Finally, today's over.

Oh, it was a hard day.

Yesterday I took up the papers for my one class. I started reading through them (this is the big big research paper, so how I grade them is to basically read them three times: first, just a straight read-through to get a sense of flow and to see if anything leaps off the page at me*. A second, detailed read, red pen in hand, where I apply comments and suggestions. And then the last time, with the grade sheet, where I write in more comments and figure out what grade the paper earned.


(*like a suspicion of plagiarism: none this year as it turns out)

I didn't get that far because I had the dental checkup and Bell Choir and frankly when I got home I was so exhausted I couldn't do anything (and my mouth hurt from the scaling). So I had to do it mostly today. Finished the reading before my other class (in which I got a bunch MORE papers), did more during office hours. Got crabby shortly before noon because people kept asking me for stuff.

Part of it: Giving Tuesday. Yes, yes, I'm sure it's a nice thing. But you know how people who drink regularly call New Year's Eve "Amateur Night"? As someone who's sent off a few hundred dollars this summer alone to various disaster-relief efforts, I kind of feel like Giving Tuesday is Amateur Day. Or like how some people think Valentine's Day is the day you make up for being kind of a butt to your significant other the rest of the year by buying candy or jewelry or something. This is maybe the day people who don't give to charity on a regular basis are reminded to do it.

But. Sigma Xi, who I am ALREADY mad at because they apparently allowed a scammy "directory company" to make it sound like we had to call them up and "verify" our contact information for Sigma Xi - which turned out to be a HARD sell for one of three expensive packages (the most expensive one was $600, which is....well....almost a fifth of my monthly takehome pay, so that's going to be a NO) and I wound up having to hang up on the guy because he didn't understand my unwillingness to, apparently, stroke my own ego by buying a book with my name in it ("But it's good for networking!" Oh, pull the other one, it's got bells on).

But then, they sent NO FEWER THAN THREE e-mails today begging us to donate money to their "fight for science," which I presume means lobbying. I am too nice a person to actually do this, but I admit I was briefly tempted to e-mail them back suggesting they call up the directory company and ask for a cut of the money they are taking in.

One of the e-mails was along the lines of "Giving Tuesday is half over, what have you done?" and I admit I'm simultaneously made to feel guilty and angry at myself for allowing myself to be manipulated in that way. And it's a little too close for me to the "It's almost 2020! What did you do with the past decade?" which I've already talked too much about.

And I got a lot of other Giving Tuesday requests. Being hounded to do stuff makes me not want to do it. (Come to think of it, I don't think Mercy Corps, the main disaster/poverty relief charity I support, sent me an e-mail)

I also got a lot of asks on behalf of students, the most egregious being "Hey is the homework for this week up on the class webpage" and my reaction was "What? Do you think I am your MOM? You can go to the same Internet as I can, go look" but instead I checked (because my memory is STILL Swiss cheese) and it was there so I just curtly e-mailed "yes it is up, it is called..."

But yeah. The problem, I realize, is that a lot of students expect me to do this kind of caretaking for them, and I use up all my caretaking energy on that, and have none left for me. And I have no one to take care of me; there is no one in my immediate vicinity who cares that much about me.

Anyway. I got annoyed so I went home (no afternoon classes or office hours on Tuesday). Ate lunch, started writing out comments. Got about halfway, took a break, checked my e-mail.


My uncle had sent a write up of my dad's interment service. I read it right then, in retrospect I should have waited, because I had to get up from the computer, walk away, and cry for about ten minutes. And I've still been crying off and on as I think of it again.

The Scripture chosen was good and appropriate. My Aunt Deb read it, he said. And here's where having a good imagination kills you: I can imagine her, standing there, in the memorial gardens, in her slacks and the big puffy coat you have to wear in Michigan in December, and reading it out in her clear voice to the cold air. And he sent pictures and....Oh, I know, I know, the "person" that inhabited those remains has gone on elsewhere, but seeing the urn sitting there. It looked so....small, somehow, and lonely, and thinking of it now is making me cry again.

I mean, I guess in a way it's not lonely now; my dad's remains have been interred next to his mother, and there is space there one day (many many years hence, I hope) for my mother too, because our family is so small and so scattered and there's really no way my brother or I could easily travel *anywhere* that was meaningful to our parents on a regular basis, so a memorial gardens where there was regular care and maintenance (apparently there is something like a trust fund that covers it? Or when my grandfather bought the plots, that was paid for in more-or-less perpetuity?)

But yeah. The finality of it is what gets me. I will think of things I might want to tell my dad, or ask him, and I can't now, and it sucks. It still sucks, more than four months after it happened.

And I admit, I think part of my sadness and discomfort is the knowledge that yes, someday too that will be me, and I will have even fewer people to mourn me. Depending on how long I live, I might have very few people indeed. (Women on my mom's side of the family tend to live VERY long; on my dad's family it's harder to tell because his generation was the first generation of non-smokers; previous generations tended to get taken out by emphysema or lung cancer). (I think I said once before why the idea of The Rapture, even as non-supported as it is by anything actually in The Bible, is attractive to many believers: you get to go to Heaven but you don't really have to die first.)

But today, it just worked out to be hard.

Oh, I do have better days. It's just, today worked out to be hard.

It took me a LONG time to buckle back down and finish the grading. And I hate to say it but some papers were really not up to standards, and there are going to be some unhappy people. And also a lot of people didn't follow the instructions I gave, and I downgraded more than I had in the past, because I'm just done with that, and more and more, as time passes, it seems people either don't pay attention to, or don't care about, following directions, and I'm sick of it.

I finally got them done just around 6:15. Washed my hair, nuked the "emergency" mac and cheese I keep in the freezer for this kind of situation (need a quick meal that is easy to eat without much thought or effort). Decided to buckle down and grade the exams given in my absence, partly because NCIS (one of the very few network shows I still watch) was a re-run, partly because I just wanted to be DONE with them so I could move on to the grading for another class tomorrow.

Thank goodness, because this was the "I will do this as your drop exam if you are happy with your previous exam scores" exam (and perhaps because it was the day before a vacation), only 10 people (less than half the class) took it, so I was able to finish it fairly quickly but yeah. I am feeling very worn right now.

I would really like a treat. But it's 9 pm, and I'm trying to reduce, so food-treats are out. And it's too late to drive out for any other kind of a treat. And ordering something doesn't work because then I have to wait for it to come. (I do have a couple things on order from earlier; Li Chen has a new sweatshirt/t-shirt design out ("Cosy Cat") that I loved the minute I saw it on Twitter. (I ordered a dark green sweatshirt with it; I don't have enough cute sweatshirts). And I ordered some more yarn - I had a credit at Loopy Ewe (you earn credits when you spend money) and I wanted to make myself an Antler Toque, only red.

but it would be nice, I think, to either not be trying to watch what I eat (so I could just get nice carry-out for dinner tomorrow night instead of some kind of diet-frozen-meal or sauteed spinach) or have some kind of nice store in town where I could buy some nice small thing to make myself feel better.

Oh, I tell myself: in two weeks you'll be in Illinois, and your biggest concern will be what kind of cookies to bake but that two weeks seems awfully long.