Today, less than an hour ago, I was able to stand on the edge of the continent, trace a strand line, expel the day's thoughts, and dissipate into the din of the surf.... The edge of a continent--this continent--where the land mass ends and the green begins.All cantankerous tendencies dissolved and turned into ellipses. For I was greeted--no, nudged by 4 very sandy-briny dogs this evening...Could they tell--did they know that I had evolved into a cat person---maybe they sensed me teetering on the brink of declaring myself a cat person? (Oh, Kitty Stilts! you could be attacking the beloved's leg right about now...only I'm not there!!) If such categories of cat- and dog-people exist. And if dogs can smell fear, surely they could smell pet-favoritism, no? Well, I rejoiced for these slap-happy mammals---they were making the best of their 49 days; in 49 days, they are banned from this elitist beach.
The outing was my panacea for to-day, which in itself was a diversion (an unwelcomed one?) from the usually long teaching day that is my Tuesday: I had spent the day with my colleagues and we gleaned from administrative imperatives and from educational strategies for assessing our respective programs! (Will you permit me an "oysh!"?) And while I am--I think--equally adept at socializing with my peers and steering impressionable minds, I am not adept at enduring alternating jabs and pricks from one sharp, acidic individual in a sea of potentially thoughtful, highly passionate folks. The vampiric-tactics of this particular person had me volleying saucy repartees...
And dodge the rain of pinpricks I did!
As if this weren't enough to drain my life blood! (Remember--I'm a bookish type of gal, whose people time is generally limited to discussing literature and ideas!) But I found myself in a room of fellow wordsmiths, we had turned the simplest statements of our program's goals and objectives into artful prose. We had transformed "simple tasks" into exercises in frustration, nitpicking over diction. Some of us collectively justified it with, "it's what we do--word work is our medium," or "clearly, we think too much," playing the we're-intellectuals-and-not-administrators card.
By 3 o'clock, I had an assessment hang-over. And, at the end of the day, when it was all said and done, it boiled down to this:
(1) a handful of adults behaving like rebellious, back-talking teenagers;
(2) I am grateful--this is just one of two such days in my work year;
(3) and such a day gets me to the beach and nudges from canines;
(4) I will soon be living with my love!!
