New photos from the road to Yosemite . . .

. . . and from being there.

Loose ends

Well, just one more big messy hurdle to get through.

Or . . . one big messy day, three big messy hurdles. Return the student papers, finish out my time at AFG, and submit my field paperwork for my MSW.

It'll be nice to be back at AFG; just sad, since it'll mark the end of an era there. But I'll be back in January to do some more work on the evaluation. So the only difference will be no more clock ticking, no more surveillance of the same variety. I don't like to be surveilled.

I have submitted the student grades, submitted all my work for the time being, and am now sorting through the detritus of the end of the semester. I got to the bottom of the laundry hamper and realized two interesting, if slightly disturbing things: (1) I had clothes in there from Thanksgiving, which means I probably haven't done laundry since then, unless I did it and just left the handwashables at the bottom (which is possible, but in any case, I can't remember, and that in and of itself is kind of telling) and (2) my laundry was so cold, there is no doubt that it helps to insulate the wall the hamper sits against in my office. Hmm.

Well, now I have both the washing machine and the dishwasher running, and I'm debating what to do next. Something about having an intense stress-induced adrenaline rush for several days makes it a bit anticlimactic just to go to bed, though it probably would be wise. I feel a bit too pumped up for that, anyway, though. If I drive to the supermarket to buy O'Douls and get gas, though, I'll probably be done for the night. Well, at least I wouldn't have to stop for gas in the morning on the way to Detroit.

One option would be to work on my field paperwork now, but my arms are tingling from all the typing for days. So I probably shouldn't be blogging, either, I know.

I did buy a ticket to California, FINALLY. Hooray. And I've left enough time for me to clean up the house thoroughly before I go, so everything will be pristine and fresh and tidy and all my personal crap will be a little less overwhelming. So I pulled out a suitcase, and can finally start thinking about being a person who is something other than a teacher and a student and a social worker, for at least a few days.

Oh, just to give myself a sense of accomplishment, I just tallied up my writing I've done since Thanksgiving: 1 28-page paper, 7 pages of short response papers on readings, 1 23-page paper, 1 35-page paper, 1 8-page paper, and 1 page of prelim questions. That's 102 pages, and just shy of a hundred if you knock out title pages and bibliographic material. Nutty. And that doesn't even include comments on student papers, or emails, or blog writing. I guess it's been a productive few weeks. I'm not saying all of it is good. Heck, plenty of it isn't. But a little of it, I think, actually is.

Between that and the very exciting meetings with a few faculty members I love, I think I'm going to head off to California pretty blissed out despite all the last-minute stress of grading and running around for field placement.

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr. (Please let me know if you'd rather I not leave these up here, Marcell!)

Oh, my heart is a little broken over missing Robert Hass reading at UMMA yesterday. He is one of my very favorites. I even got out my old copy of Praise to lend to Katie after our late-night giddy return to e.e. cummings a few weeks ago.

(Late-night Monday edit: Oh, Marta, remember reading "Meditation at Lagunitas" aloud to one another with Ross, over and over again, when we were all ailing and huddling around together on the beds in our room in Spiti?

[It was Kaza, wasn't it? Where I hung on the shoulders of you both, and you dragged me, complaining the whole way, down the hill into the valley to the hospital, to get me medicine for my intestinal bug, only for us to discover a week later that I'd been taking sulfa drugs that gave me hives, and for Ross to discover a few months later, that the mangoes you brought me for comfort everyday were only further contributing to the allergy!? Those were the good old days, I tell you. The good old days of riding on a tractor to get between villages, drawing our tupattas over our mouths and noses to filter the dust, then taking turns racing to the toilet for our assorted ailments. . .] And then there was the night you went off on your date and the Scandinavian/Korean Christian Buddhist wooed me from below the wall where I was sitting and singing by myself, and gave me the book Living Buddha, Living Christ that I still can't quite let go of, though I've never quite read it either. . . Oh, how I miss being young, sometimes.)

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr.

Fitting, by the way. . . I'm the Hermit today. I wish I could hide away for a few more days. I think I could finally get all my work done if I could just have a respite from the social and not have to prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet...

I'm putting off even writing to and calling people I love. Yeah, I think that "I" in the Myers-Briggs from years ago probably still holds, even if I do flirt more than anybody you know. :P