Not a bad Monday

Saturday night: festive dinner out. Sunday a.m.: dreadful food poisoning. All who partook of the moo shoo pork were stricken with it.

Was this my penance for lapsing into porko-vegetarianism? If so, I swear—I'm solidly back on the veggie wagon. So, forget the indignity of racing to the bathroom every twenty minutes, or the agony of balky innards. By Sunday night, my hands were shaking, both from dehydration and rage. My class was getting observed in 12 hours, dammit, and I needed to be able to stand up for it!

Nothing like a bout of sickness to steady the mind, I guess. Got up early and sipped on some Emer-gen-C, a potassium-rich drink that we normally reserve to the hiking trail. From now on, a couple of packets will also reside in our medicine cabinet. By 10, my gut still ached, but the rest of me felt fierce and alert.

Trial Woman is petite, and she settled herself in the very back of the classroom, so it was easy to forget she was there. Maybe that's why I also forgot to be nervous. No dry mouth this time around. No blank-minded moments of panic. Just a lively session with the students — one in which most of them spoke (and said bright things) as the classroom technology gods smiled.

So all's well tonight in Celloland. Okay, so the queasiness remains. And I'm wiped out, having taught four classes today, the last of which didn't end until 9:30 p.m. And, blast it all, I still have about three hours of homework to complete for the class I audit Tuesday morning.

Still. At least I didn’t stumble in that teaching observation.

Maybe I had a delayed reaction. I came home and flopped on the couch with Adam, whose face still makes my heart do a little dance. For the first time in two days, I gazed intently at my sweetie – and grew unexpectedly tongue-tied in the presence of his beauty.

"On Mondays, I'm declaring a two-conversation limit," I finally explained. "Only two serious conversations outside of class time. That’s all this introvert can manage." Indeed, I'd had one long, lovely chat with Trial Woman over an impromptu lunch. And then there had been a second, accidental conversation with an older male professor whom I rarely see. The first conversation ended with laughter and a promise to lunch again. The second turned to a friend's nephew, recently killed in Iraq, and we'd both ended up in tears.

“Two conversations?” said Adam. “So, no talk left for me?”

“Absolutely none. Sorry,” I said.

And then he and I talked for another two hours before bed.