I walked in the door around 8:30 last night to find Kavi almost in tears about homework, Kevin at the end of his wits ditto, and Mommy please help. So I did — and may I just say that while There Are No Children Here is a worthy book and very relevant to my kids in particular given where we live, it is also dry as dust for much of it, and I don’t blame Kavi for finding it almost impossible to get through — which meant that I was working with her until close to 11, then sent her to bed (with homework still not quite finished, but she was losing it).
Then, since I was still on California time, I ended up talking to Kevin until 1 a.m. Then I couldn’t get to sleep until 2 a.m. I woke up at 6:30, because I’d set an alarm to help Kavi finish her homework before school, but when I went up there, she said she’d rather sleep an extra 30 minutes and hand it in late, and I said fine, because my brain really wasn’t working at that point, and it’s her homework anyway, so be it. So I reset the alarm for 8:30 and went back to sleep, then got up to make Anand’s lunch and get him out the door (he’s very close to self-sufficient on this, but not quite).
Then I ate some leftovers for breakfast and stared glassily at the TV fo half an hour, then made coffee and took meds because I thought it might help me wake up.
Then I taught a remote Zoom class, which was actually great — Delany, which always excites me — we talked about the opening of Dhalgren, and about “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” (possibly my favorite story title ever), and a little about Babel-17, which we’re going to come back to on Monday as we transition into talking about Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” (and the movie it was made into, Arrival). That was super-fun, and my two grad students presenting today did a great job digging into some of the theoretical aspects too, proud of them.
Now I am going to zone out on the couch for a little while longer, finish watching an episode of Hinterland, maybe nap a little. There’s much household and e-mail and garden stuff to put in order after five days away, but I’m going to have to work through it slowly, given the lack of sleep last night. Is okay. Teach a class on campus at 3, then back here for more cleaning up. Or napping. 
(Added pansies to planter just before I left town. Hello, autumn.)
