exhaustion more than physical, and I'll probably be able to sleep quite well again tonight after getting home -- especially as I won't have to get up early and do anything tomorrow but, well, pay bills with the money I have now.

Shadowboxing

Spring semester: day fifty-five

Upon my trip to Walmart Saturday night, I was able to get one box. One.

No, I'm not kidding.

This isn't because of a lack of boxes (okay, well, in some cases, it was), but because they had cordoned off most of the store as they were getting ready to wax the floors. The checkout girl -- who, as I told Daisy, I'm pretty sure has a crush on me because every time I'm in there she eye-fucks me, even if I don't go through her line -- told me that because of that, there was a really small truck order and as most of the aisles were blocked off, the stocking crew wouldn't get to them until after the floors were done.

The one box I did get was a vinegar box, ironically, and it was relatively large -- but that was only because I literally picked it up out of an abandoned aisle and took it with me. I asked one of the other associates who was stocking the toy aisle if I could have some of his boxes, and he looked at me with deadened eyes (or incredibly stoned eyes, I don't know) and told me "Uhhh....I dunno, man, but you can ask a manager or something."

For fuck's sake. I just wanted like five boxes so that I could get a bigger jump-start on my packing. I've worked retail before. I did it for years. And I was a stocker during that time as well. Do you know what happens with the boxes? All of the boxes? They go into a box-crusher/baler machine, and are disposed of at the back dumpster. Seriously. All of them. That's it. Nobody has to ask a manager for a goddamn thing. I was a manager on the night shift at the grocery store I worked in.

"Okay, well, far be it from me to get you in any trouble or anything," I said, trying my absolute hardest not to roll my eyes (and probably failing), before walking away.

Daisy said that all of the stores in Omaha will save boxes for you, but you have to call in advance for them and pick them up between 6 and 7AM. The reason I waited to go shopping until the middle of the night was to cut out the middleman, so to speak, and just get some of the boxes from the stockers in the aisles. If I do that, I don't have to call ahead, and I can pick and choose what I want/need instead of whatever gets thrown into a pile for me to pick from at the ass crack of dawn. Ironically enough, I don't remember what my ex did for boxes several years ago when she moved out -- I was more of the don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass mentality to keep track of such things.

Of course, in moving here five years ago, I was coming straight out of that grocery store job, and was able to pick whatever boxes I needed on whatever nights they were available then. As an English professor, I don't generally come across that many boxes in my line of work, except for paper boxes. Which, yes, I'll more than likely end up getting several of. They're useful. I'll ask West campus to start saving them for me, as I can't exactly take a stack of boxes with me on the shuttle bus back and forth (or to and from my class there) in any sort of feasible way. At West campus I can just throw 'em in the trunk or backseat.

I do still have a few of my boxes from moving here that long ago, but most of them have already been filled and sealed up from my previous packing. A full third of the spare room is filled with boxes I've already packed and sealed up.

So I got the one box, at least. I also got a roll of duct tape (since I'll need it) and another box of the Hefty Steel-sac trash bags, the super-heavy-duty thick ones (at $10 a box, they'd better be), so that I can trash what needs to be trashed in the coming weeks and months. I only have a few left in the old box -- I'll need more. I also got a pistol hose nozzle for the garden hose, as the nozzle I have now is a "watering shower wand" and doesn't exactly give off a ton of pressure for washing things or rinsing things off. I'll be doing a lot of both before I leave this place.

Yesterday afternoon I edited through my 210 students' projects, and attempted (and failed) to make lesson plans for my other classes. I was just too burned out after using half the ink in a new pen to mark them up. Their big, final project is something that most of them haven't done before, it can be more than twenty pages long (depending on how large the scope of said project is) and requires a lot of research and time invested into it. That's why I give them a month to do it before they turn it in (they started it during their Spring Break) and we have two weeks of peer-review and drafting before it's all due -- and before they do their oral presentations on it the week afterwards as their "final exam" (because they don't have an actual final). I've mentioned that I love teaching 210; it's easy to teach, the assignments are fun and straightforward, it operates on a much different weekly schedule than the other courses I teach, and the students who take it tend to -- for all intents and purposes -- know their shit. As a professor I can change up or modify the lesson plan a bit to suit the course, and change around dates and the like much easier than my other courses as well, and this has worked wonderfully -- so far, this entire semester, I've only had one solitary absence in the course, from one student who was stuck at work late one night and couldn't make it to campus for class. I don't think I've ever taught a class where there's only been one absence, once, the entire semester.

