mimsy and outgrabe

This is something that my lovely therapist M. (former, since I'm a chump and can't carve out time to see someone right now) used to say to me when I sat in her cozy office and threw up (metaphorically) all of the many many many things that stressed me out and caused me to be a frenetic ball of panic and catastrophe. She would wait for a pause in my litany of "blah blah blah stress blah blah blah work blah blah blah kids" and then say something to the effect of, "You just have too many good things vying for your attention right now."  She was really adept at reminding me, gently, to be appreciative of my good fortune. As I write that paragraph above, too, I'm conscious of the fact that to have anyone vying for my attention makes me lucky; I could be alone, really alone. Not in a comfortable, peaceful, solitary way of being alone -- like my mornings, when I write (or, unfortunately, as of late -- grade). But the aloneness that feels closed, without ...

Well, somehow I made it to the end of the week without completely losing my mind or my dignity. I say completely, because I'm fairly sure I lost a little of both. And that's pretty standard. I'm losing brain cells and pride the way a beach loses sand . . . a little bit at a time, imperceptibly, until one day, people'll be like, "Wow, she's nuts!" the way we go to the beach and say, "Wow, the water's right up to the dunes now." Or something like that. The beach losing sand is more impressive, really. I have a gajillion papers to finish grading this weekend. And myriad errands to run with the kiddos, who need clothes, diapers, birthday presents for friends . . . so I don't have high hopes for the grading. I do have good news to share, though. Verse Wisconsin Online published two of my poems (with audio -- a first for me!) and the issue was just released today. So that's happy-making. Even if I look like a sleep-deprived h...

The first snow of 2013 set me back a bit in the blog world, mostly because it set me back also in the writing-poems world. A. worked 16 hour days through the storm, and because I waited up for him to travel 40 miles back from the yard each night, I didn't stick to my morning writing schedule. It might be the pregnancy hormones overriding my innate impulse to stick-to-a-schedule-no-matter-what -- or I could just be worn out from carrying around all this extra weight -- but whatever the reason, I've been tired, tired, tired lately, and taking advantage of any chance to sleep. Yesterday, however,  I brushed up those three monologues from November, and shipped them off to A.P., who I'll meet with (eventually) and see what he thinks. Progress on this verse play creature is being made, even if it's in tiny, tiny increments. I managed to grade about 1/2 of the material I brought home with me this weekend. I consider this quite an accomplishment considering I was h...

Sack O' Papers That's right. One class down. Freshman Composition grades are FINISHED -- oh, with the exception of one student WHO BETTER GET HIS VERY LATE PAPER UPLOADED TO THE COURSE SITE PRONTO OR IT'S NOT GONNA BE GOOD NEWS FOR HIS GRADE. Also, I DID enter my developmental course's grades on Thursday, so technically that's TWO classes down. Also, I managed to wrap Christmas presents last night and this morning, so I'm more ahead of the game than I've ever been before! (Not to jinx myself -- but I'm hoping I'm this productive tomorrow, and that I can actually go to sleep on Christmas Eve, instead of wrapping presents into the wee hours like I've done every other Christmas since we began having kidlets.)

The semester is finally over. I've collected all of the last assignments, and now I must grade them. This is what my weekend will look like: Portfolios, Final Papers, Accepted Late Work I suppose it's not so bad. I mean, at least I can't accept anything else at this point. I'VE LEFT THE OFFICE. I'M NOT GOING BACK UNTIL AFTER THE NEW YEAR.  I'm so tired! But yesterday was actually kind of fun, in that I was able to say goodbye to a couple of students who I'm particularly fond of, and wish them well. One had the spectacular news that he's being scouted by Villanova FOR AN ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP (Who knew they scouted for academics? I didn't. But knowing it now makes me feel better about the world, somehow.) And I received a lovely thank you card from a student for whom I wrote a letter of recommendation back in November, and a couple of students said in a non-ass-kissy way that they enjoyed their class. Another student hand-wrote a ...