Last week, Last breath

I am posting the below, which was originally drafted last week. Have no energy to write a new post, as the administration has indeed (of course) bothered me on my one week off. Send tips if you actually know how to unleash the fires of hell.

I have spent the last seven weeks--solid--frantically writing papers, conferencing, preparing and sending proposals, grading (How is it possible that I left the bulk of it for the end?), attending mindless end-of-the-semester meetings arranged by the administration (Do these people actually think we have our wits about us in the midst of getting exams written, final papers graded, and final grades calculated, all at the end of a grueling heavy-service year that has rendered the entire faculty into exhausted little puddles of professorial goo?), attending the many and varied activities surrounding the graduation hoopla, and managing to get myself involved in a whirlwind romance that involves travel and hours of late-night phone conversations (which means I have been averaging about four to six hours of sleep a night).

This is the first day in those seven weeks that I do not have to get through a list of absolutely pressing tasks. I am not going to go into the "I should be elated but I am depressed" element of how I am feeling. It happens every year, and I am hoping that I have learned to cope with it. I am telling myself to let myself ride it out and not to let it lead to the paralysis it did last summer. In fact, I do not know if I have fully hit the APPS (Academic Post-Partum Syndrome) stage, as I have ANOTHER FULL WEEK of meetings mandated by the administration to attend and a stack of mindless paperwork to do.

I am so frustrated--hell, infuriated--by the administration at Foggy C. They are positively compulsive about not letting us get on about our summer business. The obsessive calling of meetings is a result, I am convinced, of their neurotic belief that we do not do work when we are not actually bodily present in the panoptical halls of Foggy C. If I have to hear one more joke about how I have a few more very serious matters to attend to before I can have my summer free to walk my dog (which I could not afford on my salary or if I could would not have time to walk and which would be rightly and promptly removed by the SPCA), lounge in the sun (do I fucking look like Paris Hilton to you?), and get on with that pleasure reading (I have to re-read Kant this summer. KANT!), I will spontaneously combust on the spot, leaving the deliverer of said joke maimed for life.

OK, I will stop with the parenthetical messages to the administration and just go for it. If you are listening, esteemed members of the foggy-but-no-less-evil-for-all-of-your-banality regime:

I have an active research agenda. Because of the work I have been able to squeeze into those rare pockets during the academic year when I am not absolutely pinned against the wall with teaching and service obligations, I have several accepted papers to write this summer. I absolutely must begin these projects in early June, leaving me what was originally a precious two weeks of down time. Because of the meetings and the newly set early due dates for various written thingies of no real use to you or me, this has dwindled to a mere week. If you even attempt to bother me during this week, I will do my best to unleash the fires of hell upon you and your progeny. Leave me the fuck alone. Seriously.

Now that I have very likely dooced myself, I have no time to blog about the romance. It's intense. It's amazing. It's scaring the hell out of me. I am trying with all of my might not to resort to my Medusa ways, especially the one involving the consequences (for him) of my being seen.