Arrrrggghhh! Got back from the Mayo Clinic yesterday, after enjoying the hospitality there for five interminable days.
Actually, the Mayo’s hospitality is very fine: they go way, way beyond the call to provide kind and effective service. And their docs can’t be beat, at least not in these parts. But that doesn’t change the facts of an excruciatingly painful intestinal blockage (scars from an old appendectomy) and major surgery to fix it.
Now I’m back at the house, but very tired all the way around and feeling like I’ve swallowed a bowling ball every time I ingest a few bites of food.
Naturally, this happens right in the middle of Arizona’s so-called “monsoon” season, when temps hover at or above 110, dirt and debris blow through every afternoon, and thunderstorms frighten the locals and blow over trees.
When I got home the pool was a vast mess, a puddle of trash and mud. My son (who has his own place to take care of, to say nothing of a full-time job) got most of it out last night. But then another storm blew through during the night. Up at dawn to shovel it out again.
Fortunately, this morning’s mess wasn’t as bad as I expected. Don’t think I hurt myself hauling just one bag of debris off the bottom, dumping in some chlorine, and reconnecting the cleaner. In fact, the activity was probably good. By this evening the pool will need to be backwashed again, which I can’t do because it involves manhandling a difficult valve. But Dear Son can deal with that.
All of which is to say…what? It doesn’t look like I’m going to get much writing done in the next few days. I’m exhausted, and the bowling-ball sensation does nothing to make me feel like sitting at a desk and working.
So all of the writing projects have heaved to a dead stop.
Meanwhile, hallelujah, brothers & sisters!
I QUIT THE GODDAMN TEACHING JOB!
Yes. This latest little crisis — I now have had six surgeries in the span of a year, one of the for a life-threatening condition — finally elicited the obvious epiphany: Quit doing things you hate doing!
I am so sick of teaching composition. Just can. not. put. up. with another rude little pighead who thinks I should dole out passing grades to people who don’t even bother to read the syllabus or the comments on the papers.
Switching to all online courses helped — at least when you don’t have to face them down in the classroom, you don’t have to cope with mental problems, disrespect, and open rudeness, nor are you at any great physical risk. But it doesn’t change the fact that disrespect, arrogance, and disinclination to do the most minimal level of coursework characterize lower-division studentry. This classic says it all…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVvKnq5XT-g]
Hafta tellya…that doesn’t even strike me as an attempt at humor. It’s a reality show.
(LOL! If the sound doesn’t play, click the X next to the little speaker icon to turn off “mute.”)
One of my friends earns more selling used junk on e-Bay than I do when I’m teaching the maximum course load the District allows me to carry! And believe me, my friend will not be retiring to the Riviera on the proceeds from her e-Bay empire anytime soon.
So. I figure writing full-time will generate at least that much, on average. And if it’s true that erotica practically sells itself and that over six months to a year will pull in a living wage if you pour enough of the stuff out there…well. Any day I’d rather write smυt than put up with what I’ve been subjected to teaching adjunct since I was laid off my job…six long years ago!