Could be a title for my blogging activity, for my brain, for my job…hard to say. A respectful Veterans Day to those for whom today resonates. My mental relationship with the military aside, some people have truly sacrificed for our country and should be remembered. My neighbor remembered by mowing the lawn and blowing the leaves. He might be vacuuming the rocks later.
I do have today and tomorrow off of school…my district is one that realized that people will take that Friday off (mostly the kids), and gives us the 4-day weekend when the holiday is on Tuesday or Thursday. Thanks for that guys, because apparently a shit-ton of districts all over the US forgot to plan intelligently and are scrambling for subs. We were short yesterday, and teachers had to sub during their prep period. It’s stressful and means you don’t get done what you needed to get done, plus it’s a subject you don’t teach and other people’s sub plans can be confusing. Sometimes you get lucky and the kids are helpful…they do like to be helpful. But it sucks nonetheless. Whatever we don’t get done during the school day comes home and haunts us during our time off.
I worked last night for a bit, grading a couple of assignments. I didn’t do the hard one. I will. Just not yet. My co-teacher somehow did it in class yesterday…while I was walking around, trying to get kids to understand that you can’t prove plate motion with a random fact about Mesosaurus having lungs instead of gills. Kudos to her. I can’t grade academic stuff without some mental space, and I didn’t have that yesterday.
My art brain is totally arguing with teacher brain and house brain right now. Art brain is like fuck it, don’t take a shower, stay in the pajamas (but it’s going to be 90 degrees today and flannel is warm), just iron things to fabric ALL DAY LONG, fuck the day job, don’t clean anything, don’t put shit away, don’t go to the gym, don’t even water the plants. JUST ART. House brain is like, you have to spend SOME time cleaning shit up…it’s getting out of control. At least the kitchen counter and the table…just a quick moment…it won’t take long…and the plants will NEED water after the heat today. True true…but I have an in-person stitching meeting tonight, so that’s time, plus the gym is time, plus the cleaning is time, and then how much ironing time is left? What about drawing? I want to draw more. Then teacher brain is arguing that there’s another academic assignment next week, plus kids will be turning in their unit packets and I’ll have to grade those, so I should really just get on top of the assignments now, yeah? At least grade the 30 or 40 who handed in the academic assignment. Do the others when they come in. Ugh. That sounds like the worst option. Teacher brain, shush. I need time off. We’ll talk later.
I have been ironing at night…Tuesday night, I did about an hour, most of a smaller figure…
I finished ironing the flesh, but needed to do all the inner bits…heart and hair and eyes and arteries. I did those last night…got them all in the box…
and then started laying out everything for the second, much larger figure.
I got up into the 500s, I think…yeah. But not all of them are ironed down. I was going to stop there, just lay them out and iron them today, but then I said fuck it, because I didn’t have to get up and teach today, so I channeled my old midnight self and kept going…ironed all of it down. Today I’ll go back through all those and do the eyes and hair and heart and all that good stuff…bones too. Maybe get on to the next figure…hopefully, but the night meeting might affect that. Going to the gym might affect it. I’d like to hike, but it’s going to be in the 90s for the whole 4-day weekend. Ugh. Maybe late Saturday…we’ll see.
Tomorrow is all the art exhibits I want to see…I’m going to Visions Art Museum to see Interpretations and Linda Anderson’s solo show, then on to the Oceanside Museum of Art to see Marty Ornish and Charlotte Bird’s work, and ending up at the Sowing Seeds opening at Mesa College, where one of my pieces will be. Sounds fun, yeah? The man is coming with and maybe we’ll stop for lunch somewhere…we’ll see how that works. It’s rare I get a day full of art these days. And I’m taking on a copyediting job for December/January, because I need the money, so it’ll be a challenge to get that time in December. I’ll try, because the girlchild is coming home (yay!)…she got permission to work from California for a few weeks, which is awesome. The holidays are always a bit crazy, so I enjoy what I get.
So there we are…a short break in the school slog, always appreciated. Use it wisely. I think I might iron for a bit and then go to the gym…and then see where I’m at. See? Art brain is winning…house brain and teacher brain will get some time, but not first. Me first.
Kathy Nida 