New Developments at the BardiacShack (tm)

In April or so, a friend of mine told me about an acquaintance who's going through a painful divorce and was looking for a place to stay for a couple of months during the summer.  Without a great deal of thought, I said it might work at the BardiacShack.  (The house is mostly on an upper level, with a walk out, well-finished basement with the laundry, a den sort of room, two bedrooms, and a full bathroom.  So someone can be downstairs and have a fair bit of privacy while I'm upstairs.)  A day or so later, I got a call, and we made arrangements for A to come stay for a couple of months.

It worked pretty well.  A's a thoughtful adult, pretty quiet, if a bit quirky.  And A cooks sometimes, and that was nice.  

The only wrinkle was that A began seeing B, and B is more than a bit quirky, and spent a lot of time here.  B is also quite nice, and friendly, and also likes to cook a lot.  But one of B's quirks is that their house is lived in with several adult and near adult kids and friends, and so a bit messy, messy enough that B never wanted A to see the mess.

Anyway, it was a little weird, but Sunday A and B loaded A's car and went off so that B can meet A's parents.

And now the BardiacShack is mine, and I'm even more of a "confirmed old bachelor," so to speak.

So that's one biggish thing.

The other is that a couple weeks ago a solar company contacted me, and it put the spark in me to look at other companies, too, so I've just signed a contract to get solar panels on a south facing roof.  It looks like seven or eight panels will fit there, and that would be about 120% of my electric energy, needs, so I could run air conditioning more freely if I wanted, and so on.  I talked to my financial guy, and he says the investment makes sense, even if I only stay in the house another five years, because it also adds to the resale value of the house.  And there's a tax credit, so that's also nice.

And finally, my financial guy gave my basic travel plans for next year a big thumbs up, and figured out where the money should come from (tax implications and such), and so, within a few days, I'll start planning that big adventure!

And Yet Another Play, Even Better!

Today I went to the Great River Shakespeare Festival production of The Winter's Tale, and it was stellar.  I so enjoyed it!  Paulina was amazing, just superb.

They did some really interesting staging.  For example, in the trial scene when Hermione dies, they covered her with a light white cloth on a big chest, the sort of chest you might imagine being used on a cruise in the 1890s.  (Chests and such were the main stage furniture.)  The scene with Antigonus and the baby followed, and when he talked about her dream, the actor stood up, covered with the white cloth (through which she could be semi-seen), and said the lines instead of Antigonus saying them.  They did that sort of thing several times, and it was effective.

The other thing:  it really stood out to me after seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream the other day, how well I could hear and understand everything these actors said, and how deep their range of emotional representation was.  They could represent anger without yelling, and then when they raised their voice, it was effective at showing greater anger.

So, if you're in the Winona area, be sure to see The Winter's Tale before it closes!

And Another Play!

Yesterday, I went to the brand new Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival's production of As You Like It, in Eau Claire, at the newish Pablo Center.  The Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival was announced a couple of years ago, but the opening was postponed, and this is the first year.  It's also had some paring, so, for example, a student production of The Tempest was on the books, but isn't happening this year.

Eau Claire's got a lively amateur theater community, and a number of locals were in this production.  The rest of the cast looked to be (from the intro paragraphs), college students and recent graduates. 

The Pablo Center is a beautiful venue, right at the confluence of the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers; they've put together what they say is a replica of the Globe, but it's less a replica of the Globe than maybe something such as Blackfriars.  As you can see from the picture at the link, and from the image below:

the seating doesn't take advantage of a thrust stage, nor does it have standing room.  It's basically a pseudo Tudo backdrop to a semi-proscenium arch stage.  The lighting reflects that sensibility, so the audience's attention of fully on the stage, and there's little to no interaction between actors and audience through most of the performance.  (The exception is when the court folks join the first row of the audience to watch the guildsmen's performance.)

The performance was basically a strong student performance, a bit hard to hear clearly (I wasn't the only one who found this), but pretty solid.  Bottom was the stand out performer, and did a really lovely job.  The guildsmen's performance was especially fun, with a really creative wall part that I enjoyed a lot.

It's hard for me to think that another Shakespeare focused theater "festival" is going to be able to compete against the Guthrie in the twin cities, American Player's Theater in Spring Green, and the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.  Ticket prices are pretty high (as they almost always are at the Pablo) for what's basically a student production, especially compared to what's available in the other venues which are fully professional productions.  On the other hand, it's always good to see new theater opportunities trying to make a go of things!

