To ________, Or Not To __________

Grade.
Clean.
Pack.

I'm not happy with my current alternatives for my day. I need to grade--that is just part of the unfortunate circumstance of assigning papers to be turned in so close to break. I'm becoming okay with that. I met my grading goal for yesterday with no problem. Today's goal is to grade two stacks (6 papers in each stack) from my Major Course (5-7 pages each). These papers are fun and interesting to read because they are all on different time periods and issues in history, but time consuming to grade because students have to synthesize secondary materials to explain a particular historical context. They have a lot of issues with pulling scholarship together and organizing it in a way that creates a compelling narrative.

But cleaning and packing are two different stories because there is such little motivation. My house is not incredibly dirty--I'm not here that much during the normal school week to wreck it. But I actually enjoy cleaning, especially before I leave town so that I can come back to a spanking clean house. As Dr. J says, I'm a bit of a Cleaning Commando when I really go at it. And that's what I'm in the mood to do--a furniture moving, closet organizing, nooks and crannies type of a clean. But it keeps looking more and more like I'm going to be stuck here in Gorgeous City for most of break. My being in town for an extended period leads to a little cleaning here, a little cleaning there, rather than an all out assault on my domestic space. Frankly--just not as fun.

I was going to go to Hometown and set up shop at home for the week so that I could handle some wedding dress business with mom, hook up with our planner to see some photographers, and then head to University Town to hang with Dr. J for a couple days. Unfortunately, our planner, is MIA. (I'm not going to speak any further on that right now). Additionally, Dr. J is in the middle of intense number crunching on SPSS and working through his discussion chapter, so it looks like this isn't the best time to pull him away from his work. He's under some serious deadlines (campus invite coming up!), and I know I'd be a disctraction because I don't know a thing about quantitative work and his numbers really need to be tight for the institution he is visiting--they made that very clear. All of this leads me to having very little motivation to pack up for a week (or what's left of it) just to sit around at Hometown while Mom is at work all day (she has un-retired herself). Hometown is right up the road--I can hop up to see Mom any day.

So I'm trying to take my wise fiance's advice to heart. After whining in a text to him (much like this whiny post), he responded to say that I should enjoy the BREAK in my Spring Break. Sigh. I'm going to work on that.