I got nothing

This is a busy week. I didn't even touch my knitting yesterday. Last night was CWF meeting, it ran until just about 9 pm. (Again: I am the only (I think) non-retired member of the group, and people forget that I have to be up early for class. And I think there are one or two people who don't get listened-to enough, they tend to dominate the conversation. And yeah, I don't get listened to enough, but frankly my desire to just be able to get home and go to bed overrides my desire to be listened to.)

Today I have my every-six-months doctor checkup. I am trying not to be apprehensive - as I said, I've felt better than I did in a while, this will just be the "listen to her heart and lungs, look in her ears and nose, ask her how she's feeling, and set up a time for routine bloodwork" checkup and honestly the worst thing might be that one of my ears may have excessive wax (it's been itchy) and the solution for that is easy (the doctor or nurse squirts in a lot of warm water while I hold a basin to catch the water and wax).

But still. When you're a fattish person, doctor's visits are kind of fraught. I don't think I've gained much weight - if any - I have been careful about how I eat and have tried to keep up with exercise, but I still have that demon that sits on my shoulder and says, "If you're so smart, if you are so diligent, then why aren't you *thin*?" and I hate that.

(No, I don't know why. Fat genes, maybe: both my grandmas were fat, my dad is fat, my mom eats almost as much as he does and she is thin. All I know is I don't want the "why don't you eat even less, and even less of the things you like to eat?" talk, even though my doctor has never given it to me, I still expect it, being a Fat Woman in America.) Part of the problem is I just get hungry some times. And I'm not good at ignoring hunger, which is apparently what you're supposed to do if you are to lose weight.

(Then again: I read an Ask Metafilter thread about someone asking about the timeline to expect for her mother to die of ovarian cancer, and a lot of talk about how the person drastically lost weight during the process and....there are worse things than being fundamentally healthy but a little too fat)

And then I have seven pounds of ground beef to cook up for the college kids, and I hope my partner in this got all her stuff or I will be making an emergency run to either Pruett's or Green Spray at 5 this afternoon and I'm just tired. The main upside to this is that my labor is appreciated here, and cooking up ground beef (and heating up beans) is not that hard.

(If I had been thinking enough for my Overachiever Mode to kick in, I would have gone with "Hey, it's Pancake Day! How about you bring sausage and fruit and I'll make pancakes for all the kids" but that way lies madness. Make your own tacos-on-chips is better, and anyway, it IS Taco Tuesday, so that still works).

I *might* make pancakes for myself for dinner, though, I don't know. Depends on how the checkup goes.

And tomorrow is the regular round of regular meetings at church, though that's less fraught than it once was. It still means I'm out most of the evening.

But still: lots of work to do. The Sci Oly tests to finalize, an exam to write for next week, the usual round of weekly stuff to do. And budget worries in the back of my head again: the Grand Plan some in the legislature came up with to fix the budget hole got voted down, and I am still wondering: how long before they decide closing/consolidating a few of the regionals is a good idea? At this point I'm beyond even hoping for a pay raise; I just want to keep my job until retirement comes along. ('Cos again, I don't know what I'd do - I have the undesirable situation of living where there are few other jobs I would want/could do but owning a home and being able to currently afford the cost of living here without too much pain, and moving very far would probably mean living under greatly reduced circumstances (I am too old to have a roommate at this point). And just also all the agony of job hunting, apartment/house hunting, divesting myself of tons of stuff so I COULD move...it's too much. I think for me the balance would tip in favor of "stay here and try to figure out some way to keep body and soul together without having to do a job that makes you want to separate your soul from your body" but I don't even know what that would be.

I officially turned down summer teaching for Summer 2018 yesterday. A colleague is going to teach Biostats online, which worries me that the admin will eventually say "Why not let him just teach it, online, and you can, I don't know, pick up another section of the intro non-majors class" because it does seem that everything that can go online IS. And yes, I feel territorial about this but it's my favorite class to teach. (Though then again: my botanist colleague is retiring in 2022, and if his position is downsized, I might wind up having to teach botany and systematic botany in the future....)

I don't know. This isn't the future I envisioned, not even in the pinched and stretched 1970s.

I may need to pick up some work of some kind over the summer to earn a few bucks. I keep hoping one of the textbook companies will approach with Big Editing Work but so far nothing. (I got a call from a rep yesterday and was excited at first, then it turned out he wanted to 'chat' about me "maybe adopting some of our new tests for fall" and ugh). I hope something like that comes through because it's a good way to make money, it's something I'm good at, and something I enjoy. (Most other places - like the little journals I publish in - editing is on a volunteer basis, and I bet most pattern tech-editing is volunteer, also).

(I'd honestly rather tighten my belt and drop cable and the landline phone than do something like work retail over the summer, though. It would be nice to make more money, but it would have to be on my own terms, doing something I am good at, that doesn't have excessive amounts of interpersonal interaction).