A slightly better week.

This week wasn't as bad. I know, that's not saying much, but still.

I worked a lot again. Monday and Thursday I put in about ten hours on campus, as well as part of Wednesday. I got a lot done which does make me feel much better, all by itself. I finished the trials of the electrogravimetric analysis. I did six trials each of three unknown ores. They had to stir for over an hour each, but I have five sets of apparatus so I could do five simultaneously. While that happened, I made solutions and did the first of the four titration experiments, a redox titration with chromium(VI). I did four standardization trials one day and then twelve unknown trials (two different unknowns) the next day. I would have done more trials but I used up all the chromium(VI) solution, and I would have to standardize again if I made more. This is the endpoint color, kind of blue-purple.

On Tuesday I had the virtual doctor appointment, with one of the PAs. She was kind, and asked lots of questions. The virtual thing was strange but no stranger than teaching a class virtually. Anyway, she and my doctor don't think I'm close to menopause because I'm not experiencing any other symptoms. The PA thought it could be a thyroid problem, so Wednesday on my way to campus I went to the lab and had some blood drawn for those tests, which all came back totally normal. Therefore, my doctor recommends mindfulness and stress management techniques. Sigh. I mean, I'm glad there's no huge medical problem! But, it would be easier to have something that could be treated in a more concrete way. Instead, it kind of feels like "this is all in your head" so snap out of it already. I have another appointment with the counselor on Tuesday and I'll see what she says.

Today I went to one of the local basic hair salons (it's a national chain, no frills) and had my hair shortened by about ten inches. I do this every other year: get it cut as short as I can while retaining the ability to make a low ponytail. Then I do nothing while the hair grows out again for two years or so, which is when it starts to be annoying and hot. I knew I was due for this haircut in June, but I wasn't brave enough to go right after salons reopened. I had almost decided to wait another year, or maybe until Christmas, but I suddenly changed my mind. The place I used two years ago is gone but these chains have outlets all over the city. This one had an online check in thing so I found the location with the shortest wait time, checked in there, and then drove over. It was pretty slick. I did have to wait about 5 minutes in the shop after I arrived because both stylists were busy with other people, but there was no one else waiting. I feel much better now. The hair should stop tangling in my clothes (and face mask!) and it should be cooler. So that was a successful adventure.

I immediately changed my clothes and washed my hands when I got home, just in case. 

We received several messages from the Provost this week. One was about being flexible with students who are experiencing issues and maybe can't do class work the way we would normally expect this fall. Another was the long-awaited announcement that the college has purchased a site license for Zoom and we can all sign up for accounts. It feels like this new guy is starting to make things happen, and that's good. On the other hand, I received access to my department budget yesterday and found that our equipment purchase and equipment repair lines were eliminated and the supplies budget was cut 20%. I don't know how well that's going to work out. It's hard to teach chemistry without buying stuff.

Today I made a screen capture video for my Quant students describing the textbooks and other required materials for the class. I usually just send an email listing the ISBN and brief comments, but I wanted them to hear my voice this time. I made a Google Slides deck with pictures of the books and the most important details and then I just talked through that (for 11 minutes, which I know is "too long" according to the experts, but I don't care). I'm going to do one for General Chemistry too, but those students don't know me already so I want to put a little more time into preparing what I say and how I say it. 

I've been working on those knitted ornaments. Each one has taken about two hours, start to finish. I have made five so far in different combinations of yarn and beads. The yarn is leftover from a hat I made a long time ago and the beads are leftover from various lace projects. Each ornament only uses up about 4 grams of yarn, but 100 beads, so I will run out of beads first and then need to decide whether to buy more.

Time is even more wobbly than usual

I can hardly believe another week has gone by. Time is just...totally weird right now.

I worked another 2.5 days in the lab this week. I finished the first two experiments for Quant and got things set up for the third. The experiment I was working mostly, each student starts with a different indicator solution (they don't know the identity), so I repeated the whole procedure for each of the six indicators we had ready. This way, if it comes to it, I can give different students different data and they won't all have exactly the same analysis. It seemed to take forever to get through these. These solutions do look pretty, though. This is bromothymol blue:

All of the next experiments require students to analyze replicates of an unknown substance, and I'm not entirely sure how that's going to work for me. For the one I am starting next week, I have five sets of equipment so I am making five samples and going to try to run them all simultaneously. Hopefully, that won't take all day and I'll be able to do at least two or three different unknowns before moving on. All the other experiments are titrations, and I haven't figured out a way to titrate more than one sample at a time.

