By this afternoon, I will be finished (papers graded, grades submitted, finished) with spring term 2010. That's something I've been looking forward to for a very long time; I started the school year coming off a very bad (post-m/c, post-cancelled IVF) summer and never really slowed down. The bad year is almost officially over, as I conceived May 7, 2009 and had a positive pregnancy test twelve days later. Of course, long time readers will recall that I learned I was pregnant in the same phone call that told me it was likely not viable, with a first beta of only 17. The bad year is almost over, and I'm terrified that another one will start. The summer that I was so looking forward to? Last night, as I sat in the kitchen drinking (decaf) chai tea and listening to Chet Baker while grading the last of the papers, it occurred to me that summer starting might not be a good thing. That, in fact, for a person who has used the hyperbusy-ness of work as a crutch to get through a very bad year, summer starting might be a very bad thing indeed.
What if I have another summer like last one? Barring a positive pregnancy test in 10 (!) days, is there any way to avoid a summer like last one? Certainly I have work to do (manuscripts to draft, my tenure portfolio to assemble), but it's not the same kind of showing up and smiling and talking to people work that actually allows me to think about something other than the state of my uterus. It's sitting at the desk work that, when I'm anxious about other things, I find very difficult to do. I spent the bulk of last summer reading novels by Paul Auster and sitting on my porch in a depressed, teary fog. I can't do that again. And I'm not sure how to avoid it. And even if I manage to work during the day, the nights after LG falls asleep can be very long indeed.
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