Just busy week

 I am only getting 20 minutes of piano practice in many days :(

It's okay, I guess, because I'm not doing lessons. I hope some day to pick them up again but between me not having time, and me and my former teacher both working in different workplaces and likely to be exposed - I am not so sure it's a good idea.

Yesterday I spent the morning over here working, ending up at noon changing over my soil extraction. I was also reminded of the giant stack of scan-trons I have to process for my sub-job as assessment person for the department. I guess I do a bit of that this afternoon, maybe. (I also asked people to get me their last-semester's stuff; one person protested he didn't know how to download it and "[I] would have to show [him] how."

I wasn't cordial about that but in that moment I was (a) trying to do my research task, (b) fretting over whether I could get home and eat lunch before having to turn on the all-seeing eye of Zoom to hold my afternoon office hours, (c) fretting over processing the scan-trons WHICH NO ONE HAS OFFERED HELP WITH DESPITE MY ASKING, and (d) grading an exam for one class and writing two more. (The exam was "due" at 11:59 pm,. so I had only got about half of them, I guess I do the rest during my office hour this afternoon. And I got one of the two exams written).

Also there are people whose job it specifically is to help with questions like that. It's not my job, it's not one of my thousand jobs these days.

Then I went home. Graded, held office hours, write the exam. Finished with the exam at 6:15 pm, just enough time to grab some dinner and run to CWF meeting, which I had to run. 

So yeah, I'm not exactly cordial when someone teaching fewer classes than I have and who has exactly the same amount of time and instruction as I have had in doing something tells me I need to show them how to do something. I figured it out for myself, buddy, you can, too. 

Yes, I am losing some of my agreeableness in all of this. But I'm tired, and I'm sad, and my mom and I discussed Sunday night that she thinks there's no safe way for me to travel up there for Christmas (I floated the idea of "if there's reasonably good rapid testing by then...." that I could go up, and do my best to isolate from her until I knew I tested negative, but she still thinks it's unwise) and I admit while I am MOSTLY sad because it's just a disappointment in a year full of them, it also triggers my unreasonable fears of abandonment - that no one really wants me around and while I know logically it's that she wants to minimize risk to both of us (It's too far for me to drive or I would - that would be a lot safer), still....

I don't even know how to celebrate Christmas alone. I guess I'll learn. I guess this is a hard lesson in "someday all your family who wants you around will be dead, and you were too stupid to marry, so you're going to be alone. Everyone else has families so they won't want you"

So I guess I muddle through and figure it out. Like I always do. Make it up as I go along. (And as I go "alone," which I first typed there). 

No, I don't know anyone I could celebrate with here, not unless they invite me. I don't want to crash someone else's celebration, especially not if they're spending it with family, and asking and being told no outright (or worse: gently and politely let down) would be worse for me than being alone.

Today is also apparently "Treat Yo'Self Day" (from the old Parks and Recreation). Well, for me, there will be no treating-of-self, only work. 

and I have to remember when I go home briefly for lunch that I need to stick something in the crockpot so I can both eat dinner and so that the meat I bought a little while back doesn't go bad in the fridge.

But yeah, this is normally the bad part of the semester in re: work and just ennui about everything; of course this year is worse. I am also realizing that looking at BlackBoard for more than an hour or two gives me headaches - I don't know if it's psychosomatic or something about the color palette of the screens, or reading type off a screen, or what. If this is going to be my 'forever' now for teaching.....well, maybe I put in one more year to see if things get better, and if they don't, if this really is how we have to do it now, I quit, and try to figure out either some other way to make a living or else see if I can live very small on what retirement income I would have.

Sorry the ice cream machine has been broken so long; I don't anticipate it getting better any time soon.

I may wind up going to weekly blog posts for a while as very little is happening in my life; all I do is work these days.