An Ominous Start To The Semester

The spring semester started this week with two snow days.  Unfortunately my first class (which only meets once a week) was cancelled.  This is one of my favorite classes to teach and I was looking forward to getting started.  A bigger problem is how to make up for the lost day.

In part due to the delayed start and in part due to my entire winter break being eaten up with the move, I have not felt prepared all week.  I enjoy routine and structure and had been happily anticipating its return.  Instead the week has been spent with a great deal of uncertainty: will the university be open or closed?  will my pregnant teen mom go into labor or not?

I have a very anxious doula client (who is as sweet as can be) and she is due this week.  We have been in and out of the hospital and induction has been scheduled and cancelled.  I have arranged and rearranged my schedule around her anticipated delivery and still there is no baby.  While this is all within the range of normal, I didn't realize how disruptive it would be at the beginning of a semester.

The delayed start was not all bad however.  In keeping with this year's word, I was able to prepare many of my spaces this week.  I finally cleaned and organized my office at work and am loving it more than ever.  I also managed to set up my home office, and like everything else in the new house, it is far superior to my last one.  Perhaps more importantly, I cleaned off the desktop on my computer and cleaned out both my bag and my wallet.  There is something about having all that clutter around me; having to sort through flotsum and jetsum every time I try and do the most menial of tasks; that drives me crazy. Now everything is neat and clean and accessible.

The final space that needs to be cleaned up is my car.  Buying the second car for b means that the car we originally bought for me has once again become my car.  Over the years it has acquired junk from both me and b and in the week of the move it became filled with last minute items.  b has promised to clean it out and clean it up for me this weekend.  Once that is done all my spaces will be as I like them.

On a related note, when we rented this house we were excited to have a fireplace again.  However we were disappointed to realize it was gas.  At the top of the growing list of 'what we will do if we buy the house' was converting it back to wood-burning.  Last weekend b unsuccessfully tried to get a fire going and, in reporting the absence of any gas-flow, asked the landlord if it could be converted back.  Although surprised that we wanted wood instead of gas, he was happy to comply. Yesterday he came over and within half an hour we had the fireplace we wanted.

Tonight I stopped on the way home to pick up some wood.  I got home to find b already sitting in front of a roaring fire as he had thought and done the same thing.  Our home space is now complete.