You're a Bad Drunk, World. Go Sleep it Off.

The first week of the academic year went relatively smoothly, although when yesterday came around I was massively under-prepared and so didn't eat much all day OR have a dinner plan for the kids pre- or post- soccer practice. The result was that I was exhausted by 9 p.m., but for all of that chaos, it was still a good day. While it's still too early to confirm any first impressions, the students in my classes are really engaged this year and it's not been an uphill battle to get them to participate in discussion. (And that can really make all the difference. Talking "at" a silent crowd is really, like, the worst. Particularly if they're a silently hostile crowd.)

The things that distract me at soccer practice.

I teach three classes back to back on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that makes for a day without much room for error. I just need to prepare more on Monday and Wednesday nights to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The week was made a little more unusual and crazy by 1) my mother taking a spill down some stairs while vacationing in London (thankfully, she's okay) and 2) Hurricane Irma. There was a lot of worried texting between family members that consumed the afternoon and evening hours after my lovely mum texted us initially with something to the effect of, "I just fell down the stairs and suffered a major head injury! Blood everywhere! This might be the end! Also I'm turning off my phone now, byyyyeeeeeeee!!" (LIKE, FOR REAL, YOU DID THAT, LADY.) Also, my husband is a lineman (as in, for the county, not for a football team) and we spent a night running around the house gathering up everything he might need for a several-week stay in Florida restoring power after Irma wrecks it. He left yesterday morning.

Also, WTF, world? Catastrophic earthquakes and possible tsunamis in Mexico. Fires engulfing the Pacific Northwest. Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. My skin is crawling. I'm not a pessimist by any stretch of the imagination, but today when I woke to the news of that earthquake in Mexico, so close on the heels of these other disasters, man-made and otherwise (although I feel like they're all the result of mankind's careless and/or purposely horrific actions, somehow), I had a feeling like, maybe this is the end. Maybe my kids are the last generation. Maybe we're fucked.

So, other than donating to disaster relief efforts and #resisting the Orange Menace's infantile, narcissistic, jackass contributions to the destruction of our country, I suspect the only thing one can do is pull up a lawn chair, pour a stiff drink, and watch the shit-show until hellfire rains down and obliterates your party. 

I don't really feel that gloomy, by the way. I'm unnerved by the chaos and terror in the world, but it's my nature to look on the bright side. And yet today's my birthday, so sitting in a lawn-chair and soaking in this gorgeous late-summer weather while it's still possible (in the realistic, seasons-change-weather way, not a nihilistic, end-of-the-world way) actually sounds pretty damn appealing to me.