All My Spline Is Wrong

Whoa. Two days of writing in a row. I used to do this. I used to write 6 days a week. It’s OK that I’m not…well OK by me. I write a lot. But I had time this morning and no staff meeting before school. Tomorrow there’s a staff meeting, so there’ll be a rush to get stuff ready in the morning. So it’s better to write today and maybe miss tomorrow.

My district is getting ready to bring kids back, but I’ll be teaching from here for a while. I had to persuade Kitten that this was not her chair yesterday morning.

I stand at the light table with my computer when I can. I need to get a different adapter, unfortunately…can’t charge, run an extra monitor, and have an ethernet cable at the same time with what I’ve got, so I’ve been swapping out. Zoom sucks battery charge as well as everything else.

About halfway through 4th period, I heard Luna scrabbling on the window screen next to me, looked to the right, and saw her most of the way up the screen. I squawked at her to get down and she ripped a cat-sized hole in the screen.

Trying to fix it has been fun. I did have window screening in the garage. It wasn’t big enough. I went to Home Depot to get more, but then got home and realized the spline I have (three different splines) are all either the wrong size or too old. *Bangs head on desk. All my spline is wrong. OK. I will go back to Home Depot or an equivalent after school today…because this window gives me air in my hot little corner of the house. It’s been nice the last few days…and luckily, I’m not teaching this weekend, because my weather app has 108 and 110 degrees showing.

In the middle of 6th period, the neighbors’ upped their construction game with wood saws…always a nice addition. Sigh. Is it bitchy of me to (a) ask for a saw/loud noise schedule or (b) hope that after 4-odd years they might be done with construction? I don’t think that man will ever stop sawing things. So I apologized to my students…it’s not ideal here, but it’s what I’ve got.

I also went into school after everyone was gone (I sneak in like the wind) to sign timesheets and attendance and more importantly to get the teachers’ editions of our new curriculum.

Nine boxes later (I only opened mine), they were not to be found. Sigh. The one thing I actually need right now…all this hands-on stuff is lovely (is it though?), but I won’t be touching most of it until who the fuck knows when.

Depressing. I’ll be back in there on Monday to find room for the stuff I unpacked and probably get rid of some stuff to do that. Someone will be in my room and will need some space. Maybe. I can’t get depressed about school not being normal. It’s not going to be normal for a while. So far, there are only about 55 kids in my grade who are doing online learning, so I will either have another grade or kids from other schools. That means coordinating with multiple schools and counselors and administrators. That was the part that made my head hurt the most last night.

So I did the only intelligent thing I could do. I sewed the bindings on Grow…

She’s done! She’s little, but even the little ones are time-consuming. Future self…this was more time-consuming that it should have been, but it’s OK. I learn with every new thing I do. I’ll take a better picture of it in daylight, clean it up, pack it up, and send it off to its new owner.

OK, luckily I have Zoom pilates today…that will help with the back and shoulders. I’ll be buying some spline at some point. School is pretty chill today, I think. We’ll see how it really goes. And then back to cutting pieces out for the new quilt. It’s nice to get one thing checked off the list though. I need to finish sewing cloth napkins for the house. I have 15 minutes until school officially starts. I’m gonna do two. New goals!