Also, the fact that the class will end completely, with all grades calculated, tallied, and on the books on April 23 -- almost three weeks before the actual semester's end -- is a huge bonus as well. As mentioned before, I could stretch the class out and force them to come in on April 30 and May 7 as well if I wanted to, but there is quite literally nothing left to do on those days. As it is now, aside from telling them how to do their oral presentations, there's nothing left to teach these eight students I have, students who don't have to be told repeatedly that they have to proofread their papers and cite their sources, students who don't have to be continually reminded of due dates or be given "come to Jesus" talks about the quality of their work or the importance of following directions. They all already have the instruction and skills they need to do their work -- now all they're doing is that work.

It's a very dark day today -- while it's in the 60s, it's so dark at 1PM that the streetlights are starting to click on. We're supposed to get rain and storms (though it's not doing anything now) through tomorrow morning, basically, but the plus side is that today is supposed to be the coolest day of the week -- by Wednesday and Thursday the high temperatures are supposed to be up around 80 or so. The weekend was relatively warm, as well; I wore shorts to work on the deck, and was able to break out the flip-flops to get used to them again when it was warm enough during the daytime.

As for everything else in my world, things are...relatively quiet for the moment. Daisy has been working her normal schedule, which requires her to be asleep during the day during most times I'm awake. There's no more wedding planning news, aside from a few of her extended family members who have RSVPed (bringing our total of known guests up to around 66 or something like that). We've also been trying to help my brother -- who is my best man -- find inexpensive airfare out here and back, as he's flying in from Pittsburgh. He's been having a rough time affording the trip or scheduling for it, as he not only has a job but a wife and three kids to support. Daisy found round-trip flights for $379 on Priceline, and we told him that if it was necessary to save money spent on hotel costs, he could stay with us in our place. We have air mattresses; I have one of my own, and Daisy/her family have at least one or two more. I used to sleep on mine all the time in the spare room when it was too cold to sleep downstairs in the winter (before Daisy got me the electric blanket, of course); it's actually fairly comfortable. We may have a few people staying with us, actually -- we also extended that offer to Rae, as well as to one of Daisy's friends who will be flying back in from NYC (if she can make it, that is).

I also told my brother that yes, while it is important to me that he's there and is my best man, it's not more important than being able to pay his bills and support his family, and as he doesn't make a lot of money as it is, I told him that if it is not financially or otherwise feasible to make it out here, it's okay and I'd understand. In fact, I understand his situation better than most would, due to the fact that I also work my ass off just to make ends meet, and he's about the only person I'd allow to basically "opt out" of the wedding because of it. My brother has a lot of proverbial irons in the fire; neither he nor his wife work in traditional office settings, they have to buy their own insurance now because of Obamacare, and they do, as mentioned before, have three kids -- all of whom are homeschooled. I told him to keep us posted and we'll do what we can to accommodate him if necessary and help him out on the logistical aspect of things. My brother is also not the type of person who wouldn't tell me if he wasn't able to make it -- he'd be sure I knew well in advance.

As for the other family-related stresses and issues I've been dealing with for the past several days...who knows what's going on there. I've basically washed my hands of the situation at this point and don't want to be involved with the drama/bitching/pissing-and-moaning involved with it -- it's a colossal waste of my time and energy, and I have enough things to take care of on my own in not only the day-to-day, but in the upcoming weeks and months.

