Drinking my second cup of coffee of the morning and I’m still barely waking up. 7:30am. Half-watching a movie because the PS3 controller that I forgot to plug in last night was dead this morning, so my usual morning GTA4 ritual has been disrupted a bit. Waiting about a half hour yet before I pop my morning Vicodin and get to work.

It’s been a painful week with recovering from oral surgery, but I’m at least (painfully) eating solid food again, and I am healing. I’ve scaled back from four Vicodin to two per day, and I’ll be off them in the next day or two: there’s only a few left in the bottle and we both agreed not to get it refilled. Switching to Tylenol at that point. Legal narcotics taken under the orders of a licensed doctor for legitimate reasons is a wonderful thing, but I’ll tell you something: I now know how people get hooked on the stuff. Vicodin’s nice.

Probably not helping my jaw to recover, I spent most of last week on the phone. Called about 60 companies and people to drum up some post-Labor Day work (and yes, more than a few of those calls were made stoned out of my head); I need to get my September hours up, and I hadn’t done much of anything the week before except deliver on August drafts and kick out invoices.

It was a productive week. By Friday afternoon, I had four proposals floating around, lined up a half dozen scheduled calls for this week, scheduled out eight or nine billable hours to be worked this week for a regular and reliable client, and nailed down an article deal with Bride Nouveau Magazine. So this week’s going to be a busy week: three people to talk with today, followed by another week of hustling and schmoozing and wheeling and dealing and, occasionally, writing.

Busy days for both of us. Kristi’s firmly buried under her new GATE duties at work while I’m fighting to ramp up business for the fall and early next year. She’s constantly exhausted and I’m sore and on drugs. But you know, strangely enough, we’re both holding it together. It’s a lot easier to take on heavier loads when you have someone you trust there to help keep you from being crushed by it.

Thanks to everyone who called or emailed and asked how I was doing. I do appreciate it.

August is always a hard month for me.  I hate going back to work, starting all over with new kids.  It’s physically the most draining time of the year and mentally, I’m wrung out.  This year, I have 4 classes of seniors, the largest has 49.  We are slammed with kids in every class and right now, admin won’t balance numbers because we have to hire or transfer a few teachers.  So I’m dealing with 40+ kids in 3 classes, a lunch period I hate (eating at 1pm after starting work at 7:15??), and my wing is basically empty except for a new teacher in the department who is getting on my nerves.  I’m lonely.  I don’t know any of my students, except a few I had last year in my CA.HSEE class.  I miss my neighbours from school who have all moved to other parts of campus.

I’m a bit of a moody mess today, mostly from being tired.  I get overwhelmed at school when I’m dragging this much.  I’m just glad Rob is here, day in, day out.  He’s taken care of everything the last week from meals to laundry to the animals.  He’s taken care of me.  For better or for worse.  In good times and in bad.