Tonight is our open house.  I have readied myself for the evening - sign is made, the call has been put out to my advanced students that they can come in and print in an open darkroom session.  Will anyone show up?  If it goes like last year's call for videos, not a soul will show up.  So to be prepared, I will be bringing some of my own negatives and paper in case my students flake out.  Will I be disappointed? Yes.  Will I be surprised at the disappointment?  No.  I am used to it.  Does it hurt?  Yeah, it keeps on hurting.  I student taught with women who cared deeply for their students.  I learned from an advisor who cared deeply about her college students.  I went to the wrong places.  If I learned from people like those I grew up with, I would be more selfish and I would be hurt by the disappointments less.  Oh well.

So Things are really unpredictable here.  There is a great push for this criminal justice program - because, hey, this country needs more cops - and we have lost a number of kids to coercion to take one of those courses.  Of course, the true measure of the success of a program is how many kids you have pressured to take the stupid class, right?  As such, our numbers might go down.  As I have said before, I know they want my rooms.  But the problem is I am second in line in seniority in my department.  I am higher than a couple of the ass-kissers.  They will never be RIF'd.  I can't be unless the four under me are.  That presents administration with a problem.  How to get rid of me?  Well, make life miserable.  Take committee positions away from me.  Make me feel insignificant.  

In preparation for this, I have begun to look for a project.  I have begun looking for fixer-uppers in Italy in my maternal hometowns.  My mother has already made two calls and let one agent know I am interested.  My original desire was Hungary, but Orban is wrecking the country right now and I fear the tensions will not get better.  So, Italy it is.  I never had good back up plans to ensure my happiness growing up.  It was one let down after another.  Now, I am better prepared.  If I know I might be pushed out - and I do know how to see those signs because I was a replacement for a woman who was slowly and systematically pushed out of another district - at least I will be monetarily and emotionally prepared.

Lest you think I am swimming in money, I am not at all. This area of Italy is seen by some as a backwater.  It is cheap as all hell.  I have students with cars that cost more than these homes.  My idea?  It will be a vacation home for me, hubby, dad, and my sister and her kids.  Will the brother-in-law be allowed to go there?  That depends on whether he can muster the ability to go a family gathering without making some cruel dig at me.

I must also make a concerted effort to create my art more.  I will begin painting again.  I will continue drawing.  And I must shoot more.  I have some ideal swimming around my head but have been too depressed to get off the sofa to bring them to fruition.  I need to do this.  Badly.  I get a high from making art.  But the depression is so deep that it anchors me to the sofa when I am home.  I need to make my new art site and I need to make more submissions.  This is my homework.   And house shopping.  It's better than focusing on this place that is pulling me down.