It’s November 1st, and time to put the flannel sheets on the bed. I like to begin the season with the tan sheets with the tiny multi-colored autumn leaves on them. Soft, so very soft, and warm, so very warm. . . .

I really prefer crisp cotton sheets, around 250 count (I hate satiny sheets; I feel as if I need a railing to keep from sliding onto the floor, and I hate really low-count sheets because they’re scratchy.) But crisp smooth sheets? I’m almost in dreamland from merely the thought.

But when the weather gets that autumn chill, I like the thought of flannel sheets, even if the actuality of the sheets isn’t my favorite.

We spend so much time with sheets; it’s little wonder that people have favorites.

Not as much time as we’d like, but enough time that we ought to have sheets we can get along with.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

So many of my students are overcoming tremendous odds to be in school right now. They’ve got families and mortgages and spouses/partners, some of whom disapprove of the whole “college” thing; they’ve got needy parents and in-laws and overdue bills and a sad lack of daycare options. On top of it all, most of my students have no job right now, and the defunct factories and Workforce are both being poopy about promises they’d previously made concerning tuition and books and actually coming through with things because education is the key to the future and you can count on us to back you up.

And yet, most of them show up, day after day or night after night, homework done, papers written, knowing exactly which page we’re on and ready to begin again.

The majority of my students are fine, hardworking, upstanding people who genuinely want to better themselves: not just so they might get a better job at some future time, but also just so they’ll be, well, BETTER.

Sure, there are some clunkers. In any group there will always be losers. But the vast majority of my students this semester are prime. In their prime, and prime.

Still more reasons why I love my job.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly