Exhausted Before It Even Begins

So I've spent the last two days in training for my writing consultant job. I was picturing myself sipping coffee, meeting my new coworkers, commiserating about the start of a new semester, and filling out a few forms.

That is not what happened.

That is so not what happened.

My life until May.

Turns out this is a job job. Not only will I consult with students, but I've been assigned a special project over the course of the semester that involves helping Masters and Doctoral students with their theses (sounds like feces for a reason). As if I know anything about Doctoral theses. In medicine. Or science. Or creative writing. Or, let's be honest, in anything.

Not only that - they want me to do a book review related to this project and they have already scheduled me to present a variety of workshops for faculty in their classes. These are not the whole let-me-tell-you-a-bit-about-writing spiels. These are detailed, major-specific, discipline-specific lecture workshops.

The introvert in me has shriveled up and died in advance. It refuses to be a part of this.

Also, have I mentioned that all of this is in addition to freakin teaching two classes of my own?

And taking two reading-heavy classes?

Who thought this was a good idea?

What I want to do until May.

Also what I want to do until May.

Last night I settled down (in bed) to read around 8:30. I don't remember anything else until I woke up at NINE THIRTY this morning. NINE THIRTY! I never sleep in past, say, 7:00 or so. This is insane. I'm not going to survive the next few months. I'm telling you.

Thank GOD Monday is a holiday and all hell won't break loose until Tuesday. I'm using the weekend to finalize and print off my syllabi, purchase the rest of the books I need for the lit classes, pull a Tasmanian Devil and organize the crap out of the house and my car, tutor a few students, prep for a week of tutoring (including a new student), and pray pray pray for my own sanity.

We are also having peeps over for dinner!!! I begged Chef Campo to help us change our 1970's ceiling fan in the dining room and in exchange, we would ply him with endless wine and homemade pasta.  (Meanwhile, Nat King Cole, my niece, Lucy, and I will be off in another room doing girly things and staying away from all the testosterone and tools in the kitchen.)

I was tempted to buy this puppy but G talked me out of it.

I mean, who wouldn't want to enjoy a home cooked meal under a bunch of swaying antlers?  My Papa would be so proud.

Before and After pics coming soon, along with the final book reviews for a long, long time.

Enjoy the weekend, peeps!

Reading About Prison During My Free Time (PUNNY!)

Get it? My FREE time?

Look, I have to start up all kinds of work tomorrow and have to put on real clothes and like, act professional, so throw me a bone here, people.

Bye, bye, reading books for fun! Bye, bye, reading books that I don't have to then write papers about! See you in, oh, June.

But! This is a good one and you must read it.

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman

As you know, this is an enormously popular show produced by Netflix, but did you know it's actually a memoir? I haven't seen the show, but I've heard mixed reviews, that it's fantastic and super duper vulgar.

But the book is pretty darn good (and is not vulgar). Piper Kerman, a professional woman in her mid-thirties, was convicted and sent to prison for 15 months as punishment for transporting drug money a handful of times a decade earlier. The beginning of the book, when she writes about her crimes, is stilted and staccato, but just get through it. The majority of the story is about her experience as a white, middle-class, educated woman held in a minimum security prison (with stints in a maximum security prison and also traveling via Con Air). The way she tells it, prison is wayyyyy more boring and less violent than I had imagined. Of course, she wasn't locked up with the crazies and murderers or anything. She tells about the strip searches and bad food and unwritten rules of communication and enduring the bureaucracy and learning new social norms and navigating basically a brand new society. Kerman does a good job portraying an experience that is like culture shock times a thousand. With a lot riding on a quick and successful immersion.

Memoirs are weird. The authors never come across well, like people I would actually want to talk to, or get to know.  That sounds bad. I have to say that Kerman doesn't come across as likeable (to me) although she's not unlikeable either. Reading about prison, though, is fascinating when you don't have any friends or family or other connections to one. It seems so remote, and it is. We spend all of our time trying to stay out of prison, and this book takes us inside.

