Why Can't Life Have a Pause Button

I wish I could get the “young” Karl to do some of the things the “current” Karl needs to do.  I envy my former self. That youthful guy of years past would be bored looking for things to do.  If only he could baby sit – he’d have plenty of time.  I’d even let him watch Dancing with the Stars with my wife.  I’d really like it if he could grade papers, but he wouldn’t know how.  Maybe he could read Saint Peter Killed God and scan it for errors. 

I’m jealous of people who have time to write.  In the past, I searched for jobs where I could write as much as I wanted.  I volunteered at a drug rehab for juvenile delinquents.  All I had to do is listen to teens read for one hour, play basketball with them for another hour, and drive them to AA meetings.  That’s it.  Plenty of time to write or read.  I took another job working overnight at a psych hospital.  For four years I had about five hours or so per night where I could write.  I only needed to do a couple of hours of work per shift.  And twice I went part-time as a teacher.  Every other day off.  Every weekend was a three-day week. Now that’s the life.  Of course I used that time to write SPKG.

Right now, I’ve never been busier.  My baby is coming up on his first birthday and crawling around. My back aches as I’m constantly picking him up.  Man, why did I wait until I was 42 to have my first baby?  When Xavier goes to bed at seven, I’ve got papers to grade.  OK, here’s a stupid thing I did – in the 10^th grade, students have to write a research paper to prepare for the big on in the 11^th grade.  I assigned the one I always do, but this year I’m teaching the biology track students (it’s our high school’s forte) and they have to do a biology research paper.  So now I have to grade back-to-back research papers two months apart.  Ugh!

Which gets me to where I am in the editing process.  I’m almost done.  I have to do a few micro edits – mainly about the musical allusions I’ve added.  Johanna has given me good advice about not needing to mention the groups – and in some places I don’t even need to name the song if the lyrics are familiar enough.  Then I need to go through and read the entire thing to make sure it’s to my satisfaction.  After that Johanna is going to look at it again.  I can’t believe I’m so close – and I hope SPR doesn’t get too mad that I’m not doing this a little faster.  After this weekend, I should be finished grading the research papers and ready to tackle the edits. 

Have you ever seen the movie Click?  I don’t understand why the Adam Sandler character always pressed the fast-forward button.  I’d hit the pause button and try to catch up.