This afternoon I will be creating lesson plans for my classes this week, though those lesson plans will be fairly sparse as we're beginning the big wrap-up of the semester (and that takes several weeks in most cases). I'm collecting two sets of papers tomorrow -- one in each of my classes -- with the larger set (my 102s) needing to be graded by Thursday morning due to conferences (and, y'know, me giving those papers back to them in their conferences). This means that tomorrow afternoon, regardless of how nice it is outside, I'll be spending most of my hours grading through those...only to get another set of papers tomorrow night, papers I'll be grading over this coming weekend. Wednesday night in 210 we're doing full peer reviews of full project drafts, and on Thursday morning I'll hold those aforementioned conferences for my 102 students. I've already done one of the conferences, as I have a student who has to be out of town for the latter half of this week. Said student is probably my best student in that class anyway, so that's not a big deal.

My 011 class will require the most work this week (at least teaching-wise, anyway), because I'm collecting their papers, assigning the next one, covering two chapters in the book, covering a short story, and then will be giving them a simple, fun take-home quiz. Teaching this class may be easy, yes, but it may also be difficult, depending on how many of them actually show up. As I've mentioned before, they're dropping like flies -- I'll have several more who will fail not only due to absences, but mathematically if they don't come in this week and turn in their papers. Not one single student in ANY of my classes, even the ones who had already failed for the semester due to absences and/or not turning in work (and believe me, I've told the ones who have), withdrew from my rosters by the drop date. Not one. Oh well -- it's their grades and GPA, not mine.

And, of course, I have to get gas in the morning before I leave town -- as is customary on Tuesdays, you know. Gas prices have been going up like crazy over the course of the past month or so; for a while, I was getting it for about $3 or so. Now it's hovering around $3.60 and hasn't really gone down any. If anything, it's fluctuated between $3.49 and $3.69 depending on the week, which is insane. Now, I remember paying about $4.20 a gallon in 2008 and probably early 2009, but shit, it's never been this high here for a prolonged amount of time like this since I've been living in Kansas. For months on end last year I was paying $2.88 a gallon or so. I have the money to pay for gas, obviously -- I'm not destitute -- but damn.

Of course, I'm still (rather impatiently) waiting for my tax returns as well. I/we need that money soon. I have bills that will be coming in over the course of the next two weeks, and Daisy needs what I can give her shortly thereafter as well. The federal return should be processed more quickly this time because there's no check that needs to be cut -- it's direct deposit. I'm starting to get twitchy -- not because I can't pay my bills, because I can, but because that money needs to be in my possession soon so that it can be put to use for necessities for both myself as well as Daisy.

So that's what's going on here right now. Now it's time for me to do my lesson planning, eat something, get a shower, and go to bed early this evening. It's Monday night, after all -- even though the weather may be nicer now than it was earlier this semester, Tuesdays are still godawfully long and gruelling for me, and I still need to get the necessary rest to be able to be awake and running for fifteen hours straight between two different campuses.

Don't Mean Nothing, Part II

Today, in my continuing battle to fend off stress and depression, I put on my work clothes and work gloves, and cleaned off my back deck.

It took about two hours, and at the end of it I had two full/overflowing trash bags -- one full of recyclables and the other full of trash/dirt/stuff that desperately needed to be thrown away.

Now all that remains on the deck is the garden hose/sprayer and a few ceramic and plastic pots that I want to save and use. The rest of the deck is bare and has been hosed down/hosed off. I saved some of the planters and the tomato cages in case Daisy's parents want them for their own garden, as they might find them useful (if they don't want them, I'll trash/recycle them too) and I had to save the grill (even though it's about useless and is rusting through) because I have nowhere else to put it and it's too big for the dumpster can -- at least this week -- with everything else in it. I'll probably offer it for free at the garage sale, and then if nobody takes it I'll disassemble it and trash it.

Next week is the garage and storage room. I'd do that tomorrow, but I don't have any more room in the trash/recycling cans for the stuff I'll throw out, and Monday is garbage/recycling day. Again, the goal is to not only get everything cleaned off/cleaned out/thrown out that I don't need, but to also get everything ready for the city-wide garage sale a month from this weekend as well. The garage and storage room is also a big job -- it'll take several hours as there's a lot of stuff in there that, simply put, needs to go away, and both places are probably crawling with spiders just waking up for the spring.

