We've arrived at the season of Too Muchness: too many papers to grade, brussels sprouts to pick, pawpaws to process. I mean, we love pawpaws and appreciate an abundant harvest, but the flesh is so slick and slippery that I kept dropping the knife while peeling them last week to make pawpaw butter.
Too many stinkbugs coming into the house! They're trying to find a warm place to spend the winter, and they keep bopping against the big picture window and getting tangled in my hair. If a cockroach got caught in my hair I'd scream, but I just brush the stinkbugs away and wait for the resident Stinkbug Remover to scoop them up and dump them on a big spider web out on the porch.
Too many meetings! A meeting to discuss a problem directly related to one of my classes has been scheduled at the precise time when I'm teaching that class, which won't work unless someone quickly develops a method for cloning myself. Or wait--maybe I can create an AI version of myself, but would I send the AI to attend the meeting or to teach the class?
Too many special events! On just one day next week, I'll have a visiting scholar speaking to my morning class and Sarah Vowell meeting with my comedy class, followed by a dinner with faculty members and a public reading. For a confirmed introvert, that's a lot of schmoozing in a short span of time.
Too many excuses! Yes, we've had a bunch of viruses swirling around campus, including the stomach bug that knocked me out last Thursday and a particularly nasty strain of strep throat. I've also had students (and colleagues!) dealing with parental illness and the demands of extracurricular activities. The result is a mass of make-up quizzes, all scheduled to accommodate the students' schedules more than mine.
Too many drafts to read and papers to grade, but the good news is that if I use my time wisely today and tomorrow, I can head off to fall break without too much work. Grandkid time! I can never get too much of them.
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