Screw! Research! Screw Teach! Screw Service! This Is My Life After a 12 Hour Day!

My intention was to write about the numerous sock toys I've made out of  old socks that are in my dog's, Glamis the Wonder Dog's, toy box. I couldn't find a photo of socks like the ones my dog has, because the random search on the Internet is a display of white socks, when Glamis's sock collection are mostly black socks. Still, her collection is eerily similar to this display.

She loves them. She hordes them. They haunt me.

And it is my life. I spend 4 hours in k-12 schools, I come to campus for meetings and faculty searches, then I teach until 7, staying after until 7:30 with worries and questions of my graduate students. I get home at 8, I prepare a quick dinner (thank goodness for a 3-day weekend so I can prepare food for the week) and I settle down in my 'academic' chair to begin plans for tomorrow.

But I am greeted. It's the dog. She brings me one, then two, then three of her sock-toys.

Now, I should note that I set my alarm to get up extra early today so I could both run and WALK the dog. I knew I had a late night, so I wanted to be sure she was exercised before I went into the office (and let me just tell you, the University selection of Work Day will be the end of me - it is the the new  accounting system they've adopted so they could hire less staff and rely more heavily on digital accounting - early into the process I can say, "It isn't working!". Ah, but who am I in the mechanism of higher education when administrative deals are made at a level that I can't even imagine).

She walked.

When I came home, she could care less that I met with over 50 students today and 26 in-practice teachers. She doesn't care that I had a research course to teach, or that I had 300 copies of POW to get mailed by Thursday. It didn't matter to her that at 8 p.m. I was hungry.

She wanted me to throw her socks. Not just one set, but all the sets. It was pure joy for her.

Insert a phone conversation, too, with a colleague who recently lost a child in her life that didn't even have a chance to experience the world. It was a tragic story and one I'll process for a while.

But Glamis wants her socks. She wants them to be thrown. She has know ability to process the human world of teaching, bureaucracies, schedules and limitations in being one person. She wants me to throw the socks.

So, I throw the socks. Not just once, but for over an hour, trying to assess student papers in-between.

If ever alien beings are to come to this planet and study the ways educators function in their lives, I want the to take in consideration the relationship with dogs. Glamis centers me, loves me unconditionally, and drives me nuts. She gives me meaning, and although I know I'll be lucky to get 11 years out of her, she makes my 35+ years I'm expected to teach that much tolerable. I love that she doesn't give a @#$@ about what I do everyday. She simply wants her socks tossed, her walks given, and water/food in her bowls.

This perpetuates live and for that I am thankful.