Awkward Foreign Accent

I’ve been having bad dreams, careening around steep mountain roads in a minivan, I’m not driving, mom is and sometimes other people are, and they’re fishtailing around corners, sometimes fully spinning around before regaining control and continuing at an incredibly fast rate down the hill. My stomach’s in my throat for most of it and then I wake up…and I eventually fall asleep again and I’m right back in the same place, starting over again at the top of the hill, someone else driving, holding onto the oh-shit handles and not screaming, because there isn’t enough air. That was Tuesday night.

Last night, it was lights in the eyes; I kept waking up thinking someone was flashing lights in my eyes. You know that crazy jump of your heart when you wake up terrified? It was that about five times. Scared the cat once.

I didn’t start ironing until late, and I knew I’d have to be up really early this morning for girlchild’s doctor’s appointment, so I told myself I was going to bed before midnight. It was pointless, because then I tossed and turned for at least an hour before finally falling fitfully asleep. My sleep app says my sleep was only 79% effective last night. I’m not sure which is worse…only sleeping 4 hours or sleeping crappy for longer? I’m not sure I got 4 hours last night.

I worked on the man’s head…

It was pretty easy to put together. The gender symbols throughout this piece…I purposely picked a fabric with computer code jargon on it for the male and typeset letters for the woman.

Think of that what you will.

The tree was a pain in the butt. First of all, I needed two of the ironing sheets to get the full width, but the other one kept falling off the ironing board.

Then I realized I had fucked up on the cutting…the top two branches were supposed to be different fabrics, but they aren’t (I left that mistake). The continuation of the top right branch, though…totally wrong fabric, so I had to recut that one. Same with below…there’s a piece of branch on top in the middle that is the same as the one below, but the ones on either side are different (like they’re supposed to be), so I had to recut that one.

There she is in all her glory.

See that’s why I do them. Because now it looks cool. Now I need to do all the things that grow off of it and hang off it. Not a small amount.

I only have about a third of my voice this morning. That wouldn’t be a huge problem, except I am a teacher. I did wonder yesterday, because I ran a lab about gas exchange (blowing carbon dioxide into an indicator to make it change color…they were very excited) and my voice was necessary, so I overused it, and now it’s barely here. I think I can do today. They’re doing research. I do have to talk in the beginning. Ugh.

A kid wore this to school the other day…find the typo.

Amazing. Yeah, I notice shit like that. All the time. In emails from the district office (bad practice in a school district). In emails from political locals. In books. Everywhere. TV ads seem to be better edited. Maybe you get better editors when you spend more money. Apparently there’s something wrong with me because I notice those things.

I blew off grading yesterday evening to finish my book…Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus…

I think it’s official. I’m done with Scott Card. We read this for book club for November, because Thanksgiving. And Columbus. Get it? Sort of. I know. I’ve read most of the Ender’s Game series, which I liked at first, but got bogged down with in Xenocide. His writing…it took me a while to figure out what the issue is. He’s deep into histories and politics and details of all that, but relationships? They’re dealt with in like one sentence. “Tagiri decided she liked Hassan and they got married and had children” and all of a sudden, 30 years have passed and we’re on to the next stage. It’s very separate from human emotions, which is strange, because he doesn’t leave those out…but there’s just very little feeling in all of it. Even when the two main characters meet after a bunch of years, there is a brief moment, and then we’re on to explaining the rest of the story. It’s an interesting story, sure, but it’s dry, and I had a hard time with the long middle of it. But he’s planning a series, and the next one is about Noah’s flood (he did actually have a theory about that in this book). I bet he’s Asperger’s. I found this quote from one of his books…one I’ve actually read, I think: “He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.” That’s it. He doesn’t know how to write about it. I think. Good topic for book club discussion (if I remember in three weeks).

Anyway. I know I haven’t posted any book reviews in a while. I’m still reading; I’m just not writing about them as much. I don’t know why. OK, have to get out of here. Need a title. Dammit.