All my bad dreams feature me sitting in a place with a bunch of people I don’t know and suddenly coming to the realization that I forgot my mask and I am way too close to other people with no masks on, and then I wonder how long it will take us to get back to normal after all this…I mean those of us who are actually trying to follow the guidelines and not get other people sick. The alarm woke me up this morning out of a bad dream where I was sitting in a restaurant, shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers, no masks, and then I realized…
Thank you, alarm, for getting me out of that situation.
Back to school today…speaking of, I keep reading about back-to-school nights that schools are doing online and I hope my principal doesn’t ever see those posts. I’m hoping he’s so buried in trying to plan schedules for our school that he never thinks about it. In 2 1/2 weeks, we go hybrid and online. I keep online kids, no worries. I might just have multiple grades or multiple schools and no prep with my co-teacher. I don’t even have access to other grade levels in the program we’re in…or do I? I don’t know. I don’t have teacher manuals. I wonder if they’ll even give us those. Probably not. OK, well there’s 2 1/2 weeks before I have to worry about that. Actually, he said Friday. So then I can worry about it. Turning worry off is hard for me.
Yesterday, I ended up working almost all day, minus the hour and a half dealing with an incredibly inefficient UPS customer service center. If you’re only open 4 hours a day, maybe don’t send half your staff to lunch during those hours? Or make sure they’re covered? Yeah. No.
I tried to clean up grades, and then sent messages to all the kids (and their parents…I love our new communication system) about the big missing assignment. I think 4 responded by actually turning stuff in and one responded with OK and turned nothing in. It’s like this in real life too. No worries. I confirmed what we’re teaching this week…one week at a time! A short week even.
I went to Pilates and my body was so happy to stretch and work out properly, instead of the half-assed matt version I’ve been doing. It’s better than nothing, but not the best. I’m hoping the gyms can manage to stay open. Keep classes small and masked and clean. Please.
And best of all, I managed to get to the next step in the quiltmaking…I cut stuff out for about 2 1/2 hours…
I didn’t think I was that close to the bottom of the bin, but apparently I was…because then I was done.
And it was only 10:30 at night. Well, hell…let’s sort!
I got that all done in less than an hour, so now I’m ready to iron this together.
Fun stuff. But also, I got assigned a person for the SJSA Remembrance project (I sent in my info back in June, so of course I didn’t get it during the summer, when I had plenty of free time)…it’s OK. It won’t take long and it’s for a good cause. Plus the clay thing…so that’s two things that need to be done by the end of the month. Stop taking on new stuff! Yeah. I told me.
I wish the phone camera could deal with reds and magentas better…the morning’s sky.
Fire is still out there, but more under control and didn’t grow yesterday. All good. And the winds haven’t shown up here yet. We have all day to wait those out. Hopefully they’ll be absent. And my students will show up instead. Meanwhile, they’re doing construction with saws next door. I swear. My brain. Fuckers.
Yeah. That. A friend posted this last night…
She had me at “Help a raccoon…”.
OK, I’ve got work to do before school. Which means standing up from this computer and going to the other one. Turning the fan on because it’s muggy. Trying to figure out the stuff I can’t remember that I didn’t do from last night. Hoping I know what I’m doing for today. And who knows what tonight, because after school, I have a union meeting. More Zoom. All the time.
Kathy Nida 