This Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life. . .I Wish

Today it's easy to remember why I love being an academic. Because at 11am, I was crossing my apartment complex to go talk to the central command rather than working. (I'm not trying to be annoying to all of you who are teaching right now -- I worked through the summer myself, so while you guys were going on vacation and doing fun things, I was slogging away teaching. Now it's my turn for a little R & R.)

It's noon now, and I've taken Tot to daycare, filled out a permission slip (my first mom permission slip!), went to buy canning supplies, bought bulbs and a bulb-planter, and gotten one of those food mills because I refuse to shell out big bucks for a food processor when I might still have one in storage. I paid the rent and the storage.

Instead of giving myself a week off, which I fear might cause a slide into the slough of despond, I have this wonderful list and all these things to do. Right now, I'm running the jars (why is it called canning and not jarring?) as well as my brand-new stew pot in the dishwasher. So I need to begin my new plan of working on scholarship and creative work. I'm not going to go crazy and drive myself too hard, of course. But I am going to get to work. How exciting! And there are all these apples that need to be cored and softened into applesauce and then "put up." (Really I want to make apple butter for Christmas gifts this year, but I think I don't have enough apples for the recipe. Also there was a terrible late spring freeze that really ruined a lot of the fruit crops in my area, so my wonderful apple orchard is sparse in their offerings -- to say nothing of the astronomical price of Honeycrisps. Mostly I got Galas, which are supposed to be wonderful for applesauce. We'll see how it goes.)

That's really all. I'm working on an article I'm determined to be done with by the end of the calendar year, and I want to make significant strides on a project that has long since been stagnant. There is also work stuff to do: committees and pet projects. But I don't want to deal with that today. Better get to work before I blog the day away.