It’s weird to be off for as long as I have. I haven’t taught anyone (except Ben) anything since November 10. I finished course development work on the 16th of November and gave birth to Katie on the 17th of November. I’m starting to work on my organizational plan for the first term back because I know I’m going to have to have one. People look at what I do and think it’s fabulous because I can “do it whenever I want.” This is not precisely true.
Every place I work has deadlines inherent in their scheduling. This includes my house. Thinking about schools, though, they usually have two separate deadlines. One they call the “best practice” deadline and one that is the absolute, we’ll be calling your house if you don’t have things up deadline. The best practice deadline is not always, in my opinion, realistic for the kinds of classes that I teach, but it works to at least increase the stress levels for the instructors and make us work that much harder to attempt to meet them.
So, I’m spending this last week of downtime attempting to craft my organizational plan for returning to work while still in recovery from a rather difficult birth experience. I’ve learned a great deal about the frailty of the human body and what happens when it actually reaches its legitimate limits.
I’m also doing laundry. Somehow, we’d forgotten just how much laundry a newborn can generate. Today, she had a diaper that suffered “epic fail” and soaked everything within a few feet of her, poor child. However, laundry is spinning and I’m going to make more of my favorite fudge (Nigella Lawson’s fudge from Nigella Express). I use semi-sweet chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and good vanilla. Melt it all together. Pour into a 9 x 9 square pan lined with parchment paper. Cool. Cut. Freeze. Use as a pick me up whenever the grading starts to get me down (or the really late nights with a very small girl).
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