A grave tactical error

This week I made a mistake that I always advise my students not to make – I took on too much. After all that telling students not to do it, I’m not at all sure why I thought I could  do it – fit in two volunteer gigs around everything else: two shifts at the WI Film Fest and another two, although shorter, at the UW Friends of the Libraries Book Sale. Circumstances conspired to make me think I’d get away with it – until about Thursday morning 5:50 a.m., when I woke up fretting.

I guess things really started Sunday – I went to Chicago with Mark to see Emanual Ax in solo recital at the CSO. I did a little work on the train. We had a nice brunch at a place called The Kitchen – we’d peeked into their windows from the river walk, and I had determined that it was some kind of farm-to-table chain. Seems to be the philanthropy of Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. I kind of put it together when I went to the bathroom, and there were posters for some kind of raffle/giveaway, where you could win a Tesla.

This is how I got lulled into thinking I could do it all. Monday I got up early and worked on my online classes, recording overviews and setting up discussion boards – getting things set for the week. Then I took my helmet in a pannier and walked – in the melting snow – to the bike shop to pick up my joy riding hybrid bike that had gotten cleaned up and a rack put on, in anticipation of riding it for the AIDS ride this summer. And a training ride this Friday that I just begged off of …. I made it to work and managed my 1:00 meeting that I was chairing, and the 3:30 that I only had to attend.

I called my doctor’s office about all my discomforts – see below – and asked to have one of the nurses call me back to see if I should come in. I missed the call back, and came home and ate a bunch of sugary stuff and felt better. 7-minute frosting leftover from the coconut cake, on cinnamon grahams with Nutella, and Cretors caramel cheese mix popcorn, finished the giant bag from Costco. And went off to my film fest shift. I was home at 11:30, and I got in pajamas and ate a couple of chocolates in bed while reading one of the Outlander spinoff books on my phone. And I didn’t brush my teeth. Decadent,

Tuesday I started with an hour of unloading boxes for the Friends of the libraries book sale.

I called the doctor again, because my chest hurt while I was walking to work. This time they gave me an appointment at 11:20. It was an hour plus of questions with this nice young doctor with a funny perm – little ringlets – and tests to see why the backs of my legs hurt and why they’re kind of puffy and why I have headaches all the time.

Turns out – like the last time I went in – it’s all nothing. I had a bunch of tests done, even an EKG – what’s that going to cost me?! But in the end all I got prescribed was some stretches, and not even a different prescription for a higher dose of my thyroid replacement medicine that I’ve been taking for 15 years.

After all that doctoring for me, I figured I might as well take my phone in to get work done, too. It’s been having trouble holding a charge. So I went to the Apple Store that’s in the mall right next door to the AMC Dine-in 6 where I was seeing a film fest movie, and signed up for an appointment. I had a 30 minute wait, enough time to return library books and pick up holds. They wiped my phone and then reinstalled from a backup. I think it helped some. Certainly in the short run everything was cooking along OK, I was doing a little work email on my laptop while the phone was reinventing itself. But I got hungry, and you can’t eat in the Apple Store. I had my packed lunch from work, so I went down to the coffee bar in Metcalfe’s to get more coffee and eat. As soon as I left the Apple Store my phone kept trying to download every app I own on cellular, and that kinda creamed the battery again. So, after I ate I went back to the Apple Store and asked if I could sit there and plugin and download apps their wifi until I went to my movie at 3:00.

Which was First Reformed – Ethan Hawke, directed by Paul Schrader with Amanda Seyfried, a minister in a crisis of his faith. I actually liked it quite a bit, although I thought the ending was a bit of a cheat. Afterward, I came home and made a real dinner – leftover chicken from Passover, rice cooked in coconut milk (impulse buy at Costco, a case of 6 cans of full fat organic coconut milk, which makes the rice delicious but adds something like 700 calories to the pot), and creamed spinach. After we ate, I boned the chicken and saved the meat for a casserole, and made stock. I also made a spice cake with the leftover charoset, brown sugar and buttermilk, and a little bit of butter, a little bit like this Deborah Madison. It’s a nice plain cake, good for breakfast, and Hanne’s been eating it with the leftover 7-minute frosting and lemon curd, so I don’t have to make myself sick eating it on those graham crackers again.

Wednesday I managed to get the stock strained and the bones disposed of before work and before Hanne got up. I’m sure she would’ve thought it was kinda gross. I had a fairly productive work morning, and then an eye doctor’s appointment at 1:00 that I’d made before all the doctoring on Tuesday, and there really didn’t seem to be any reason not to keep it. Got a new prescription, but didn’t take the time to look at frames. Back to campus, more answering emails and general catching up, and I worked the book sale from 3:45 to 8:30. All more thinking I could do it all.

Until, like I said, Thursday morning, when I woke up realizing how far behind I was … grading to do, summer internship placements to make requiring a lot of carefully worded emails. And I had a guest lecture in my online class, so I knew I’d be managing that and not getting too much stuff done. And my last film fest shift, 12:45 – 6:30. And yoga after that.

But, somehow, Thursday turned out to be a pretty good day after all. The cinema I was managing for my volunteer shift had the VO5 trailer. I forgot my yoga clothes – well, I was wearing leggings and a dress and somehow thought I’d be OK for yoga. I stopped at Title 9 and blew $100 on a sports bra that I’m keeping and a top that I returned already. There was a statewide tornado drill Thursday – they ran the sirens twice. I heard the sirens and announcements on the radio as I was driving to yoga, which is in a school building, and didn’t think much of it. I went into the women’s bathroom to change and then headed down the hall to the class. There were two women, one of whom was holding a yoga mat, and a guy, standing the doorway to the men’s, who said they were instructed to go into the bathroom for the drill. I figured it must be over because the sirens stopped, but a school admin type popped out of the next bathroom and told me to go wait with those other folks til we got the all clear. Yoga started about 15 minutes late, with our instructor relating that being with 18 people stuffed into a public bathroom was about the weirdest start to a yoga class that she’d had. One of the women waiting with me in the men’s told a bathroom-appropriate but somewhat horrifying, in a first world problems kind of way, story – get me over a beer and I’ll tell you it sometime.

Friday I had a whole day in the office with nothing until going to see John Sebastian and David Bromberg at Barrymore. Lots of time for catching up. And to make that chicken casserole and a salad for dinner. Sebastian and Bromberg put on a good show, but we had obnoxious neighbors. I had read that Sebastian can’t sing that well anymore, but he told great stories interspersed with songs, and played harmonica with Bromberg’s Quintet. The obnoxious neighbors got on my wrong side by squeezing into their seats at the end of Sebastian’s set and starting with the “WTF? why don’t this guy sing?” They were the quintessential bad concert neighbors, talking non-stop, going, “oooh, I love this song”, then getting up to get a beer three bars in. The only thing that would’ve made it worse is if they’d spilled a beer on me. The Bromberg Quintet did an almost all blues set, although they did Tennessee Waltz – but of course, since they their 2017 album release is called The Blues, The Whole Blues, and Nothing But The Blues.

And now it’s Saturday, miserable weather, but there’s food in the house again, and I’ve picked my holds at the library, and getting laundry done. Even wiped out a few emails. Whew.