Yesterday was not a good day. I ached all day, I didn't get up and do a workout because I was tired and achy (I woke up around 4 am and was like "oh heck no" and reset the alarm for an hour later and slept right up to it).
I don't know if it is the changeable weather (very warm for February, and then a front came through last night) or allergies or what.
I will note that down at church on Sunday, the family didn't remove any of the flowers. They also took all the communion stuff (the candles, the cross, the offering plates, and the lids to the trays for bread and cups) off the table and stashed them in the hallway. I am usually the one who sets out the communion as I am the first on there (teaching Sunday school). I had to scramble around and find the stuff, and the brass cross was almost too heavy for me.
(man, there is some symbolism in THAT, isn't there)
But also, the flowers - lilies. I dislike lilies at the best of times because to me, they 'smell like death.' But also, when my allergies are bad, that strong heavy smell makes me sneeze. I had to ask the organist to move them because I was the one who was going to be doing the readings that day, and I KNEW I'd have trouble with the lilies up near the lectern like that. (She did move them).
I did get a few things done at work:
- got the rest of the scholarship stuff for the Honors program evaluated. And I decided to go ahead and "finish" (submit) it, because they had some "late applicants" they loaded on to some people, and I thought that maybe if I'd sent my stuff in, they wouldn't give me any more late people. (Maybe this is one way in which I'm a little bit rigid, but: if there's a hard deadline for a scholarship, I think failure to meet that deadline should be grounds for "sorry, no." Oh, I get "extenuating circumstances" but there were enough people that I really wonder if that was the case.)
- Got the call-for-applications for the AAUW scholarship out. I very nearly forgot this. But I think it will be okay; people have several weeks (I extended the deadline slightly). But maybe in the future, I see if I can get someone else to take this on? It does need to be someone on campus, that's a complicating factor (I think I am currently the only person actively employed here) but it is something I would like to give up.
- called the CPA and set up an appointment (a week from Friday) to bring in all my tax stuff so he can prepare my taxes. Hopefully that means THIS YEAR it's done right. (If you live in a rural or lower SES area and have a more-complicated return, do NOT use Jackson-Hewett or, I presume, Block. It seems they unleash their low-knowledge/low-experience people here, and for maybe 90% of the people, that's fine. But I need to trust that my taxes are done right, and I don't trust them to do them right any more.)
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I need to figure out something to fix for the potluck at church on Sunday. Complicating factor: can't do "big" (fancy) grocery shopping between now and then, and also, it has to be something I can fix quickly because I am busy. Not sure whether to just pony up the cost of a chuck roast again and do the carne machaca again (that is easy) or whether to do the cheese grits casserole.
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Lots of talk about the weird pronouncements Richard Dawkins is making on Twitter (one, in favor of eugenics; another about "culturing human steak"). And while I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility something is going on with him (e.g., some kind of illness), I admit I feel irritation:
some people are "allowed" to be unpleasant and abrasive, and still get to have renowned careers. But for many of us women? We be a little forceful when we need to be, and we're suddenly a "b*tch."
Also, I quipped on Twitter that "maybe he's getting ready to release a book offering A Modest Proposal (though maybe with a different focus than what Swift had)"
And I followed it up with: if this really does happen, I expect you all to tell me how smart I was, because I don't often get to feel smart these days.
And you know? YOU KNOW? That's it. That's part of my malaise: I don't often feel smart any more.
And, I don't know. I don't know how to fix that easily. I spend so much time doing what feels like spinning my wheels - so much administrative work, so much stuff like reviewing stats stuff I BARELY understand (and barely understood 25 years ago when I first learned it) and yeah, it makes me feel dumb when I try to read something and I have to read it four times to make heads or tails of it. And right now it's worse than it's ever been, because allergies are bad and I think I'm STILL kind of brain-damaged from grief (WHEN will I ever get better?) and so I walk around worried (that I won't get prepped in time for class) and frustrated (that I'm working so hard and not getting farther) a lot of the time.
And I just need to feel smart. Or at least feel competent. And not feel like I'm JUST hanging on by my fingernails, and while I'm getting stuff done, it's nothing very outstanding - lots of grading, lots of teaching stuff I've taught before, no real new insight.
I talked about getting a writing desk to put in my bedroom and I did half-heartedly look at a couple antique stores this weekend but the truth is? If I found one I'd not have time to use it. My life is so taken up with mundanities - getting work done at work, at home trying to keep entropy at bay (I cannot, I am sorry, I cannot face HIRING someone to clean my house. I'm too weird, I have too much weird stuff, any cleaner would be horrified. I'd need to clean the whole place top to bottom and throw out half my crap before I'd be comfortable having a cleaner in, and I don't have time for that, so I have to keep cleaning myself)
And yeah. This is why I disagree with the "Anonymous was a woman" statement: the reason women (and poorer people, etc., etc.) are so under-represented in the canon is that we were the ones who served. The wealthy men (and a few wealthy women, I guess) had people to clean up after them and cook for them and they didn't have to go out and earn their bread and they didn't come home at 7:30 pm and realize they were too tired for anything useful.
But I also need to feel smart and like I'm getting something done so my legacy just doesn't go "poof" after I'm gone. OR I need to work on being comfortable and happy with "okay, you're here for a while, then you're gone, then fifteen minutes later, you're forgotten" because those seem to be the only two choices. (And sadly, the second one may be easier).
But yes. I do a periodic check-in on myself by going "if you could have one thing you could wish for, reasonable or unreasonable, what would it be?"
You all know what my "literally impossible" wish would be; same thing that it's been since the end of July. But a slightly-less-unreasonable wish (in the sense that it might somehow happen on this earth) is that I want to feel SMART again. Like I'm accomplishing something and not just always doing things for other people that....don't benefit me that much or don't "feed" who I am. But I'm not sure how to get there from here.
I suppose you could argue 'an attitude adjustment would be all that it would take' but that's not so easy for me. (There isn't such a thing as an emotional chiropractor that you can go to, and get your feelings "cracked," and then you feel better). But I do need it - I said last fall, "I need something BIG and something GOOD to happen for me" but the sad thing is? As an adult you mostly have to make that happen, and if you're too tired and too busy? I don't know.
Again, maybe the attitude adjustment, accepting that I'm one of the 99.9% of people who don't matter, who have never mattered, who are just brief candleflames on this earth that are replaceable and forgettable, would be easier than trying to do something that makes me feel like I matter.
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