I came back in from the deck and stripped down to wash my dirtied work clothes/gloves, as well as the fleece blanket I recovered from five years' worth of sitting on the back porch (it's perfectly fine, though the way it was sitting made the sun bleach it out in a tie-dye like pattern), and took a shower before applying for a few more jobs at one of the colleges in Omaha. When I logged onto their site, I found that they must take their time in reviewing all of their applications (or there are just a ton of them), as only one of the positions I applied for was currently under review as of right now. Oh well. A few more applications can't hurt. I applied for one of the positions that had been open six months ago, but had closed and reopened again, and applied for another in advising.

I then messaged Daisy, made something to eat, and cleaned out the freezer -- finding some stuff in there I forgot I even had. I used three bags of frozen fruit (cherries and raspberries) to make a blender full of smoothies to drink over the course of the next few days. I loaded up the dishwasher again, but won't run it until I get some vinegar to splash in there (seriously, try it -- your dishes will be cleaner than ever before). 

The plans for the rest of my night are to go to Walmart in a bit for some boxes and some groceries (such as the aforementioned vinegar), and then come home and go to bed. While I know what I'm teaching next week, I haven't yet made my formal lesson plans and I haven't edited through my 210 students' draft projects yet. Yesterday wasn't a great day, and today I've been working around the house on different things almost since I woke up, so I'm rather tired. I don't even want to go to Walmart tonight, but there are things I can no longer wait on -- I need stamps, I need cigarettes, the cats need another bag of their food, and I'm on my last roll of toilet paper. I'm also dreadfully low on actual food for myself in the house. I considered ordering a pizza -- as I do have the money for it, yes -- but decided against it as I wasn't in the mood. I haven't had pizza since the weekend before our last big snowstorm that closed down the university for a few days, but I have to be in the mood for it and it has to sound appealing to me before I'll get it.

I've been making a mental list for stuff I'll need to do/get when my tax refunds come in before I send the rest of the money to Daisy for living expenses/apartment and wedding stuff. I need to pay down my credit cards, for example, and pay whatever bills I have -- including paying for the Publisher's Clearing House stuff I got for the parents. I also have a few items on Amazon -- important ones, not frivolous purchases -- that I need to get, such as some cables/adapters, possibly an inexpensive shop-vac, and an external HD to backup my files (which I've needed for years, badly, and I've been putting off getting). The rest goes to her for whatever she needs/we need, and she may end up socking some of it away so that we can open a joint checking account with it, as that's one of our first priorities once we're married -- it'll make any cash/check wedding gifts really easy to deposit and keep track of in one place, plus (obviously) it'll become our primary bank account. My bank account in West Virginia is going to be practically empty once my job at the university ends and I get my last paycheck near the end of May, as that's what I use to pay all my bills with and I'll have to pay all of them off shortly before and/or shortly after I move, closing accounts with the electric/water/cable companies and the like.

I actually may not have to close my cable (read: internet) account, just transfer addresses on it -- Cox is in Omaha, too, and they have the same plans/rate structure as they have here. I know this because Daisy's parents have the same plan/internet speed I do, and pay the same I do every month for it -- we looked it up. So it may be fairly easy to just call them and say "Hey, I'm moving, here's the new address, turn it off here on date X and on there on date Y," and just hook up the modem and router when I get there. Even if they do some shady, somewhat underhanded business practices sometimes, they've always had wonderful customer service. I told Daisy this and told her to hold off on anything involving the cable, because if I can do that I'll just do that and make it easier.

I filled out the apartment info sheet/application tonight in its entirety and now have it ready to go; all I have to do is print it, print a copy of my pay stub, give them a photocopy of my license, and fax it all on Tuesday.

"Is there anything utilities-wise included in the rent?" I asked Daisy. "For example, most apartments include water and trash in the rent, some include gas or cable/internet as well."

