Snow Day

We have a snow day today, which is lovely. So far this semester we've had quite a bit of snow but we've only had late-start days, which are annoying on account of then no one can remember when classes start and end and so on. Everything runs late and bumps into whatever else you have to do: in my case, doctor's appointments and church. All the people with children, and we have quite a few students with children, have their difficulties multiplied as their children's school will have a snow day when we have a late start day and so on. You can imagine the chaos.

I am enjoying mine by drinking many cups of tea and working on the conference paper and the senior thesis and memorizing the first seven lines of the Iliad.

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.*

(I'm really surprised it stayed in Greek)

As of Friday, I will already be a quarter of the way through the semester. I can hardly believe it. Soon it will be spring break and I'll get to drag out the sundresses from under the bed. By the time spring break comes, I'll be waiting for acceptance/rejection letters from grad schools. I will have finished my thesis and be preparing a presentation form of it. I'll be waiting to hear from two other conferences.

Thinking about this is nice but then my mind pops back to today and I think, how will I ever squeeze out enough time to do all that? It's a good question. I can't even find the energy or concentration to clean up the house.

Then again I can think back five weeks and remember how overwhelmed I was at the mere idea of going to school. I was sure I'd give up in the second week. I was very down from having been at my parents and couldn't keep up with some extremely basic things, too embarrassing to detail here. Now I am at least more or less on top of the day to day homework and I look presentable on a daily basis, something I would not have been able to forsee myself doing. Perhaps I'm in the same boat now, unable to see how I will do what I need to do but about to do it all the same.

I hope so.



*copied and pasted from the Perseus Project