I�ve got two new employees this morning, which means I am in the midst of training them, which means I can�t put my trusty headphones on and listen to NPR and catalog and ignore the entire world which is all I really want from life this morning.

Student #1: Mariah. She is very tall and very sleepy. Usually other women are not so tall that I have to actually look up to see their faces. She makes me feel short. But she seems cool. Student #2: David. He is very quiet and, from what I hear, a scientific genius. He is very clumsy. I like clumsy people.

These are my other student workers:

Pinar: she uses her feminine wiles to make everyone love her and help her because she is a helpless female. Men? They fall all over themselves around her. It's most amusing to me. But she's awfully sweet and good-natured.

Scott: he's a bit of a nerd, but also a little bit cool, a little bit of a baby. He's a freshman (the youngest of my crew) and he's an anthropology major and he likes English and writing and such and he bleaches his hair and he always has sports injuries. Good kid. He's transferring, however. NC is too cold, he says (the boy is from Massachusetts). Arizona, look out.

Nicky: Our fashion goddess. She's totally cool, my Nicky is. She's had to work incredibly hard for everything she's got--she was shuffled around when she was little way more than any kid should be shuffled around and she has to pay her own way for everything and she's super smart. I dig Nicky. She's tough.

Un: She's very quiet. She's probably the best worker in this department. She has never missed a day of work, never left early, never not a done a brilliant job. I am right now trying to decide if I should nominate Un for student employee of the year. But see, I've also got...

Heather: My girl. Heather is like my right hand man here. She hilarious and smart and a super creative thinker who has helped me change this department around. She really is the best ever, except she often doesn't come in when she's supposed to and leaves early all the time and she's a junior and Un is a senior. But I think I'm nominating Heather anyway, because we would have fallen apart around here without her.

Oh yeah. This shit is fascinating.

Why isn�t there a word for that very specific sadness that comes in the midst of winter? Part loneliness, part boredom, part lack of sunlight and lack of exercise, and yet another part loneliness. Restless and anxious and lazy and worried and sad sad sad. I will make my own word for it then and I will call it golbreet. I am golbreet.

Because there are things that frighten me (new people, new places), I have decided to throw myself in harm�s way and move outside of my comfort zone�it�s high time, I think. I think if I don�t get myself somewhere scary I will become harder and more intractable and more rigid and more unable to adapt to the world. I will begin to expect the world to adapt to me. I will continue to travel the same roads I will continue to become smaller and meaner and less alive.

You know what? The only reason I�m writing here is because I�ve nothing to do except wait for these students to finish putting date due slips in all of the books. I don�t really have anything else. I mean, I have nothing to add. I would like to write funny and wry and witty and insightful entries about the world and myself in the world. Alas, it is only me, small me, bored me, sad me, writhing on the couch in frustration me, frowny-faced me, irrationally angry because Buffy came on two hours late me, dreadful dreadful me.

I haven�t written anything except for a couple of limping tired entries in the last week, I think. Not even email. Not even checks for my overdue bills. Not even my forbearance paperwork. Not even.

When I get like this, I cannot bear the idea of people, even of friends and yet, right now is when I need friends the most. I think to myself, I can�t possibly go out, I can�t possibly go to this reading or that gathering. And then Jeff calls to tell me they�re still stuck in DC and I become a rushing stream of chatter, because I just need to tell someone something (uh, not that Jeff is just someone�he�s top notch, he is). So I chattered on about the dogs and the weather and quality of snow or sleet or slush or whatever the hell we got down here. Sheesh. I need to talk to people more often so that I don�t vomit all my thoughts onto the first person who unwittingly crosses my path.

Weekend after next? I think I�m going to Blythe�s. Weekend after that? Bathsheba�s coming. These facts are cheering, no? This weekend must then be the work weekend, the weekend I clean my shit up, the weekend I plan my class for once. You know. That weekend that I always promise myself I will have but never do. Oh and Timalina tells me that Abrando and Jennifer are having a party for pregnant Barbara (whose due date is fast approaching). But she�s on bed rest so maybe that won�t happen. And what�s the party for anyway? Like a baby shower? Except I hope not.

I have lately been deeply nostalgic about Florida. I smell some slightly spring-like, earth-like smell and I ache for the clear and early-bright mornings there and I ache for the sandy roads, and I ache for the sounds of a Florida wood�not at all like the sounds of a North Carolina wood, which is much more amenable to visitors�and I want to be someplace where I don�t have to put lotion on my skin five times a day, where the air is so thick it seems to have it�s own life, like the life of water. I long for the ocean. I long for the hot sun that ruins my pale freckly skin. I long to help my mother put in the garden, to tend the roses. Ah well. In due time, my pretties, in due time.