Nostalgia

On SCAToday someone posted photos from a recent event that happened in the incipient shire in Spain. So I went to look.

Soooooo glad I did. The photos remind me of all my pleasant memories of Spain (okay, except for the champagne and grapes New Years Eve) and none of the stuff I hated.

Mmmmmmmm. Soft cooing noises.

Catching a breath

All right, I admit it--I'm procrastinating. The papers are sitting in a folder to be graded, I've got to go teach a class in 40 minutes, another at 2...

So I've been reading live journal, thinking,...anything but grading. Trying to decide whether to put in to go to the NCTE conference next month in Pittsburgh (my boss cautions me to fly because it's "quite a hike." I snicker quietly to myself. "No? Really?")

It's midterm week, so there's lots of planning, regrouping, trying to figure out where we go from here. How much of my original plan is essential, how much can I dump, fiddle with,....? The kids are all exhausted, from work and the psychological exhaustion that comes from knowing there is no break until Nov. 22, and from the successive plagues that have been running roughshod through campus. Very nasty bugs, both of them, that the Drs. advise fluids and rest for. The fluids they can do, but rest isn't really an option, and truly is the only thing that works. Yes, they need to tough it out, but at a certain point there is a law of diminishing returns--they keep going they get sicker and can't do the work, they don't keep going they get so behind in the work they can't catch up.

I'm so tired myself I can hardly keep track of where I am. Didn't want 7 classes ever--I hope the college figures out we need more faculty soon.

There are bright spots--the student who wrote the paper that was both on the assigned topic AND funny. The dozen (out of 150) who are really committed to doing the work and doing it well. The ones who don't expect me to bend over backwards when they've been irresponsible. I got to show an episode of Buffy and a Bugs Bunny cartoon on Monday, and today is an episode of Star Trek. We're doing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and we're looking at other versions, or heavily influenced examples. I wonder what they'll think of Spock and Kirk.

Okay--time to muster.

Perverse

It's way too late for me to be up. I have to be out of the house by 6:45, which those of you who have been around me in the A.M. know means I have to have a cup of tea in my hand no later than 5:45--unless you intend to point me at something you want dead, and are wearing Kevlar yourself.

In the other room, there's a bed, with a warm man in it, my puppy laying beside it, my cat snuggled up where my feet have to go. I haven't had caffeine since 4. I'm really, really tired, and I'm typing. Maybe because if I go to sleep, tomorrow is here sooner, and I'd just as soon skip the programming for tomorrow and go straight to Friday.

Nothing traumatic. Just beyond the pale of annoying. Waaaaay too reminiscent of dealing with a polling order you'd just as soon nuke, but have to sit there, trying to be supportive, while they play out their assinine little psychodramas. I have to spend 4 hours tomorrow night with people so self-absorbed in their little penny-ante politics that it makes me long for the sanity of baronial catfights. And while I've got responsibility for all their little toys, I have no authority, no background on how my job is supposed to be done, and less patience for any of it. I've been having fantasies of walking up to the woman in charge, who is blithely disregarding every bit of how we agreed we would work together, and telling her "I quit." The next month is hell-time for this job (for which I get paid--$200 for the year), and I have no clue where I'd find the time if I was motivated. Since what I'm motivated to do is throw a Molotov cocktail (making one of those I've got time for!), I really don't see where or how it's going to happen. And it has to happen.

I think, come January, when the new officers go into place, there's going to be a conspicuous hole where I used to be, and they can just bloody well cope.