Unglued

I.am.about.to.come.unglued.

Partly, it's 3:30 and I haven't really eaten yet. But really, a lot of things are converging at the moment, making me generally crabby and stressed.

The washer has annoyed me immensely by breaking down, mid-load. A random woman in my top-secret exercise class is annoying me in ways that would be hilarious if I could get it together enough to blog about her. Random adjunct faculty members are annoying me. The system by which we adjunct faculty members are kept in poverty annoys me. My beloved, poor thing, has annoyed me. The cats are annoying me. The public health system in this city is really, really annoying me. My body is annoying me.

Midterms are here, which means I'm swamped in grading and which means my students are also coming unglued. There's the average, run-of-the-mill stuff like the girl who has not turned in one single scrap of writing or homework for the past 8 weeks, nor taken a single quiz. There's been a car accident for one and a DWI for another (his second). There's the two kids I failed last semester, whom I somehow have again (maybe they love me?), but who are about to fail for the second time. It gets a little more exotic from there. One student has started twitching and talking to himself. We've had our first abortion and our first bipolar diagnosis of the semester.

I only have 28 students at this point--attrition tends to be high--but the above strikes me as a fairly high percentage of serious problems. It doesn't even include the average kids struggling with ADD, undiagnosed ADD, or ADD denial; the kids with full-time jobs or night shifts; the kids who are soooooo in love that they can't concentrate; the sleepers; the donut eaters; the single moms; the high school athlete with the debilitating injury that forever ended his hopes of going pro; and the marine who has an appointment in two weeks to see if he'll be called back.

I'm actually seldom annoyed by students these days. I just give them what tools I can and hope they get it together enough to use them. But on my end, I have somehow lost my only copy of the syllabus for weeks 9-12, meaning I will have to recreate it from memory. The disruptive classroom observer I had to kiss up to has taken another job. Grades are due Tuesday, and I am facing 28 poorly written papers.

I have to give a 45-minute knitting lecture in a week. It's a luxury, I know, but my brain is reeling too much right now to think.

If I step back a bit, it's all nothing a giant box of Chicken in a Biscuit healthy lunch and knitting won't cure, but right now, I'm pretty damn annoyed.