Enjoy!

All Systems A Go

Oh, the ramp up. Back to normal life.

I was an hour and a half into an intense ACT tutoring sesh last night - science - and my brain was just mush. My student goes, "I totally don't get why that's the answer." I was like, me neither, let's just keep going.

Plus, I took on a new student yesterday - my fave! Third grade! - to tutor. His parents were like, "Do you have any experience teaching writing?"  Hahahahahahahahaha.

I give everybody this crazed look and they slowly back away.

I have two days (counting today) to get my stuff straight before all I'm doing is writing and grading papers. And reading Jane Austen. And fumbling through Feminist theory. And pining for naps of yore.

Again with Lucy not being sympathetic.

I've been working in random appointments and errands while I have time on my hands, and every day I say I'm going to go to the grocery store. And every day I glide, glide away in my chair and read instead. We now have to rifle through the cabinets for old granola bars and stale chips to eat. Just. Too. Lazy.

I'll pay you a thousand dollars to organize my life and also tutor for me today. Thanks.

That Moment Before All Hell Breaks Loose

You know that moment, say when your plane is about to take off, or when they launch a rocket - and the engines are fired up and the noise and vibrations are taking over, but there's no movement? That moment when you're still just sitting on the runway, when the arms break away from the rocket, and it's just levitating?

That's me today.

Source

In about 3.5 seconds, all hell is going to break loose and I'm going to be high in the sky, all systems a go.

This week (today, actually), all of my tutoring starts up again and I start the new writing consultant job on Thursday. I'm in the final stages of solidifying my syllabus which has proven about 400 times more complicated than I expected (all readings, all assignments, all points, all homework, all activities, all scheduling and planning for the entire semester) but I am trying to think long-term and not kill myself on a day-to-day basis in the coming months. This present difficulty will prove to be a blessing in the middle of February when none of my neurons are firing and I'm incapable of simple personal hygiene, much less reading, writing, or planning anything.

Lucy is not sympathetic.

The pet store was out of her usual litter, so I had to get this white, fluffy kind. It looks like it's snowing in her cage, and she messes it up all the time, but it made sense in theory.

My disdain of learning new technology aside, these new phones take phenomenal pictures. Check this one out, from my covert op last week. I could tell you about it, but then I would have to kill you.

I will pay you $1,000 to finish my semester planning.

Want to Hear About the Book or the Food?

I bustled through the door tonight after Lit Society and told G that we had the most amazing dinner. He held his hand up before I could say anything else, and remarked, "If I want to know about it, I'll read the blog." One of us is a foodie and one of us is most decidedly not.

But, you guys! The food!

This is clam and mushroom pasta in a cream sauce, garnished ever so lightly with flat leafed parsley. You might think, like I did, oh who cares about the parsley. And you would be missing out. It ever so subtly cut the creaminess of the sauce and added just the slightest hint of texture. I tell you, I don't know how Nat King Cole stays so trim. If I were married to Chef Campo, I wouldn't fit through the front door. That is a fact.   

My stunning contribution was dessert. The best and freshest pineapple this side of the Pacific, with a regular apple thrown in for good measure or extra fiber or something, and a fruit dip. Here's the thing - whip together a block of cream cheese and two small containers (or one honkin container) of marshmallow cream and you have a little taste of Heaven. You're welcome.

But, the book! It was also a winner. This was a fiction month and we read Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin.

The book is a fictitious account of the life of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindberg. A little refresher: Charles Lindberg was the first person to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean. He later married a young, very smart girl from a well-to-do family. Anne became a remarkable pilot herself, they had several children (one of whom was famously kidnapped) and became, in effect, America's first celebrities. A better word would be 'heroes', because that's truly what they were in the eyes of the nation - or what Charles was, at least - but they achieved a level of unsolicited notoriety and fame and press coverage that eventually caused them to move to England in order to escape it all.

