Mothering at Mid-Career: Early Semester Check-In

So we've made it through the first two weeks of my semester, and the first week of Nick's. And what have I learned so far?

• that changing up the syllabus to your bread-and-butter class is fine, but does require a little extra prep time. And that maybe it would be easier to make the big changes at some point after the first few weeks, when we’re all still getting to know each other. But maybe not.
• that getting up for the high school bus is just as hard sophomore year as it was freshman year.
• that everyone else wants to have a meeting this week, too.
• that the best time to call Mariah, who is back in college and has just finished her first week of classes as well, is while I’m walking across campus. She won't be free then, but she'll call when she's next walking across campus, and maybe one of those times we'll connect. Or, of course, I can stalk her on Facebook.
• that baking is still a good stress reliever. Unfortunately a painful bout with tendinitis in my shoulder is making knitting a bit harder than I'd like, so baking it is.
• that home-made yogurt takes fifteen minutes of my attention, and the rest of the day in an incubator (or, in my house, an insulated cooler with some bath towels in it), and makes me feel as if I've accomplished something useful.
• that answering all the emails that accumulate during one day does not always make me feel as if I've accomplished something useful, even if it is necessary.
• that putting “answer emails” on a to-do list and checking it off does make me feel as if I’ve accomplished something useful. To-do lists, in other words, are magical.
• that the mass email function in Blackboard works best if you don't have an old class with the same name as the new class.
• that building the spring schedule during the second week of the fall schedule induces a kind of chronological hallucination — at some point on Thursday I really thought we were already in spring semester. Oops.
• that I am no better at bulleted lists now than I was last year—but, also, that this fall has so far (cross fingers, knock wood) been a little less eventful than the first couple weeks of last fall semester.