Well, it’s back to teaching for me. My summer night classes begin this evening. I got up early with Jes to run some GAS conference errands (the conference is this coming weekend). I had to transport several thousand dollars worth of auction pieces in my van from storage to the conference hotel. Yikes! So I’m just home from unloading that and I need to get my lecture notes in order for tonight.

I often run a kind of low grade depression that I chalk up to weltschmertz (weltschmertz differs from the sadness and boredom of ennui by expressing a determined German certainty about the consequences of human nature in the world), but today I am two clicks further on my emotional dial. I am grumpy. I am wrong side of the bed “who stole my meaningless widget” grumpy.

It’s possible that not getting enough sleep, having a meal last night that isn’t quite finding a home in my digestive tract, and listening to the endless atrocities of war on NPR (asymmetrical warfare my ass – try unconstitutional psychological torture chambers) are the roots of my grump, but the trunk and limbs of it are fears over going back to the classroom slightly unprepared.

It’ll be fine. I am the king of winging it and I have a “paint by the numbers” script to be my guide. This always happens to me, a kind of stage fright, so I know better than to be really worried about it. In a sense it is an emotional marker that I take my students and my work seriously.

Time jump – I have detailed lesson plans now for the next two weeks, so that at least means I know what I am going to try to cover tonight and beyond. I am no longer grumpy, now I am just ill. BJ has me convinced that I have sleep apnea – warning signs include an enlarged neck and hypertension. I’ve got the hypertension, and my neck is huge, but then I have a large head so go figure. However, my head isn’t getting larger and my neck is!!!! Well, I am off to make copies of succubus syllabi and perilous prompts.