Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Let the Madness Begin...

Classes begin in five (count 'em-5) days! Where has the summer gone?

I guess teaching summer school for two months does eat into spare time, as do grading papers and driving 90 miles every day. But the class was good, not stressful at all; I had a wonderfully small class of students who wrote well and were funny, too. So that made the time pass quickly.

This semester, I have four classes--one Intro to Fiction (with 35 students), two Advanced Comps (one of those online--each class has 20 students), and a new class, Writing in the Humanities (this one has 13 people so far). In addition, I'll be teaching an intro knitting class for Continuing Ed for six weeks; that just provides me an excuse to knit and talk about knitting for two hours! It's built-in relaxation for me, a good reason to begin new projects, buy more yarn, and escape from academe for a while. I forsee, however, long days. The good news? I have a semester of three-day weekends again!

I mowed the grass this morning. It's so dry that I may not have to do this again for a couple of weeks, unless we get some rain (I'm not holding my breath!). I complained (sort of) about all the rain at the beginning of the summer, but everything is dry and dusty now. My garden has suffered greatly--first from an excess of moisture, then from its absence. But isn't that nature's way? Always the extreme!

Even the cats feel the heat; they spend most of their time inside (I keep having to clean the litter boxes--they've got an entire acre for a litter box, but they still come inside to do their business!). I would think they'd be out chasing the neighbor's chickens, but even that's not enough to tempt them right now. I can't blame them. I don't even like to go out to get the mail until the sun goes down.

2 comments:

CrackHeadforTennis said...

Hi Ma'am! Love the blog as always. Are you really ready for the Fall semester? I kinda half and half. I wish that I had you for my Literature class, but it may turn out to be a great class. I will come and visit you. Would you please tell me your office hours? I will have a lot of free time during this semester. A girl named Mary Katherine left a sweet comment on my blog. I'm guessing that she saw my blog because of you. Thanks again, Mrs. Smith, this is why I do my blogs. See ya' soon.

ang \\ said...

I laughed outloud when you mentioned your cats coming inside to use the litterbox. I was on the phone with my mom a few days ago, and in the conversation she mentioned that her cat Tux had woken her up at 4AM to come inside to use the litterbox. He then woke her back up at 4:10 to go back outside.