What I’d really like now is a weekend to iron this quilt together. Like a whole weekend…not bits and pieces fitted in at the end of the night when I’m already tired. The whole damn weekend. Usually I have to wait for breaks to do that, but this Winter Break is full of a copyediting job, so that’s tough. An hour a night is just not enough. I end up looking at how little I got done and I feel frustrated with my life. I have a meeting with my boss today about a curriculum that the district is requiring me to teach, even though it doesn’t fit my standards and I have no actual TIME to teach it unless I don’t teach something else, AND it’s at way too high a level for my kids, so it needs a massive overhaul…and he’s a good guy…he’s willing to pay me to overhaul it, but I honestly, straight up don’t have the TIME to do it. Like which weekend am I willing to trash for this shit? This is what teachers are dealing with right now…WHEN the hell do you want me to do that? I had to call a parent yesterday afternoon (OK, she demanded I call her, and I didn’t have enough presence of mind to realize there was no way it was going to end well) and she’s like “You should be calling me for THIS and for THAT”…after I had just emailed another parent who demanded we contact her more (um, make your kid go to school then, because THAT’S the problem), and I was just done. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO MAKE SIMPLE PARENT PHONE CALLS. I’m too busy trying to deal with lesson planning and grades and pandemic contracts and IEP meetings on my prep period and all the other shit that I just can’t get my head around. I can call you at 5:30 AM or midnight…which would you prefer? I actually started out by texting her, hoping that would solve it. Nope. My fault. And it wasn’t even an academic issue…it straight up is another kid’s missing charger that her kid disappeared and is trying to blame on me. Sigh.
So on this Friday, even though I had last week off (last week was hard, y’all…still missing Calli and frustrated about so many things), I am yet again overwhelmed and on the verge of tears, which is not the way I want to be.
Tomorrow will be better. I will sleep in (a little) and then go to my quilt guild holiday party (although I need to bring food and modern fat quarters…which is an issue I will get my head around at some point). I was going to go rent a carpet cleaner tonight…I might still do that. I need to get that taken care of, and it might have to be tomorrow or tonight.
(Puts head on desk).
Make more art. Possibly lose my mind in front of my boss. Won’t be the first time. Or the last.
Tonight I will iron some more. Maybe it will feel like more? Here’s Wednesday night…
And last night…
It felt like all I got done was that arm, but I guess I did the sky behind it (bouncing into the 900s briefly just to make sure everything fit) and then I got the breasts done, but I think I’m going to try to do the rest of that figure later, once I get the bottom filled out a bit more…so skipping some of the 400s and going to the 500s I think. Not sure. Haven’t decided. At some point, the teflon sheets start slipping all over the place and it’s a pain, so I’d like to get a solid space filled in before I try to go more up.
A friend of mine visited my piece at San Diego Mesa College…
Her thinking…my thinking…I think this is up until the 9th? I know I pick it up the following week. I was hoping I could get a household member to do that, but apparently that will not be a thing. Sigh.
It’s been foggy the last few mornings, and the spider webs were pretty…especially this one…
As long as you don’t have to walk through it.
OK. Well. I’m not sure how I feel about school today, about what I’m teaching. It’s been a bit of a slog…tiring, trying to make kids read more, trying to make hard things more interesting, trying to deal with the minutiae honestly. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, brain and stomach conspiring against me, and I kept grabbing the phone, not for what you think, but to put things on the calendar to remind me to DO them, because I keep forgetting to do all the things on my list. There are just too many things. Yeah. There’s always too many things. I wish I could choose more of the want-to-do things and my district would realize they are giving us too many things…ha, not happening.
It’s Friday, though. So I will have a bit more exercise in the next few days and a little more free time and I will be able to pee when I need to, and my tea won’t languish in the prep room, getting colder because I didn’t have time to come get it, and maybe I’ll get more than an arm ironed down. And maybe I’ll have a solution by the end of the day for this stupid extra curriculum that seems so irrelevant at the moment…I’m sure it’s not totally irrelevant, but I certainly wish it weren’t on MY plate to disseminate. I’m totally gonna need a hike tomorrow.
Kathy Nida 