I Adapt to Adversity by Making Pithy Comments and then Running and Hiding (Possible Autobiography Title Number...?)

Don't you hate it when you subscribe to a blog, and the blogger never posts? Yeah, I hate that. Well, I haven't written in quite awhile, and I'm not sure I have anything of substance to say today but--what the hell, right?

This Demotivator reminds me of a line from the movie Get Shorty in which Chili Palmer is telling b-movie producer Harry Zimm that he'd just gotten out of loan-sharking. Harry asks him, "What? The pressure get to be too much for you?," and Chili answers, "Pressure? I'm the one who applied the pressure." Well I, for one, am not the one who applies the pressure. And, if I am, then whatever I'm pressuring tends to break. (See? This is the problem with asking a crabby person to write a blog entry: they'll probably just bitch...)

So, yeah, I'm sort of feeling the pressure and not really coming up diamonds. Ideally, I'd take a two-week vacation right about now and go stay at the beach. I'm a firm believer that there's nothing that a good beach vacation can't cure. Sun, sand, lots of walking, lots of swimming, reading, and the pleasant mind-numbing repetition of the waves. (Oh yeah--and seafood!) An alternative would be to take two weeks off and refinish furniture. I have an itchy sander-trigger finger and a rainbow of stain swatches arching through my brain. Ok, revise that ideal vacation: what if I could refinish furniture at the beach? It's...it's almost too beautiful to imagine. Of course, I'd probably be doing this in an iron lung. (Those of you who remember my last endeavor sanding furniture might also remember the 4 or so bouts of bronchitis I suffered that fall.)

Instead of wading through the Atlantic surf, I've been wading through the necessities of work. This morning, I've been working on an article that I've been trying to retool since before spring break. I finally teased out a thesis, and now I just need to do a bit more research and a lot more writing. Two of my classes are going really well--my American literature students are interested and engaged with the literature, and the students in my team-taught composition two course are bright and ask important questions. My solo comp two class students? Not so much. I tried my Hail Mary project, and, for the most part, it worked. Even so, I think that my relationship with those students is irrevocably broken.

While this class is a pain in my...side...it's the other issues that are making me sing Bowie. My roommate just announced that he doesn't want to renew the lease for the fall--a reversal of his earlier stance--and my parents seem engaged in a subtle battle of one-ups-man-ship in terms of medical issues. At this point, I start thinking that I can't be all things to all people. I can't--I know that; my folks understand it, too. But, at times like this, I need somebody to care for me. Right now, I'd rather be one of two pearls in an oyster than a diamond in the rough.