I hope you had a good Thanksgiving break, if you had one. Mine was pleasant. I spent about six hours on campus on Wednesday, getting things in order for the week ahead, which will include a big admissions event. A nice change is that this year I’m not teaching brief sample classes at the event–I usually do, but the English numbers worked out so that we had enough teachers to do the classes and I will have more time to walk around and talk with prospective parents. I enjoy the classes, but I’m glad that this year I’ll probably have a calmer day–unless, of course, someone has a last-minute emergency and I need to step in. On Wednesday, I also took some time to research summer residencies and made a tentative list of those I want to apply to. There are some that don’t require letters of recommendation up front, but I think there is at least one that does that I want to apply for, so that’s probably the next step–ask for those. As always when applying for stuff like this, there’s an awareness that time invested in these applications is time taken away from writing, and the hope that it will turn out to have been worthwhile.
On Thanksgiving morning, I enjoyed a hike with Stubb–I was a little achy, but the physical therapist advised me to get out and walk and move around as much as possible, so I could be confident I wasn’t actually doing anything bad to the muscle. Dinner was at Stubb’s parents’.
Friday was a writing day! I went to a yoga class and then (because all the public libraries were closed) moved between coffee shops and worked on my third book manuscript. Dr. Tea and I had had tentative plans for a writing date, but something came up for her and that was fine–I had a very good time on my own with my book.
Saturday was more like an ordinary weekend day–yoga class, laundry, errands, reading. I went to an SA basketball game in the evening, a very exciting game which we won. I had been on the fence about going, but I’m glad I did.
And Sunday I wrote some more, did a tiny bit of schoolwork (I actually need to get up early and do 45 minutes of grading–I suppose I could have done it over the weekend and probably should have, but it was really nice not worrying about it, and I will zoom through it in the morning), went to yoga again (three days in a row!), and went to FLS’s tree-trimming party, where I ate way too much maple-bacon-flavored popcorn.
I have the sense that the glute area is really getting stretched and relaxed–I have been assiduously stretching and foam-rollering, not sitting too much, walking more. Overall, the pain is less frequent and mostly less acute, although it starts to hurt after a few minutes in the car, and I’m still waking up from the ache–I’m guessing that lying too long in one position is the problem there. Looking forward to seeing the PT again Wednesday. The next three weeks will be a big swoosh to winter break, and I’ll need to make sure I don’t get so busy that I don’t make time to work on this.
They should be good weeks, though! A lot of the big stuff is behind–college recs and teacher observations are all done (except for the parts I’ll need to do for the two English teachers, Lucinda and Dorothea, who volunteered to try out new evaluation processes–but even for them, I’ve already done one observation and writeup each). Some fun things are ahead–school events and social events. I’ve got some major papers coming in, but I think they’ll be spread out enough–it would be good to get them all back before winter break. There’s always some tension about fitting it all in, but it should all be doable. Off to bed now, to wake up early again…
Literature Should Mean Something in Your Life 