The Light at the end of the Tunnel

I feel like I'm perhaps on the upswing here. Had some good work outs this week. On top of grading and stuff thus far (a set of drafts come in today, and I will crank those out before afternoon). I got about 900 crappy words written yesterday, for the article due Monday (yeah, up pressure cooker anyone?? ha! and it only needs to be 2000-3000 words), so that did make me feel a little bit better.

I have a feeling though that some students have just fizzled out and I do wonder if I'll get a complete set of drafts or not this morning. We shall see what happens.

Today I really need to try to clean this place up, or start cleaning this place up. It's gross. Seriously. I'm embarrassed. But with the pace of this course, the exhaustion, a week of being sick, two dogs who are majorly shedding because of the heat, shit. It's more than a body can bear. But I will make a valiant effort this afternoon when I'm done grading. I will open a bottle of wine, prep the food for tonight, and drink and clean because cleaning is always better and doable with wine.

Totally unrelated--but does anyone out there watch Hell's Kitchen by chance? First of all, I LURVE Gordan Ramsay (say what you will--I get taken to task on this all of the freaking time, so whatever. I love him). But I hate this season. This is the first season I'm pulling for the men, and I find more of the women this season to be complete irredeemable human beings. They are so so gross. And I can accept that it's done for ratings and for entertainment, but as I was catching up on the show yesterday afternoon, I had to stop watching. They are seriously so disgusting that I can't even enjoy the spectacle of the show anymore. Like really? That's how you want to present yourself to a national audience and to people to are already your clients or patrons? Or am I seriously just getting old? Or is it a combination of both? I can't tell.

Anyway, four more days of actually showing up to campus left. Three more days of class time, one of which is peer review, the other two of which are in class writing for the entire class so they can work on their essays and ask questions as they're writing. And then I'm done! Except for grading, but I'm done! Yippee! That leaves me two months to write my monster (literally and figuratively) article and start developing the other one and prep for the fall class and work on a course proposal. And while the husband is in class and doing homework, I will do my own work. I certainly have to make a schedule for that, but I'll worry about that when this is done. But I'm so close to being finished with this quarter I can hardly contain myself!!

P.S. I also love the new Dallas. I DVR'd last night's episode so I'm not up to date yet, but I hope it sticks around. I'm giddy with nostalgic delight.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

I have decided that today will not be a marathon grading session.

I will get through as many drafts as I can during my office hours. And then I will finish them tomorrow. I'm hoping to get through at least 10.

I have a marathon draft commenting day on Thursday. I'll save my energies for that.

Today we look at an essay. Tomorrow we finish the movie and talk about it in context of today's essay. Wednesday is a short essay we read. Then from here on out, all I do is look at drafts. No more prep.

The end is in sight.

While I didn't get hardly any sleep last night, I feel okay this morning. Okay enough to go for a run before class since it's like 100 in the afternoons now, there's no way I'm running after class.

Also, I think there may have been something going around over here, contributing to my exhaustion and its accompanying depression. One of my friends has been sick all week and battling a 101 degree fever! And the husband said there were a couple of cases of strep throat at drill. And a few of my students have been sick enough to end up in the doctor's office--a couple twice already! So maybe I had a bug. I'm glad it wasn't worse than it was! Although I did feel like the world was ending.

All right. I'm going to enjoy my coffee, contemplate my day, and then run, teach, grade, and then consider cleaning and putting things away when I get home, since I'm not going to kill myself grading this afternoon. I feel like I need the house clean so that I can focus on writing that little article that's due in a week.

Better Mood?

Wow, it seems to be a rollercoaster of sorts over in these parts here between my anger/angst and feelings of serenity. Perhaps it's time to go back on the meds till I get a handle on thing? Who knows. It's a sure sign of either depression, PMS, or both. In any case, it's wreaking havoc on me. And I don't want this place to be such a negative space. But I guess all that negativity, or a large portion of it is academic related, so oh well.

