One more example of students' amusing us: Carol, my friend from graduate school days, reminded me of a student who had quoted from the Bible and had scrupulously included the reference in the bibliography:  Ghost, The Holy.  (You can call me Mr. Ghost.  You can call me The.  Just don't call me late to the Pentecost.)

The last three days have been marked by very pleasant ups and very difficult down periods.  Thursday morning, we went to Washburn to deliver some papers, saw several old friends in the English office, and then went out for a nice, long lunch with Danny, the new department chair.  Unfortunately, on the way home, I got very sick.  We made it home before disaster struck, but barely.  And then I had to crash.  I think that one of the most frustrating things is how difficult it is to explain what it means to "crash" or "hit a wall" or however we want to describe it.  It's not just being tired.  It's as if both mind and body shut down suddenly and completely.  The simplest thought, what should be the easiest movement become impossible.  Except for Mohamed, most people see me for a few hours when I'm up (and socializing always energizes me) and the blog is, I think, generally optimistic in tone.  But there are many hours, especially in the evening, when I feel as if I can barely function.  Once home Thursday afternoon, I slept for a few minutes, but then the phone rang and a Bulgarian friend was in town and wanted to visit.  He's a talker and has a penetrating voice.  I enjoy his company, but after two hours, I couldn't concentrate on (or comprehend) anything he was saying.  And the rest of the evening, though I stayed awake, was absolutely miserable.

Friday, the workers came in the morning (the two bathroom are now, after two weeks' work, finally tiled, and after two days, the yard has been relandscaped, so at least after the disruptions my OCD has calmed), but once again it was hard to sleep during the day.  That evening, we went to Lawrence for an end-of-the-year party at Danny and Tami's.  It was a very nice occasion.  And I got to see even more people that I don't see as often as others.  When I came in 1972 to Washburn, three of us, all Ph.D.s, were hired into a department that had only two professors with doctorates.  The next year we got a new chair, and in 1974, two more new professors were hired.  Those were turbulent and often divisive years.  Two old-timers had applied to be chair and gotten no support from the others in the department, so there was bitterness over that.  The old guard, who had always thought of a master's degree as sufficient, felt threatened.  But then the department settled, and things ran smoothly for a long time.  Although of course the department had its eccentrics (we are an English department after all), we all generally got along.  When we did interviewing for new hires, we "showed well" and got many first-rate colleagues.  I remember asking one candidate whether the interviewing had been too tiring and got the response, delivered with some amazement, "Not at all. You actually seem to like one another."  After decades of relative stability, starting in 2006, the department began another period of great change.  In my four years as chair, I hired five tenure-track professors; two more were hired after I retired, and there are more in the future.  It is very good to see, as the gathering Friday suggested, that there is still that feeling of camaraderie, a lack of rivalry among the new hires.  Once again, though, by the time we got home, I had hit the wall.  I could barely make it to the couch, and climbing the seven stairs to the bedroom seemed impossibly difficult.

And yesterday, the pattern was repeated: a burst of energy in the morning, a huge crash, a lovely belated birthday dinner with my oldest colleague and co-writer of four books, Virginia, and then a complete internal revolt that not even four Imodium (not all at once) could calm.  Up and then down, alert and then unthinking...and behind it all the nagging worry that maybe the downs are more frequent or lower, the energy flags more quickly than before.

Basta!  Happy Mother's Day, and now let's have a spirited argument about attachment parenting and the Time magazine cover story.  That'll get the synapses firing.