(I'm trying to begin my days by blogging or at least journaling. Partly to remind myself to balance reading with writing. Also partly because if I don't write out some of this stuff I either brood about it and fail to work or I feel the need to tell people who don't necessarily need to know it.)
So I really thought that I was going to get up and start working at 6:30 or 7:00 this morning. When I rolled over it was 9:23 and I had been having one of my bizarrely crowded Wisconsin-related dreams. My whole family was at the house and then some. And K kept calling me but we never really ended up talking. Or he might have actually been there. I checked my messages when I got up this morning just in case this particular disturbance was occasioned by him rather than me. (We did have a sort of hurried and possibly planned on his part encounter in the library on Friday, but Friday was really complicated.) In retrospect, I realize the entire scenario was absurd because I don't get cell phone reception in Wisconsin. (Not the whole state, just where we are.) Or it might have been partially in St Louis. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that some of the characters from Friday Night Lights were there.
The point is that, in spite of my best intentions, I was in a dead sleep until 9:23. I must not have even heard the alarm go off. I think I need to get one of those alarm clocks that makes the room brighter because my bedroom doesn't actually have any windows. It's fine because I keep the door open to the living room, but when it's raining (like today) or just plain dark in the room, things can be pretty bleak. This may also be a necessity if I get that adjuncting job that would have me teaching composition in the Village at 8:00 in the morning.
Why I thought that it would even be possible for me to get up at 6:30 and start working requires a slightly longer explanation. For what it's worth, that's what I did yesterday. But let's go back to Sunday. On Sunday, I gratefully returned to my own home. Not that housesitting wasn't fun, but I was definitely ready to come back home. Also, the cleaning crew showed up at around 9:30 while I was in the shower. Granted, this was an improvement over their having woken me up at 8:25 on Friday morning, but it still increased my desire to head back to Crown Heights, especially since the information I had was that they were coming "midday." Anyway, I reestablished myself at home, then turned right around to go back to school, where I got about half of my grading done (the reading of the papers, but not the commenting or deciding grades) as well as a few other things, all with no awkward or painful run-ins with K. What did not get done, however, was grocery shopping, as somehow by the time I got back to Brooklyn, the Key Food, the fruit stand, and the overpriced yet okay in a pinch bodega fronting as a grocery store were all closed. Determined not to spend more money and time eating out, I went home to scrape together a meal from my extremely bare cupboards.
That turned out to be a mistake. Something I ate, whether the defrosted lentil soup from a couple of weeks ago, the frozen blueberries I had for dessert, or (as I suspect) a couple bites of tahini while the soup was heating up gave me stupid food poisoning. The irony of throwing up at 7:00 in the morning after my first night of sobriety in a week did not escape me.
So that kind of killed Monday. I cancelled my appearance at my field meeting, dragged myself across the street for ginger ale and a single sleeve of saltines that cost me $1.99, and resolved to wait the thing out until I could work again. That never happened. But, as a result, I ended up going to bed at around 9 and getting up at 5:30, and proceeding to work basically a 12-hour day, not including the commuting to teach. I got all the prep done, but had to take about two and a half hours after class to finish the grading. (That was too long, I realize.) After a trip to Target on my way home (I had to get some basic food as well as pens, as I completely ran out of stupid pens over the weekend, too), I was pretty exhausted, so I figured I'd just go to bed early again and get up early again.
Well, thus endeth that experiment. I kind of knew I was sunk last night when, despite being unable to keep my eyes open for even one more page of Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, I found myself unable to stop tossing and turning. And I think my sleep was fitful, at best, especially if I was having those kinds of dreams. And I think my plans for the day were at best overly optimistic. If it continunes to rain, I'm not going ot the grocery store either. It's far enough away to be a pain in the ass and enough of a shithole not to be worth it if it's raining. This doesn't bode well for my newly-formed resolution to eat fewer processed foods and do more cooking, but, well, I live in the hood. People here clearly don't *want* decent grocery stores. And no matter what A. says, not all of us can just zip up to the Union Square Whole Foods to grab some fish. My friend M says she's going to start bringing me to the Fort Greene Farmer's Market to meet both seasonal produce and age-appropriate single boys. That may help get this resolution off the ground. I may also start trying to patronize the Flatbush Co-Op that I just read about, but not until my conference paper is written. That kind of excursion would also entail a fairly high probability of running into the K, since as best I can remember, it's basically around the corner from his house. Brilliant.
Yes, I realize this was an incredibly boring post, and one that's probably not going to be improved if I mention things like having rearranged my living room furniture, deciding that I need to slightly alter my approach to orals note taking, or saying that my plans for the day involve adding Victorian women poets to one of my orals lists, typing notes for Rousseau, and writing a draft of my Tennyson paper.
On the other hand, this may all be a fascinating placeholder for some of the other things that are going on. I'm still a bit emotionally hung over from Friday. For some reason, it was just so damn *complicated.* Suffice it to say that I did not, for example, expect Thursday night to end the way it did. It was something I'd thought about in a general sense, but apparently I'll do all kinds of things after that many drinks. (I haven't decide if I'm blogging that in full yet.) The morning was weird and restless, even when I had a decent seat for a couple hours at West Village Coffee Shop, then school was a bizarre series of run-ins. Not just the K, but some dude that I know from a completely different social circle and had an awkward non-sexual night with in December (I actually just saw and avoided him, feeling cowardly). And, potentially, at the back of the room where our recruitment event was being held, someone who may actually be responsible for the absolute worst thing that happened to me last year, something that I have told very few people about and may never blog. Plus a bunch of other encounters, renewals of friendships, long discussions--well, suffice it to say all I did during the day on Friday was sleep on the couch where I was housesitting and finish Confessions.
Anyway. I do have a lot of things to do today that I should probably start on, especially since I'm not into my fourth hour of work like I thought I was going to be, and also because I am seeing the Poet (my new pseudonym for the guy I don't really know how to talk about since he is absolutely 100% wrong for me and far too old and probably deserves to have a reputation as kind of an ass and yet makes me fairly happy at least in the sort of half-relationship that is all I am able or willing to have with him) tomorrow night which means I really must dispense with most of Rousseau today.
Okay, working.
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