On Death

"But when one is alone and it is night and so dark and still one hears nothing and sees nothing but the thoughts which add and subtract the years, and the long row of those disagreeable facts which remorselessly indicate how far the hand of the clock has moved forward, and the slow, irresistible approach of the wall of darkness which will eventually engulf everything I love, wish for, hope for, and strive for, then all our profundities about life will slink off to some undiscoverable hiding-place and fear envelops the sleepless one like a smothering blanket." - Carl Jung

Promotion Blues

I found out today that every full-time psychology teacher who applied for promotion at my college this year was promoted. Except for me. That's six people in all, six people (and their dogs (and their canaries)) who are better that I am (only one of whom has a Ph.D. in psychology, as I myself do).

Other than a ravaged self-esteem, the humiliation of not being promoted when all my psychology colleagues were, not getting the raise that goes along with the promotion I didn’t get, being a year behind those who did get promoted in being able to apply for a full professorship, I’m taking this pretty well.

The Strangeness Continues

The plumber came out yesterday to fix the exploded toilet at my house (see blog below). I told him I’m never seen a toilet that had come apart like that, and I asked him how often he’d seen the like.

“I’ve NEVER seen a toilet like this,” he said.

“What do you think caused it?” I asked.

“If I told you anything at all, I’d be lying to ya’,” he replied.

A Modern Haunting?

Weird things have been going on around my house. Squeeze thinks the place is haunted. Fairly large objects completely disappear. Lights come on by themselves at night. Objects that are in closed off guest bedrooms move and break. Last night the tank on the toilet in the master bath exploded. I never have heard of a toilet exploding on its own before, but this one did. We were asleep when it happened so we awoke to a flooded bathroom.

Perhaps squeeze is right.

She has hypothesized before that our house might have been built on an old Indian grave site.

“How would you like to find out that you’re on top of someone dead?” she asked.

“I’m used to it”, I replied. “I used to be married.”

Brain Fart in the Sooner State

This last Monday something very creepy happened to me. I had come home from school and was upstairs working on the computer in my office. An hour, or perhaps less, I went back downstairs and sat on the couch in the den. I seemed oddly disoriented and confused. My memory of what I had been doing on the computer seemed strange and unreal. Something bad had happened to me and I still haven't figured out what it was. Because some of the time I was in my office I seemed to be stuporous, my first thought was that I might have been exposed to carbon monoxide, fueled by a faulty furnace. Yet, there are carbon monoxide alarms in my house; they had detected nothing, and seemed in good working order.

Stroke?

Narcolepsy?

Alien abduction?

Spirit possession?

Having happened once, I'm afraid it'll happen again.

What if I'm driving a car when it happens? Or walking down stairs? Or teaching a class?

I hate getting old.

Can't Figure It Out

I used to pass a student in the hallways of academe and I’d call out “How ya doing, Red?” and his stock reply was “I can’t figure it out.” Good answer. I can’t seem to figure it out either.

Here we are in 2007 and I’ve had one problem or disappointment after another. On the second of January, with the year still in diapers, I was making the bed, reached down to pull up a corner of the mattress to tuck a sheet under, and I felt something move in my back. The pain was excruciating. I was stuck in this half hunkered down position, neither quite upright, nor quite quadrapedal, totally unable to move, and in indescribable pain. The best I could do was roll onto my back on the bed with feet and hand sticking straight up in the air, looking something like a cockroach who’d just lost a draw-down with a can of Raid.

I had thrown my proverbial back out.

Squeeze was leaving that very day for a two-year visit to the Congo and the Sudan (she says this is the busiest time of the year for her, but she says that twelve months a year). Thus, I had the prospect of freezing and starving in the dark as I regularly fouled my bed. THIS is how my year began.

Then there was the ice storm. Worst I’ve ever seen. It’s been over four weeks ago and there is still an icy patch on my driveway, this in spite of temperatures routinely above freezing.

I found out yesterday that I was passed over for promotion at work. This is the first year that my college is promoting to Associate Professor. In coming years they will allow Associates to apply for Full Professor positions, the highest available. There were 50 slots available and I got none of them. I was good enough to be a Full Professor at a university in Texas, but apparently not good enough to be an Associate Professor at a community college in Oklahoma.

It’s politics of course. I’m not so good at politics so I guess I’ll just have to accept the way it is, rather than the way I wish it to be.

My son broke up with his girlfriend. My friend Kevin is on the outs with his. Jess and Drew are splitting the sheets, and Bry is taking a hike from his ol’ lady too. Must be something in the air.

Plus it’s been dark. Really dark. Depressingly dark.

Every morning I have to ask the same question. “Do I get up and go to teach today, or do I take a sniper rifle up on the roof and commit suicide via SWAT team?”

Well, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. It’s my favorite holiday, next to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Fourth of July, President’s Day, MLK Day, Arbor Day, and Guy Fawkes Day.

I been screwed over way too often on Valentine’s Day.

Bummer.