Thursday morning random

 * Slowly finishing up last night's grading before giving an exam in my one class. This evening is the AAUW party and I have the meatballs ready to go (part of last night's malaise was probably stress over stacked things I had to do - the meatballs, the grading, washing my hair, calling my mom at 7, fixing some dinner, practicing more piano. In the end, sadly, I had to dump the remaining 20 minutes of practice as there was no time to fit it in. The things that matter most to me tend to come last)

 * I guess I'm technically hostess so maybe I need to pick up some white grape juice and ginger ale to make a kind of punch to serve. That's probably the best one to do; it's not so sticky sweet as the sherbet/ginger ale one and it's less messy. I probably also better check with the other person who said they'd help to see if they are getting plates and cups and plasticware; I'd rather not use the church's and have to replace it, or use the actual plates and then have to wash them at the end of the night. (I'm already going to have to do clean up and trash removal)

* I had to run back to school (had to put street clothes on again, and drive out in the dark) and almost-8-pm when I realized that the papers from one class I wanted to grade were still on my desk. But I got them and got them mostly graded. 

* Tomorrow is job candidate day, fingers crossed that this person wants to come and work with us.

* My student who was out with COVID last week is now testing negative (multiple tests) and is back in class, but they sounded so horrible yesterday (post covid cough) that I pressured them NOT to try presenting their research but wait until Friday. Everyone else was agreeable to coming back for it even though we just were having a review for the final. 

 This also convinces me that "no, you didn't have a case of covid that flew under the radar of testing" - this student says they've never been so sick in their life, and even "recovered" they are sicker than I was at the worst of this thing. (There was a dark night or two where I wondered: what if this actually IS covid, and you gave it to your mom, who is in good health but is 87?" I can't imagine ever being able to forgive oneself if one infected a relative who then died of it....) Anyway my mom is almost fully over the cold.

* Thinking about the general malaise I've been feeling. Part of it probably IS that "teaching four classes and trying to do research is just hard" but part of it may be some after effects of having lived through a pandemic. Michael Siegel, over here makes the point that we haven't really considered the psychological trauma a lot of people have dealt with.... i know I was pretty freaked out for pretty much all of 2020 and part of 2021, and I never even had COVID. He's talking about it in the context of learning loss but I'm still realizing how much the whole thing fundamentally altered my personality. I used to say back in the earlier 2010s that I was never a happy-go-lucky person but DANG I was positively a Pollyanna then compared to how I am now.

Part of it is, I realized the other day: I no longer trust there are good things coming. I expect everything to be bad in the future. I've been battered enough by the random uncaringness of the universe to feel like when something else bad happens, it's like "why not? Why not everything bad?" I know I have to break out of that because I do suspect on some level your attitude can contribute to dying younger than you might, and I don't want to die younger than I might. 

 I suppose the BEST answer to that is "go back to counseling" but I'm resistant because of the time commitment and also the cost. (I run much closer to running out of money at the end of the month than I did before. Even with the raise. It seems like everyone raised their prices - like the electrical provider and the gas company and everyone - just enough to eat up the extra I'm taking in, and then some). 

Possibly though, another answer is "you have to give it more time" - I know I suffered a lot of emotional shocks starting in 2019, and maybe I just, personally, need more time (or maybe we ALL need more time, but there's a lot of denial of that - possibly a lot of the bad behavior that's being reported on, just the petty rudenesses, is a result of a sort-of-traumatized people blinking now that they're back out in the light after being in a cave)

But I do need to find reasons to hope, and have joy, and find peace, and all of that. (Love, maybe not so much. Oh, I have friends who "love" me but I have no illusions; if their families needed them at the same time as I needed help, I can't expect that kind of help). 

Part of it may take getting under the load of heavier teaching? In the spring I only have three classes and while one's a challenging class for me, at least I'm not prepping it from scratch. Also, it seems unlikely there will be anyone needing advanced biostats in the summer this year, so I can have the summer to do some research again and also maybe relax a little, given - as far as I know - there will be no new preps for the fall.  I mean, I'm actually looking forward to having time to do research again (if I can come up with a good project idea), so that's something. 

I will admit I'm annoyed how some want to memory-hole it, just as a lot of workplaces tend to look at someone who recently lost a loved one (or lost a pregnancy they very much wanted, or went through divorce...) and basically go "wait why aren't you back to normal yet? It's been a couple weeks, you should be FINE now"

I also wonder how much of the "roaring 20s" and "Lost Generation" behavior was people who just burned out during the flu pandemic. I'm old now so i wouldn't do anything outrageous but if I were, like, a 25 year old who had lost both parents to the disease I might be moving to Paris to try to write poetry, or doing vanlife, or something - the whole "kicking over the traces" thing and refusing to go to a 'regular' job. I don't know. Though this may also be me looking back from 54 and realizing my whole life I've followed the rules and done stuff to please other people, often at the expense of my own self being happy. And I don't really know how to change it because I don't know what form it would take for me. Life seems kind of small right now, I think that's the issue....

* I did buy myself a couple of "presents." One is (FINALLY) supposed to arrive today; I just ordered another, and the third - actually the first of the three I ordered - is somewhere in International Shipping. 

The International package is the new Susan Crawford pattern book. The one I ordered today, which SHOULD come before I leave (Simply Sock Yarn ships fast) is their Pinkalicious sockyarn holiday pack - with stitch markers and a nice little bag, and a fancy skein of "Pinkmas" yarn, apparently inspired by the Barbie movie. And the thing that's set to arrive today? A squishamal Winter Wildcat, their winter critter for this year (where they also donate one to a child in need for every one bought). So I have three holiday critters from them: Elsa, my snow dragon, bought in 2020; Wentzel, the one I bought last year (A dragon in a santa suit) that almost didn't make it to me in time, and now this one (which I didn't think would; it was stalled in the UPS/USPS handoff for like a week)