Here Comes the Sun?

Ok, not really, as it's supposed to thunderstorm today, but I woke up feeling like a whole new (and non-bitchy) woman, even though I did have a dream that sucked because it was one of those ones where there was a person in my house even though I didn't invite him in, and the person was this contractor guy and he was trying to make me pay him to do all this decorating work on my apartment (which was incidentally a mess) because it looked like I didn't really live here. At least it wasn't the dream where huge numbers of people keep coming into my house through doorways I didn't realize existed and partying while I'm trying to seal off all exits and to oust those who keep getting in. That's worse than dealing with Contractor Guy who disparages my nesting skills.

(Incidentally, I probably should do some things to decorate the apartment more, but I'm just not that interested in doing them. I'm not really a nesting sort of person. No, not at all.)

But anyway, even with having that dream prior to waking, I still am in a better mood than yesterday. Today will be similarly busy, but in less pressure-filled ways than yesterday was, which will help. You know, it occurs to me that while I'm good at handling crises (big or small) I'm much less good at handling constant, nagging, low-level pressure. That constant, nagging, low-level pressure is the thing that turns me into a raving bitch and that makes me lose it.

I need to go take some allergy medicine - the one thing that sucks is I woke up with a sinus headache (slept with my window open, so my own damned fault) and I really want it to go away before school today.

Ok, so what's on the agenda for today?

1. Travel $ requests for my summer travels, including begging letter to people not my department chair to try to squeeze a bit more cash out of the university.
2. Grading. Ever more grading.
   
3. Meet with two students.
4. Finish with friend's book so can write overdue review.
5. Wonder why I'm considered an XX Scholar when I'm woefully underread in that area. Beat self up for not having read all those things people assume I've read, but then still don't read any of them.
6. Consider how I'm going to decide who to reject for the MLA panel. There are so many issues involved in this that I want to die. Actually, I'll digress from my list for a moment to talk about why this is so hard because maybe it will help. So I've gotten a good number of submissions for a panel that really at maximum can handle 4 papers. And that's a maximum - it would probably be preferable to have 3. Of those who've submitted, one is an unbelievable mentor to me, one is a guy I cite all over the book manuscript, many are people with whom I'm already acquainted in real life, and a few are people who I've not met and who are not currently involved in the society sponsoring this panel. All but one of the proposals is excellent. Also, add into this equation that I really want to have a nice range of papers in terms of subject area/texts that the papers cover. In part, I imagined this panel and agreed to put it together as a way of opening up the area of study a bit - to bring new voices into the criticism and new blood into the organization. So. This leaves me in my current pickle, because do I pick the new blood people and reject people who are inner circle people? Do I pick my mentor as a way of reciprocating for all of the opportunities she's given me? And then there are also some issues related to gender that I probably can't go into in any kind of detail, but let's just say that if I wanted to I could make this an all male panel, which is BIZARRE given the general makeup of scholars who work on the thing that the panel is about. You know, sometimes I think that I think like a male critic, though like a gay feminist male critic, probably. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Ok, let's get back to the list.
7. Figure out what I'm doing in the class I'm teaching this morning. (I mostly know, but I need to figure out which activity I'm having them do, figure out how to manage to meet with each of them as they do that activity.)
   
8. Make list of things to do for end of week (as week is getting out of control a little bit).
9. Email. Ever more email.
10. Prep for committee meeting and committee meeting.
11. Prep for class tomorrow in which I'm teaching a novel I've never taught before (because I'm dumb and I think it's a good idea to put things on syllabi I've never taught before to "change it up" but at least I am very familiar with the novel and I did reread it already, and I've taught other texts by the author, so it's a matter of organizing ideas more than anything else.)
    
12. At least go for a walk, but maybe go to the gym.

Ok, I'm not putting anything else on this list. But yes, that's what the day is looking like. I just have to remind myself that by the end of the month my life is going to slow down a lot - I'll be done with the manuscript, and I won't need to be so super-productive as I've needed to be this week (as normally I'm really not quite this super-productive) with an eye toward needing to work on the manuscript all weekend.

But now, I need to think about what I'm going to wear today. This is harder than it should be because I feel like all of my shoes are wrong. With the spring-like weather boots seem wrong, but looking at the spring-like shoes I've got, they all seem wrong, too. I may need to take a break from all of the productivity this weekend to do some shoe shopping. Not that I should be blowing money, but whatever.

You know how I mentioned in my post the other day that sometimes I can't help but like crap music? Another example of this just came to my attention: Fergie. I know in my right mind that Fergie is horrible, but in my unright mind, all I can say is, well, her songs really are Fergalicious. It's so wrong. I can't believe I've confessed this here, but if you can't confess such things on your pseudonymous blog, where can you confess them?

Ok, this is more than enough of a post. Now I'm just procrastinating. Time to get the day started.