Hello Stranger

I never meant to be away for so long. I thought I would post a lot during my mini-break from classes. Instead of the deep lounging that usually takes place during vacays, G. and I were busy with some important stuff, but a lot of unimportant stuff got in the way, too. We ended up having people over a lot, staying up really late every night, drinking, eating-not-so-great, and alternating hours of laziness with more hours of being really busy. On the eve of classes starting up again, we both felt exhausted and unprepared.

Do you ever go through phases of treating yourself really badly? Maybe not intentionally--neglect just builds up over the weeks until you just feel like absolute shit? That was me last week as I adjusted to lecturing for four straight hours everyday, Monday thru Friday. It wasn't so much the lecturing that got to me, but having to be prepared to lecture for the same class everyday. All of my lectures are written out, but there is a lot of lecture revision and setting up video segments and slideshows. I'm not so experienced to lecture off the cuff about both early and late US History--I need outlines, I need to review the outlines and the textbook. During a regular 16 week semester, I have more time to do this prep work. Summer classes are four weeks only, so the pace is quicker.

My own (sad little version) of a rockstar lifestyle caught up with me and now I'm suffering from a cold. I should be asleep, but cold medicine does funny things to my head, like make have super weird dreams and what-the-fuck?-hallucinations. I finally had to get up and try to clear my head--literally, with kleenex after kleenex, and figuratively, by getting back to blogging.

Following Joel's brilliant model, I'm going to offer up a confession to make up for my absence. It's not a sleazy confession by any means (see Joel's blog for that little nugget), it might even be considered sweet. Anyway, my confession is that I still have a blanket from my childhood and I still sleep with it. I never named it or called it anything other than 'Blanket' for the 27 years that it's been with me. Blanket was my constant companion as a kid. There's a classic story of my parent's having to drive back home an hour into a roadtrip because I forgot my Blanket and was crying inconsolably in the backseat. I was 15-- HA! JUST KIDDING, I was 8. By now, Blanket is not much more than some fluff and bits of material in pillowcase, but I just can't let it go. I remember this family friend who suggested that my parents and I cut a piece of Blanket off every night and throw it away in order to get rid of my dependence. At the time (hell, even now), this idea was absolutely horrible. Blanket is my ultimate comfort, waiting patiently for me by my pillow whenever I have a migraine, feel fat and ugly, if my lecture fell flat, when I seriously wonder what the hell I'm doing, if G. ever acts like an idiot (rare, but we all have our moments, no?), or if I just want to nap. By now, I don't travel with Blanket or take it with me in the car or anything. But, I don't ever feel truly comfortable and ready to sleep without it. Really, wouldn't we all be much better off if everybody had a Blanket?

Stay tuned for news about my new hair-do, the World Cup (5 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes to go), a new segment called "This Week in Pizza" (I eat it every week anyway and have some strong opinions that must be shared with the blogging world, if only to make them semi-legitimate and not just the rantings of a pizza-fanatic), and lots of cheesecake pics of Filomena.