Sleepy Monday

It is almost July... hard to believe! This week, the first draft of the first paper will come in. We are working our way steadily toward it right now. I can see the students still need work on the concept of thesis, on the notion that one could create a coherent argument about two different works. Now that I was trying to come up with a thesis and plan for this comparison or contrast paper, which I had envisioned as rather simple, a gentle introduction to analysis, I found it to be not nearly as simple as I had thought. Of course, that is always the way with me. It is probably the way my mind works, a writerly tendency to complicate, to see the baroque underpinnings of a seemingly simple idea that everyone else simply accepts at face value.
I had an idea that I am now pursuing. I belong to the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, and the last time I was unemployed, I thought longingly of working there, perhaps writing the Zoo's educational materials, their magazine, or other materials they put out on their website, perhaps. I could not really see myself as a keeper, though I spent much of my life hauling animal crap, cleaning cages and tanks, gentling creatures. I am just not very big or strong, and most of the keeper jobs require such strength, as well as manual dexterity, which I lack in spades. But I have always wanted to at least go on one of the Zoo's behind-the-scene tours or overnights. They are just so expensive that I could never afford to do it, except by going alone, and that wouldn't be nearly as much fun as going with R or J or both of them.
But now, as I said, I had an idea. I will volunteer to teach a workshop there, a poetry workshop for adults. We will have a tour and spend the night or perhaps just have a tour, feeding and getting up close to some animals that are usually far away, in their enclosures. Then I will do the workshop, reading works featuring animals to the class and giving them an exercise. That way, perhaps I will be written up or be on the news or both, and someone who needs someone just like me or realizes that s/he does after seeing me, will give me some sort of job. If not, it will still be fun, and I will get to go on one of those tours.