4 Months in a Nutshell

Well, here I am. After far too long of not posting, I've made it back. I've been fine, really, so I apologize to any readers (if there are actually any of you out there) for not posting since October. Midterm is always terrible for me, and apparently it was so bad last year that I didn't find time to post again until this semester's midterm!

Here is my quickie catch-up for the past 4 months. Warning! November and December are rather depressing. Read with wine and anti-depressants nearby.

November:

I kept busy with school, grading, students, etc. I dreaded the thought of Thanksgiving without Ken here and me having to do family rounds without him. As a result, I went into major hiding from the week before Thanksgiving until January 1. I basically just didn't want to deal with the holidays and since the major ones start in November, I was almost inaccessible for two months. Another reason for not posting much since then. Work and helping my friend Lynn with house remodeling projects was about all I could manage.

December:

December was worse than November with all the wonderful snow and holiday spirit being thrown around by all. I just couldn't get into it all and didn't even want to try. Once the semester was over and final grades were turned in, I resumed being in hiding for the majority of break. This was a really tough time for me. Trying to deal with Christmas without Ken was a nightmare, and though friends and family tried to reach out for support, it was difficult for me to accept help. I decided that if I ever have to spend any future winter holidays without Ken, I am going far far far away from home. It's too hard to deal with the memories and loneliness at home. I don't know how others manage to do it after a spouse is gone. The best thing about Christmas was when Ken Skyped me from overseas on Xmas. I was able to see him for the first time in about 6 months, and I got to watch him open the box of presents I sent him. That was the best gift I could have ever received. Seriously, I'm getting teary now just remembering it. It was one of the brightest spots in several weeks of feeling terribly sad.

January:

Once the last family Christmas gathering was done, I felt an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders. I awoke that day with renewed energy and a sense of being ok. I've never felt such a sense of exhaustion being swept away. Amazing what a calendar change can do to a person. Though school was about to start again, I had Ken's two-week leave visit to look forward to. He was home and we had a wonderful time together. It was just like before he left, wonderful. We spent time at home, with family, and then traveled to Wisconsin to see friends. We also took a trip to Branson to get away. The time went by far too quickly, and before we knew it, he had to return.

February:

Thank goodness for short months. I've been keeping busy with work, sewing, and knitting. The last two are my two hobbies that I picked up at the start of this year. So far, I'm loving them, and am working on quilting, which is something I've wanted to learn how to do for a very long time. It's a slow-going process when there is so much other work to do on the weekends, but I've been trying to make time for myself.

March...?

March begins tomorrow. Only 2 weeks left until Spring Break. Boy, am I ready for it. I'm feeling better, but have reached the point where I just want this deployment to be over. I need life to get back to "normal" or at least for us to figure out what "normal" actually means. For starters, I'll try to be better about posting. :-)

Birthday Celebrations

I guess it's been a while since I've posted on here. Things are in full swing around here with work and other obligations. I feel like I hardly had time to have a birthday, but I did. Oct. 20 was my 32 birthday. Hard to believe in one way, but the number didn't really phase me. 31 was the hard one for me, as I think 35 or 36 will be later. The people in my office at work think I'm just a baby, so that makes me feel younger too. I spent the day teaching, but only had two classes, so that was nice. I also received flowers, one plant from friends Jeff and Kelly, and my usual monthly rose bouquet from Ken. Lovely!

That evening, I went to dinner at one of the very nice Italian restaurants in town called My Verona. I haven't been there so it was a real treat to try it. Melissa, Audra, Nadia and I had a wonderful time, and Nadia treated me to a luscious and very decadent dessert! She insisted on getting a picture of me blowing out the candle.

I also received some birthday Beef & Noodle soup from grandma, which is the best! She made me three containers full: one to eat that week and two to freeze. In all, a wonderful birthday. I was sad Ken couldn't be here, but he will be here in the years to come. Now it's back to grading those piles of papers stacked on my kitchen table.

The end of a looooong week

Last week was one of the worst, as in busiest, weeks of the semester. I hesitate to event write that though considering that on Wednesday and Thursday of this coming week my students -- 138 of them -- are turning in their first papers. Last week, however, I got a sneak peak at them all when the students turned in their first and second drafts for review. My hope is that it will take less time to grade the final copies if I saw them a few times first. Fingers crossed.

