Avoidance

While I did make meager progress on the first-day handouts today, I mostly did five loads of laundry. Also changed the sheets, did dishes, and ran from the house out into the yard with Scott to enjoy a coughing fit after he nearly suffocated us by bleaching the part of the bathtub he was about to re-caulk. Bleach. It is strong smelling devil gas.

I'm now finished with one and a half syllabi and I'll need three total. Various other crap to hand out on Day One is still in the works, as is my annual pep talk to myself, trying to believe that I won't fall to pieces like a dry crumb cake when I have to re-enter those doors of academia.

A very close colleague and I parted ways last spring over a complicated and stunning misunderstanding that tore us both up inside like a hollow-point bullet. I supposed there's a chance of friendship forming between us again, but it's doubtful and it will never be like it was before. So that adds an extra  rottenness to the beginning of the semester. I'm used to the exhaustion and the chaos. Not so used to the emotional wreckage I'm about to climb back inside. It feels like going to the scene of a horrifying car accident and, after reliving the sounds of metal and the scream that turned out to be your own, being forced to squeeze in behind the broken steering wheel again.