The society is sick and the leadership has not been courageous enough to do something more radical about stopping this train. –Gustavo Garcia-Siller, archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
It’s not often that I quote an archbishop here. There’s a lot more quotes, even though I stopped looking at social media and the news fairly quickly last night. With only 16 days left in my school year, I don’t have the mental strength to read about little kids dying because guns are legal. I came home and went straight to the gym, where I exercised and read my book set in a fantastical world (where unfortunately guns also exist, but so do demons and the fae, so it seems less real). I came home and requested no news. Ate dinner, graded some stuff, tried to think light, end-of-school-year thoughts, traced for a bit, and went to bed.
This morning, I face the last state test for my kids, the math performance task (never easy), but also probably some conversation about the shooting in Texas. Straight up, I’m on the verge of tears about half the time already from just pure exhaustion and other stuff. I need to get through the test, get through the meetings (only 2 today), go exercise (again), cook dinner, repeat. I don’t have much faith in my government to do anything about this. I straight up don’t have much faith in my government at all…women’s rights, human rights, immigration law, gun control, climate change…yeah. I can’t make another gun control quilt, y’all. The last one was so hard. This after I and another teacher had a conversation with a kid who was making a gun with her fingers and shooting herself in the head. Granted, that might have been a response to math testing yesterday. I can understand that feeling.
Ugh.
Well I’m still tracing, even though I didn’t get much done last night. The night before, I did a bunch…
I started earlier. I refused to grade that night. Because I stayed late at school? Graded then.
Tracing is never very exciting in photos. But I’m sitting there constantly trying to fit in as many pieces as possible in the empty spaces. It’s a weird puzzle thing…kind of crazy, because Wonder Under is relatively cheap (although I buy it by the bolt), but my grandma saved everything (Depression-era baggage) and my mom and I have similar tendencies. “We might need that”…and certainly, I never buy rubber bands. I haven’t bought paper clips in years, not since I was a full-time book editor and kept mailing them away from me, never to return. Twist ties? Save those. Plastic bags? Totally try to never take one from a store, but if I end up with one, I save it. Yeah. Grandma used to save the tinfoil. I don’t do that. Maybe I should though.
Had to bust two kids yesterday for stealing glue from my classroom. Sigh. Materials costs come out of our pockets, you dingbats. WTF. That was depressing and that was before I heard about the shooting. I really do need a break. Not coming soon enough. And this weekend, I send the man off on the PCT again. So that’s stressful. I dream of reading my book and not worrying about anything.
Last night, I didn’t get much time in. I’m on piece 373. Tracing the cat. The legs and torso (minus the portal) are done. It’s going fairly fast, mostly because I’m ignoring a lot of school at the moment. At some point, I will need to not do that. I’m not sure when that is.
I have a parent meeting this morning about a kid who we worry about academically. I have a science meeting later to figure out WTF we’re doing next year. I wish I had better answers to that. In between, I need to get 27 kids through a math task and then hopefully keep them quiet for the remainder of the time we have to stay locked up in the room. Good luck with that. And meanwhile hope that more kids don’t die, more boys who shouldn’t have guns can’t buy them, more boys don’t try to kill their grandmothers before shooting littles. I might have to add to this drawing tonight. Yeah. Might need to do that. Peace all. Peace and love. Especially to the families in Texas.
Kathy Nida 