News and Whatnot

Hi everyone,

I have been very, very busy lately, and this includes the announcement that I wanted to make that I alluded to on Twitter.

I am teaching 29 students, and last Wednesday was hell! They watched Tim Wise's film "On White Privilege" on Monday, and half of the class was offended by what he had to say, and the other half of the class was offended by the statements from the first half. Let's just say, when I came home that day and said "I want a cigarette," I wasn't kidding. That was stressful.

Sticking to more positive news, I have an announcement: I am officially a PhD student pending the completion of my Master's Thesis. What that means is: If I can get my shit together and finish my thesis, I can actually call myself a PhD student, instead of the generic "grad student" label I tend to use now. Am I excited? I should be, but it's hard to celebrate when your childhood home was almost sold out from under you by your aunt in collusion with my father-in-law (and the sale was only halted because my husband told my f-i-l that as heir to half of my mother's part of the house, I refused to sell).

I'm supposed to do a term paper for my graduate school class, I need to make significant progress on my thesis paper, and I have to get through teaching my course without murdering any of my students (which is harder on some days than others). I'm hella stressed because my husband has no job, didn't qualify for unemployment, and spent 1 1/2 months lying about it. The saga continues, so instead of boring everyone with the continuous exploits of my douchebag f-i-l, raging bitch of an aunt, or the genuine sorrow I feel about everything else, I'm going to just cap this with some much-anticipated pictures.

Enjoy!