Summertime, and the listing is easy

June already--and I haven't made my list of summer goals!

Well, I've made a mental list and I've already accomplished a few of those unwritten goals: summer haircut, check. Prepare summer online class, check. (Class starts next Monday!) Add two chapters to the never-ending ever-growing fiction writing project, check. (Someday I'll work up the nerve to call it a novel.) Cross a title off my "Books I Really Should Have Read Already" list, check. (John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Great book, but I wish I'd read it before A.S. Byatt's Possession.)

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's more:

Health: walk 150 miles. That's 15 miles a week for 10 weeks, which I ought to be able to do as long as my bum hip doesn't fail me.

Home front: paint the living room. (At the rate we're going, just agreeing on a color would be a major accomplishment.) Paint the trim around the front window and door. Get the Volvo's suspension fixed. Keep up with the garden.

Teaching: keep up with summer class. Write syllabi for three fall classes. (One can be recycled from the last time I taught the class but the other two need major revamping.) Assemble portfolio to submit for our annual teaching award.

Administration: finish writing a report summing up the year's accomplishments in the Center for Teaching Excellence. Work with my colleague to develop a program of workshops for next year. Assist as needed with new faculty orientation.

Research: plan reading, research, and travel for sabbatical (which begins in January 2012--and I'll be looking for cheap but bearable lodging all over Florida, so I welcome suggestions and invitations.) Continue reading about new advances in cognitive approaches to literature, even though I'm not sure how this information fits into my research plan.

Writing: finish pedagogy essay on teaching while undergoing chemotherapy. Write proposal to present a paper at the second Making Sense of Suffering Conference (details here)--and then write the paper. (Because I desperately want to go back to Prague in November!)

Fun: explore my woods in the dark. Visit my daughter and son-in-law. Play Bananagrams. Plan party for colleagues.

That's starting to sound like a really busy summer, but it's flexible enough to allow for some serendipity. I never expected a family of foxes to slip into my daily routine, but there they are every evening watching us work in the garden. My husband says they're trying to hear the Cleveland Indians game on the radio--and with the season the Indians are having, he may be right.