There was a fun and interesting talk after by a local Shakespearean, which I enjoyed a lot!

I went to a play!

Ahhh, retirement!  I went to As You Like It at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN.  I haven't been to the GRSF for a long time, I guess, or at least hadn't blogged about it.  Then I saw Taming, and while I liked the production well enough, I guess, it reinforced my hatred of the play.

On the other hand, their production of AYLI was a delight!  Very fun romp of a production, with some wonderfully creative moments.  For example, they made a lot more of the wrestling scene (which was more mixed martial arts with kicks and punches) than usual, and every so often would go into super slow motion.  One of those times, Orlando leaned back in the way that Keanu Reeves did in The Matrix, except instead of some fancy special effects, they had another actor back to back with him which was both effective and added humor.

And every time two characters "fell in love" (not necessarily at first site, since it happened to Corin and Sylvia after she was stuck with him), everything would come to a stop, special lights and music would hit for a moment, and Voila, LOVE!

Best of all, the three main characters, Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando, were played by stellar actors, who were not only individually good, but who had really beautiful chemistry on stage together.  Celia and Rosalind just seemed to have such joy in each other; when they teased, it was fun.

If you're in the area, I highly recommend AYLI.  They're also doing The Winter's Tale and another play I don't know (Imbroglio).  I'm hoping to go to another of their plays before the season ends.

Big Basin: After the Fire

 When I was in CA recently, I visited one of my favorite places, Big Basin State Park.  I haven't been there since some cousins and I went camping there (in July 2018, when I was on sabbatical).  (It looks like I never posted pictures, though, oh well.)

In August 2020, the park burned in a huge fire (also see the wikipedia post above).  I talked to the rangers last week (well, not real rangers, they told me, but the two women who were in charge of the parking area), and they said 98% of the park was affected by the fire, but 97% of the redwoods survived.  

I was expecting to see just charred remains, which is what I've seen in previous visits to burned areas, but was pleasantly surprised to see that things were looking pretty good.

Here's a picture of the same tree, first higher, showing the growth up there, and then lower, showing that the base of the tree is damaged.  The not really rangers told me that redwoods to fine if the interior is burnt some, so long as the outer part lives.  And that's how it looked.  There were a LOT of partly burnt trees with green way up, and a bunch of little trees growing out of the root area.  The little trees looked bigger than I'd think two years or even three would grow, so I don't know if they just survived, or if they grow super fast when they're released by the extra light post fire or whatever.

At any rate, I was really happy to get a chance to visit and take a short walk, hug a tree, and smell the redwoods.

The not really rangers told me that there's no back country camping yet because all the buildings and such (like latrines) were destroyed, but that there's hope to rebuild a new visitor center and new camping infrastructure in the next couple of years.  If so, I hope I can go camping there again someday.

Seen on the Street

 I was in the SF Bay Area last week, and saw this: 

 

 Several friends quickly identified it as a new Tesla truck.  And one of my cousins said that it looked like they had done the camouflage wrap to make it harder to tell what's up with the car.  Except, since anyone who's looked has seen pictures of the new truck (see link above), what's the secrecy for?

I'm obviously not the intended buyer for this sort of truck, and it's a good thing, too, because it really doesn't appeal to me.  The back seat, for one, looks useless.  There's a pretty steep dive over the back seat that makes it look like you'd have to be short to sit there, and the window's miserably small to boot.  (I spent a lot of time as a kid in the backseat of cars, and a tiny window is ucky.

Anyway, it was fun to see something so new; not something I'm likely to see up in the Northwoods for a good while, I bet.

Retired: A New World to Explore

 It's been a while.  Let's just say that there's so much unbloggable stuff for a chair, and anything that's bloggable is boring.  I don't think anyone wants to read about the hassles of trying to figure out which funding streams can be used for supplies, which for travel, which for stipends or other payments to people.  But now, all that's somone else's worry.  

I've been retired just over a month now, and I'd like to say I'm deliriously happy.  I'm pretty close, anyway.

