Somebody Buy Me an Elephant Cake!

I'm watching Ace of Cakes right now (because I'm completely addicted to all things cake decorating, even though I have no actual inclination to bake OR decorate cakes myself, I just love watching other people do it) and Duff and crew just made the cutest elephant cake ever. I love it. I want one, badly, although I don't think I would actually eat it. So maybe what I really want is a large cuddly-looking elephant figurine rather than an elephant cake. Whatever. I realized a couple of weeks ago that in theory I now live close enough to Charm City that I could commission myself a cake. Of course, the fact that at a bare minimum the cakes cost $500 and they need at least ten weeks' notice makes the whole idea sort of prohibitive. Maybe eventually I'll have a special occasion that warrants an awesome cake.

So it's Thursday, which means I made it through another week. Three whole weeks into the school year, this was my first full week (the first week was only Wednesday and Thursday, and then last week there was no Monday since it was Labor Day). It's good to finally have an idea of what my entire schedule is going to feel like for the rest of the semester. So far it's still feeling quite manageable. Sure, I feel like I'm just squeezing everything in, basically. I honestly don't know how people with kids or significant others can do this, because I'm always barely a step ahead of the game and it's just me by myself here with no other responsibilities. I guess you always find time for what you really want to find time for, though, and if that were my situation I would make it work. I guess what I'm trying to say is that my schedule is not so easy that I feel like I could take on a bunch of other tasks, but right now I am getting all of my reading and assignments done, having time for a couple of social events each week, and still getting 6 1/2 to 8 hours of sleep every night AND working out regularly. I feel like that's a really good balance and I'm going to try to maintain it as long as possible. Especially the sleep thing.
The problem is that sleeping the proper amount is always the first thing to go when life gets busy, and I know that. That's how I know that things are manageable right now: I'm still sleeping. There was a period of time in college when I was student teaching and having to get up at 7 a.m. but still wanting to booze with my friends and fool around with my not-a-boyfriend until the wee hours. This meant I was regularly sleeping only about 4 to 5 hours a night. And while I actually can function on that small amount of sleep for quite a long time, it's obviously not healthy. AT ALL. Um, and not just because I was substituting vodka and other bedroom activities for sleep, although that was certainly part of the problem. I remember when I finished school that semester and actually had time to sleep again I had the most amazing, vivid dreams for weeks. I think it's because in some way my brain was a bit screwed up from being sleep deprived for months and all that dreaming was a way of getting back on track.
At any rate, I'm not looking forward to getting back into that sort of pattern, so I keep trying to be grateful for the fact that I'm single because for me single=time to be healthy. I may be happier when I'm in a relationship (maybe) but I'm definitely better at balancing my time and treating myself well when I'm single. So there's that.

Anyway, as for school itself, it's still going well. I got more positive feedback in my Wednesday class this week, all of my other classes seem to be going fine, and I am enjoying teaching my intro kids. I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune the first time I have to grade their papers, but for right now they seem fairly willing to participate and engaged with the material. Sure, there are a couple of minor problem kids in both classes, like the guy in the front row who slept all day Wednesday. I didn't call him on it, mostly because I was just sort of impressed by the fact that someone could sleep so deeply that nothing stirred him until class ended, and even then pretty much everyone had left the room before he popped his eyes open and looked around startled to realize everyone else was gone. He was sitting straight up as he slept, too. That's one tired person. I also didn't call him on it because, frankly, from last week's discussion I can tell that he's already miles ahead of the rest of the class conceptually. Since I was lecturing this week instead of leading discussion (the prof is already behind in the syllabus due to an emergency that cut the big lecture class short on Monday so we were trying to play catch up) and since I was lecturing on material that is covered in their text book, I don't blame him for being bored. He's the sort of kid that's smart enough to not need my explanation of the basics. That's still no reason to blatantly sleep through a lecture, but I let it slide this week. If it happens next week when we're back to the discussion format, though, I'm going to be counting him absent and talking to him about it because it's one thing to sleep through my lecture but I can't really give him credit for discussion if he's sleeping.

I'm trying to think of something else to tell you about, but it has been a pretty low key week and I don't have much to say. My plan is to not do much this weekend, either. My parents are coming to town the week after next and I'd like to have time to actually hang out with them without feeling guilty about piles of work waiting for me at home, so I'm going to try to lay low this weekend and get a ton of work done. We'll see how that goes.

This feels kind of disjointed. Sorry. It's the end of the week, my brain is a bit fried. I'll leave you with two more quick thoughts:
a) I have yet to have one of those, "What the-? I really don't understand what you're talking about" moments in class. I have also yet to come across anything that wasn't at least somewhat familiar. So far the work has been exactly what I was expecting: the same basic sort of work I was doing in my MA program, just amplified (very amplified in some cases-you should know that I read 400 pages FOR ONE CLASS this week. No I'm not kidding. Yes, I really did read it all. Yes, I am something of a speed reader. I did have to read literally all day on Saturday to accomplish that task, though so I'm not quite superhuman. No, it's not always quite that bad and this was a particularly heavy reading week in that class). Anyway, the only things that are throwing me for a loop a bit are issues specifically related to systems and routines at this university. Basically, I feel like I am about as prepared for this task as anyone else here. That makes me feel good, like I actually belong here. It also makes me scared, however, because usually I'm worried about my performance and then I end up doing really well. The fact that I'm not that worried worries me. Stupid, I know, but there ya go.
b) I have been doing a month-long workout routine (I already mentioned this, didn't I?). I'm almost done with week two. The workout has specific things that you have to do every day, so I haven't been able to use my usual twenty days a month plan. Instead, this workout has me doing something every day but Sundays. This isn't a routine I'd ever attempt to maintain in the long term but it has taught me something important. There were two days this week where, if I was doing my normal twenty days a month thing, I would have skipped working out that day and just done it on another day when I had more energy. But I am determined to do everything I can to get the promised results from this workout, and skipping a day in the middle of the week would screw it up. So both nights when I got home from class I looked longingly at the couch but then sucked it up, put on my workout clothes, and did my weight or interval training. And you know what? Both nights after my workout I had such a rush of energy that I was able to stay up and work for hours. Had I napped on the couch instead, I probably would have just kept napping and accomplished nothing. Moral of the story? There's no such thing as being too tired to work out, because working out will actually make you feel better than if you had taken a nap. Seriously, it will. I have always read that in motivational articles: "Go for a thirty minute run and you'll feel so much better about yourself AND you'll have energy" but I didn't really buy it. I do now, though. Try it and see if it works for you.