Oh me, oh my!
Yesterday, I was just a goddamn lump of aching fatigue. Partly, the day before I took a Claritin D to get rid of the allergy stuff. It wiped out the allergy—pretty much—and me as well. But most significantly, I forgot to take my morning meds and by mid-afternoon I began to think if this is what life is like when you get old then I really don’t want to do it. Then I thought, did you forget to take your meds?
I thought about turning out a bumper sticker: Did You Take Your Meds Today? I figure maybe getting people to remember to take their meds would cut down on road rage. They had to completely close down a road that was being worked on in LA because the motorists were starting to attack verbally and physically the guys working the on the roads. I hate to say it but I have felt the urge myself. Here I am sitting there stewing in the heat, late of course, irritated because I have forgotten to take my meds, and there is this imbecile standing there doing nothing but holding up a little red sign that is blocking my path.
While I was feeling like a lump of fatigue, I was reading through a batch—about 50, I guess—of research papers. I was getting them emailed via emailed attachment. I would get through a batch; then I would check my email, and there would be more of them waiting for me. I did this over and over again. Read, click, more to read. And for some unknown reason, the students are all writing the full 12 pages I asked for. One was even 15 pages. Damn! I kept thinking I will find a short one or a really screwed up one. I can do those fast.
I am doing them fast, as fast as I can anyway, because I want the grading stuff pretty much taken care of before we head out to South Carolina to bury Joan’s remains. Sure I will still have email contact wherever I go, but I don’t want the student papers on my mind, hanging over my head to be done, while I am trying to “get away” a little bit, though I am not sure going to a funeral counts as “getting away.” Although, what’s that joke I tried to make up: A Tingle’s idea of a vacation is to get pneumonia.
Actually, one of the best vacations I ever had was when I threw my back out for nine days. I couldn’t stand up straight. The doctor gave me a powerful muscle relaxant, and for nine days I just forgot the outside world, work, all that crap because I couldn’t move and the muscle relaxant produced a sort of high. I just read stuff on the Battle of the Bulge, for example, and the making of the Panama Cannel. I didn’t mind at all except getting up and going to the bathroom was pretty painful.
We have to get up before 5 am tomorrow to get a flight that will take us straight to Dallas where we get another flight that will take us straight to Charleston, SC. So we should be there by about 430 ECT.
Knock on wood.