I also need to put the data together for students at some point. Right now, all the photos are in my Google drive, notes are written in a physical notebook, and spectra are on a flash drive. I need to start putting that together (I'm thinking of using a Google Slides file for each different set) before I forget all the details. There's also all the lecture prep I haven't really started yet...

Sunday afternoon I had my little knitting group scheduled. It's just me and two other faculty members. They asked me to teach them how to knit...goodness, that was two years ago!...and we've been meeting at my house about once a month since then. They are both making simple potholders - very, very slowly - but really this is an excuse to get together and talk. None of us has many friends here; I think it's hard for us to make friends as adults. We've been meeting virtually since March. Anyway, only one of them showed up this time. We emailed the other person afterwards and it turned out she had had an emergency (I hesitate to be more specific on the interwebz). I was relieved to hear from her, but sad that things are not going well in her life. I almost wrote the common line about "let me know if there's anything I can do" but I didn't because (a) the number of things I could actually do and would be willing to do at this point is pretty small, and (b) if it was me, I would read that as a sort of empty offer and I don't want her to feel similarly ambiguous about it. Instead, I wrote about how much I valued her friendship and wanted things to be better. We're going to try to meet virtually again soon. 

Tuesday morning I had my counseling session. The counselor was nice, I guess. I haven't ever had counseling before so I didn't know what to expect. She suggested that my troubles could be hormonal, that maybe I'm in perimenopause, and I should talk to my physician about some tests. Since my bad episodes only last one or two days, she didn't seem to be too worried about me. She suggested a book on stress management, physical exercise, and using an app for mindfulness and meditation. We are going to talk again in a couple of weeks to see how I am doing. I did feel better after talking with her. She reminded me that it's been a very stressful time (which I knew, but somehow it helps when someone else says it) and that I am grieving the loss of our staff people (which only happened two weeks ago - another weird time-thing - it feels like longer). I have a virtual appointment with my doctor (actually with his PA) next week to follow up on the hormone angle. I don't expect that to be productive since I don't have any other symptoms of menopause yet. 

And after that, I went back to the dentist and had my filling replaced. It was not a big deal and didn't hurt at all after the Novocaine or whatever they used. My mouth was numb until suppertime, and that was that. Everyone there was super-nice to me. They asked me all about how I am preparing for fall semester and how I feel about school starting. I was surprised at how much I talked, since I don't normally do a lot of chit chat. Maybe I was feeling more open after the counseling. 

Imperfect Foods has changed our delivery date because they have drivers for our area now, I guess. All our boxes so far have come by FedEx on Saturdays, but soon that will change to Wednesdays. It looks like tomorrow's box is on the previous schedule and then we don't get anything next week, with the next shipment scheduled for the Wednesday of the following week. I'm hoping that with an IF driver we can start returning some of the packing material and cold packs we've been collecting. BAM used some of the cold packs when he bought ice cream this week, but there is a limit to how many we really need. These IF deliveries have been really nice these last few weeks. We got mahi mahi and salmon last week and also ate some smoked salmon from a previous box, and I felt very virtuous for eating so much fish!

I finished the retirement gift scarf this week. It has been in progress since late April, but I really enjoyed the pattern. I like double knitting. I like having the design develop on both sides at the same time. The pattern is Crystalline from Knitty magazine. Being an old crystallographer, I was attracted to the panels featuring different symmetries. I hope my colleague will like it too. I need to figure out whether I should drop it off for him at school, or take it to his house, or mail it. 

I have been working on the second of a pair of socks this week and making pretty good progress. Tonight or tomorrow I will start the next thing, which is going to be some Christmas ornaments. They will use up some yarn I've had in stash for a long time and make good gifts. Since I didn't go anywhere fun this summer I didn't collect anything for people, and I'd like to have something more to give family and close friends than just a random book from the person's Amazon wish list.

This can't be what winning looks like

Another rough week. I keep reminding myself that I'm healthy and safe, and sometimes that helps. 

