Close to done

I'm on the last lace section of the Hagrid scarf. I am still not sure if I will have enough yarn for the full thing as written so I will watch carefully. (I suppose I could just keep knitting, put in a lifeline at the place I'd have to rip back to, and see if I had enough for the full set of repeats).

I'm also a lot further along on the Policy and Law stuff than I realized: looking at the past year's syllabus, it looks like I'm already up through October. I'm going to keep going, though....and also, I'm including a few other things (like some of the regulations on land use) the other person did not. Now I'm hoping I have enough time to cover everything....we'll have to see.

It's been a long, long time since I made a class 100% from scratch. Even when I started teaching Principles I back in 2011, there was kind of a "set" syllabus of what we needed to cover and when. Here, it's all on me. (Well, I do need to meet with my colleagues who are also in Conservation to see what they think and if I'm overlooking anything).

I also need to find at least two more readings. I have "Tragedy of the Commons" in the v. first week and a pretty good history of environmental law by Patricia M. Wells, but I need to find something maybe on the Clean Air/Clean Water acts, and maybe something on RCRA or the Superfund stuff.

I still kind of feel like I don't know what I'm doing but maybe that's how it's supposed to feel, I don't know.

Maybe it's good to have to make a class 100% from scratch once in a while, I don't know.

That said: I'm not going to fret too much about losing most of tomorrow to Meals on Wheels (and tomorrow afternoon my plan is to go home and clean house a bit) and also Friday. (And of course, Saturday is meeting up with Laura).

Tonight I am going to see Henry V. My campus does a Shakespearean festival (though usually only one play is Shakespeare: this year it was also heavily kid-themed: there was a kid play (one the kids were acting in) and a teen play I think. And they did Tony N Tina's Wedding, which I honestly wondered how well the humor (very New Jersey-centric) would translate to southern Oklahoma. I know there are things funny to people from New York/New Jersey that I don't find funny, and probably some of the stuff I find funny isn't funny to them.

(One of the re-runs of Bob's Burgers last night was about the kids taking off - "Stand By Me" style - to go see this alleged two-butted goat. One of the gags was "does it have two anuses" and of course Gene speculated that it could pass gas in harmony - "fartmony." And I admit I was tired at the time and my inner 12 year old tends to come out when I'm tired, but I laughed for about five minutes at that. And yes, the two-butted goat DID exist...)

Anyway. I've read Henry V and seen the old movie of it, it will be interesting to see this version. (Please don't be a reset, please don't be a reset....I like some of the resets, especially of the comedies, but I prefer the histories unaltered).

This is also something I ran across on Twitter (it was part of a longer thread about the people who genuinely love you vs. the people you manage to finagle into loving you) and it struck me:

"The people who love you, really, love you even though you are a complicated heap of twigs and stars and too-sensitive wriggling things." (from Maria DahvanaHeadley)

And that's something I really struggle with. I suspect a lot of people do; I suspect I feel it because I spent so much time as a kid feeling rejected by my peers. And it's why I do things like make sure my house is as clean as I can make it before someone comes over (and really, really hate it when someone "drops in" when I have not had time to clean) because I think people will think less of me if they see I have a dusty floor or spilled face-powder in my (one) bathroom. And it's perhaps also why I take on thankless tasks some time: somewhere deep down there is still that scared 11 year old who thinks maybe she can MAKE people like her if she does enough for them.

(There is perhaps a slight parallel there with the idea of the faith vs. works dichtomy....)

And I'm always a little afraid to let the mask slip with someone I don't know well. If I snort-laugh in your presence (it happens), if I get angry at something around you and express that anger, if I cry in front of you, it means I've reached an unusual level of comfort with your presence, because those are all things I fear will drive people away if I show them.

I also admit I have a problem with something else she talked about in that thread: accepting that there are going to be people who just don't like you, for their own reasons, which may be completely illogical. Because really, I walk around doing that, going "But I am as mild as a dove and as gentle as a lamb and I don't express my unpopular opinions and I try not to dominate the conversation and for goodness sakes, I do volunteer tasks other people won't do! Why won't this person like me?" and yes, I do internally go a little bit crazy-Fluttershy:



I don't know. Maybe it's because there are a lot of people who have traits that annoy me but that I am MOSTLY willing to overlook that it bugs me when there seems to be one little thing about me that people just can't get past to bring themselves to like me, I don't know.

(And maybe it's not even ME that they don't like, but rather what I represent: the various tropes out there about higher ed, for example, and it makes me bite my tongue so hard, the things some people say, but inwardly I'm screaming NO BUT I AM NOT LIKE THAT AND YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND or in some cases, when I'm really angry, I think hard at them, OKAY THEN, LET'S SHUT DOWN ALL THE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ALL OF 'EM. AND GOOD DARN LUCK FINDING A SURGEON OR A NURSE OR A DENTIST OR AN ENGINEER OR SOMEONE TO WRITE UP THE CONTRACT FOR YOU TO BUY A HOUSE TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW and I realize it's not reasonable but....well, I guess this is my first experience of real prejudice* and it's kind of hard to cope with)

(*And yeah, we had a few sexist type teachers when I was in school but that somehow seemed different because ALL the girls rolled their eyes over the stupidity of that, and just quietly pushed to earn better grades than the boys did. But here, I don't know....it feels like it's something I identify pretty strongly with and it's being misrepresented, though I also acknowledge there are some profs out there who make it waaaaay too hard to caricature all of us.)

But yeah. There does seem to be a shortage of love in the world and sometimes I confess I feel a little deficit of it in my own life, and I tend to go way too much into people-pleasing mode as a result.