mimsy and outgrabe

This week featured only one day of teaching, thanks to a fantastic virus that struck Little Miss Talkalot II. I guess her body was already kind of run down from having that 24-hour stomach virus the week before, because she came down with a fever on Monday and it didn't leave until yesterday. 72 hours of fever is a little extreme in the kid-world. After a week with me, she's ready to return to school now. As a result, I've worked a little bit on my play (reformatting, mostly, into an old-fashioned standard script form -- which is really, really counter-intuitive and highly fucking annoying, but necessary if I'm going to start submitting the thing) and very little on poems. The rest of my time has been divided between running between the kitchen and the living room for Little Miss Talkalot II, who -- despite being feverish and congested and generally miserable -- still had an immense appetite, and sending and answering emails in an effort to keep the last weeks...

It's amazing how a person can teach for 11 years and only JUST figure out in her 11th year that, maybe, she should figure out 1) EXACTLY how much time it takes her, on average, to grade the assignments that she grades and 2) schedule it into her work week just like she schedules class time and office hours and meeting times, so that the time is accounted for and protected and separate from all other things. (And by "a person" I mean me, and by "amazing" I mean kind of shameful and stunning in its obviousness.) Patti Smith talk about writing in Hartford last weekend. So good. I imagine there are people who are kind of horrified at the idea of scheduling your days in increments and appointments but that's the nature of this gig, I think -- at least, if you're going to do this gig well enough to keep your sanity and not get fired. (And by gig I mean teaching higher-ed. Sheesh. Constantly qualifying. This week has drained me. Brain not quite workin...