Ugh, anxiety day

I think I've been doing too much grading; I can tell when I get my head in my work too much that I get sadder and more anxious. The problem is, the work has to be done, and I have too little time to take time off right now, so.

I pushed through and graded what Policy and Law papers I had early this morning; I'm still waiting on one (oversight - it was someone who was going to a conference as part of an internship she's doing and she just forgot to hand it in, I'll overlook that). I have a stack of exams on my desk that must be done this afternoon.

There's also a faculty meeting in a quarter-hour which is going to be to discuss a big change (which I can't really talk about here yet) in the department, but, it may mean that unless we hire just the right person I will wind up on the 7-week-online-course-from-the-outside-partnership treadmill, because one of the courses is one that's right in my area of expertise. And this displeases me deeply. Because the 7 week cycle means your Christmas break is shorter, you don't get summers off - and apparently the expectation is once you jump in, you can't leave or take a break without damn good reason.

The upside is I may be able to give up Policy and Law as there's someone who's probably more qualified to teach it who would be willing to. I don't know. I'd rather teach P and L and not teach online, but then again: I always wanted a pony and never got one, so why should my work life be any different?

Two racing-brain anxiety thoughts while proctoring the exam:

Might the really large bulldog-type clips be good for blanket forts? So you could more firmly attach the blankets to chairs - or run stout cords between chairs, or, heck, if you don't mind marring up the walls, put some cuphooks in to hold the cords at good blanket-fort height. (I was thinking about blanket forts last night when I was making my bed and putting the new fleece blanket on top, up by the shoulders - because my neck and shoulders get cold at night.

Could anthropomorphic sloths knit with their claws? I thought about that then realized they couldn't "turn" the work like you have to - but maybe there's a way to work backwards? And damme but I didn't almost try it there on the sweater I was knitting, until I realized I'd probably mess it up, but maybe something to experiment with with scrapyarn and a short pair of straight needles some times.


Unfortunately, that kind of stuff is the limit of my creativity these days :(


Edited to add: well, once again the thing I worried about didn't happen. The online classes apparently will be taught by a new hire, and the class that might fall in my lap is either a graduate-level face-to-face, can be done as an arranged early-evening time stats class (which I can totally do, ESPECIALLY with a summer's lead time) or the intro-level zoo/bot/ecology/evolution survey class, which I can also do, especially with a summer's lead time.

I still feel jittery, which tells me it's something else (allergies have been bad the past few days) rather than just situational. Hopefully it goes away soon but I do think part of it is "too much stuff to think about and schedule"