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We all float on

Throat coat needed around here, too. First sign of fall and my body apparently freaks out. Sore throat, achy ears, exhaustion and sniffles. Lovely. I know it didn't help that I worked a 12-hour day on Monday but that's the price I pay for doing no work at all over the weekend. It was lovely while it lasted.

True story: I didn't drive until I was a freshman in college. And by "freshman in college" I mean sleeping through my morning classes at the community college and, typically, yawning my way through the afternoon ones. I think remembering how I was placed on academic probation that first semester helps me understand some of my students better. My parents both have advanced degrees but for various reasons I had very little interest in school initially--I mean, I did on a big picture level, but I couldn't figure out how that applied to my day-to-day life. I also just wasn't prepared for the shift from high school to college. The shift to being accountable for my time--and responsible for the consequences that came with that. I do think my parents' divorce had some affect on all of that. My mother worked the swing shift at the hospital until after I moved out and I didn't see her a lot. My dad was 1500 miles away and we rarely talked, much less saw one another. I think in many ways I felt alone. Sometimes alone felt like freedom and sometimes it overwhelmed.
Another true story: My mom kicked me out one week after I graduated high school because I blew curfew. Again. I was 18 and curfew was midnight. We got into a huge fight and she told me to leave so I packed a suitcase and went to a friend's house. A day or two later she called begging me to come home but I refused. I ended up sleeping on the couch of my manager at Target which, in retrospect, seems like the dumbest thing ever. Everyone in the store thought we were sleeping together. I think maybe he wanted to but, no, that never happened. Eventually I got an apartment with a friend and that was that until a year or so later when the friend moved home to the Bay Area and for various reasons my mom and I made up and I finally moved back home. I stayed there for another year before moving out with the awful person who would eventually become my first husband.
God, I was so stupid back then.
Life does feel pretty overwhelming now. The sights out of Mexico are heartbreaking. I don't know where to donate and I just feel helpless. Sometimes I want to hibernate and other times it's easy to feel so removed from all the awfulness when life seems to go on as usual here.

I don't even know what my point is except that I hope you make it (made it?) to the museum. We need moments where everything seems OK, normal even, right?

Meanwhile, I just want a nap but now I have to teach a class to students who, like long-ago me, are probably partying too much and floating on without much direction. Some of them anyway.

10:14 am - 20.09.17

sounds:
words:
i am:

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previously on ... - next time on ...

a little less dreadful - 29.09.17 - 9:10 pm

So that's that. - 27.09.17 - 9:31 pm

bring your own lampshade, somewhere there's a pity party - 26.09.17 - 6:25 pm

autumnal malaise - 25.09.17 - 7:10 pm

in which i hate feeling as though i'm not acing this thing - 22.09.17 - 6:11 pm