This week we start the nannyshare. Baby Gavin was supposed to come today, actually, but we postponed 'til Wednesday, to alleviate the risk of his catching this cold. So today and Tuesday we have Jarmila all to ourselves, which is good, because we can work on the transition to 'Mommy and Daddy are home, but upstairs working, and you should leave them alone, Miss Kavya'. I worked downstairs for the first hour today, but she kept coming and climbing into my lap, or clinging to my leg. Makes it difficult to type. There were some howls of protest when I first came upstairs a few minutes ago, but Kavi seems to have settled down to playing with Jarmila. I think she'll adjust quickly; we'll see.
Today I need to finish up my comments for my online class -- the last chat session is tomorrow evening, and I plan to be essentially done with the class by then. It was definitely a bit over-ambitious trying to do the class in three weeks over Christmas break -- we ended up extending it a week and a half. I think four weeks would have been okay if I hadn't gotten sick.
I'm tentatively planning on doing something over spring break, but will have to think about how to structure it if it's online. May make more sense to just do a one-week intensive in person. Or a weekend intensive. Hm. Would people come to Chicago to do a three-day class with me? It adds a lot to the cost if they need to pay for housing; but on the other hand, they can spend some of the time touristing. Maybe better when the weather's better, though.
Other than that, mostly lots of reading this week, re-reading the texts for the colonial/post-colonial class. Also still waffling about what to have them read for my intro-to-fiction class. I'll use LeGuin again, but am thinking I may just have them read my book for the fiction examples. It feels a bit weird to do so, but it just works so well, since a) I know exactly why I made various structural/writerly choices, and b) the book has so many different styles / pov shifts / etc. Okay, I think I've talked myself into it. For the more advanced class, I had them read from an anthology too, but for this intro class, I think one fiction book is probably as much as we have time for.
Reading, lecture notes, syllabi. Funfun. (No, really. I love this stuff. :-)