A why and an eavesdropping and a brief update

 WHY is it that, you can sit all day waiting for a call from the garage yet they manage to call when you're in the bathroom?

OVERHEARD:

small child, crying inconsolably

frustrated female voice: But I thought you liked your new haircut

child, between sobs: I DO, but we left my hair at the shop!

I had a bit of a breakdown at Easter - physical, mental, whatever.  Stress, overwork, whatever.  Basically back to the full post viral fatigue sort of symptoms I had 15 years ago without a precursor virus, coupled with stronger brain issues than I remember (lack of concentration, patchy memory, can't multi-task, fog patches, emotional lability) and depression stuff.  I don't THINK I've had COVID at any point - I've been super cautious, and in the couple of weeks running up to hitting the wall I didn't go on campus (I've been having more migraines/eye infections/bad stomach days, and the trimester was winding down anyway so I could work from home more often) - but boy have I been subjected to long term overwork and stress.  Anyway.  And I got guilted (partly by myself, partly by external parties) into doing some marking throughout most of my sick leave.  I'm very slowly upping my work hours, but I'm kind of sticking around 20-25 hours (which isn't so bad given I'm contracted for 30 hours, but it's been taking 45-55+ hours to just about keep up with my assigned duties... so I am falling SO BEHIND!!).  Life, never ceases to throw curve balls does it?

Eavesdropping...

 My house is a typical northern terraced house with no front garden or yard, just step up to a door onto the street.  The upstairs front room is my bedroom and sometimes I can't help but hear what's going on... today's gem:

I hear two little kids running down the pavement, giggling.  They reach an adult who says "Well done, you're both getting so fast!"

Then a small voice says urgently: "Mummy I need the bathroom"

MUMMY: "Why?  we just went"

CHILD: "Running jiggled my wee!!!"

I know exactly what they meant...

Well that was a year

 I'm currently on sick leave after hitting a mental and physical wall at Easter break.  Needless to say, being me, as soon as I could focus for an hour or two a day, I let myself be guilted/guilted myself into doing some of the most urgent marking (i.e. projects I supervised) and meeting my grad students and doing tasks for next year.  But. UGH.  

Here's the latest stress canary sketch:

Stress Canary contemplates the state of academic in the year 2022

 

Hello world!

 Still here.

Still grumpy.

Still creaky.

Re-reading Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, which are wonderful, highly recommend.

And really, after having a moan over at Top Left Quadrat this week, that's all I have to say.

D&D & mock exams

 Everyone in the D&D group I run games for is involved with mock assessments at school or college, so attendance has been erratic.  However, those who CAN play are always very keen.  So we've been mixing our longer-running story campaigns with a "job board" game when only a couple of people can attend - I made up a noticeboard which lives in the Rapier & Ruin tavern, just inside the city gate of the city which I developed two years ago for a campaign with my nibling which is currently on hiatus (we finished an arc, then paused).  The premise is that this is where adventurous people like to hang out between longer journeys or quests, so one off little jobs can be posted here by people in and around the town.  Every job is a roughly 2 hour game (allowing for the table being chatty and social), and the players turn up with whichever character they fancy playing that day.  If they know each other they take a job together, if not we assume they both grabbed for the same advert at the same time, and agreed to share the job.

I'm enjoying adding little touches to the board - the adverts, the little bits of graffiti.  The slip under the "no politics" note is from the "cult" the last game were dealing with, the 'People's Rights' protest is a response to a previous job board game where the players ended up changing sides and siding with some sprites against their client (a wealthy merchant who wanted to clear some bushes to build a new dock along the river) to his financial disadvantage.

Today we successfully rescued Beloved Pet Duke Duffington, so I need to come up with something else to pop into the gap... the two players who turned up agreed that it was a very welcome break from studying so that feels like I did something useful today in making that possible...

Anyway, everything else is pants, basically, so I thought I'd post about something I'm having fun with!

What WAS I doing? RBOC

•  Today, in class, I discovered that I'd prepared all the slides for NEXT week's weekly seminar, not this week's seminar.  oops!  Wishing the trimester away... well, I am.  Aren't we all?
• Doomscrolling is so tempting, but it's not helpful.  But the news is so bad...
• As a tutor I was asked today to reach out to Ukrainian- origin students in our department, which went smoothly but was still an extra bit of emotional energy from a nearly empty pot.  This is the sort of tiny thing that students need, that matter, but that have no value in the career sense...
• I hate that I envy people who are at institutions where the union met the threshold to take action.  I know it's hard, but when I actually want the opportunity to get off the hamster wheel, even at the cost of pay deductions, it's not a good sign.  The signs in general are not great.
• Also any ideas what is with students who refuse to attend online and say they will ONLY attend in person sessions?  (I asked their views about moving one, 9am, seminar (on the "bad day" after the uni club night no less) online in a module which has a lot of on campus content coming up, because attendance at in person has been POOR - around 40%, and often with only one word contributions however hard I try to make space for students to speak and make it easy - low attendance REALLY doesn't help).  I get they're tired of online, but why would you just not attend?  
• My sister's birthday today, and my nibling made her a cake in secret, and she's adopted a new (adult, sad story, very needy and very much in need of her expertise) dog, who is getting on really well with the current family dog.  I'm so glad she had a great day, nice things may be tiny in the individual but they MATTER.

