Couple quick things

 today was a long and not-great day. Had a few demanding e-mails, including one I thought I had answered earlier by saying "the information is on the BlackBoard page for the class" and got one back saying it wasn't there and almost implying I had lied - enough that I checked (a) to be sure the student was actually enrolled in my class and (b) the document in question was actually there.

Both were true. I sent the direct link for where the document was but also attached a copy.

But yeah - I am on my last nerve, I am at *least* as stressed by all this as the students are, and there *will be tears* if I get people doing this thing to me in class. 

On the other hand, I got an "accommodations letter" and e-mailed back to the person in charge talking about what I was doing (in part: avoiding any in-person handouts, just for hygiene) and the whole recording-and-posting thing and she thanked me and said it sounded like I had made it sufficiently accessible for the student in question.

But this semester is going to be HARD. I know I will be whining on here about wanting to quit after this semester.

***

Went home for lunch. Was home long enough for the mail to arrive, which was good.

Dexter arrived. Dexter was the item I purchased with the $35 Amazon card I got for doing that survey (and a little of my own money).

Dexter is *wonderful*

He is very, very soft - in recent years they seem to have made great strides in making fake fur, it is so much nicer than it was when I was a kid, this feels like it would be of a quality I'd want a faux-fur coat (probably the only kind of "fur" coat I'd wear) out of. He's also slightly weighted with beads and is the size of a small cat (if somewhat lighter).

When I was a kid, I had a Norman Bridwell (the guy who wrote the Clifford books) book called something like "The Witch's Catalog" where the conceit was it was like a catalog for witches (but of course, ordering was so arcane - you had to rub the order form with boar fat, or something, it claimed, and leave it in an oak tree - that even if you DID buy into the fantasy (I didn't, really - I mean, I knew it was made-up even if I was tickled by the idea).

The only thing I really, really, really would have wanted out of the catalog, the only thing I really longed to be "real"? The dragons

I always imagined it would be friendly - I'd want one of the very small ones - and would protect me from the "mean kids"

So maybe that's why, even as an adult, I sometimes want toy dragons.

But Dexter is extra nice as these go.

(I'm pretty sure my copy of "The Witch's Catalog" was either a mail-ordered Scholastic book, or from one of the book fairs. There are a lot of unhappy memories I have of grade school but one of the uniformly happy ones were Scholastic book day - the ordering, where you got the newsprint ads with the long, narrow order form, and picking out what books you wanted, and getting the coins from your parents (or your piggy bank, though generally my parents were happy to give  me money for books). And then you waited, and eventually the box came, and the teacher would open it and distribute them to the class. The book fairs had the same sort of things but there was no waiting, you picked out and paid for your books right there). 

* One of my missing Doki Doki crates finally showed.

I have not opened it yet so I don't know if it's June's, July's, or August's. Kind of hoping it's June's, that would mean the others are still on the way and it didn't get lost.

* I finished the second third ("Tom Outland's Story") of "The Professor's House" yesterday. While it's an interesting book and I love Willa Cather's relatively spare (and yet evocative) prose, it's also a very sad book in some ways. 

There's the sadness of missed opportunities, of seeing your life kind of constrict down as you age - I see that in Professor St. Peter and I also see it in my own life; I have not achieved what I thought I would and it hurts me. (I told a colleague today that of the graduates from my prep-school class, I am one of the ones who has done the least with her life. That may not be strictly true but it *feels* true enough)

There's the sadness of "settling" - where the younger daughter and her husband, though they love each other, have to scrimp and save and are constantly shown up by the richer couple.

And then, in Tom's story, there's the loss of the British man who had served as a "serving man" for Tom and Roddy (though in a way they saved him, too, because he was apparently an alcoholic and they were able to keep him off drink) - he was bit by a rattlesnake and died in agony.

And then finally, the betrayal of Tom by Roddy - when Tom went off to try to get someone in the Smithsonian interested in their archaeological find - Roddy either misunderstood Tom's main motive, or else went against it, and sold all the beautiful pieces of Indigenous art to a collector, and then thought Tom would be pleased at how much money he had made. But it's a very visceral feeling of betrayal - I involuntarily cringed when I read what had happened.

In a way, I will be glad to see the end of this book. I liked it, and found the parts where Tom and Roddy were traveling around in the mesas interesting and beautiful - but there are so many instances of people hurting each other (I didn't even mention some of the pettiness that is part and parcel of being on a college faculty). Not sure what I will read next - I do need to pick the Chronicles of Prydain back up. 

But tonight, I think maybe it's more Asterix; I need that tonight.