Notebook: Morning Coffee with My Former Self

This morning, I need to be providing feedback on application letters for jobs, which my students wrote for the job search unit we just completed. I haven't graded one this morning.

I was feeling exhausted, and when I'm feeling so mentally weary, I write, read, and get organized to just let go of the stress for a minute. Now I'm feeling better, relieved.

I read an article on adjunct instructing, and I'm reminded that I work in one of the absolute best places to be an adjunct instructor--I have an office (albeit shared) with my own desk that is always mine where I can leave things. I have a full course load at one school rather than commuting between two or three. I have health insurance. I am genuinely one of the best cared for adjunct instructors in university academia. If the burden of cover letters is weighing me down, at least I don't have to commute home for an hour and then grade. My home is a 10-minute walk from my office.

I also decided to clean out a hoard of scribbled on pages in the old notebook I use to write down my lesson plans. I know, I know--this is the modern era. People type lesson plans. But for me there's just something about using paper. I use a paper calendar; I hand-write my reading notes; and I lesson plan in a notebook. Perhaps its a necessity--I'm doing most of my grading electronically.

Anyhoo, as I tear out pages of the notebook, I skim them to make sure I want to throw them away. There are some story drafts and brainstorms in this notebook, and I never throw out a story. (You should see my collection of idea sticky notes. It's getting quite large.) The pages of this notebook are such an odd and broad-spanning preservation of my past.

The book is largely concentrated on the tail end of my sophomore year of college, but it extends into my junior year. There are notes between my friends Curtis, Bret, and myself. We talk about strange things: muffins, tattoos, which branch of the military is sexiest, mockery of our classmates. There is a sketch of a penis drawn by Bret, which I reframed into a squirrel because I didn't want anyone to see a penis in my notebook. We didn't focus much during Brit Lit I.

There are also genuine class notes--homework assignments, sketches of neurons, a line-by-line interpretation of some unlabeled sonnet. There are waves of fitness and food logs. What a health nut I was! By comparison my penchant for health is quite tamed now. There are sentence diagrams of every sentence I found interesting or significant during the semester I took Traditional and Modern Grammars. Perhaps my favorites snippets of text are quotes from my friend Jesse when we were studying for grammar: "I am smart, whearas Cheryl is not." She was demonstrating the use of a subordinating conjunction.

There's a bad short story with my friends Jackie and Curtis cast as hobos. I'm guessing they were mocking me, and I wrote that to mock them back--I'm sure they read it as I wrote, or I read it aloud. The word "junkitude" is written in quotes, and I'm not sure why or in what context it made it into the notebook. Perhaps the oddest line is "Psych appointment - I always wanted to be Teddy from Peter Pan." All I can say is, huh?

I have torn out all of the pages to take up to the shredder box. Perhaps the greatest strength of finding my past preserved in a notebook is that I can revise it with finality. When the page is destroyed, the content is gone, which is what I want to do with some of my more emo journalistic entries. I know that, for the most part, I don't want to be that person, except I want the stories. I want the creativity. It's the only part of myself I will preserve from that notebook, perhaps because I am vainly seeking to regain that portion of my former self.

Now that I've written this entry, I've exhausted the mechanisms of relief, and I must grade, but I wish I was writing a story. Or wishing I still knew how to write a story.

Historic Mac & Cheese-y Childhood Night

Simply Recipes posted an intriguing recipe/article about Mac & Cheese. Mac & Cheese appears in cookbooks back to the1400s. My guess is the dish itself is probably older. That's a long history of yumminess.

They offer a recipe from 1861 that is really more like a guideline--oh before the days of 24 hour grocery stores. For those uncomfortable with guideline-style recipes, Simply Recipes was kind enough to morph this beauty into a modern clear-cut recipe.

Tonight, my friends and I are gathering to test the mac & cheese recipe, which means I'll be doing mostly whatever I want because they're just guidelines. I'll be making the mac & cheese, others will brings sides, appetizers, mix-ins, etc.

We've also got some lemon ice cream made at Kansas State University to finish off the evening. It tastes like this fruit dip Lindsey makes, which our friend Amy dubbed Childhood and Sunshine. I think it's an appropriate dessert for a dinner so reminiscent of childhood. Let's face it, adults don't eat much mac & cheese.

The recipe doesn't call for any sort of cream sauce, but I think I might throw one in to make it creamier like they have a nice restaurants.