It's long seemed to me that the most interesting blogs are written when people are doing new-to-them stuff: new PhD programs, new faculty positions, and so on,  So maybe this blog will be interesting in my adjustment to retirement.  At any rate, for a long time, the blog's been a way or recording memories in a semi-public way, and it can certainly have that function for now.

I'm not going to do some massive catch up post; I think I'll just catch things up bit by bit.  For now, I just finished Alison Bechdel's new book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, and I'm disappointed to say it didn't do much for me.  I really used to love Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For.  A friend gave me a collected volume, probably one of her first ones, and then I got some others, and really enjoyed them.  They spoke to me.

But Secret didn't.  I think part of it is a graphic novel issue.  There's so much in the pictures that they slow my reading down a lot, and I just don't get immersed the way I do with regular prose writing.  I haven't read tons of graphic novels, just this and Persepolis, and Maus, so I guess mostly memoir, and memoir isn't a genre I really love a lot anyway.  At any rate, with the ones I've now read, it seems like you get a scanty sense of the narrator, and no sense of depth in other characters.  Maybe Bechdel was trying to respect her partners' privacy by not giving a strong sense of their lives, their individuality, but you don't get much.  And what you get, your told: so and so is strikingly beautiful or something, rather than being shown what makes them beautiful.

Bechdel's art is, as always, crisp and readable.  I could look at her drawings a lot more and be quite happy.  I liked the connections with the Romantics gang (Wordsworth, etc) and Beats (Kerouac), but Bechdel doesn't really get at the problematics of either movement in a deep way, nor think about how problematic her identifications with those folks are, and how they might add to her unhappiness.

Finally: the therapy thing.  As I understand it, the point of therapy is to help you accept and deal with things to be as reasonably happy as you can so that you don't harm others nor yourself unnecessarily.  Bechdel's narrator has been in therapy for a long while, but it doesn't seem to be working, really.  But it never seems to work, does it?  I never seem to meet people who say, "yes, therapy helped a lot and now I can deal with things reasonably well."

I read Secret because some friends and I have sort of formed a book group and one of them really wanted to read it.  For me, I'm finishing Maus next (it's taken forever) and then I'm thinking of rereading Pearl.  But I'll need to find a newer edition than I have (mine is from maybe the 30s?)

Major Tom to Ground Control...

 Or lack thereof?

I'm usually moderately excited to be teaching new courses every fall, to be seeing students, and so on.  Planning my courses is usually fairly pleasurable; it's like a fantasy: what can we do this semester?  what can we learn?

This year feels different.  I just don't want to prep.  I've procrastinated about prepping my class way longer than I should.  (There's still plenty of time; I'm about half done, and my first class isn't until Wednesday next.)

Every afternoon lately, as I walk across the big shot parking lot next to my building (the big shots all have numbered slots in this special lot, which is why I knew that certain officials were rarely on campus last year and such), I just feel like I want to cry.  It's not quite at the point of actual tears, but close.  Why?

I don't feel like crying when I get up in the morning, when I go to work, while I'm at work... it's walking across the lot leaving.

***

Our administrators are so very out of touch with the teaching side of thing, and let's be real, the teaching side of things is where the revenue happens, so even if you don't give a [expletive deleted] about educating students, it's still [expletive deleted] important.  Here's an example, only the latest:

Chairs are on contract for various percentages most of the summer.  Then in early August, there's a two week lapse.  (I don't know why, but it's there.)  And then two weeks before classes start, new contracts start (so we can do prep and have endless meetings).

Some administrator has decided that all chairs and above need "media training" so that we can talk to the press.  (Yeah, imagine how well that goes over in the Journalism department...)  One day into our "no contract" period, we all got this doodlepoll thing insisting that we'd been assigned to a three hour media training and should choose a time, yes, during the two weeks we weren't under contract.  They had all summer, and they just then urgently need us to do that?  I call BS.  And so did lots of other people.

I guess they were talked out of insisting on that meeting and told to wait until we're back under contract.  At which point, if they had good sense, they'd look at the schedule for the two weeks before classes start, find the times with fewest meetings, and send out a doodlepoll for a couple times before classes start.

Alas, no, they sent out a doodlepoll yesterday, insisting that we all pick a three hour timeslot during the second week of classes.  I'm guessing the deans and such are pretty much booked most days so there's no free three hour slots.  I have a couple, but two of the choices happen while I'm teaching, so that's a no.

