Let's just wait and see...

I'm expecting a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking, a lot of anger, from certain colleagues today.

I really don't want to deal with it. Look, your guys had their two years. The American people decided they didn't want to repeat what Europe did fifty years ago (and is now having to change, in the midst of violent protests from a generation of workers who were told they could retire at 60 with full benefits, and other coddled groups).

Also, I'm really busy. As I have been all damn semester.

I'm just going to look at whoever comes to my office wanting to use me as their cut-rate therapist (I think that's what it is; people think I will listen to them vent) and say, "Sorry, I'm up to my ass in alligators right now."

Because it's true. And hopefully it will get people off my back.

(That is just one of the useful phrases I have learned living here. I had never heard it before, until someone called me with a question about some committee work, and they said, "Are you free to talk now, or are you covered up in alligators?" Like all idioms you don't know, it sounds strange (and I was almost taking it literally, because at one time we actually DID have alligators in a river near here). I mentioned it to a colleague and she told me what it meant, and also what the "less polite" version was.)

In addition to the regular teaching this week, I have a meeting I have to go to (and present at, and moderate a session). And Saturday I somewhat foolishly agreed to go to a women's retreat. And I have to bake cookies for a function next week, plus all the typical second-week-of-the-month meetings I have.

So I admit it - except for a small moment of happiness at the realization that Nancy Pelosi (who rubbed me the wrong way on so many levels) will no longer be Speaker, I've not really thought about what has happened or what is going to happen.