Don't laugh; the last actual apartment I lived in included water/trash and gas in the rent; some big, expensive places -- even here -- include free internet as well. In my last apartment, I only had to pay a $40 or so a month electric bill and a $30 a month internet bill in addition to the rent -- which was, sadly, half of what this place's rent will be. You bet your ass I want to know if anything's included for the amount we'll be paying to live there.

"Trash is," she said. "Or water. I can't remember. I think it's trash."

"Most cities/areas bundle that together," I said. "I've never lived anywhere that didn't."

My water/trash bill here in Newton is $80 a month, if not more. They added an extra $20+ charge to our bills every month about three months ago to help pay for the new water treatment plant. This month, my water bill was $82. Bills in Kansas are outrageous for everything. I mentioned before how my electric bills here in the frozen tundra of winter are usually over $200 a month -- that wasn't a joke. This month it was $150. The most I ever paid for electric anywhere else I lived was about $70 a month -- and that was in the hottest of hot summers when the window-unit air conditioner had to be running near constantly. I try not to run the central air here any more than I have to in the summer, because it does the same thing to my electric bill that the furnace does. Luckily, I won't have to deal with that anymore.

According to what the apartment manager lady told Daisy, the average utility bills for that apartment are much less than what I've been paying here -- but remember, it's also for an apartment and not a house. This is good, because we'll have enough financial finagling to do anyhow regardless of where we're working, whenever and wherever I can get a new job up there.

Anyway.

None of the stressful family issues have been resolved; I don't exactly expect them to be resolved anytime soon, either. There's nothing I can really do about any of them, so in the meantime I have to put my focus on, and spend time on, the immediate things that are going on in my life and around me, and take care of issues one thing at a time. Life goes on. Even train wrecks get cleaned up eventually, right?

Tomorrow I shall sleep in and get up whenever I wake up to work on all of my student stuff, pay at least one of the PCH order bills, if not both, and be a hermit the rest of the day. I'm really glad my weekend is only halfway over. The feeling of knowing that I can sleep as long as I need to sleep in tomorrow -- hopefully to decompress and alleviate some of the stress around me -- is somewhat comforting, at least.

Don't Mean Nothing

Spring semester: day fifty-four




It's been a...rather difficult past 36 hours or so. I've been really tired, my allergies have been killing me, and I've been dealing with snags and problems with almost everything from every angle. I wanted to go to bed hours ago, despite the fact that I didn't wake up until nearly noon today and it's only 11PM now. I'm just...what is the best descriptive term to use here? Weary, I suppose. There are a lot of things going on, and all of them are stressful with only a few of them being good. The biggest one involves family and personal issues out of my control, and while I'm not going to get into them here, let me say that they are indeed distressing -- but nobody's dying, or anything like that, so eh.

It turns out that I don't have to mail the apartment info to the manager lady who's working with Daisy; I can fax it all to them on Tuesday when I get back to campus. The manager lady was, however, nice enough to email me with the mailing address if I need it. So, when I get to main campus on Tuesday I'll make all the copies and printouts I need of everything, and I'll more than likely fax them all up there that afternoon. Daisy gets to do a walkthrough of an identical place on April 11th to get a feel for it and the space/take measurements/etc, and as soon as everything gets cleared she gets to sign the lease on the 1st. I will sign it as well upon my move-in up there, whenever we get all of that worked out.

Daisy wanted to know if I want her to go pick out some furniture before the move -- her parents are apparently giving us at least one couch and maybe a chair for the living room, but she wants to have some more stuff around the house (obviously) before the wedding.

"It doesn't matter to me either way," I said. "I trust your judgment. If you want to go get some stuff before I move in, and set it up before we get all of my stuff up there, that's fine."

"I didn't want to pick anything out without you if it was important to you that you help choose," she said.

"Eh, again, doesn't really matter to me. If you see something you want, and we can afford it, go for it, babe," I replied. "When I get my tax refunds, whatever I send to you, I expect you to do whatever you want/need to do with it. If you want to get furniture with it, fine. If you need it for rent/deposit/other expenses, that's fine too."

