Hi. I’m Kathy. I’m a bit of a workaholic. I seriously don’t know how to relax, especially with a bunch of grading that’s late and a quilt that’s due. The man was asking about my Saturday plans, and I kinda went off, because Saturday is DAYS from now and I have SO MUCH to do before then that my right eye is twitching. Or maybe it’s my left. Or they’re alternating. Did you know there’s something called TwitchCon? And it has nothing to do with my eyelids’ propensity to denote my stress levels.
12 hours plus on school yesterday. I am tracking actual hours this week for the program I’m on. Why? So I can cut some of those hours. I’m not sure how that will work, but I’m getting there. By hell or high water. Or I’ll die trying. OK, shouldn’t offer that as an option. This job will take it all out of you. I remember the guy who planned to retire from teaching, had to go out 3 months early on medical, was dead by the end of summer. Cautionary tale!
Anyway, I quit because I was reading this one essay and I’m thinking, whoa, this sounds familiar and then read a phrase about convection being a substance (WTF?) and went, holy fuck, Batman, I’ve read this before. Sweet little dumbasses. They must think we’re idiots. OK, sometimes we don’t catch this shit just due to time etc, but seriously, write something as lame as that and I will FIND YOU and award you the zero you deserve, you and your little friend. Yes, because Google Docs tells me who edited it when. Haven’t decided what to do about it yet. Drawing and quartering seems a bit much (though tempting). Making them rewrite during tutoring sounds fun. Not really. But I’ll probably do it.
Today is some practice with equipment that will hopefully help them with a lab tomorrow and the next day. Then we go into days of labs, which after yesterday’s incidents with “I don’t know how to shut up long enough to hear instructions,” might be an issue. Anyway. My day job…can suck the brains out of my head and spit them out in a what do you call that thing by the side of the road, next to the curb, damn, there goes my brain. I’ll let it ruminate and hopefully I’ll remember what it’s called. THE GUTTER! Sheesh. Google will be saving my forgetful ass until I die. The gutter.
So it was around 9:30 PM when I started panic quilting. Really it’s all a run to the finish now.
I had both arms, the Anza Borrego section, the entire torso (trees, heart, lungs), and the head to do.
In the last week, I’ve worked on this quilt for more than 18 hours. Yesterday, I only got in 2 hours and 12 minutes. They were good ones though.
Because I finished all the outlining, which was my goal…
And then I started quilting the background, of which there is not much…and I got about a quarter of the way around, maybe a little more. So that’s tonight…and hopefully trim it and maybe cut and start stitching the binding? We’ll see. It depends on how long the quilting takes. And on my sanity after tutoring. I really should grade more things, but I don’t know if I’ll have the fortitude. How come I can remember FORTITUDE but not GUTTER. My brain is like a fucked-up sieve.
Oh yeah, while I was watering last night and dealing with my composter, I saw this guy…
I thought their season was done, but apparently not. He looks well fed.
OK, off to the day job, where I will remember the word GUTTER and try not to use a triple-beam balance in a way it was not intended to be used. Seriously, though, why does it make sense to weigh your hand on a TBB without cutting it off? Because otherwise, you’re not weighing anything. Now you know why I’m a middle-school science teacher and not a kindergarten teacher.
Kathy Nida 