Sunday, November 09, 2008

It's Hard to Publish When You've Nothing Nice to Say


The title pretty well says it all.

The election is the only really good thing to talk about right now -- and that's been covered by everyone else.

I'm working very, very hard in grad school. My lovely 4.0 took a huge header when I actually FAILED a huge paper -- but the prof let me try to make it up. I ended up with a low B on the paper and was grateful for that. Then I blew an on-line test and my grade point average for the class was suddenly in the mid-B range and I finally thought -- "screw it, nothing wrong with a B" and just tried to relax. The next paper and test went back up to the A grades so the grade point now sits at 91.33% and I'm trying not to blow it again. The writing and reading assignments in this class are monstrous and I'm totally overwhelmed.

I'm working very, very hard at teaching. This is my month for IEP's and mostly they have been conducted but mainly they haven't been written up. Also I've not made any inroads on my new course for second semester so I think I'm going to have to give up grad school in the spring and concentrate on building a new curriculum for the Freshman / Sophomore English course I'm going to teach.

I've been very, very sick on and off throughout August, September, and October but for the last week have been recovering nicely, once again. I can only hope that "sick" stays away for the rest of the year. I got the 24 hour flu (yeah, I know, it's not really flu) at school a week ago Monday. I couldn't make it to the bathroom on the third huge vomit but the kids were kind to me and haven't made me feel stupid about about covering myself in crap. Hubby came and got me fairly quickly and I spent 24 hours in bed recovering. However, I've had a lot of sick days this semester, more than I ever expected.

I've been wanting to tilt at windmills but the effort seems fruitless -- so I've taken the easy road out and simply stayed away from the windmill. Makes my Sunday mornings really peaceful and quiet and actually very productive. Hubby, though, is in the center of the storm. I've told him I'd go if and when he wanted / needed me to support him but my heart has abandoned the windmill, I think, forever. Autocrats fry my soul and unilateral decisions boil my brain. 'Nough said -- at least for the time being. Bah! Humbug!

Luie is adjusting to our family. He's a hoot of a dog. The eye doc says he will be totally blind very soon -- the eyes are failing rapidly but Luie doesn't seem to mind. He just loves life. Gussie likes him enough to sleep on him during the cold spells. That says a lot about how well he fits into our family.

Today I got all the summer clothes put away. I had resisted doing it because of the many trips required up and down the stairs AND we kept having days in the 70's and 80's. But it's November and this weekend we had temps in the teens so it was finally time. I always forget how much I like my winter clothes -- my winter happy pants are really nice. My summer clothes are not so pleasant in the wearing so when I finally got all the shirts and skirts and dresses put stored away and all the lovely happy pants upstairs and folded in the drawers, I realized how much I was looking forward to wearing my warmer clothes.

I'm going to try to update a bit more regularly . . . but a huge paper is due in grad school for the 24th of November, so this could be a pipe dream. Happy fall, my friends.

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