Meandering through a puzzling time

I was halfway through a morning walk along the country roads near my house when a car stopped beside me and the driver lowered her window to ask, "Don't you have a new baby?"

Unlikely, since I lack a uterus and all--but it turns out she thought I was attached to the nearby donkey farm, which may well have a new baby although I didn't see any sign of it. "I don't live here," I told the driver, "I live down the hill on Big Run."

She looked skeptical, and well she might: the distance from my house to the donkey farm is a good mile and a half, much of it up a steep hill, and my interlocutor looked like she'd get winded walking to the kitchen to fetch another beer. Frankly, I got a little winded myself, mainly because I haven't walked up the Big Horrible Hill in a while. I've been spending my weekends in Jackson, see, and on weekdays I come home so exhausted that it's all I can do to keep up with the mowing and grading and housework.

But this weekend I didn't go to Jackson and I'm caught up on the mowing (but not the grading) so I thought I'd head up the road and see what I could see.

Not much is the answer--or not much that would impress anyone: pretty clouds, thistles, donkeys, nondescript little brown birds, tall Joe Pye weed blossoms fading into delicate tracery against the sky--even the luscious purple ironweed is starting to droop. At one point, though, I saw a great blue heron flying low over our creek, which suggests that even at its lowest ebb our creek offers something to sustain a heron.

How long will my morning walk sustain me?     

This week a former student showed me a photo of her new emotional support animal: a snake she keeps in a terrarium in her dorm room. (Snakes are low-maintenance and quiet--what's not to love?) If a snake keeps her going through difficult times then I'm all for it, although I'm less enthusiastic about another coping mechanism suggested this week by a person in a position of authority. What our hard-working faculty and staff members need to support them through this difficult time, they said, is simple: jigsaw puzzles. So that when we're not teaching or preparing to teach or grading or struggling with technology or helping students cope or, you know, having a life, we can use our abundant free time to lean over a table and puzzle away.

I can't speak for everyone but puzzles are not what I need right now. What I need is an IT person to follow me around and fix all my tech issues, a personal assistant to mow my lawn and do my shopping and make sure I eat healthy foods, and while we're dreaming, how about a few more hours in the day? 

If none of those things are happening then I'll take what I can get: a heron, some hay bales, a few scattered birds and blossoms, and  along walk down country roads where there's not much of any interest to see.