This week, I worked in the labs on campus 2.5 days. I feel pretty good about what I accomplished. I finished one of the analytical experiments and started working on the next one. I tried out a bunch of simple general chemistry experiments for students to do at home, wrote procedures for them, and compiled a list of materials. I will be making kits to send home with them so they can do these activities wherever they are. I bought 50 small digital kitchen balances so each kit will have one and my lab manager is ordering all the other supplies now. So for the fall semester, I have six in-person lab experiments, five do-at-home experiments, and three back up experiments the students will be able to do at home with their kits if we have to go fully online sometime and can't continue the in-person labs. I just need the students to be able to pick up their lab kits during the first week - otherwise I guess I'll be mailing out 50 boxes somehow.

We faculty met our new Provost Tuesday afternoon. He held a two-hour Zoom meeting and he took questions from the attendees as well as talking about the questions we had submitted ahead of time. I didn't feel like he gave many answers. Most of what he said was "we're working on the plan for that" and promises to share the plan soon. He also spent the last twenty or thirty minutes talking about what he thinks are the problems with the small liberal arts college model (basically the way financial aid is distributed) and how he thinks he can fix us by making some changes like adding revenue-positive graduate programs. Well, I will try to give him a chance, but I feel as if I've heard all of this before. 

I had a dentist appointment Wednesday for a regular cleaning first thing in the morning. I had to wear a face mask of course, and call from the parking lot before I could come inside. The hygienist measured my temperature (new), oxygen levels (new), and blood pressure (not new). My blood pressure was surprisingly high, and continues to worry me. I normally have nice, low blood pressure, so it was quite startling. I had to do a mouth rinse with some truly disgusting tasting solution. The hygienist said it was salt or sodium bicarbonate, with mint flavoring. The rest of the cleaning was as in the before times although she wore some extra gear for protection. The dentist recommended that I replace one of my old amalgam fillings. I had one replaced last summer too. They are probably close to forty years old, but no one told me that replacements were a thing. I assumed they lasted forever, you know? At first, I thought I would wait six months and do the replacement at my next regular visit, but then I started worrying: what will the pandemic situation be like in January 2021? Will dentists be open then? Will I have time then? Will I even be employed and have insurance then? So I decided to have it done right away - I'm going back next week.

Thursday I was on campus getting some more lab work done. At about 4 p.m. a thunderstorm rolled in and it was quite nice to see some rain after the week of heat and intense sun we've had. But then the electricity went out, so I couldn't keep working. I stood around with the lab manager for twenty minutes or so to see if the power would come back, but when it didn't I went home. I wasn't able to download this week's lab photos before the storm, so I don't have any to show you here.

Wednesday was the worst day I've had in a while. I started crying for no apparent reason in the shower. After the dentist I cried most of the way home in the car. I was so upset that I called the EAC from home and made a counseling appointment for next week (same day as my filling, so that will be fun). The man who answered my call was very calm and nice-sounding. He just asked me a few questions like my name, phone number, and employer and scheduled the appointment. They aren't doing in person sessions at this time, but I had a choice of telephone or virtual (Zoom, I suppose) and I chose telephone just because if I cry again I will feel less exposed if the counselor can't see me.

Part of me thinks there is something wrong even beyond the pandemic and associated stress. I know I felt almost this bad for a while last January, and there have been times in the last few years when I didn't feel good but it didn't seem like something anyone could help me with. I couldn't even explain what the problem was. Over time, I've started feeling more and more guilty that all I do is talk it out with BAM, and he doesn't deserve that burden (although he doesn't complain). Back in January, the bad feeling lasted more than one day, and I called the EAC one morning before class to get an appointment but no one answered. I was annoyed that the supposedly 24/7 service wasn't, and I didn't try again. Until this week. I can't even describe what I feel bad about, and that's sort of frustrating. It's just a general badness, a hopelessness, a sense that things are not right. I don't feel like I'm bad or that I will harm myself, not anything like that. Just a feeling that everything is wrong and I can't make it better. Usually, after a sleep I wake up feeling normal and fine again and I can't figure out what happened.