Anyway, yesterday, I came home and took a nap. Turns out that was just what I needed! It's the simplest things that make the biggest differences! I had already worked out in the morning before class (something that didn't happen this morning because it's too much of a rush to do so on TR mornings, but it looks like on MWF mornings it's going to start happening), so I didn't have to work out when I came home. The husband cleaned the kitchen, did his homework, and then cooked me dinner. I spent the afternoon sleeping and reading stuff for fun! Turns out, that was a great idea! I know I have grading and stuff to do, but I'm trying really hard to be protective of my time here at home. Because next week, for sure and for real!! is when I add the research time blocks to my calendar!!  Especially if I get into the habit of getting the MWF workouts done in the morning, then I have large blocks of time in the afternoon on those days to get that stuff done. Even on TRs if I work out when I get home, I have time in the afternoons for that. And I really have to start working on that article and that conference paper. I need to do the research for the conference paper. Right now, I'm refusing to grade at home. I refuse to bring that stuff home with me unless absolutely necessary. And I have plenty of office hours during the week in which to get that stuff done. And I don't have legions of students (or even a trickle for that matter) coming to see me yet, so there's no reason for me to bring any of it home, honestly.

Thankfully today I just give midterms. Tomorrow I take up essays and give a midterm. I think in the freshman class we're going to watch something. So I have plenty of time to ease into a new routine and start adding the research this coming week.

With any luck, I'll be motivated today and get the bulk of the take home midterm exams graded while the students take their in-class exam and during my office hours. So the goal by 11:00 is to:

• Finish the TR take home midterm exams
• Get halfway through the MWF take home midterm exams or more--Not quite. I only made it through 6 of them, but I did grade a total of 17 today which means I've got about 33/62 total done. That's pretty good progress. So I'm counting that as accomplishing today's grading goal.

And that's it. The actual in class midterms will be easy to grade, so I'm not worried about that.

The goal for tomorrow:

• Finish MWF take home midterms
• Get 1/3 way through 101 final drafts, so about 7 of them, at a minimum.--this did not happen. Rather I plowed through ALL of the midterms, in all their forms.

All right, now it's time to sally forth!

Have a great day all!

The Storm Has Passed.

I am happy to report that after yesterday's rant, a whole helluva lot of chocolate, a good dinner (actually, no my dinner sucked, but I cooked it, so it was better than pizza or eating out), and three very finely crafted snobby beer, a great movie, and some episodes of this series, a decent night's sleep, I awoke, albeit early, significantly less splenetic than of late. Actually, this was the first morning in a week that I've not felt like beating someone up.  And let me tell you, it felt wonderful not to wake up angry. Good lord. It was sapping a very large amount of energy out of me. But I am happy to report that I do feel better. I think what I needed was a day like yesterday. A day to pout, complain, rant, be angry, cry, not teach on a weekday, clean a little bit, cook, indulge in cookies, and drink. What helped was that it was an off day for a Friday and that meant I didn't waste a Saturday, thus half the weekend being a grump. I've got tomorrow and Monday still off, so I think I seriously just needed a mental health day that didn't cut into my weekend.

This morning, I got up early (unplanned, but I figured, what the hell, I was up), made some coffee, journaled, and then I worked out for 2:45. Yes, that is correct. I worked out for almost three hours. I did 90 minutes of yoga, an hour's worth of legs, and 15 minutes of abs. I was smoked by the time I was done, but I felt so much better. I attempted to work out yesterday, but I was so mentally exhausted that after I put on my workout clothes and got the den set up, I just started crying, weeping over how I didn't want to workout, begging the husband through my tears to tell me it was okay for me not to work out. I took a shower instead and went and bought a new French Press and then cleaned the kitchen and then bought chocolate.

I made some progress on the office yesterday. Turns out the plans I had for organizing and cleaning during the break aren't going to work out quite like I wanted them to. The office is a much bigger task than I had anticipated. I managed to get both desks moved and set up (now the Husband has his own workspace that's NOT the kitchen table) AND get some of the shelves cleared off so the Husband could unpack his boxes of books (he was really cute--he cataloged them as he unpacked them). I got the cookbooks moved to a shelf in the kitchen. All in all, the office is half done. I think we may be done working on the organizing and stuff for the day as well. I cleaned my bathroom. I'm about to clean the kitchen up a bit, and then it's off to the grocery store and the liquor store and then back to cook and hang out with each other for the rest of the day.

I'm so glad that I feel better today. So very glad.