Brought to You by the Sunday Afternoon Kid Sitter

(Note:  This post was drafted on Sunday, thus the title.  Then the reality of the week hit and I didn't post it.  Pretend it's a lovely Sunday afternoon, okay?)

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I am sitting at a high top table in the Starbucks near campus, finally sitting down with a printed calendar and a pencil to make a week-by-week plan for sabbatical.  This, two weeks in. 

The first two weeks involved a fair amount of reading, TV watching, going to the gym, prepping for my interview (this took much longer than I anticipated), and assorted admin type tasks (such as letters of rec).  I’ve deferred or said no to a few others (a student asked for a letter; I said I could do it if the deadline is after Feb 7 [so three weeks out] and this actually works.  Good for her for thinking ahead!  On the other hand, I said I wasn’t willing to help a student “revise” some class work for a campus writing contest.  One, it seems horribly unethical as I will end up reading submissions in that category, and two, WTF.  I just don’t get the sort of entitlement involved in students thinking that professors—from previous semesters, no less—should serve as unpaid editors.  If I was teaching and holding office hours, I’d be happy to sit down face to face to talk about this sort of thing.  But SABBATICAL.)

So anyway, I’m sitting in the Starbucks, and I actually think I found a drink that works for me:  decaf coconut milk macchiato.  The coconut milk is fairly subdued and won’t give me a belly ache, and I won’t be awake until 1 am.  I have planned a rough architecture of the semester, barring unexpected things (umm, like a job talk).  I still have an hour of childcare.  This feeling is worth paying $12/hr.

Not much else going on.  We are in the market for a matched set of roughly 4-5 month old kittens.  I don’t think I mentioned this, but we did euthanize our old girl two weeks ago.  The vet said something that made everything feel right, which was essentially ‘mother nature wouldn’t let this happen,’ meaning if she weren’t domesticated, she would have died long ago.  We miss her, and our house is quite quiet with only our one cat-who-rarely-meows.  The kids want kittens NOW.  I could go a bit slower.

My interview went well, I think, which has caused a certain amount of angst.  Getting ahead of myself here, but what happens if I am actually offered a new job?  And if I stay, what would actually make me happy?

I’ve been doing reasonably well on my Whole30ish month; I’ve made some exceptions, mostly involving alcohol (cocktails at two friends’ houses and also after my interview and the night we put our cat to sleep).  I’ve figured out that even small amounts of dairy (like the amount of half and half I’d put in coffee) results in a vague headache; fortunately, I also found a non-dairy substitute (Califa brand) that tastes reasonable.  I figure if by the end of the month I stuck with it 80-90% (or, minimally 25 days) that’s great.  My goal isn’t to arbitrarily follow someone else’s rules but (1) gain some control over mindless eating and bad habits, (2) lose a few pounds, (3) feel better.  I’ve definitely accomplished all three.

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Now it's Friday, and I feel differently about much of the above (have not yet heard about the job, for example, so I'm assuming it's not going to happen).  I did have a productive week, especially considering MLK.  I could be on campus literally all day to day for meetings and talks.  I deliberately decided NOT to attend our dept meeting and another big meeting, because all the relevant stuff I will learn about anyway (that's four hours of my day!).  I am going in for a library session because relevant to my current project, and I need to print a friend's novel.  If it's not helpful, I'll leave!  Working it out as I go.  More soon.