Well, I made my peace with ending my term as chair of the committee. No one gasped, no one did the "but the Earth will stop turning on its axis!" thing that people have sometimes done before when I have said "I really don't think I can do this right now."

Either they recognize the thanklessness of the task, or they understood my protest that having taken on too much was affecting my health.


We're supposed to have a cold front come through this morning. I have been disappointed so many times before this fall about cold fronts that turned to stationary fronts, or that only approached us closely enough to go "HA ha!" as they swept on through Missouri, that I'm actually kind of numb to the idea that it might get cold. Oh, I brought a sweater with me today, I was a Brownie for too many years not to. But I don't quite believe that fall is going to be here - I tend to think we have slipped into some kind of alternate dimension where the White Witch's sister rules, and we have eternal summer but never rain. (Except then, where are the talking animals? I want to meet the talking animals.)

My air conditioning kicked on this morning. I have it set at 75*. That is just WRONG.

That is the one thing I find hardest about living here - the weather. The long, depressing slog of the summer, where it's just hot. Dating is hard because you can't spend time talking about the weather: once you get past "hot enough for you?" there's nothing more to be said. The seasons don't exactly change - not in the way I'm used to, anyhow. We don't really get "fall color." I remember Hallowe'ens as a kid when I griped about having to wear a parka over my costume, and I think I remember one Hallowe'en where it snowed. And I remember traveling through lots of snow to see my Grandma C. for Thanksgiving at least one year. And tons of snow at Christmas - true, it was the statistically-speaking cold 1970s in the Ohio snowbelt, but I remember nearly every Christmas being snowy. I do miss snow. I don't think I'd like driving in it much (I have never really had to...when it snows down here, everything shuts down until the snow goes away. And in Ann Arbor I did not have a car. And in Illinois, I didn't have a car and I had people willing to drive me in the snow). But there's something about sitting at home, looking out the window, and watching it snow. It's peaceful, it kind of covers up a lot of the ugliness of things, it's good for daydreaming about Trollopian family Christmases or people sitting around the fire and telling stories. There's something pleasantly insular about being inside while it snows - like, the rest of the world can go to the devil, you're warm and safe and have a mug of tea and some apples and walnuts and there's a good book to be read.

Even walking in the snow - provided it's not too cold or too windy - is nice; I remember many days in Ann Arbor walking to class or walking downtown just for the joy of being alive and being out in the snow, looking in shop windows, doing my Christmas shopping.

I can't quite get used to the Christmas spirit when it's in the 60s and 70s out. I know, I know, long-time Southerners and Californians and desert-dwellers all figure it out somehow, but like Garrison Keillor's transplanted Minnesotan, there is something about seeing Christmas lights on a cactus that just makes me homesick.

If it does cool down enough today to inspire me to do it, I am going to take my prerogative of still being a "Yankee" (yes, I am, at least to a number of people here) and decorate my house for Christmas (people 'round here tend to say that only Yankees decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving; well we should, considering that Thanksgiving is typically the time when the weather up north begins to be really unfavorable for doing such things as nailing lights to the outside of your house). Or else, if my stash of pecans haven't gone off*, I might do my annual Baking of the Fruitcakes.

(*I have everything else I need but I cannot face the thought of making a trip to the grocery today)

I am really ready to get into, and really wanting to be in, Holiday Mode. Where my main concerns are wrapping packages and baking cookies and juggling the parties I have committed to go to. Much, much nicer than grading papers and making tests and juggling meetings I must go to. One of the reasons I went into academia is that you get somewhat of a vacation around Christmas - granted, this year, it seems later than usual (and I don't get WHY, we start in the armpit of August. And we don't get a whole week at Thanksgiving. And we don't get Veteran's Day or any of the other civic holidays off...). I don't leave here until the 19th, which doesn't leave me all that many relaxation and rebounding days before Christmas...I always feel that I don't enjoy the holiday as much as I could, when I'm still sort of bouncing back from the stress and sleep deprivation of grading and exam week.

It was different when I was in graduate school. Graduate school people, appreciate your lives. Regardless of what you may think now, it is harder out in the workforce. (There's got to be some kind of an algorithm that shows that money is directly related to responsibility level and inversely related to ability to bug out and do what you want on any given day. Or maybe inversely related to spontaneity. I don't know.)

(Yeah, I know, the corporate people are going "I have to take the 24th as one of my sick days if I want it off, cry me a river.")