Lost

I feel out of touch. I don't know why I haven't been posting the last few days, but I suspect this is it. I've read your blogs; I just haven't written anything of my own. I'm between giant piles of grading this week. I don't get final papers until Thursday and Friday, which should be easy to grade - no comments, just letters. I think that the lack of grading has left me totally confused as to what I need to be doing. I feel . . . lost. How sad is that? Grading defines my time.

This week, in the absence of grading, I have cleaned out my office. No more back papers, extra handouts, old books. My stack of scrap paper became ginormous once I added all of the extra handouts to it (I print on both sides of a piece of paper before throwing it away - our school doesn't recycle, and my apartment building doesn't do mixed paper).

This summer my tasks include:

Finishing my gothic kids novel.

Planning out next semester so I don't have to do that while I'm in school. I normally come up with a weekly syllabus and figure out the daily as I go - not this time. I am going to figure out everything (including handouts), so all I have to do is show up and teach, grade, and adjust as necessary. Oh, and it's a new textbook too.

Write an essay for a book collection and figure out of I can be on a panel for it in the Spring.

Go to New York for a few days for Husband's art show (by the by, on the way back to Island State, we're going to detour through East Coast State -where I got my MA- and Landlocked State -where I grew up- for those of you who still live there and want to see us and possibly let us spend the night at your house).

Swim everyday.

Read a bunch of books. I just read Sunshine by Robin McKinley - wow!

Rest and get ready for being a full time instructor and PhD student.

I can't really start any of this until the semester is over. I have piddley things to do too - fill out a FAFSA, buy plane tickets, call and email friends/family to make sleeping arrangements 'cause we can't afford both plane tickets and hotels, calculate grades, play Oblivion (yes, that's a real task) - I just don't want to do them. I want to curl up and watch Pride & Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy - a DVD I don't own, but pick up every time I go into a bookstore (I carry it around for a while, then decide that $35 is too much for the DVD -on sale-, and put it back. It's become a ritual of mine).