It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon. Grey and bleak outside the window. Everyone is silently attending to various projects. Jonah is waging war against the Huns on the Steve’s PC behind me. I can hear Steve is hacking up a lung on the sofa downstairs. He’s wrapped in an afghan and absorbed in his new book on Caesar. I think Ian is playing games on the Game Cube downstairs. I’m not thrilled that both boys are playing video games all afternoon, so I’ll chase them away soon. But, like flies, they’ll just swarm back again. Steve’s too sick, and I’m too busy to more effectively distract them.
I’m pumping out lectures like I do every weekend, every evening, and in every spare minute that I have. Things are a bit mad around here, but we’re laughing about it, so all is not lost. And this insanity will continue only for another couple months when the semester ends. I’ll have off from May until September. And all next year, I’m only slated to teach two classes each semester, the prep work will be done, and Ian will be in school full time. We can handle a little nuttiness for a short time.
Last week, Steve used a week of his vacation time to watch the kids. The kids had off from school; I didn’t. While it sucks to use one of Steve’s vacation weeks and not go away, we really needed the break. We’ve all been sick, probably from not enough sleep or proper food. Having him around to make the meals and do the laundry was such a relief. Instead of spending two hours getting the kids ready for school and then racing off to lecture. I just got myself ready, patted the kids on the head, and left for work. When I came home, dinner was made and the chores done. I was my dad for a week.
My first paycheck came. Hurrah. The first one in three years. Hurrah. There’s a pencil skirt at Banana Republic with my name on it. Actually, this is my first proper paycheck in a decade. Probably more. I’ve been doing adjunct and graduate school-slave jobs for so long that I have disassociated work from money. I’m liking this salary thing. A lot.
I think that classes are going well. We’ll see how the midterms go. The school paper wants to do a profile on me, which is nice.
I’m surfing around for disturbing pictures of Iraq for Tuesday’s media class. We’re going to discuss the impact of images and if these images affect national security. I was going to flip through a bunch of pictures, but I don’t think I can stomach it. Found this interesting website that is chronicling the war of images.
Apt. 11d 