A Strangely Free Day

So I was not at school yesterday because San Diego County is on fire. Nine fires, but most of them are in North County, not down here. We can occasionally see smoke plumes. They are affecting air quality a little bit down here, but nothing like the last two big firestorms in 2003 and 2007. So they closed all the county schools for safety reasons. Stands to reason, since school staff don’t always live in the same neighborhood as their school. Anyway, it’s like a free day for those of us not dealing with evacuations and fires (hope everyone we know is OK). So what did I do? I went to bed early (for me, before midnight) and tried to sleep in. Unfortunately, I have animals and they don’t agree, so I got up and dealt with their needs, made a cup of tea, and went back to bed with a book. I often dream of being able to do that, but I’d really rather train one of the animals to bring me the tea. Working on that.

Eventually I got up and fed myself, and then I cleaned floors. Seriously, it’s been driving me nuts. I haven’t had enough time to get them done. My kids are freakin’ useless lately because of the AP tests (which finished Wednesday! Yay! Now of course they will use the excuse of end-of-school projects not to help…cough cough…bullshit!), so nothing is getting done. I didn’t get home Wednesday night until almost 9 PM because of a union meeting, soccer stuff, and car stuff, so I was exhausted yesterday anyway…that’s a typical scenario, so that’s why nothing gets cleaned. I made an effort last week to sort out all the returned quilts and get stuff cleared out of the entryway. Today, I loaded up all the thrift shop bags into the car and cleaned those floors…it looks so much better. I wish I could afford a cleaning lady (although it might stress me out more knowing I had to straighten up for her)…I just can’t keep up. Yes, I’m lame. I’m constantly picking up after the teens, though…they will do it if reminded (well, one has to scream at me first because she was going to do it anyway but then I had to remind her and that just pisses her off, even though if I never reminded her, it never would actually get done), but since they’re only here half time, it just doesn’t work well.

Anyway. I didn’t do any fabric stuff Wednesday night due to exhaustion. Then I spent all day shopping with the girlchild, because she needs clothes (so do I, but I wasn’t particularly successful). At least the stores were air-conditioned, and she used up four gift cards (one only had $1.96 on it, which I was not informed of when we went INTO the store). Now I just need to get boychild suited up for prom, because, yes, he’s going, and no, not with one other person…but with a group, but I’m still pleased he’s going…the last school dance he went to was the Halloween dance in 6th grade. He didn’t like the noise. Anyway. One more thing on my list of things to do.

It was 105 degrees here too, so running around doing lots of stuff wasn’t a reality. I had quilt class last night, so I cut out pieces in someone else’s air conditioning…

And then I came home and cut more pieces out in my non-air-conditioning.

Those are actually the trimmings. I save them to make sure I didn’t drop a piece in there, because sometimes I do. This is going to take forever, I think. Actually, Earth Stories, which is bigger and has more pieces, only took 12 hours to cut out at this stage. I’m 5 hours in. It might just be another week or so.

I’ve been getting massive drawing urges. My brain is in the mood. I need it to get in the mood of drawing a specific thing for that next show, but it’s crotchety, recalcitrant. It doesn’t want to follow instructions, as has been patently evident over the last year. I’m planning on doing a life drawing session during the summer to try to keep the brain happy. It’s worried about all that empty time, which isn’t really empty, because I have 17 million things that need doing. But there’s no overwhelming school that is eating up so much of its daily time to wander. It helps. The brain needs focus, or it ruminates too much.

So I found this in my old car…

My forest adventure pass from 2006. You need one of these to hike up in the National Forest here…it has seen better days. There’s a newer one in there now…but I didn’t have one from 2006-2014. I didn’t get to hike much during those years. When soccer starts up again, it will be difficult for a while again, but she’s only got one more year. There’s already four summer tournaments scheduled. But I won’t hike as much in the summer anyway…too hot.

My mom made this while she was traveling in Australia/New Zealand…

It’s her first wool piece, I think. Someone should tell my brother that I’m inheriting this one. (Notice the magazines…Consumer Reports, AARP with Patrick Stewart on the cover…NO! Is he OLD? And Sunset…all OUR magazines are food-, quilt-, and education-related.)

So the fires are still going, although some are under control, and our local schools are going back today…which makes sense. I had to move the test for today…although I’m not sure a test on Monday is a good plan for middle-school kids who will completely forget about it over the weekend, but maybe more of them will do their study guides (ha!). I think my schedule for the next two weeks is now completely fucked, but that doesn’t really matter. In fact, none of it really matters. Any questions? They’ll learn whatever I teach them on some level. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t get through it all, because we never do.

OK, so we had one day off and it was too hot to think straight, and the plus was that I got some of the house cleaned up and all that thrift shop stuff out of here, and girlchild will leave me alone about shopping for a while, although next on her list is altering clothing, which drives me nuts, and I did a little grading and art stuff, and if I’m still feeling mopey and down, it’s because that’s what I feel most of the time. I even got more sleep than I usually would have and that’s a good thing. So I should stop pretending that this is NOT a school day (ugh, do I HAVE to go?) and remember it’s air-conditioned there and it’s only one day and then I can come home again. Not that home is a solution to the mopey and down feeling. SIGH. I need a change. I just don’t know what that change is.