Yagh

Sometimes the wall is a lot closer than others. I was a photocopying fool earlier, which of course also necessitated sorting it all out and making sure the right stuff went in the right folders. (Mind numbing and time consuming, but a nice feeling of cleared space around my feet.) And of course, in that process, I thought of about 40 more things I need to prep and copy, very very soon. However, I did decide to make the 102 students download their own review sheets for next week's assignment. They can use their paper and ink, dammit.

I also chipped away at the schedule of assignments for 265. I even have everything photocopied up through the week after spring break, which is a huge relief. I still want to figure out the rest of the assignments, even if I don't get them all copied right away. (I hope to use the copy center for the rest so all I have to do is get the master ready.) Of course, as I was driving away from the house, running late for my morning appointment, I realized I'd left my volumes of Sexton, Atwood and so on sitting on the whatnot by my front door. Much cursing ensued, followed by resignation. I'd hoped to nail the whole thing down today, but I'll just have to pull that end of things together later. I already know that the students won't be happy with the number of poems I have assigned for one week coming up, even though I'm only requiring four response sheets. I just couldn't keep myself from assigning just one more cummings poem.... As it stands, it seems we'll alternate a relatively easy week with a pretty tough one (and I think I have the readings staggered so the tough ones do not coincide with a writing assignment, but I can't guarantee that). Ah well. They'll live. So will I. We all have to remember to relax and breathe and know that it's all open to change.

After all that, I started marking homework left over from what feels like several decades ago--and that's when I hit the wall. Nothing particularly awful about the journals I was marking, but I was saying pretty much the same thing over and over, and obviously that gets tedious. And since I didn't sleep well (or enough) last night, I quickly ran out of focus and patience. It's damned early yet--mid-afternoon, for heaven's sake--so I have this fantasy that I'll go home, nap, and then be charged up to do more marking. Getting some more stuff marked today will help me feel OK about the weekend, so I don't feel like I have to grind myself to a nubbin to be ready for the resumption of festivities next week--but I still am hanging on to this "It's the break: I should be having fun" mentality. And quite rightly.

So I will go home and nap and then see how I feel. But pre-nap, I'm going to go to the Apple store to get some accessories for my delightful iPod nano. It's entirely possible that will sap the last of my energy, nap or not (the mall! the mall! aaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!), but it's something I wanted to do for myself over this break, so I'm just going to. So there. Funny how I feel the need to justify these things (to myself, not to you, dear readers). I need to remind myself that I make up the rules, and since they're my rules, I can arbitrarily change them at any moment. Like now.

Side note: I am interested to see what the spell-check function here picks up. For instance, it recognizes "dammit" as a word but not the hyphenated prefix "pre" as part of a word. Curious.