Out of Gas

Well, today was long and exhausting, and I'm totally, completely out of gas. I think last weekend's marathon has finally caught up to me.

My midterm marks were due today, and because of procrastination plus my weekend trip plus too much to do, I had to work like a crazy fiend this morning to finish marking, tabulating, etc. I'd planned to finish by 12 noon, the deadline, but finished by 1:30 so that I only had one half hour to prepare my mind for my class. Needless to say I was tired, headachey, and brittle during the class, and even though we had some excellent discussion about the poems for today by Maya Angelou, I found myself getting more and more cranky. I ended up confronting a student who often complains and makes disparaging comments, saying "why are you so negative all the time? It's very irritating..." etc. A totally ineffective approach to her constant naysaying, I know, but there you are.

The students do some good work but have a bad habit of talking in class and I'm getting sick of it.

I was also a bit anxious because I decided today to take one semester off of teaching to work on my Harry Potter book project...it seems to me that the time to try and publish anything on HP is right now, while the series is still in progress. I handed over my courses for next term to a friend, which helps her out, and starting January I am going to walk the tightrope without a safety net.

Our friend Professor S inspired me to think about this by talking about her own book project. I have a couple of book plans that I will need to choose between, but I was thinking that when I start, you folks on my friendslist could all be my beta readers. (I'd have to f-lock the writing so that I could publish it after).

Anyway, thinking about taking this leap into thin air is pretty scary, and by the time I got home from my class I was extremely tense. I went for a quick run before picking up the kids and that helped a lot...so did telling my kids a story on our walk home, and so did looking at logospilgrim's wonderful pictures from Witching Hour.

I am totally wiped out still, but we ate some dinner and we're going to the Dollarama store to buy things for my 9 year old's birthday party. No leisure time to be had from now until after the party.