Diary Day
4/4/22
I woke up unusually awake for the hour (although I don’t know what that hour was). I think it’s because the garbage truck comes early Monday mornings, right outside our window. So, it was probably that I was sleeping less deeply when the 6:30 alarm went off. I also woke up smack in the middle of the king-sized bed with a cat who had clearly claimed my side for herself.
While my wife was in the shower, I went and grabbed us breakfast. I’d taken some banana bread she made previously from the freezer. For the last couple of months, I’ve been working to replace social media reading with Washington Post reading during breakfast, but I don’t see the daily briefing section yet, and it’s too early for an actual article. Instead, I find myself over on Twitter where I read a post about Adrienne Rich being a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist). I asked my wife if she’d heard that, and she sure had. I’ll be honest, Adrienne Rich is one of those authors who I have never read and know next to nothing about but who I pretend I know about because *shrug* I feel like I should have read and know her work. Well, I guess this at least relieves me of that guilt. I do a little googling and apparently, she was very involved in a book that is basically the bible for TERFs. And all this (me diving into this today) came about because of a call for conference proposals (CFP) for a major conference where they cited her and my trans Twitter friend pointed out how this made them feel. And I think about another CFP that was cancelled recently after not including the Black authors they should have. I wonder a little how anyone can keep track of who is being terrible these days, but even more, I wonder when society at large will start caring about NOT endorsing the transphobes. In my notes, I wrote a few hours later that I was feeling irritable, and I can’t help but think that my mood started here.
Today I have an in-person awards ceremony to attend and present an award at. I pull out dress pants and even a jacket from the back of the closet—the only suit jacket I still own. My wife likes the way I look in this business attire, but I feel generally out of place in it.
Adding to my general irritability today—and feeling like I’ve had a lot of diary days fall on annoying days when they aren’t THAT common—I feel rushed because I thought we were leaving at 7:45 and my wife thought 7:30. This is the problem with variable schedules, I suppose. It’s been a few weeks since we were both in the office all day. But I’m actually ready by 7:35 and we get there in plenty of time.
In the office, I check in with a colleague about a few things. And then email another to see if she is in the office today. Since she’s not, we hop on a brief Zoom call at 8:30 to touch base. I run into a third colleague I also need to touch base with in the restroom, and she joins me in my office to discuss things. I suppose this is the advantage (?) of being in person.
Last week was consumed with annual review reading and meetings, including a 4-hr meeting on Saturday. So, I’m looking to get a lot of smaller things off my to-do list that have been piling up. I work on them throughout the morning, wondering why I can’t seem to do anything with my shoes on. No matter how comfy they are, I slip them off the minute I close the office door and try to settle into anything. It’s like I can’t concentrate until I do.
My wife sends me a text about being incentivized to contribute to our employers upcoming big donation day. We agree that we have… feelings… about being asked to donate to our employer. I suggest she donate less than the amount of pizza she would eat that is the said incentive. Trick them into actually losing money on the deal. Later she tells me that she was, indeed, reassured that donation was not a requirement. Honestly, the pushiness of it all makes me LESS likely to donate. Fundraising is something I have fundamentally rebelled against my whole life, really. All the way from being asked to sell things for the school fundraiser as a kid to being asked to promote current employers fundraising efforts. Fundraising annoys me no matter which side of it I’m on.
At lunch, I decide that I’m finally going to go back to the on demand presentations from a virtual conference I attended over spring break. I’m excited to be able to watch at my own pace and have the presentations available until June. Unfortunately, when I click from the feature where I saved all the ones I wanted to attend, I get an error every single time. So, I submit a help ticket instead, and tweet about it. It may be that you have to look them up again, but that would be unfortunate considering I took several hours just going through the program and saving them. So, I just eat the hummus and things I brought for lunch while checking email (and Twitter) again. I engage with interest with tweet about research methods, so that’s totally the same type of activity I’d do at a conference.
At 1:00, I have class. Mondays used to be my best attendance day, but it seems to be dwindling even further. I have 9 in class, and 2 on Zoom (or sort of, maybe on Zoom?). I think the ones that are there get some good direction for their project, though.
After class, it’s an assessment meeting/norming session run by me. It really is an annoying day, isn’t it?
At 3:30 is the awards ceremony, and I walk over to the student center with a colleague. The weather is surprisingly delightful! And the part of my day I was perhaps most skeptical of at the beginning ends up being quite lovely. My friend asks me if I’m okay with her taking her mask off outside as we walk, and I say yes, super appreciative of the ask. About a block in, I try taking off mine. It still feels weird to look over and see the bottom half of her face, but I’m starting to feel mostly comfortable not masking outside. Inside, I’m starting getting a little used to others not masking, and I DO take my mask off briefly for a picture with my two graduate students winning awards. After completely losing my shit when we came back from spring break without the mask mandate, this is kinda big progress (?) for me. I am appreciative as well that the snacks are after the event with the option to eat them outside on the terrace. One of the graduate students comes out with me and we have a nice little chat on the terrace of the student center on a lovely day, and I don’t think I’ve been out here in my 10 years here. No one else takes advantage of the lovely day or safer option. Oh, well.
The awards ceremony wraps up my day, and we head home. My wife immediately turns on some tunes and gets to work on dinner. She’s making lobster mac n’cheese! We got some frozen lobster a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t great, but it will be perfect for this.
On the home front, good news is we found a house to buy… a super lucky story that is not so much a part of this particular day. But we are now figuring out when to list our current place. So, I’m writing the realtor with some questions about waiting until May or listing sooner. Meanwhile, my in-laws call wanting to know if they can visit to help with the move. Or the weekend after (which is my birthday). I have mixed, complicated feelings about when they might visit.. and maybe about birthdays… so I want to sit with this because I’m probably just a smidge overwhelmed. I help my wife crack open the lobster and pick out the meat.
OMG is it good! Totally worth the wait.
It’s Monday, so we watch Jon Oliver during dinner. Today’s feature is about the abysmal conditions that are working for the trucking industry. Why is our system so fucked up? These people have to pay for their own trucks and all the things for them, don’t get paid while the trucks are being loaded, and are asked to drive under all sorts of conditions and not use their own judgement. I wish there were just unions everywhere. This is appalling.
After the show, we chat a bit more about listing the current place and decide it is less stress to just wait a month and do it when we’ve got all our stuff out. AND the semester will be over.
After that, I finally feel like settling in to write this today. Usually, I write more fully throughout the day, but I did more notes this time. Meanwhile, the cat is quite convinced that my wife is going to drown if she takes a bath unsupervised and commencing her yowling at the bathroom door. She’s not going to like that the new house has more doors.
After writing, I complete bedtime chores, dishes, grinding and setting the coffee, giving the cats treats. Then, I settle in and fall asleep reading a new book on the Kindle.