So we'll see if this counselor can help me. Meanwhile I have to continue preparing two classes with their labs for next month, while COVID-19 cases are surging all around here again, worse than March and April. It makes me angry that all the sacrifices I've made in staying home for the past four months are wasted because of the idiots who are out there behaving stupidly. I'm angry that I'm going to have to go back to school in a few weeks surrounded by people who might make me sick and that those people are endangering not only the health of everyone else but also the learning experience for all my students. I think my job is hard enough to do well under the best of circumstances and now I don't look forward to any part of it. Until sometime in June I actually had some hope that we'd be able to beat this virus, but I think the virus is definitely winning now. At least our governor made face masks mandatory as of next Monday. She's on my side and I'm on hers.

July: Time to Panic?

This has been a weepy week for me. I seem to be even more fragile than usual, getting teary at just about any provocation. Of course, there is a lot of provocation happening, but I still feel weak and stupid. BAM keeps telling me to go easy on myself, that there's a pandemic out there and it's okay to not be fine. That makes me cry, too.

I didn't see C on campus. Word is, terminated employees are only allowed back on campus with human resources supervision, so she had to schedule a day next week to come clean out her desk. I emailed her personal account to ask if I could pack for her or bring stuff to her home but I haven't had an answer. I left a gift bag with a card and the Queen Anne's Lace shawl on her desk.

The faculty in general are pretty angry about the staff terminations. We have not been told who was let go, so we keep finding out only when our emails to specific staff go to someone else. A group of us started compiling a list, just so we know something, as there has been no messaging about what positions no longer exist or who to contact instead. Three of my favorite staff are on the list. The administration seems to assume the faculty are completely absent from campus, physically and mentally, right now. 

My lab manager is furious at how all of the staff was treated. She would quit if she didn't have a child in college using our tuition exchange benefit. I don't blame her, either, although the thought makes me nauseous. The department would not be able to function without her. Maybe, for a couple of weeks not during a pandemic, but definitely not now. I remember what it was like when our previous staff person quit and there was a month gap before our current person started. I worked seven days a week just to have minimal labs prepared in addition to my other work, and none of the other stuff like ordering, inventory, maintenance, and compliance was done at all.

I worked in the lab two and a half days this week. I made all the unknowns for quantitative analysis first because I was worried we would need to order more supplies, but I had enough. Then I started photographing the lab experiments as I do them. I'm working backwards from the last-scheduled, in case we switch to fully online partway through the semester, hoping that the students get to be in lab in person for the first few experiments, at least. I plan to take the photos and put them in order in a Google Slides or something like that so the students can follow along, read the data from the photos and do the analysis themselves. I took my old digital camera because I thought it would be easier to transfer files from that to my office PC rather than my iPhone, and it is but the quality of the photos is surprisingly poor. I think I'm not getting the auto-focus to work properly and I don't have the motivation to repeat everything again, so I'll probably just annotate the photos when they're a bit fuzzy.

The other days, I spent time working out some experiments the general chemistry students can do at home or in their dorm rooms, on the weeks they are not in the lab. Our current plan is to split each lab section into two groups and have them alternate coming to lab, but they need something to do on the non-lab weeks. I found a book while I was unpacking my office that has a bunch of home chemistry experiments and I'm modifying those. I plan to make up little kits to check out to the students so they can take all the supplies with them and be ready whenever we might switch to fully online. The biggest question is whether I can buy sixty or so small digital balances in time, because most of the experiments require a balance. 

It's July and every year I feel like a switch is pulled July 1. On that date historically I go from "no problem, plenty of time, enjoy summer" to "OMG I have so much to do and there's only a few weeks left!" I felt the threat of July all week this year, but the level of panic does not seem to be worse. Or maybe it is and my weepiness and my inability to sleep a full night are signs that I'm pretending not to recognize. I haven't slept past about 4 a.m. in at least a week now. For a few days I was getting out of bed and reading on the sofa until it was the normal time to get up, but the last several days we've had such hot weather (temperatures above 30 C, lows only down to about 20 C at night) that I started getting up an hour earlier so that I could take my walk before it got uncomfortable to be outside. This works, but now I fall asleep watching TV at 9 p.m. and still wake too early. 

Next week we have our first meeting with the new Provost. He asked us to submit questions ahead of time on a Google Doc, and people have been typing those in all day today. It would be amusing if most of the questions were other than "How is the college going to keep us all from dying next month?" So that meeting should be interesting.