Incomplete Work…

Work is following me home. It seems silly to say that if you know anything about teaching. I leave my computer at school some days and tell myself I’m not doing work when I get home, and then my brain is trying to solve a problem. I don’t ask it to do that. It does it anyway…incomplete work! In my head. I don’t mind so much when it’s how to create an assignment or push something out to kids or something creative like that. It’s a problem that needs solving. The stuff that sucks up energy, mental energy, is the kid stuff. My brain has been worrying a problem since yesterday, like a dog with a bone. I think I have a solution, at least something I can try. I just need to remember to do it. I tell my phone, but I don’t always look at the alarms that go off during the day. So I kept the issue in my head at the dentist, just in the background. And I worried at it when I was drawing, still in the background. Then slept with it. And woke up with it.

In the background, playing right now, I’m listening to the 40-hour teacher week podcast thing. I don’t know if it’s helping yet. I hope so. Some new procedures are working; some aren’t. This crew is a challenge.

OK, so I got home from the dentist late, and mostly exhausted. Still. I think it’s the end of September when I adjust finally. Maybe. I did decide that the sample I was doing for November’s class was probably too big and complicated for the time allowed, so I made two smaller samples. I still wanted to do a landscape…

It’s a good place to do some embroidery. This is 6″ square.

Then I did a flower, because they’re pretty easy…

I’ll probably do a face as well, just because…well, me.

After dinner, I did a little embroidery on it…

But mostly I spent time petting and combing the very nervous Golden Retriever, who was freaked out by a random thunderstorm wandered through in the afternoon.

It’s warm here. Muggy. Sweaty. I was hoping it would be cooler today, but it’s not. By the weekend, it should be. This is usually our hottest month of the year. But it hasn’t been really hellish yet, so that’s good.

It took me a while to find the energy to draw. Really, it was the standing that was the issue. I had decided this sharp corner was bugging the heck out of me, so I cut it out…

And redrew that section, rounding it out…plus drew a bunch more. Some Anza Borrego above her head, plus the redwoods on her torso. A Torrey pine on a La Jolla cliff. Bougainvillea thorny branches for pubic hair. I’m about halfway down. Maybe.

I literally just stare at the paper for most of this time, and sort of half draw things in my head. I might look up some pictures online. I think I finished the top arm too…I was going to go to bed, and then it started talking to me. I like when it talks, so I listen. Plus the tired goes away the later it gets. That can be a problem.

My companion for last night…

He barked at lots of things. It’s what he does.