Nat King Cole and I had a fascinating conversation about the pros and cons of the nature of historical fiction. But, that aside, the book was compelling and left us both wanting to know more about this fascinating family. I highly recommend this one.

And it led me to the next book, written by Anne Morrow Lindberg herself (she was an accomplished poet and writer - majored in Literature!), Gift From the Sea. 

It is a short book of essays about life, growing older, marriage, and motherhood. I don't think I would have appreciated it very much if I had not just read The Aviator's Wife. After reading it, though, I can say that Benjamin nailed Anne's voice, tone, and general persona in her book. Anne likens stages of life to various sea shells found on the beach, and expounds upon her thoughts. It is a book I will probably pick up again in a few years. It was very interesting, though, to read that one so shortly before reading A Room of One's Own. All these remarkable women! I do believe I'm prepared for that Feminist Thought class!  :)

Prepping for a Feminist Thought Class

Ok, just one more pic from last night. My Sunset Beach drink was every bit as tasty as it looks.

You know how I keep harping about the (exciting! wonderful!) fact that I'm taking two Lit classes very soon? Well, one of them is a Feminist Thought class. I'm earning a graduate certificate in Gender and Women's Studies, so this class kills two academic birds with one stone. Also? I know about feminism in general, but not so much about how it has appeared within literature at large, so I'm looking forward to learning about that.

G is convinced this class will turn me into a man hater and force him to tip toe around his own house. Apparently he thinks I'm incapable of independent thought and our 13.5 years of marriage will quickly fade into the background while I'm burning bras and trashing his XBox...

So, in thinking about the upcoming class, I read Virginia Woolf's essay, "A Room of One's Own." This is yet another classic that I have never read before. Sometimes I wonder what I actually did read as an English undergraduate major, besides Shakespeare, but anyhoo.

As you probably already know, this essay is actually a combination of essays she wrote to present at conferences about women and literature. It's part history, part socio-economic commentary, part philosophy, part art. She posits that in order for a person - but really, for a woman - to be freed up to think about and subsequently write literature, she will need about 500 pounds a year (i.e. a semblance of financial autonomy) and a room of her own (as opposed to sitting in the family room, surrounded by children and duties and expectations and interruptions). A famous part of this essay is Woolf's theory about what would have happened to Shakespeare's hypothetical sister if she had had the abilities and desires he had, and tried to professionally implement them in London. Needless to say, it would have turned out much differently and most likely tragically.

I'm really glad I finally read this, and I plan to read Mrs. Dalloway sometime soon, hopefully before school starts. One note - in this essay, Woolf does not come across as a man hater. She's quite frank about the realities of her time and the past concerning gender equality (or the lack thereof) but she is also very clear in her belief that art and writing takes both sexes, and something is missing when women are not represented, or if there is a mistaken belief that men, and men only, can adequately represent women.

OK, I must go prepare for tutoring, which means at some point today I'm going to have to get out of these pj's. **sigh**

Starting the New Year Off WRIGHT

Thanks to G's parents and one of their Christmas gifts that was not stolen from us by the U.S. Postal Service, we went to a hockey game tonight! We got to see the Colorado Avalanches play!

First, the pre-game festivities:

View of my city from the Pepsi Center.

G's parents, I have to say, treat us right. We were in the THIRD ROW and could see everything. We call these the "snot seats" because players so often run each other into the plexi glass and, well, you know the rest.

Get this - the seats are cushioned! OMG it was actually comfortable to sit there for a couple of hours.

Is this a great view or what?

These guys were about to start fighting over me but then I held up my hand and flashed my wedding ring. Geez. I can't go anywhere these days.

We lost by one point in the last minute of the game, but still. It was a good time and we had so much fun. Nothing like a little violence on ice to start the new year off wright.

I will pay you a thousand dollars to tutor for me tomorrow and also to finish up my unit lesson plans for this semester.