***

On the other hand, here's hope:  we got a notification that there are practice fire drills coming up.  We have these every semester, and let's face it, practicing evacuating a building is important.  Mostly, the times are pre-announced and set up so that they hit the last 15 minutes of an hour, cutting 5 minutes of class time.  Except that most classes at 2 pm on MW don't also run Fridays, but run an hour and a half, because few students want to take class until 3pm on Friday.  The chosen time was 2:45, which is right in the middle of the 2-3:15 class time.

So, I wrote a short, polite note explaining that to the person who'd notified us, and got a polite note back saying they'd check into it, and then, miracle!  a note thanking me and saying they'd changed the time, and then a note to all of us indicating that the schedule had changed slightly.  So there's someone over there who's actually willing to think about teaching as important!

Retirement Meeting

I had a meeting with one of our HR folks about retirement stuff, making sure I understand what I need to understand, when to do things, and so on.  It was really good.

I found out approximately what my state pension will pay every month, and even better, learned how the very generous state sick-leave policy works in retirement.  Basically, if you're lucky enough not to need to take a lot of sick days, then the value of the unused sick days gets moved to pay for health insurance.  It pays for the group insurance until you hit 65 and get Medicare, and after that pays for the Medicare B part, until it runs out.  Mine will run out when I'm about 80, so that's pretty darned good.

Having read blogs for a longish time now, I have a feeling that the most interesting blogs are about someone's life in transition: grad school, new professor, new parent, and so on.  So I'm sort of hoping I'll feel a bit revitalized her as I transition into retirement.

 

Beginning Again, For the Last Time

 We've come back "under contract" now, and so it's time to get ready for the new school year.  We have two weeks til classes begin, so plenty of time.  And not.

This is my last fall getting ready for classes.  I thought I'd feel emotional, sad, teary, but not yet.  I tend to be fairly emotional about some things like that, so I'm pretty sure it will hit at some point.  But for now, it's not!

A couple of colleagues are asking for a special "take it easy on me" semester/year as far as service.  On one level I'm sympathetic.  On another level, I'm frustrated.  We've lost several people to service in other areas, an interim chair of another department, an interim administrative post, and all of a sudden, we're really hurting for committee roles.  And we need a senator.

Now to prepare for classes!

Yes, Retiring!

Since a couple of people kindly asked, yes, indeed, I'm planning to retire during summer of 2023.

As to what I'll do when I retire?  I learned when I had sabbatical that I'll never be bored, so there's that.  

My local nature center has a bird banding program which I worked on during sabbatical.  I'd like to become way more involved.  I really liked the people, and the birds are endlessly fascinating.  I'd like to bird more, and since spring and fall are the best birding times around here, I haven't been able to much for a couple of years.

Some depends on covid etc.  In my dreams, I've always traveled a lot when I retire.  Will covid mean that's not really possible?

My dream travel: get an air bnb or something for a month or two in different places: a month in Barcelona, a month in Porto, a month in someplace in Italy, someplace in southern Germany, and so forth.  The idea would be to be away for two or three months, then come back and relax at home, then recharge, and off again.

Where's home?  That's a great question.  I really enjoy my house.  You may remember when I posted about having my old rug taken out, and then having hardwood floors put in.  Then the hardwood floors being darker made the house feel dark and sort of cave-like, so I picked new colors and a friend painted the interior for me (for pay, of course).  The thing is, every time I look at the yellow, I smile.  It's just happy.  The floors are beautiful, the house is very live-able, I love the colors.  Yes, it's too big, and yes we have winter.  But it's also fully paid off, so my expenses are real estate taxes, maintenance, and utilities.  Less than you might think.

But then, maybe I want to move back to where I'm from?  That's not clear at this point.  It's way expensive there.  But there's good weather year round, and family in the area, which I really enjoy.

We'll see.

If covid makes travel really untenable, then I may get a dog...

Two Years In

 I've been chair for two years now, and am looking into the final year before I retire.  So this is a little weird.  Everything for the last time, to some extent: my classes, the chairing work, all that.

And yet I still feel like a beginner in so many ways.  All sorts of higher ed organizations have "becoming department chair" programs to help new chairs do a good job; I was signed up for one my first summer, but it was cancelled due to Covid.  Last summer new chairs got to go to them, but I didn't, so now I'm still behind in some ways. 

