please allow me to complain, just for a moment

Tuesdays are very long. At the end of them, I find myself needing to vent a little bit. They require my presence on campus from 8 am, when I teach Composition, through my three classes for the day--no biggie, really, except that the last one lasts from 7-10 pm. The 14 hours on campus is, to say the least, harrowing. To be fair, I could go home for a little while, and I have done so a few times. The bottom line is, however, that between getting out ot my car, home, and back to a parking spot--its not worth the hassle; particularly becuase in my time at home in the afternoon, my time is hardly spent 'relaxing'--I am still completely in 'ON' mode. I have learned it is actually less tiring somehow to just stay on campus and use my time gap between 4 and 7 to catch up on research, homework, grading, etc.

Normally, when I get home, I fix myself a snack and do some light reading. If the day has been rougher than usual, I watch some TV (though usually while folding laundry, my favorite pasttime while watching TV, besides the actual sitting and relaxing part). Tonight I was not afforded such luxury and, I write this blog because I feel that lately, apart from typical end-of-semester stress, my life in 'OFF' mode has been just as harrowing.

The garbage cans were still in the front yard; they had not been taken in. I do this. The dog needs food. I run up to the grocery store and buy him food. While I let my soup simmer, I empty the dishwasher and throw a load in, press start. While I am doing dishes, I call my renegade roadtripping friend (who, although otherwise fairly tame, today spontaneosly up and drove to Bosstown for a campus tour of LastChance University--more on that later). I'm not listing all of these things to demonstrate how awesome or diligent I am, or how much I am like my mother in my use of lists; I am voicing some frustration that when all of this busy-bodiness was going on, between 10 pm when I arrived home and 10:30 when I sat down (after the 14 hour day), my husband was picking at his new guitar with leisure. Granted, he had just gotten home himself only about an hour before, but as I have just shown--I got a number of things done for the benefit of the household. Had he contributed a bit before resorting to his own relaxation, we could have divided the time and the work, and saved any of you reading this froma legthy blog about a loing daythat doubled in length in just one half hour.