Which way the wind blows

Not sure how I'm feeling now. The weather vane of my mood is not pointing in any certain direction. Mellow, certainly. Tired, certainly. But also have had a very blahh late afternoon/evening. My classes at The Other School on the Hill went well this morning, as well as my afternoon at the community college. Was blasting my tunes driving in the bright sunshine, feeling pretty awesomesauce, but then I got home and the energy just sort of drained out of me. Tried to get some things done but ended up taking a nap. Oh, how lazy of me! Tried ordering Chinese food for dinner and that sucked. I have said it before but I will say it again and with more finality - I am done ordering from that particular Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant. I'm tired of thowing money away on tough chicken with ginger that includes NO vegetables.

I mean, can you imagine? A chinese food carton full of dried chunks of gingery chicken and NOTHING ELSE?

I wanted to take a bath earlier, but took a good look at the tub and said EW. And do I feel like scrubbing the tub? Hells naw.

And so there it is and there you have it. Oh, one more thing. I STUPIDLY ordered a vitamin supplement for what I thought was a 30-day free trial and then realized after I'd ordered it that it wasn't free, it was "risk-free," which is a bullshit marketing term that means you can return it if you don't like it. I'm a dumbass. My intuition warned me, but did I listen? No. NO. I immediately called back and asked the guy to cancel my order, but of course only a manager can do that, so I have to call back in the morning and call this manager dude Robb. Jeezus.

So right now I'm not feeling so spiffy. Tomorrow's my nasty 9-hour day with the independent study and the 7-hour straight shift of tutoring. Something to look forward to, right?

I guess feeling uncertain is better than feeling shitty.

Grumpus Maximus

I've been a grumpus since last night. I came home sick from work yesterday. That only took 2.5 weeks of the new semester. Still better than last semester, in which I was sick before classes even started, but I'm still not happy with the apparent continuation of the sickly theme.

One of two things are going on:

1. I secretly hate my professional life, my subconscious is sabotaging it, and my body is trying to tell me how miserable I actually am.
-OR-
2. My immune system is really so delicate that a few nights of wacky sleep schedule is enough to cause me to catch the first germ that comes along.

Tutoring is worse than teaching when it comes to germ exposure. Students come in all sniffly and snotty and are all up in my face, and I often have to handle their books or whatnot. I need to do better at keeping them at arms length if they come in all sickly.

Truth is, I think that it is likely a combination of 1 and 2. Although I love my new job, I have already found it very stressful to be shuttling between two campuses, two institutions, two totally different types of work, two radically different environments. I need one job that suits my needs. I have to stop this patchwork piecemeal life. I can't take it anymore.

I have put out feelers for any possibility of increasing my hours at the tutoring job, so that I can start transferring my proverbial eggs into that basket, but that college has just entered a hiring freeze, so my hopes are dim that that can happen. This means I have to keep struggling with this fucking crazy schedule that includes early mornings, late nights, and one day a week that I have to be in both places. I can't get a handle on the balance of it. I've sworn off all 10:00 television programming (which, alas, includes Burn Notice and Leverage) so that I can try to be in bed and asleep by 11:00, so that getting up at 6:30 won't feel like dragging my cold corpse from the grave every morning.

I realize that to many, this sounds like a bunch of whining. Sam Axe would call me "a bitchy little girl." But the fact remains that I am going to be 42 in less than a month, and I'm working a young-woman's game with this kind of schedule and work. I deserve something much better, with benefits, a reasonable work load and schedule, and somewhere I can hang my hat and say "this is where I work." I love being a tutor (which is more complex than just the 1-on-1 work, because we do workshops, classroom visits, and other such things), and I love doing the operations stuff that my job entails. I need more of that.

So how can I make this happen? Incidentally, I wouldn't mind doing that kind of job in a place with palm trees.

I should note that I felt my best this winter the two weeks I got up and went to the retreat house to write every day. Underneath this entire discussion about how to earn a living is the undeniable identity and desire to write and do nothing else. How to get that to pay the bills...that's another topic for discussion.

In all seriousness I have nothing to be grumpy about. Our financials are looking up with Bizarro's bonus and my paychecks being stronger than I'd anticipated. We're on a budget and it's working out well. I've been writing and getting things done.

But last night I realized was 6 months to the day (Wed. the 22nd) that Mom died. I had a hard time falling asleep anyway because it's so damned muggy and gross, but then weird shit kept happening.

Weird shit? you ask. Yeah like a pile of pots and pans that I need to bring to Salvo suddenly fell over on it's own. I kept hearing things that, with my earplugs on, I couldn't tell what they were. (I know that's a grammatically fucked up sentence but I don't care.) I got up numerous times and at one point saw a centipede crossing the room. SERIOUSLY? A centipede. EW GROSS. I had to dispatch the centipede or there was no way I was ever going to sleep. Just a really frickin' aweful night. And of course these things always happen the night before I have to get up and clean house at the rectory, so that I'm a zombie.

And that's where I'm off to now. My head feels like a trash compacter, only instead of trash it's snot. This weather is killing me.

But on the bright side, we are going to Massachusetts next month so there's something to look forward to. I hope there's some decent weather when we get there.

Oh crap time to go to work.

definitely me today:

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One Down...

Today was my last day at Out of Town University. I handed in my grades after meeting with my students for the last time, and then off I went, never looking back.

The morning drive was very pretty, actually, with snow and ice clinging to every wisp and branch in the morning sun. The roads were clear, which was a relief, seeing as how I drove through a frakking snowstorm on Tuesday.

Stopped at the grocery store on the way home, then a car wash (ew salt), then home to find my door was completely unlocked, and all the doors inside were wide open, thus destroying the system we've developed for preserving the precious little heat we are afforded here in the Beehive.

I got into my email and had looked at 2 of the 13 in my inbox when the internet went out. The Cable Guys showed up shortly thereafter and informed me that they were updating the service, etc. etc. and hadn't the apartment manager sent notices around? It was they who had been in and out of the apartment, leaving the door unlocked and all the doors inside open to let the heat escape. Not to mention opening the front door 90 billion times. It's only 4:00 and already it's chillier than it should be in here.

I never ate lunch, either.

Then I found out I missed my friend R's birthday yesterday. I am sorry I missed it, but jumpin' jeezus on a pogo stick I've had shit raining down on me non-stop for the last month and it's all I can do to keep my sanity. It didn't dawn on me that it was Dec. 5 = R's birthday. I was grading papers and assigning final grades for Out of Town University when I wasn't teaching at the Other School on the Hill.

I've begun taking the little blue pills for seasonal affective disorder and I hope they kick in soon.