What I've learned by being chair.

1)  No one ever asks to talk to me about anything good.  If someone says "can I talk to you?" I brace myself, because there's no way it's ever good.  It may not be horrible, but it's never good.  No one says, "Can I talk to you?" and then reveals that their book just got published.  That's a quick email, and congratulations.  Or a chat in the hall and congratulations.

Recent "can I talk to you" issues:  1) I found a new job and won't be teaching in fall.  2)  I'm pregnant.  3)  I bought a house in a state far away and want to do all my work remotely.  

None of these things is about me at all, but all will make life more complicated and difficult for me (but at least I don't have to become a parent, which I've never wanted to be).

2)  Nothing is ever stable nor meant to be.  There's always turn over, always stuff that breaks down and needs to be replaced, always some new task coming from higher up that will take time in meaningless but frustrating ways.  There are two extreme ways to get around in trees.  1. Sloth: go slow and careful.  2.  Orangutan: take a swing and hope for the best.  I'm trying to be an Orang for most things.  Because the tree I'm in may get chopped down at any moment and I'd better be a moving target.

Update

It's been a while.

I sort of posted a what's up post in January.  My Mom spent the last of December and the first third of January in the hospital, and I extended my stay for almost two extra weeks.  Evidently, getting someone into a skilled nursing facility ("snif") over the holidays is pretty impossible.  But we finally got her transferred to her prefered place, a place she has life-care with.  

For the first few weeks, we hoped she'd actively do physical therapy and be able to stand up, walk to the toilet, and back, which was the minimum to go back to her independent living place.  She refused physical therapy, mostly, though, and that didn't happen.  

My amazing brother and I started talking about moving her stuff out of her apartment in March, but we both work full time, and live a plane ride away, and so, we finally got that done this past month.  (We--well, my Mom's accounts, managed by my brother--started paying double rent in April, I think, so that was ouchie.)

Between then and now, my brother has pretty much visited every second or third week, and I flew back at Spring break, in early June, and in late July.  My brother--did I mention he's amazing--has done a lot of the heavy lifting in arranging for things to be taken to a consignment place, getting furniture to relatives who wanted it, and so on and on.  

Our Mom's living the life no one really wants: sleeping mostly, unhappy, not really in pain but not always super comfortable, bedbound unless the staff gets her up (which they do).

Before my most recent visit, which was planned to coincide with my brother's visit so that we could do the final moving stuff, Mom had a thing and was hospitalized again, so my brother flew out a few days early, and I flew as planned.  

My Mom had a tube through her nose down into her stomach to drain it to try to clear a blockage, and it looked uncomfortable.  She didn't want it, but they put it in.  And at some point, she pulled it out, so they put it in again, put her hands in mitten-things, and restrained them so she couldn't pull it out again.

Which is when I appeared.  My brother and I had a meeting with her "team" who said that they could probably take the tube out, but then what should they do if she couldn't swallow (which, I guess, is a thing that sometimes happens to people who've had these tubes), because to feed her she'd need either to swallow herself, or a tube down her nose, or a tube surgically placed in her side, or IV, which has to be specially done for long term.

They'd asked her, and she didn't want surgery or tubes and wanted the tube removed and the mittens off.  And my brother and I concured.  (We're very lucky that we had these discussions a long time ago before they were too painful, and we're all on the same page.)

Anyway, they pulled the tube and we were allowed to give her ice chips for a while, and by the next morning she was willing to eat (if someone fed her), mostly soup and mac and cheese.  (We knew her favorites from the previous hospital stay.)

And the next day, they'd detached the IV (but the vein was still accessed), but she was still in the mittens.  So we talked to them, and said we were willing to take the risk of loss of access if they took out the IV, so that they could take off the mittens.  So they did that, and we took off the mittens, and life got a bit better for my Mom.

And then we had the harder discussion:  what to do if she got another blockage?  Take her to the hospital, do another nose tube in hopes of resolving it.  Or not.  She shook her head vehemently: no hospital, no tube.

And we agreed.

So, that's that.  For now things are stable, but they won't be forever.  

She's back at her nursing facility, and unhappy, mostly bedbound and so on again.

