bogged down blogger

Okay, so I've fallen off on my reportage for Countdown to Lockdown. I haven't screamed into cyberspace my disgust about the scandal with Duke's LaCrosse team. I haven't weighed in on the current cycle of America's Next Top Model (and my obsession with Nnenna) or this season of The Sopranos (which is weird as hell, right?). In other words, I've been a bad blogger or rather a blogger bogged down with dissertation revisions.

Now on the wire, between the end of a long ass journey through academe and a tenure-track job, I'm tired, anxious and I look and feel like a hot mess. (My version of a hot mess: fallen off at the gym and it shows! Need a haircut and an eyebrow wax and let's not forget those feet! It's almost springtime afterall. And, can I um wear something besides pajamas and sweats? Oh, that would require me dropping off my laundry! Yes -- dropping it off. I do live in NY afterall.) I answer about half my phone calls, return my e-mails on occasion and go out even less frequently. These are all signs of the end, I'm told as are my highs and lows, crying fits and desire to take a nap in the middle of the day or sometime as soon as I wake up.

But the diss is not my sole tormentor. It's almost the end of the academic year and my students are freaking out and becoming increasingly needy: they need to drop the course (cuz they be failing), they need extra credit (not going to happen), they need need need. And I wish I could accomodate more of their needs but most of the time, showing up and leading discussion for an hour and forty minutes (for three classes by the way) is all a girl can do. As well as grade papers, chair senior theses and actually prep for those three classes.

But as the elders say "trouble don't lass always." And I know that to be true, but sometimes it's hard to look forward to the end when you're bogged down in the muddle of it all. Ah well, for now I'll settle for looking forward to my Sunday tv break aka The Sopranos.