In the midst of class in a room so hot we had to open all the windows, remove all excess clothing, and fan ourselves with folders for 50 minutes, where the heat made us all feel sleepy and dopey and droopy and dull, I was adjusting my coffee-bean-print mask and wishing that it was made of real coffee beans because I really could have used a dose of caffeine about then, and that's when I had my brainstorm: caffeine-infused masks, delivering a jolt of alertness with every breath. I'd buy one!
Someone could make a mint on that idea, but that someone is not going to be me. First, because we have two new confirmed cases of the virus on campus (for a total of five over nine weeks--not bad!) and two of my students are quarantining because of close exposure to an infected student, which means I have to get back into the habit of teaching to a split audience in yet another class, and all this tech is wearing me out. Last Friday I finally figured out how to use a stylus to draw on the Zoom whiteboard on a laptop during a class where most of the students are present but a few are online, which means I can now produce incomprehensible drawings equally visible to both groups. I've mastered enough tech for one lifetime! I'm ready to give it a rest.
And tech is failing me in other ways too, because for some reason the card-readers on campus keep refusing to recognize my right to exist--sometimes. Our robot overlords intermittently permit me to enter my building, make photocopies, and pay for snacks at the cafe with my brand-new college ID, but then sometimes the card reader simply refuses to recognize my existence. Okay, so I can e-mail documents to the administrative assistant to print out for me, except she's working remotely half the time and sometimes I need my copies right now. Or I can call campus police to let me in the building whenever the card reader thumbs its nose at my right to enter, but maybe I don't have my phone with me and maybe the campus police have more important things to do. Or I could avoid buying snacks at the cafe, which is probably for the best but then what will I do with all the credits on my college ID? This is not helping my stress level.
And then there are some off-campus complications, like the need to move out of the parsonage in Jackson and move into an entirely different house and take care of all the annoying details involved in moving (turning on utilities! measuring for curtains!) and then adjust to an entirely different group of parishioners whom I've never met but will have to get to know only on the weekends when I'm able to be over there, and by the way this is all happening while my husband is trying to replace his van before it falls to pieces in a heap on the highway. The people at the church we're leaving keep wanting to give me great big ol' hugs, which I appreciate except that hugs induce a pandemic-related stress response that even a coffee-bean-print mask can't negate.
Come to think of it, forget the coffee beans: what I really need is a mask infused with Valium. Go ahead and invent one--I'll be too mellow to sue for my share of the profits.
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