Sometimes she's scared and upset, and I have to tell myself that it's the dementia (which is off and on, and more confusion than total memory loss, except for short term memory).  It's horrid to talk to her when she's most scared/upset, and know that there's really nothing you can do to help.  Even if I were there, it wouldn't really help.

She talks about being scared that she won't see me (or my brother, his kids, etc) before she dies.  And at some point, that will inevitably be so.  But I can't really say that.

That's been a big part of my life of late. 

Assessment = Grade?

 I was in one of those meetings with people where we were supposed to talk about assessment stuffs, and the question came up:  Assume you have three possible outcomes for a specific assessment bit, which is being assessed based on a given assignment, say an essay.

exceeds expectations

meets expectations/

doesn't meet expectations.

One of the people in the room said, basically, that meeting expectations meant the assignment was an A.

I tend to think more, meets expectations demonstrates competency, which is a C to start, though a B definitely meets expectations, too, and maybe an A exceeds expectations?

How do you and your colleagues talk about these?

Been a While

We just finished spring break, but it didn't feel like much of a break.  I went to visit my Mom and things remain pretty much as they are.  Sometimes she's confused, sometimes not.  Sometimes she's unhappy, sometimes not.  This could go on for several years, and that's depressing as all get out.

I'm muddling through my chairness, trying to do the right thing, and hoping I'm not hopelessly naive.  We're doing a couple of searches in various ways, one of which is very complicated and political, and I feel like I'm about to walk into a metaphorical minefield.  Which is better than a real minefield, of course.

One of the searches, in multiethnic basketweaving is especially complicated.  Multiethnic basketweaving has a few courses in common with underwater basketweaving, but others not.  So, the current director of that program was in underwater basketweaving for many years, and wants the underwater basketweaving department to do a search for a specialist in multiethnic underwater basketweaving for when they retire.  

But admin wants to do a search in multiethnic basketweaving for an adjunct. 

Here's what the admin folks say:  adjuncts here teach 15 credits a semester, so that would be 5 courses in multiethnic basketweaving.  One or two of those could be our cross-listed courses in multiethnic underwater basketweaving.  The others would include multiethnic dry basketweaving, history of multiethnic basketweaving, and so forth, a wide variety of courses.

These courses would all count for general education, and the thing is, we offer, say, 1000 seats in GE, and students need 1000 seats in GE, so they take what's available, even if they hadn't really wanted to.  That means that there would be 5 GE courses that would pretty much fill.  And if the adjunct is a good teacher, ideally, then more people might decide that multiethnic basketweaving really IS a fascinating area of study and maybe they'd do their major or minor in it.  And it would grow.  And that would give the administration a way to argue for hiring a tenure track person in the area (who would teach 4 courses a semester, instead of 5, all in MEBW.

BUT, if we hire a tenure track person into Underwater Basketweaving, then half their load is intro to UWB, and they'd only be able to offer 2 MEBW courses a semester.  So the bang for the buck is, from the administrator's point of view, far less.

It WOULD be great to have intro UWB taught from a multiethnic perspective, of course.

So, I may be naive, and this may be the administrator's way of killing off MEBW here.

And the current person, who's a multiethnic underwater basketweaving specialist isn't convinced that a person who's, say, a multiethnic dry basketweaving specialist could also do a good job teaching multiethnic underwater basketweaving.  It's a massive field, and that's a big ask, seems like.

But at any rate, I'm pretty sure the admin isn't going to hire an adjunct AND give us a tenure track search next year.  And they've got the ad for the adjunct up, and both the current person and I are on the search committee.  

This should be fun.

Wandering in the Wasteland

Things continue on.  My Mom's really not improving, and my expectations are that she won't.  

My brother is amazing, and continues to be.  My aunts (both retired) who live near her are great.  They've been wonderful all along, but they also make me a bit frustrated at times.

One of them talked to her on the phone, texted our group, and then asked in the group text if I hadn't called that day.  I'd just gotten home from work, sat down for a bit, talked to my brother on the phone (about my Mom)... and the text.  Nope, I hadn't called.  I was at work mostly, and then barely got home from a tiring day.

So I called.  My Mom's sort of closed off sometimes.  She sounded reasonably alert, and said she was happy to hear from me, and when was I coming (I'm not any time soon because flying half way across the country to expose myself (and her, and others in her care center) to covid so that I can visit for a couple hours before flying back to be at work just isn't really workable).  And then she asked about my brother, and would I have him call her.  She wanted  me to do that then, so I said okay, said goodbye, and texted the group about the call.  (From his text a bit later, he called and had a nice chat.)