I only said this because I wasn't sure where this magical furniture money was going to come from. Neither of us are exactly rolling in wealth at the moment -- tonight, for example, I paid my electric and water bills, effectively cutting my bank account balance in half. She explained to me that she had a budget for everything involving the wedding and the move, and right now she was currently quite a bit under-budget because she got such a great deal on the catering -- less than half of what we were expecting. And Nebraska Furniture Mart (which is based in Omaha) not only has a massive selection, but an apparently massive clearance section.

Yeah. It's that big. It takes up a large chunk of that section of town. No foolin'.

So, anyway, she may do that. I reminded her that I have a fair amount of furniture I'll be bringing with me regardless, though most of the more useless stuff will probably be brought with me just to throw it away or recycle it, as I can't do that here (at least not easily, anyway). All of the living room furniture, for example -- save for my coffee table and TV stand -- will be gotten rid of. The futon is broken, badly, and the couch is really heavy and practically useless. That's why Daisy wants to look for furniture. She's looking for stuff to replace that furniture, as she doesn't have living room furniture of her own. I've given her my blessing to get what she needs if she can find it.

I've tried to keep myself busy and de-stressed by doing work around the house. Tonight I did all of the laundry I had to do and went through my DVDs and video games collection in order to pick and choose the ones I needed to sell. I will soon do the same with my videotapes, music CDs, and books, in order to ready everything for the yard sale next month. Tomorrow, if the weather permits it, my big task is to try to clean off the back deck and trash everything that needs to be trashed, as well as hose it all down and make it as clean as I can. That'll take at least two hours or so, if not longer, and I'm not going to do it if it's cold and/or rainy. I'll have to do the same thing in another week or two with the garage and storage room -- I really can't wait any longer on that, and cleaning what I can out of there now will only be helpful for later when we're readying to move. Every week, I want to clean out another room or area of the house so that it's easier to pack up when I need to pack it up, and that will involve a lot of trashing and recycling of different things. Everything I can get rid of, I will be getting rid of. That's just what needs to happen, sadly. It can't really be avoided. I've probably wasted too much time now as it is, and will be busting my ass between now and the move to get everything done.

I also have to go out tomorrow night -- probably around this time -- to do my grocery shopping and see how many boxes I can get from Walmart as well. I have a lot of different things I need to get that cannot wait any more, and I desperately need to acquire some more boxes if I want to continue to be able to pack things as well. Ideally, at least with my clothing and dishes and the like, once I wash them I'd like to pack them directly into boxes right out of the dryer and dishwasher so that it'll save me time, and that way I'll get that stuff all boxed up gradually instead of all at once in a panic. I've been doing this for what I can, but obviously I can't do it for everything.

The grocery shopping, of course, is another issue altogether -- while yes, I can get some things I need, I also have to eat everything I can out of the freezer and pantry between now and when I move so that it's not a mess to move overall. That means the week or so before I move, I'll probably be surviving on a few pizzas or Hot Pockets or something like that just so that I don't have to migrate a ton of food with me to Omaha. Daisy is already planning to stock the house with everything she can when it comes to foodstuffs, so the less I have to bring with me, the better. I have stuff in the pantry, even dry goods, which have been in there since I moved into this house in 2009 (or worse, they've been in that mix of stuff since I lived in Missouri), and that stuff needs to be tossed or donated.

I'm not a wasteful person, but after so many years of living here and so many things I've just...accumulated, I feel like so much of it is just going to go in the trash or recycle bin. And I really don't know how I feel about that, or how I'm supposed to feel about that. In another life, another time, it was useful to me, or otherwise I wouldn't own it...but now? I have so many things gathering dust and cobwebs. When the great gutting happens, it's going to be swift and brutal.

Oh well. It's all for the greater good, I suppose. I am starting a new life in Omaha, essentially. I'll be a married man, a husband to my wife -- and, eventually, a father. That's what's important to me now. There are only so many things I can keep, and only so many things I need. It will feel good to leave Kansas behind, honestly. I've done my time here, I've paid my dues, and now it's time to move on -- and I'll move on as a much different, wiser, battle-hardened person than I was before I came here.