Inundated

I think I shouldn't use this as a blog post title, because it implies water, and so many other places are really and truly under water right now. Still, it's how I feel and I can't think of a better word.

Nothing's wrong, though, I hasten to add. My new class is going reasonably well, all three sections of it. I've got great students -- and so many of them! In my old department, classes were capped at 19 students. In my new department, sections of this particular class are capped at 27, and I allowed an extra couple of people into each section. So I have almost 90 students as opposed to the usual 57. It's a noticeable difference.

So that's one reason I feel inundated -- so many students. It's also hard to get used to everything new: new department, with new people and new traditions; and a new office, which I share with two other people. They're both very nice, but I don't have a desk. I set up my laptop on the edge of one of my officemates' desks and try to work on that. Not very conducive to getting stuff done.

In addition, of course, I have 100% new prep to figure out. There's a shared site with lots of old powerpoints, tests, assignments, ideas for activities, etc., and I do spend a lot of time looking at it. But I still end up creating almost all of my stuff from scratch. I can't teach the material if I don't know it inside and out. In addition, I keep finding errors in other people's work. I'm not making a lot of friends among my fellow lecturers.

So this is my week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I leave to catch the bus to campus around 8:20, and then I teach at 9, 11, and 1 pm. By 2 pm I'm on the bus heading for home, usually getting there by 2:15 or so, and by 2:30 I have to leave home again to pick up either Kid A (in the car, half hour drive to get there, half hour drive to get home again) or Kid B (a 7-minute walk there and back). The afternoon is spent mediating fights and trying to get the twins to do something other than watch TV, while also trying to do laundry, make dinner, etc. After dinner we often go to the park, and at 8 pm we start putting the twins to bed. By 9:30 (unless I need to go to the grocery store) I'm at my computer, working on class prep, until I knock off around 11 to take my shower and fix snacks and make Kid A's lunch (which he eats in the car each day). Tuesdays are my days off, so after I walk the kids to school I have a couple of hours to work on class prep. At 11:20 I leave to get Kid A and drive him to his special school. Back home by 12:30, I have two more hours until it's time to pick up one twin or the other. Thursdays are the same except that I have to go to campus for a 1-2 office hour, so I don't get any afternoon prep time.

Written down like that, it doesn't sound so bad, but it really is. OK, no, what I mean is, none of that is bad stuff, but doing it all is really tiring. I'm 57 years old, not 35, and I'm fat and out of shape. Teaching is actually very strenuous for me, because I don't sit down; instead, I practically run around the classroom the whole time. I'm a fairly dynamic teacher -- I write something quickly on the board, then run to the back of the room and talk from there, then run over to the other side of the room to hear what a student over there has to say. So, three hours of that, plus the fact that my 11 am class is a LONG walk from my office (the other two classes are closer), and by the time I go home I'm a basket case. This week on Wednesday, I begged Rocket Boy to let me drive to pick up Kid A, rather than walk to get Kid B. I honestly couldn't walk the seven minutes to their school -- I needed to sit down, and the car was almost as good a place as the sofa.

One of the biggest challenges so far has been food, especially snacks and Kid A's lunch. Dinner is a bit of a challenge too. I made a dinner schedule for the first six weeks of school and posted it on the refrigerator, so that I wouldn't have to THINK about dinner, "just" shop for it and prepare it. This has been going pretty well, except that I cannot get Rocket Boy to even LOOK at the dinner schedule, nor, of course, to follow it. He constantly suggests things that he could make, which is very sweet of him, but when I've already bought the ingredients for a particular dish, I need to make that dish, not let all the produce rot while he makes something different. On the other hand, some days I fall asleep before dinner and then I don't cook and that messes up the schedule too.

The other thing that's hard about food is that both kids need a snack for the morning at their regular school, Kid A needs a snack for the afternoon at his special school, and Kid A also needs a lunch. So I find myself making a lot of extra trips to the grocery store (often at 9:30 or 10 pm) to get lunch and snack food. The big problem is that if they can find the snack food, they'll eat it when they get home from school, so then I have nothing to give them the next day. So I have a couple of hiding places, but that means I have to buy the food in secret and hide it before they know it's in the house (thus the late night shopping trips). I try not to have all their snack/lunch food be packaged, processed crap, but it isn't easy. A few weeks ago the kids and I made a cookie recipe from scratch, and I then attempted to send cookies as a snack, but their teachers didn't let them eat them -- "not healthy enough." And yet chips are allowed. Sometimes I send fruit -- Kid A's on a grapes kick right now -- but a lot of it is stuff like chips. How can chips be considered healthy?

This post is becoming a whine, so I will stop here, and make a vow to be more interesting next time. I also want to stress again that nothing is WRONG. I'm glad I have a job and I'm glad Kid A gets to go to his special school. I'm just unsure whether we will live through the experience!

The photos are from late summer trips to here and there, that I don't have time to write about properly, and the one up above is from a sort of play they put on with their next-door neighbor friend Z, who is very creative. The picture next to this paragraph is Kid A on the rope swing he fixed up by himself, on a day when Kid B and Dad went to the cabin but Kid A stayed home with me. It's gone through some changes since that photo was taken, and it's currently lying on the grass while Kid A thinks of what to do next, but it was fun while it lasted.

I'll try not to let so many weeks go by until the next post, but we'll see. After this short week (because of Labor Day), we have 10 weeks of school with no holidays (until Thanksgiving). That will be a challenge. But nothing like what the victims of Harvey and Irma are doing, so I'll quit complaining and get ready for bed. I sleep like the dead these days, and that's quite refreshing.