Time Has Come As We All Go Down*

Today is the day I’ve been preparing for, the day I get (shit…I don’t remember how many students I have right now…hang on…133 students)…wait, it doesn’t matter how many kids I have, because inevitably, a bunch of kids won’t hand them in, but hey! Let’s be optimistic, even though we’re a public middle school teacher in March about 4 weeks before Spring Break and 3 days before the end of the trimester and there’s very little optimism available to my brain right now, let’s say I get 133 science units turned in today! Yeah! Let’s say it! Yeah! Then I need to grade them all before, well, honestly, Monday night. Yeah! And my doctor is gonna give me shit tonight about working too many hours and not exercising enough! Yeah! And I’m gonna tell her that on the days when I do 12,000 steps AT SCHOOL before I even leave to go home, hell, there’s no steps left in me (not true…I do more because dogs). Yeah!

I do work too many hours. I don’t exercise enough. This is not the time to stress about that balance. When my grades are done, I can stress about it. If I get far enough in the grading by Sunday, I can even take time off and go to the gym. That’s my goal at the moment. It’s a few days out, so it’s still doable. Meanwhile, my lunch is made, I have a plan for the day to balance my sanity with my job (that’s a thing…and this week, that means I’m allowed one Rice Krispie treat a day. ONE, doc, ONE.), and I’m hoping to come home and (well, grade a bunch of science units, honestly) iron the last body down. Hopefully. It’s about 150 pieces, so it’s doable.

By the way, when it’s cold, apparently it’s acceptable to have a cat face up your butt…

After dinner was eaten, while once-nightly TV show is being watched, I have been sewing on circles…I figure I will never get them done otherwise. I think I got three done.

Then off to the ironing (I did grade before all that). See this is the part I was kind of afraid of…that’s a lot of little tiny spine pieces…

But honestly? It was pretty easy to iron together. Because of all the metallics, I used a press sheet between iron and fabric…and I’ll need to remember to keep doing that.

I decided the space in her back was going to be just that…SPACE. There’s definitely a space theme going on in this. I guess I’m thinking of all the potential a teenager has…and it feels like they have all the potential of SPACE. Or something like that. It’s HUGE.

Then I laid the spine piece all ironed together on the space and put the border around it…and voila! ‘Twas awesome. Seriously. I really like it.

Kitten is not so sure…

I gave her some hair and finished all the finger bits, thus getting me into the 520s or so.

One figure done. The other one does have another 150 pieces, true…but I don’t think they’re as bad as those back pieces. We’ll see tonight. Then hopefully iron down to the background on Thursday night and start stitching down? I’m not sure how these fabrics will deal with that, but let’s just assume it will work out. Yeah!

That optimism (that really isn’t optimism…it’s some sort of crazy)…is what will get me through the day. Maybe.

Oh yeah, I just finished this book…Golden Hill by Francis Spufford…

My ex-SIL sent it to me at Christmas and I just started reading it a few weeks ago. At first, I was like…um…this is 18th-century stuff and I’m sort of a fan at times, but it’s not easy to read, but after a few pages in, I realized, OMG. No really. OMG. This book is great. It’s funny as hell sometimes and stressful at others but it was published just a few years ago by someone who generally doesn’t write fiction, but does like history. So the history is there, and it’s definitely got some accuracy going, but then he throws in this half-assed explanation of sword fighting that made me almost fall out of my chair. And he full on admits its half-assed. The ending is also awesome. So yeah, I recommend this book…and if he writes any more like this, I’m in. Totally in.

Now I have less than two weeks to finish my book club book. Yikes. Priorities.

*Kaleo, Way Down We Go (didn’t we just hear this one while writing not that long ago???)