Got Love Make It Go*

I feel like I ran a marathon yesterday. I’m gonna run another one today, but it will be much shorter. Hallelujah. I also finished the book that was due to the library last week and loaded three more onto the iPad. One is due in 8 days and it has over 700 pages. Can I do that? I doubt it. I mean, sure, I’ll be on break as of tomorrow after I check out, but I have a quilt to work on and about five different things I’m doing over the weekend. Not relaxing yet. Although not grading is a blessing. I’ve been reading this teacher stuff about how to reduce my work week, and although I already do a lot of it, one of them talks about setting two LONG afternoons a week and grading, and then don’t do it the other five days. I’m not sure I can pull that off. We’ll see.

We started yesterday with bowling…

Two hundred and eighty kids, about 9 teachers, some number of chaperones, lots of pizza, some soda (for some, way too much soda), a whole lot of bowling balls and shoes, plus games in the other room. Then we came back and have to try to get kids through two periods of class…we just put videos on and bribe them with food and water and try to get them to chill out. I was trying to clean up my room. At some point, I was so tired, I slipped and realized I needed to stop climbing on counters to take stuff down. So I sat down for a while. Spaced out. Had a conversation with a kid about how I wasn’t going to talk to her about whether or not I had a boyfriend.

The awards ceremony was an hour after school got out. I managed FINALLY to type up the list of old chemicals for disposal (it’s only taken me almost 2 years to do that). So that’s 5 boxes out of my classroom. And I gave away all my water because I needed the cupboard space. Which is fine. It’s not like I’m keeping it for a reason. Awards are nice because those are the amazing kids and you get to tell their parents how amazing they are and then check out the little brothers and sisters for what’s coming next.

Today we have kids for about 2 1/2 hours or so. But we have to stay locked up in our rooms during graduation. So we just hope kids won’t show up. But they do. I have more stuff to take down and put away…so I’ll do that while they watch promotion on the screen. Ideally, I’ll have most of it put away today, so tomorrow will be quick and easy. Unless I need to meet about planning. We’ll see. I have 700 pages to read, you know (maybe I should take that with me today? Nah. I do that sometimes and I never get to just sit and read. Of course. I teach 7th graders. Who am I kidding?).

This is exactly how I felt when I got home around 5:45 PM.

I did nap for about 15 minutes. While trying to read. And then I realized I had stuff I needed to do. You know what blows up my blood sugar? Carrots. I love carrots. Fuckers. Or it’s exhaustion and stress. Hard to say. Because this morning, it was super low. Sigh.

Then I spent over an hour fussing with the next Patreon video. It’s me drawing. It’s only two pieces of video, not even fussy, but I wanted to add titles and have them disappear, so I had to learn how to pull the effect away from the video so I could edit it. So much of what’s online when you Google app-specific answers is from previous versions, so it doesn’t help. Now I want to add music! So I need that man I live with to make me some…but he works, so I don’t know when that will happen. My Patreon people may get a bonus video this month while they’re waiting for this official one.

So I didn’t start cutting stuff out until after 11 PM.

And I wanted to be done. So I stayed up too late. Of course.

As you can see, Simba was very invested in my finishing. Which I did. It took 4 1/2 hours to cut them all out. Not bad. Sorting tonight? I hope. Then clean up the studio for the next round of picking fabrics…one of my favorite parts. I’m looking forward to that bit. I’m really looking forward to 57 days off. Well. There’s 10 days I won’t have off of work. But I’m getting paid for it and it’s for a good thing, so that’s OK. I might not think that when I’m having to get up early next week, but for now, it seems OK.

*Sublime, Santeria