Time to Start Paying Attention

For the first time since I have lived here, our primary is not happening after somebody has already clinched the (democratic) nomination. There’s even going to be a debate here.

I asked my students to write about who they wanted to be president on the writing portion of their exam. Once I grade it, I’ll report back on the state of this red state’s youth.

Really, I have been paying attention, but I have not been motivated to research the details of anyone’s position, since I thought the nominee would be chosen before I got to vote.

Speaking of research, may I just say, thank heavens for the League of Women Voters, because if it weren’t for their voter guide, it would be difficult to know anything about the local races around here.

I Never Write, I Never Call

I obviously haven’t been writing posts. I have a couple thousand unread posts on Bloglines. I wrote my monthly baby update for the family when Zeb was 7 months old, but never got the photos done until it was time to write the 8-month update. I haven’t been writing in my journal or in my update file or on the blog about myself or my son, and they way my memory is these days, I could very well forget any and all of his milestones.  Also, I am way behind on writing  thank-you notes for Z’s gifts. On the other hand, I have managed not to fall behind on grading yet, which is good, even if we are less than a month into the semester (and writing this post when I have papers to grade isn’t going to help me keep up).

We moved more than a month ago, but we are still not unpacked. Every time I tell somebody that, they say something about the boxes they never unpacked that are sitting in the garage after all these years. I’m not talking about those. They are sitting in the garage. I’m talking about my office, my husband’s office, and the living room: in other words, a lot of books. Part of the delay is that we need to buy new bookshelves. Another part is that we want to anchor the bookshelves we have to the wall so that Zebediah does not die a horrible death by pulling over a shelf full of literary theory, or computer science, or science fiction, or fiction-from-the-region-I-study.

On the other hand, we have a new house, with only one story, so I can cross father and / or son falling down the stairs off my list of worries. Also, no more carpets. This was also a TFD-related requirement. I would have thought a soft carpet was better for people with a movement disorder that can cause falls, but I learned in the support group that hard floors are better because it is easier to trip on carpets.

Time for bed, or for grading, or–most likely–for the baby to wake up.