Time Scraps

I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to pack in a lot of online scoring days this month, but I did. We enter our availability so far in advance -- and don't get confirmation until weeks later -- that it's difficult to predict sometimes what will work out and what won't. I should have known that by now I'd be knee-deep in my students' essays, and I sure am. Now, with an additional class starting on Monday, I'll have even more papers. Throw in an evening sewing class one night a week and whatever errands I have to take care of, and I find myself with only the weirdest -- and most useless -- little bits of time. An hour here, two hours there; it's not enough to actually accomplish anything.

When I met with the dean at the campus close to home (where my new class will be), I found out that the instructor previously assigned the class had done nothing. I have five days to put together a class I haven't taught before (at least not in its current form) and, since it's an eight-week course that requires students read a full-length text, I'm going to be (hopefully) one step ahead of them on the book. Gosh! This is going to be hard! The first instructor left because she "felt overwhelmed". I don't get that. I'm not sure how many other classes she's teaching -- because she's a new adjunct it's probably only one -- but I can't imagine backing out of a class a week before it starts. Of course, it does open some potentially useful doors for me, so I'm neither complaining nor judging.

In the midst of all of this, my handyman came over on Monday night to fix my dryer, which has been broken for two weeks. He found a "roasted" dead snake inside. That freaked me out. It's not like I live in The Everglades! I live in a typical suburban neighborhood; the idea of snakes getting into my house through the dryer vent is at least a bit disconcerting. He (the handyman, not the snake) bypassed something so I could use the dryer while waiting for the part to come in. So yesterday, after I'd spoken to my son about his neck pain and just gone back to scoring after my morning break, I had a load of clothes in the dryer. Ten to fifteen minutes after I'd started the cycle, I heard an explosion; the dryer shut off and some popping noises went on for a few minutes. Or maybe it was a few seconds. I don't know. I was startled. I ran to the dryer and saw smoke pouring out. My clothes weren't exactly burnt, but they didn't smell very good. I had to sign out of scoring, air out the house, hang the clothes to dry, and call the handyman. He said to turn off the breaker.

Meanwhile, I had let me scoring leader know that my dryer had exploded and I had to leave but hoped to be back. I accomplished everything in fifteen minutes or less and finished my shift. All of it -- even just thinking about it -- is exhausting. Once I get the new class going and get through my nearly-daily scoring shifts for the remainder of this month, life will (sort of) settle down again. But for the next few weeks, it's going to be just like this -- only perhaps without sick kids and exploding appliances.