I have started t his post three times.

I have started it three times because I am rather, uh, incoherent to say the least. Which does not bode well for my afternoon class. However, I have taught this text under worse circumstances* and I do have something resembling a lesson plan that I could teach in my sleep. Which might literally happen.

Two things about doing a stimulated cycle that I (apparently) forgot: (1) I don't sleep. (2) The Headache. Three nights of three different versions of insomnia (the one where I don't fall asleep, the one where I'm awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night, the one where I wake up at some ungodly early hour (umm, 3:30?) and then don't fall back to sleep). I need about 8.5 hours of sleep to be a functioning human being; I do better with 9. Sleep deprivation is enough to give me a headache. But add it to a tendency toward menstrual migraines and taking anti-estrogen drugs, and you have a very bad time indeed.

I woke up this morning with a headache that I felt in my nose. That never bodes well. By 10:00, before I went to class #1, I had to take a triptan. And found myself writing really incoherent things on student essays and not being able to string a sentence together. And the damn thing still wasn't gone. Enter a grande coffee. Headache's gone. So is my brain function.

Oh, I really can't wait for this cycle to be over. Or the semester.




*Have I mentioned that the last time I taught this class was The Bad Year, which included being in the midst of the 5 week miscarriage on my thirtieth birthday? That was the semester I literally sat in my office and cried and then went to class. And somehow I got some of my highest course evaluations ever and ended up winning a campus teaching award. Not sure what lesson there is to be learned from that.