My cat is weird

  Had a day on campus last week.  First I got up earlier than normal and fed Fluffball early - he was pleased but also confused so mixed EATING breakfast with YELLING for breakfast which is what he'd usually be doing at that time.

Then I went downstairs and didn't sit down, just got my stuff together and left the house.  Which confused his brain, but he just wandered off again.

It wasn't the best block of time on campus, between a Covid-denier student who has suddenly become exempt from mask wearing (last week, indeed ever since September, many arguments and resistance to university regulations.  This week, exempt.  Hmmm).  We had wild weather here, but when I got back, there was a break in the weather and my small yard is sheltered, and the bench was dry, so I sat outside for a while and breathed.  After a few minutes I noticed a small worried furry face staring at me from the (not in use) cat flap.  He appeared to be tucked away to one side and peering carefully around the bottom edge.  

When I got up and went to the back door with my key, he did NOT like that and made a rapid, belly-to-the-ground slinky exit.  By the time my key had turned in the lock, the small worried face was peering around the door from the hall into the back room, and when I did get in it took him another five minutes to come back into the room.  At which point he seemed to realise it was me and started in with a loud round of demanding purring, wanting both scritchies AND cat food.  NOW.

Apparently being in charge of the house alone is very hard work!

I also moved his food plate around - he was pushing the wet food up as he ate so it was at risk of going onto the floor, so I turned the dish around when he took a pause in eating and wandered off to check other things out.  This was Very Suspicious and he had to stalk around it for several minutes before he dared to eat again.

Downsides to working from home

Things that (very very rarely*) happen when on campus:

I'm on a call with an upset student - just as they burst into tears, I hear That Ominous Noise from behind me, the one all cat-owners recognise, and the Fluffball decides to return his breakfast all down the stairs.  I hope I managed to be professional and kind with the student... and Fluffball had just trotted off for second breakfast and a nap so didn't hear the mutterings as I cleaned up once the student call was done.

*Very very rarely because there was the infamous incident of the class where one student had a crying fit and another threw up into the keyboard of their computer, but that was a long time ago and (so far) a one off (preeetttty sure that was the St Patrick's day when the student union had a limited number of large green furry top hats available free with the purchase of 3 pints or 3 shots of Irish Cream liqueur, so in order to be sure of getting the hats there was some enthusiastic lunchtime drinking going on even among students with afternoon classes... but my memory doesn't work perfectly at the moment).

Teaching starts tomorrow

 and I am not ready... (well, I'm ready for tomorrow, which is something?  Even if it is just tutorial?)

Also Fluffball keeps sitting on my arm, my mouse (with my hand on it), my keyboard keypad - but if I actually stop and pet him it's never quite what he wanted.  This might have a little bit to do with Sister buying a humungous tub of his favourite cat treats for Christmas, and He Knows I Know where they are,,,

In which I am Very Tired and I Whine

 Well that was a rather rubbish week.  I'm really tired, not sleeping well, overwhelmed, and probably having allergies (it's very early, but also very mild climatically after a cold spell, and some daft things are flowering, so... either allergies or I got a cold from somewhere despite barely seeing other people).  I made several mistakes through lack of attention, but it's more inability to pay attention than distraction if that makes sense?  And we couldn't find a time for D&D this weekend which doesn't help - it makes me get up and it's fun and I feel useful/valued all of which are positives.  And it forces me to flex my imagination which, well, the sheer drudgery of overwork, of stripping back as accomodation and student support, is that there's barely any space for creativity, and where there IS space there's no resource, no well to draw from, a muddy damp patch if you're lucky.  And I need to be creative.

Feeling gaslit by a government doesn't help - the PM, in another mess, decided to announce lifting of all remaining precautions over the next couple of months, because the current variant is "mild", but was distracted by his child being seriously ill with same virus, and the nastiness of the "freedom desirers" who insist that everyone (who matters) is vaxxed so we should all go back to normal, or hide forever.  Ignoring the current case rates, death data, Long Covid data, growing evidence of long term effects, overwhelmed health service - all down to, oh, bad management, hysteria, media-driven fear (the media which don't even report much of the information), old people dying, people who don't matter and aren't them dying.

I really, really don't want to go back in person with students.  Getting to the point where trying to make a list is an uphill task I really, really want to avoid, or that makes me cry or lose my temper.  Where I want to Not Be for a while (nice bit of seven sleepers in a cave please).  Where I almost want to get COVID, and sequalae, just to get out of the remorseless grind of work.  And guilt because, really, I have so much fecking priviledge, support from my team etc., a cushy job... a job at all.  A country not at war, a life most comfortably above the poverty line despite the losses of the last decade or more in real terms in pay.

I've been watching "quit-lit" type you tube videos, and have yet to see one where neither of these conditions pertained: a) the person had already managed to set up a paid side line of work which they just shifted to (which likely means they have more energy/less overwork than me, or are doing close-to-industry work so already do contracts) or b) the person has a spouse also earning/able to cover the basics whilst they recalibrate.  Wanting a spouse for the financial support is a depressingly retro way to feel for a female.  But not being anyone's number one priority, or in their top priorities, is a lowering state anyway!  

These days I mostly come blog for a random whine, it seems!  Between bullet journalling, journalling, and TLQ, plus the thinning out of other voices in the academic blogosphere, I need to work out the purpose of this place - I'm NOT an advice source, a learned prof sharing my wisdom, I don't have funny stories about children and family, and pseudonymising situations is extra tricky when you have a very small group and department... Another thing on the "to think about" list.