No sleep for the weary

It's been a few days since I've posted, so I suppose I should begin with a quick recap.

Wednesday
I spent the morning on the phone with the insurance company, the student medical clinic, and my ophthalmologist's office. The insurance company won't cover my visit because I failed to get a referral from the student medical clinic first. Why didn't I get a referral? Because I didn't know to do it because I failed to read my policy cover to cover. I just sort of figured since they didn't have an ophthalmologist on staff (similar to how they don't have a dentist or dermatologist on staff), then I would just go straight to my own ophthalmologist...and dermatologist. Wrong-o. Even though vision isn't covered by the insurance plan, it apparently shows up somewhere under the medical services...not sure how that works...and therefore requires a referral from the medical clinic. This means I have to make an actual appointment to be seen by a physician at the university to be told, "Nope, we sure can't look at your eyes, by golly," get my grubby hands on the referral, and THEN make an appointment with a real ophthalmologist. Same goes for dental and dermatology. Interesante. The scary thing is that I didn't do this for my orthopedic visits earlier this year with all the herniated disk nonsense...my insurance appears to have cleared, but I'm just waiting for a thousand-dollar bill to waft its way into my mailbox. I hate insurance.

Wednesday didn't get much better mostly because Robert was doing so badly. Not going into details to protect the innocent, particularly before the whole ordeal is resolved this week. But the long and short of it is that Robert is unbelievably miserable in the high school classroom and has received little to no true support from his coordinating bodies. Several times Wednesday I was close to marching into one of these individual's offices and blessing her out for being such a horrible person to my fiancé. Wouldn't have helped, so I kept my mouth shut. We'll call Wednesday the low point in both our semesters. It was a very hard day.

Wednesday did perk up, though, because Robert's birthday present for me came in the mail. He got me the entire collection of Kenneth Brannagh Shakespeare films! Is Amanda ecstatic? Yes! I had mentioned it to him as a sort of wishful thing...I eventually wanted to be able to own all of the DVDs, but I hadn't imagined I'd get them all in one go! It was very exciting, and I can't wait to get into them. I haven't seen the majority of them yet, although I did get to see one in a private screening before it was released to the general public. Shakespeare conferences are fun. :) (Or BardCon, as one of my colleagues playfully calls it.)

Thursday
Ugh. Thursday was ever more of the same. Although, I did get a great deal of work done on my midterm exams (both regular and make-up), and was able to complete them and the midterm review sheet so that my students could have that in their grubby hands by Friday's class (a week before the exam).

I did go to the running class again on Thursday, which was better than Monday. Thursday we didn't walk the route (which we'll get back to this forthcoming Monday), but instead we walked laps around the gym's lake (six) until we had walked two miles. I walked faster than on Monday, and met a pretty cool older guy who kept me company (my sister had an exam that evening and had to miss class). We also had a podiatrist on site who watched us walk barefoot--I apparently have an almost "perfect" walk. This just means that when I walk, my toes and knees point forward, and that my joints don't try to come in (like I don't walk with my knees coming inward or my ankles rolling inward). I was pretty happy with that result because guess who can't afford a new pair of shoes or shiny new inserts?

Friday
Yesterday was fine. I decided not to teach, so I had the students write an in-class reading response. I graded the two o'clock bunch during the three o'clock class, and I'll grade the three o'clock bunch today. I went over the midterm review sheet with them, as well as the midterm exam format. I think they'd all agree that I'm being extremely fair and forthright in my exam; I shouldn't receive any complaints the night before...but I'm sure I will. When I got back from class, Robert was feeling much better. I think the decision we've come to is going to be good, and we just have to wait for a few meetings on Tuesday before I can officially tell people because it might not play out the way we want it to.

We're doing Beowulf on Monday, and I have a wonderful lesson plan for Monday already. It's the lesson I was observed for last Spring, so I've got all this great stuff planned for me. I love when I'm prepared, lol. Couldn't have come on a better weekend because I have way too much crap to do to be worried about a dinky ol' lesson plan.

Saturday (today)
Today is the Auburn-Tennessee game...and I'm not going. This is one of my favorite match-ups in college football because it's such a friendly game, but I can't go today because of the amount of work to do. Although I don't really have to read Beowulf again, of course I will. I have to clean the apartment in a bad way. I have to do laundry in a bad way. I have to grade those in-class reading responses as well as work on their mid-semester grade reports. I also have to work on all my thank-you notes from back in July (for the engagement party) up to this birthday. I feel horrible, but I hope that people won't be mad at me for being a few months behind schedule. I think to make my life a little bit easier, I'm going to print off address labels for my return address. We'll see how big the ones I have are and if that'd be okay-looking. And the most important thing I have to do is to read for my exams. I'm almost an entire month behind schedule at this point. I don't know if I want to read according to my schedule anymore...I kind of just want to grab a book from the pile and go for it. Maybe that'll work okay. But I need to get a few plays read today, or else. Which sounds stupid. Hm. I think Robert's planning on coming over to watch a little bit of the game with me, so I think what I'll do is get my non-game-watching homework done first (i.e. the reading), and then I can do the mindless stuff (the grading, cleaning, laundering) while the game's on. That sounds like a decent enough plan to me.

Ugh. I'm getting to a point of resentment with my program...or at least with my placement in my program. I'm tired of everything. *frown*