The Life I Left Behind Me Is a Cold Room*

Yesterday was a really long day, but it’s interesting…I felt much more relaxed about it than usual, because we had a nice leisurely lunch…one of the pluses of the testing days is that we can go get lunch and then eat it together and hang out, instead of rushing to pee and eat and get ready for the next class in about 25 minutes. So going from an 8 AM meeting to the end of a 6 PM meeting was doable. Although that later meeting had some weird shenanigans. You know there are some people where I spend way too much time trying to figure out their motives and probably I should just hope they get fired, because that would make more sense. But besides that, it was a fairly productive day. I mean, I could have graded more things during testing, but I was focused on clean up, so I sorted a pile of the paper cash we use for kid awards. I did some other things too, but mostly clean up instead of grading. I will always be behind on grading, until I’m not, because the school year is over. So that’s a thing.

When I was leaving the district office after the last meeting, I wanted to walk. I have my parents’ dog here right now, and she is a needy beast. The boychild had already left with the other two dogs, so it was just going to be me and Katie, which is fine. I leashed her up, and we went out, and there were two incidents with dogs off leash. I don’t care how awesome your dog is…unless you have control over it, please don’t let it off leash. Mine is leashed for a reason…she’s an asshole on walks. Better than she used to be, but she’s aggressive. So she’s leashed. Sigh.

Because we both needed a walk. There were tiny baby bunnies frozen everywhere.

Blurry because it was a ways away, but frozen!

It was late…I didn’t leave until 6:20 or so. But the sun goes down later than it used to. This is a walk I do from the house, so it’s really just wild areas in between housing. It seems safer when it’s closer to dusk…less likely to run into a coyote.

Right after this picture was when I realized a pit bull was stalking us. I yelled. He/she left. Good one.

So I made it home and the pug who attacked earlier was inside this time (sigh). I made dinner and the girlchild called and then I was reading email and saw this picture…

This was pulled from video…that’s a bobcat. On the street behind us. Where I was just walking Katie. Nice. Well, we don’t hear about bobcat attacks much around here. Mountain lion and coyote, sure…and I’ve seen two bobcats since I’ve lived here, but not near the house. Well. Nature finds a way to survive. Always.

Anyway. Then I trimmed the quilt…

I hate quilting more than I need to…this was a fussy size. I hate it when things have to be an exact size. I’m always sure I’m going to fuck it up.

So I measured about a million times. I sewed on the binding and sleeves…just need to sew it all down by hand. Tonight probably. And finish the Patreon video, so I’ll know what to work on next. Because I’m going right into the next one. This stuff is stress release at the moment as well as artmaking. First, though, there’s dropping off the car for some brake work and teaching unplanned pregnancies and not having a relaxing long lunch and probably grading some stuff. I’m looking forward to the weekend…I will get a lot done and sleep in and have an opening with one of my pieces. All good.

This song has been stuck in my head since last night…I’m not sure why, but just gonna let it roll.