Friday the 13th. When you’re teaching in person, things like the full moon and Friday the 13th and Halloween are a bigger deal. Online, it doesn’t really matter. Someone might mention it, but it doesn’t have the same power over the middle-school mind when they aren’t all together in a hive situation. In fact, all of the behavior (mostly) is gone. All that’s left is trying to get work done, so kids who don’t listen and kids who don’t respond and kids who are “in Zoom” but are really asleep or somewhere else are really the behaviors. So I barely notice a Friday the 13th, normally one of my favorite days, usually good luck for me (in the past, who knows now, since luck is one of those things we perceive in strange and manipulated ways).
I’m tired. I’m not ready for next week. I think I’m caught up, and then I remember the other two classes I teach and that they need to be graded and planned and all that shit I forget about. I miss having just one prep and one type of class to worry about. You finished grading all of that assignment? Yay! It’s done! Oh wait. This other class has these OTHER 5 assignments from last week that need grading. Sigh.
I did have Wednesday off this week, and I did some work, but I also went to see three of my quilts in a show that closes this weekend, at the Front Porch Gallery in Carlsbad.
That is Bigger in the Outside and Climate Goddess. This is the California Fibers show Figuratively.
Here is Sweet Delicious…
As well as some work by Carrie Burckle hanging next to it. I’ll get a post together of the whole show when I get a chance. Please don’t ask me when that will be. I thought tomorrow, but now I am hiking tomorrow. Possibly 11 miles. Pray for me. Or send food. Whichever is more your style.
The change in schedule at the end of September really fucked with my exercise plans. I have less time, and then the time change fucked with it some more. I’ve hiked full on in the dark, but Wednesday, realized the sun goes down bloody early and got my ass out there. There used to be this huge tree down there on the left with a treehouse in it. Guess it was a bad tree.
Sigh.
As you can see, I flirted with dark on this hike…only needed a flashlight to get down this one dark hill at the end. Brought the headlamp but didn’t need it. I will keep attempting this shit. Exercise. Even though gyms are now closed for three weeks and the online offerings are slim. Double sigh. Working on it. If you have a good video/source for free Pilates or yoga-type exercise for old ladies who aren’t particularly flexible, let me know.
After dinner, I brought out the drawing in progress…with school happening on the daily on the light table, I have to put all the Me art stuff away each night. So I cleared a space and laid her out. I finished tracing the bits I wanted, and then started work on the ground around her.
Going to see my quilts at the gallery made me think about things I like in my quilts. Dirt. Skellies. Earthworms. Volcanic activity. Add in some of that.
Then last night, I did some more. Oh yeah, the cat went in the night before. And some weird mole thing. And a book.
Mostly last night I was staring at it and trying to decide how to fill space and with what. We’ve had lots of owls this year, so I added some super tiny pieces (whoops) and the moon.
And a Fall tree. It’s getting there. It’s not there yet, though. Tonight is gaming, so we’ll see if I’m awake afterward. Plus meeting my team for a socially distanced drink. I get very little interaction with people…besides the two I live with. Although we teachers often talk about kids we have when we meet, and I don’t have the same kids, and my current “team” (they aren’t a team) doesn’t talk at all…at least, not to me. I have another parent meeting this morning and who knows how it will go, because no one talks beforehand and then they offer up everything, and I’m like, WTF, I don’t have time to do that thing and how do YOU have the fucking time? This part sucks. OK, lots of it sucks. But this part really sucks.
Anyway. Welcome to the 2020-2021 school year. The Year of Suck. I get some socialization today. I will play some online games and grade some shit, probably at the same time. Hopefully I will find the energy to get my butt off the couch and work on that drawing. Notice I didn’t say FINISH the drawing. I don’t think I’m there yet. I’m still in the mentally willy nilly stage. I’ll get there. It’s OK.
Kathy Nida 