It's been a rough couple of days. What with one thing and another, I feel like I'm . . . well, see subject line. I've been really stressed, and the result of that is that my muscles are incredibly tense, which means that my Achilles tendons have been functioning even worse than usual; I'm pretty much confined to a hobble, it seems.

And I have a mountain and a half of papers to grade before Thanksgiving, along with Portfolio Pandemonium tonight - a marathon 7:30-midnight session in the Writing Center where students from all the FY writing classes can come and get their papers read by faculty volunteers. Of course, since I'm trying to be a good departmental citizen, I volunteered . . .

. . . which is going to make my 8 am class tomorrow come around even earlier than usual. Since I have grading for that class, I'm pretty much going to hole up in my office from now until 7:30 so I can get it done.

It's really tempting to spend tomorrow night in Lansing, too, because I have lots of grading for the Wednesday classes as well; it's galloping up on the end of semester, here, which means people have to turn in portfolios, which means they're revising things like crazy and wanting me to look at the revisions asap. I'm figuring that by tomorrow at 4:00 (when my second class is over) my eyes will be crossing and driving an hour for the privilege of sitting around grading more papers is going to sound pretty unappealing to me.

When I get home Wednesday, it'll be time to make pies. Even that sounds like an effort.

What I really want to do is go to sleep. Pull a Rip Van Winkle and wake up in a few years, or something . . .

Ah, well. At least it's sunny outside. I suppose I'll hobble out to the car and move it to a space closer to my building so I don't have to wander around the streets of Lansing at midnight . . . and maybe I'll get a cappuccino while I'm out there . . . I'm going to need the caffeine . . .