I’m up early. First day of training today. Training? I’ve spent a lot of mental space being irritated at needing 12 hours of training about teaching sex ed after 20 years of teaching it. And Friday’s ginormous conference when I really need time in my classroom. It doesn’t matter if I fret over it…I still have to do it, although one of my co-teachers yesterday suggested we take a sick day on Friday to miss the conference and then spend it in our classrooms, setting up, as a protest. Yeah. It would be a better use of my time. That said, I will have to spend some time at school this weekend, no matter what, so I’m getting my head around that as well. It will be air conditioned, unlike my house, so that will be the plus. Supposed to be hot this weekend…and today. Ugh. OK. Air conditioning today, as well, but also stuck in a chair for 6 hours, being fed unknown food (one of the things I dislike as a diabetic…not knowing where my next meal comes from or what it is), probably gonna have to do some role playing, so not in the mood. Such a positive attitude! I love the kid-learning part of my job. There are some parts I really dislike: multiple-day group trainings that are redundant, team-building exercises, rah-rah stuff that is supposed to get me all excited. Give me time to get ready. Give me the mental space for that. Introverts teach too, y’all.
Anyway. I’m also mourning the lack of time to make art that is coming as well. I will be glad to get paid though…which doesn’t happen for three more weeks. It’s been a financially long summer and I’m ready for that to ease up. The Man got a job! This should also help with money worries, significantly. All good. He hasn’t actually walked out the door and driven there yet and spent all day working and come back, but this is happening! So glad.
So my summer to-do list was crap. Well, I didn’t do much of it, for sure. Some summers I rock; some I don’t. To my credit, I did two book jobs this summer, one copyediting and one I’m still proofreading (almost done). So that didn’t help. I’m still trudging along on the new quilt, hoping I can meet the deadline (ironing when it’s hot out is difficult). The first thing I did was clean up. I forgot to take the requisite picture of all the fabric I needed to put away, piled up by color. But I did that. AND I cleaned the floor in here (that won’t happen again until probably Winter Break, realistically). And then I cleared out the Pile of Lost Pieces…
These are either pieces I lost and had already recut (they were put in the wrong bin, probably) or recut for color reasons (the little person shape and the big one at the bottom…both out of the wrong fabric color). I save them, just in case…but really, what for? So I cleaned that out.
Throwing things away is not my strong point. I also cleaned up the top of the washing machine, which had become a repository for shit, including all the big dog’s stuff from when she died in November (teaching kicks your ass cleaning-house-wise, man).
Then I sorted all the pieces after dinner…
Took me about an hour and a half.
Then I hung the drawing in my studio and set it up for ironing…
It’s not a large room and there are three tables and three bookshelves in here, not to mention lots of fabric storage. It’s a tight fit sometimes.
I started ironing to fabric on Monday night…
Honestly, it’s been a slow start…probably because I’m starting with three people and they all have a different run of fabric, which is a lot of choosing and making sense in the beginning. It takes me a while to get in the right headspace to pick fabrics.
Last night, I got through most of the three figures…just some eyeballs (missing one iris piece) and hair to go, and then I move on to the water, I think. There might be some fleshy bits on the big figure first. I won’t get to that until after dinner tonight, unfortunately. My goal is to be completely ironed by the end of this weekend. IDK if I can get there. It’s really hard to iron during the day when it’s hot in here. I get dizzy sometimes…there’s not a lot of air flow in here, so then I have to go sit under a fan (I run a fan in here but below the ironing board because otherwise the Wonder Under pieces would be flying all over, like a WU tornado, which would be problematic for losing pieces) and drink cold water and basically act like a fainting woman from Victorian times, but without a corset and big petticoats. I’m having an issue wearing pants and a bra today for the training…it’s too hot here for that level of clothing right now. I’ve been living in shorts and tank tops and that’s about it.
Ah well. I will iron tonight and it will be cooler then. I will also get rid of the hot clothing by then.
Monday night, we were visited by a beautiful moth…Kitten was fascinated…
So fascinated, she got her claw stuck in the screen. I think one of the other cats might have gone THROUGH the screen if they’d seen that.
And then last night, one of my babies came back to visit me!
The tree outside my studio. How do I know it’s one of the babies? Vocalizations are still very juvenile-like, feed-me sounds, instead of the single screech we get out of the parents. Also, it froze when I went out there. The adults just fly away. I was so happy to see it. I talked to it. It hung out for a while, because it was still out there, screeching away, when I went to bed. Big smiles. I know one is OK. (I also know it didn’t come back to see me…it’s OK…I’m probably pretty terrifying to a young owl.)
Got this picture from the boychild from last week’s fire near Yosemite…
He’s down near the bottom. That is one nasty slope. Glad it’s him and not me. I just deal with teenagers (and today, adults).
OK. So ‘learn’ sex ed today (I’ll let you know what’s changed since 7 years ago, the last training…actually, I don’t even think it’s been that long), go to an exercise class, I stupidly signed up to cook tonight (well I have to do it sometime), then ironing more body parts. All good. I think I get to do the Statue of Liberty next. I did her torch already. Will adjust mindset as I go.
Kathy Nida 