***

We're at the end of our first week of classes.  So far, so good.  My intro to lit class students are so far pretty engaged and interested.  I'm enjoying our discussions.  I hope they are, too.

***

Covid continues to suck.  We all put a ton of energy into trying to work around problems and through problems and so on.

Reporting on Reports

Thanks for the kind words everyone.  Things with my Mom are stable in terms of physical health, but up and down in terms of mental stuff.  Let me say: my brother is truly a rock in the best ways.

I had a meeting yesterday to help me do a report on our assessment reports.  I have two to do, one for college stuff, and one for our programs.  The college one is due first.

The person helping me spent about 45 minutes talking about how to do this massive, complicated excel database form.  And then mentioned that I could use the same form I used last year if I wanted.  It's a pretty simple form.  The difference is that if you use the new excel form, then you only have to work with one document, and once you enter everything, you can basically pick up back up next year to update.  So that would be good.  But it's incredibly complicated, and I suck at doing more than basic database stuff with excel.

I had a meeting earlier this week with admissions.  I thought the meeting was going to be them telling me things.  But instead, I found out once there that I was supposed to tell them all about my department.  So off I went.  I wish I'd been better prepared.

I still need to work on my syllabus.  That's going to happen this afternoon, is the plan.  I hate not having it done yet.  Classes start Monday.  I wonder when my break is supposed to happen?

I seem to spend a fair bit of time in any given week comforting various faculty/instructional people about stuff.  It's important, but it's a lot of time and energy.  I wonder if the time/energy investments for this comfort were the same before covid?

Slogging through Winter

 Mom's in rehab, doing... okay.  She's more confused than she'd been before, but things seem to be improving somewhat.  She doesn't want to be there, but sometimes says no to physical therapy.

And mostly, she's scared about spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair/bedridden in a place in partial covid lockdown where no one can come to see her except her kids who live far from convenient visiting distance.

Meanwhile, I have so many school tasks that need need need to be done, and so little feeling like doing them.

1  Reviews of the contingent folks so that we can order them in case there's not enough teaching for everyone.  This is hard work, and the idea that it might lead to someone not having employment sucks.

2  I have to do an annual review on a scale of 1-4 of everyone I "supervise" in case we get a raise next year.  Typically, we don't.  But every so often the legislature votes university employees a raise.  Usually it's 2% max.  If it's 2% or less, anyone reviewed at a "solid performer" level (2 on the scale) gets the 2% bump.  If it's more than 2%, then there's merit involved.  But I don't remember the last time we got more than 2%.

3  I have a class to plan.  Usually this is a joy, but what with knowing that we may go on line or need to support students who get covid or have to quarantine, it's going to be hard.

4  I'm so far out of shape that I'm upset about it.  It's to the point where I just need to sit on the trainer bike for 15 minutes of pedaling every day, or take a walk, or something something anything to get moving.  This is all the more upsetting because of my Mom's condition.  And because someday I'd like to be able to travel, but deep down I worry that I never really will because covid and climate change...

Update

Things are better...

There was a lot of sitting around in my Mom's hospital room waiting.  And then more waiting.

On Thursday, they finally were able to transfer her to the rehab/nursing facility we wanted, and they'd started reducing her dosage of the one drug, and she'll have her last dose today (Monday).  (I guess it's a thing where they taper people off rather than going cold turkey?)

At the rehab place, the doctor looked at the discharge information and told my brother that he thought that drug might be causing drowsiness.  (My brother came Thursday evening, and is staying through the weekend to help her get settled.)

I came home on Saturday, and got ready for a full week of work.

My Mom was still really drowsy all day Sunday, so here's hoping that she starts being less drowsy.

Thanks for all the kind thoughts for us.

Much Better

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Today was much better.  My Mom fed herself her meals, and ate them well.  (Yesterday she'd eat a few bites but not feed herself, and then fall asleep.)

She got out of bed, talked to my brother on the phone, and ate dinner in a chair.  And then was totally ready to sleep.

The doctor noticed the change, as did the nurses.  And me.

The one drug they think it might be was reduced today, and dosed tonight.  So we'll see how she is tomorrow.