To Do List

ANN'S TO DO LIST: Just updated and several pages in length. It starts with practicalities: closure on my home refinancing, amending my tax return, mailing certificates of completion to my poetry forum students. Then moves on to Short Term Projects: finish a critical essay, write a short paper, complete the poetry translation conference, write-up my faculty mentor evaluation and my student learning analysis for my second and final project period at Antioch University L.A.

Then I move into summer with a vacation somewhere - just two days away - that's all I need - and the state parks in Florida are already at capacity. I've got to get my dwarf bunny neutered, make arrangements for a pet sitter, complete my Teaching Practicum report, reserve a rental car for my Goddard Residency.

And my brain is sludge. Two weekends ago, I blew out all the spark plugs. It chugs along at work, capable of reading clock faces, taking smoke and coffee breaks. Surges for required student meetings, shuffles thru endless paperwork. When I come home, the brain refuses to absorb words, phrases, sentences. It can play a game or two of Scrabble, watch a little TV. I can play with the cat because she's so forceful about her time.

But I seriously need a break from everything - from deadlines and busywork and poetry anthologies and online conferences, from thinking thinking thinking. The lack of lesiure, of carefree time, of fresh air and exercise, socializing, relaxing - it's making me depressed and sleepless, grouchy and unpleasant as a Florida snapper.