It's definitely been a busy semester. I'm trying to remember though if it's as busy as last fall when I was teaching 4 courses at HCC and 2 at UNI. That was 3 preps and each of them a relatively new course. Plus the UNI classes were longer papers as that was a Comp class. This semester, it's another 6 classes but it's only 2 different ones and I've taught them both before. So why does it seem so much busier this year?

I think it's a combination of things. For starters, I have more students per class this semester and so many "student issues" have popped up already. HCC students have far more issues than the UNI ones did. Case in point, last week, I had one student come to class and call me out into the hall to talk about being assaulted by her sig. other which had just happened. She was still pretty shaken up, so immediately after class, I walked her over to the counselor. Then I had 2 students cheat on an assignment, so we had to have "the talk." Plus the multiple classes with the "chatty Cathy's" -- mostly males in this case who won't shut up in class. I can't tell you how many times I've had to talk to them about talking too much or when I've started to snap in class because they don't hear directions because they were talking and so want me to repeat them for the 4th or 5th time. The group this semester just seems so so so immature. Then of course, there are the classes where no one, and I do mean no one, will talk or discuss when they are supposed to. So I've had to do some work to restructure how we're going to do things this week in class. Some of the other ways that I've done things that have worked in the past just aren't cutting it now. Ah, the fun of teaching.

The other reason why I think it seems more busy around here is simply the fact that Ken's not here. I get the joy of doing everything around the house by myself, and while it didn't seem so bad in the summer when I was off work, I'm really starting to notice it now that I have to do it all in addition to work. The nicest thing happened the other day. I came home from getting groceries yesterday to find that my neighbor George had asked his lawn mowing guy to take care of my lawn too. He even went all around with the weed eater and trimmed the place up nice. What a treat! Not to have to mow the lawn was about the nicest thing that could have happened to me with everything else that was going on. Thanks George!

Never Turn Your Back on a Hungry Cat

Yes, I realize that I'm getting dangerously close to making this an all-cat blog, but with Ken gone, they are my only real entertainment these days.

So here I am on a Sunday trying to work on my lesson plans for the week and thinking to myself how much work I have to get done today alone. I get up for a moment to stretch my legs, and when I come back, I find that Tucker has helped himself to my little ice cream treat I stupidly left unattended on the table. Note how Artemus is looking so innocent and not the least bit interested in being involved with such a criminal act.

Here's a close up of the culprit.

Lazy Cat

Tucker's favorite resting place is to lie in the window of the kitchen. He loves it when I open it up and he can stretch across it. The weather's been unusually nice lately so I've had the windows open more. Here is a shot of my lazy boy lounging happily.

First Days of Classes Fall '09

Two days of first classes done. I am teaching 6 writing classes this semester: 4 Prep Writing I and 2 Prep Writing II classes. Luckily for me, all of the Writing I classes are on the same days (MWF) and all of the Writing II classes are on the same days (TR). The only bad things are the sheer number of students that I have right now: almost 23 in each class though of course not all students showed up for the first day of classes. Wednesday will give me a better idea of who is actually going to be in each of my classes and how many are going to stay there.

Once again, I forgot how exhausting these first few days really are. It felt good to be back in the swing of things, but by Monday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. when my last class of the day was over, I could barely keep my eyes open. I think it's the repositioning myself as the "extrovert" I have to pretend to be when in the classroom. All summer long, I've been able to be an introvert, keeping to myself most of the time, but for 4 hours solid, I had to be "on" in front of a group. When I came home that day, I actually fell asleep on the couch for about half an hour and didn't even realize I'd done it. One minute I'm watching the Nightly News with Brian Williams and the next thing I know, the local news is on. I'm not a big nap taker, but I just couldn't help it that day.

I don't yet have a good read on what my students are like. There are just too many of them and we haven't had our "getting to know you" session yet. That's coming on Wednesday. I also still have students asking me to let them into my classes. They are already so full! It's hard to say no, but the numbers are getting overwhelming. A result of the combination of a bad economy, high student enrollment, and not enough teachers.

Thinking about Kenny

It's a Thursday night, and I'm sitting around home missing my Kenny. Here are a few shots to bring him a little closer while he's half a world away.

Mt. Rushmore, March 2009.

With Brother Tom in our backyard. July 2009.

With Artemus. Sometime in 2008.

With Tucker in the Romeoville apt. 2007

Building sand castles with Audra at Backbone State Park, May 2008.