Takes the Sting Right Out of Being on Campus

Tuesdays involve a new tradition this semester. Scott and I used to have lunch together a couple times a week on campus, but for the past 3 semesters my teaching schedule has eaten up any possibility of eating up any lunch together. This time I don't teach on Tuesdays so I get a quick bite with Scott at noon and then go hold my office hours.

Today we ate in a weird little Thai place on campus and were in a room all by ourselves to try to unwind (him mostly, since I had just gotten to work), and hang out where there was no noise. I hate noise. And crowds. Campus has a lot of both.

And then later when I took a break from grading to walk to the library to return my DVDs, Scott was on his afternoon break and we walked there together. That's really all it takes.

500 and Counting

According to Blogger, this is my 500th post.

It's a random Sunday and the biggest event of the day has been a wave of grief I've had going off and on all day, missing my dad and having involuntary short sobs visiting me out of nowhere.

I've wished so many times that my dad would send me some kind of a little sign that he's around. I know people who have had that happen. I have an email from an online friend I've never met, telling me about a piece of her dad's old army gear showing up in the laundry on important dates. I kept that email and have read it over and over.

From this tiny blog with very few readers in the vast and turbulent ocean of the internet, I dedicate this 500th post to you, Dad. So many hundreds of times I've imagined walking into the nursing home to see your face again, and to hear you say "Where you been?"

Pre-Dinner Conversation

Scott: What can I do with this chicken to make it more interesting?

Candy: Ask it to read more.

Fall Semester 2.0

When I go back into the classroom on Monday, I will have been away from teaching for 11 days. With the mix of the M/W schedule, Labor Day off, and still being too sick to teach this past Wednesday, it's been a long time of isolation from my students. My nerves are back in a big way. Especially for the first class of the day, which is filled with new faces. 16 out of 18 are people I've never met, since it's an introduction to poetry writing class and anyone can sign up. In the other two classes about half of each are repeat customers.

This is all very exciting stuff to read, I know. I'm trying to get my working brain back on duty and it is reluctant, to say the least. It became too familiar with pajamas, thermometer, codeine, Hall's mentholyptus, dragging to the kitchen for juice, lying in bed and staring at the wall, and abandoning the pile of work when I was too sick to even look at it.

I made my first excursion outside the gleaming sick-bubble on Thursday, sneaking onto campus in my sweats and ponytail to make copies for the week. Everything about this semester feels odd. Since I don't teach in the English building at all (construction) and my closest colleague is an invisible mist, I'm trying to find, as they say, a "new normal." At least for now. At least something I can work with. A temporary life raft until the boat comes back.

Not the Long Weekend I'd Been Hoping For

As it turns out, one of the reasons I was feeling so crappy on my birthday is that I was about to get really sick. Today is Day 4 in bed, and I'm at that charming sneezing/snotting/snuffling stage now.

I was very excited for this long, long weekend with Scott. The belated birthday dinner out, the watching of lots of movies and the eating of barrels of popcorn. Instead I got fever, snot, and flattened into my bed. But I also got homemade chicken-vegetable-alphabet noodle soup brought to me on a tray when I felt too sick to get out of bed. And popsicles and Tylenol and Cold-Eze brought to me from the Walgreen's down the street. And the finishing of the dishes and laundry, which were chores I had to abandon when I did that thing that people do when they proclaim "I will NOT be sick!" All of these acts of kindness are the actions of a man I fall more in love with every day.