Focus.

Hey yo. Going into Friday with an attempt at zen that will probably dissolve into wack. British spelling. Means something different than what I might do to a mole. Anyway. So that’s my brain falling into rabbit holes. FOCUS Nida. Focus.

As I’m grading all this last-minute crap, that’s what I’m constantly telling myself. Some of them are doing a great job; it’s a joy to regrade their work, note the improvement, tell them how awesome they are. But then a chunk are just rushing it, they’re still not getting it, they’re fixing as fast as possible and still doing a crap job. Frustrating. And those are the ones sending me emails begging me to change their grade, or asking me “does ANYONE get an A in your class?”. Yes dear, but today? Not you. Can that change? Sure. Keep working. If I’d had her last year, she’d be there, but of course, this is the year where you have to have a 4.0 and outstanding in behavior every fucking trimester to get on the stage at graduation. This is one of the things I hate about 8th grade. The begging and pleading. Just listen to the instructions, turn your brain on, and stop writing random stuff. And then there’s the one kid who is using AI. But I’m worried about her. But I’m not letting her get away with it. Sigh. Plus the kids who are still turning in late work and trying to resubmit stuff when the deadline is past. Way past.

I have one more major redo to grade, and then a whole host of little bits and pieces to check. Plus a quilt to pack for shipping. Plus a quilt guild meeting. I want to hike tomorrow. Sometime. Daylight savings is about to fuck us over, so do it now! Hike!

Let’s talk about quilting. Because I finally am. There’s a lot of detail on this thing, but I can look back at the cyberpunk piece, which was a similar size and detail, not as many pieces though, and it was 14 hours of quilting. I’m going to buy binding this weekend though. Not because I need to this week; I could probably push it to next weekend, but because the week has been shit and I need to reward my hard-ass work with some fabric. Don’t look at my stash as I say that. It’s not warranted. But it is necessary.

So Wednesday night, I finally got everything ironed and laid out on the floor…

It was pretty easy, no fussiness. Which is nice.

It took more than an hour to iron stuff and then lay it out, so I didn’t get to quilting until last night.

I started late, because I was still grading crap at 9:30 PM. Fun times. Came home and that’s all I did except make dinner in the middle of that 5-hour time frame. Also the girlchild was on FaceTime with me as she tried to find parking near a Day of the Dead celebration, which unfortunately for her parking situation, was right near her apartment. I don’t miss parking troubles, for sure. Anyway, that’s about 55 minutes of quilting done. One chapter of Ursula K. LeGuin on audiobook. I have a hard time concentrating on audiobooks. I might need to not read book-club books that way. I don’t really hold onto the info. I need to see the words. I’m done with Chapter 3 and I’m still not really sure why this person is on this other planet. Hopefully in the next 10 hours, it will make more sense. Or I’ll have to get the real book and try again.

So I’ll be quilting for the next week. In case you were wondering. I’m good with that. I have the next quilt pre-drawn in my head, which is good, because it’ll be like a 5- to 6-week turnaround. Yikes!

Here was my grading setup yesterday…

Laptop has assignment I’m checking. Candy corn post-its are lists of whose stuff has actually be resubmitted on the form (I ignore the rest; they randomly resubmit without changing anything and it drives me bonkers). Extra monitor has the rubric up for whatever I’m grading. Judgy cat butt is there for general excitement. She’s looking for geckos. To her left is my notebook, propped up on a drawer so (a) I can note any grade changes and (b) Nova can eventually knock it off when she panics about something and jumps off. I’ll be there again tonight and part of tomorrow probably. We’ll see.

Ugh. Here’s one of the four books I’m reading…this is Margaret Atwood in one of her essays/speeches.

Sigh. I never feel like I do enough for that.

School is getting me down. Last year, I was losing my mind about now over 8th grade, but the teacher on leave was coming back at the beginning of November, so I saw a light. Well he didn’t support until mid-February, gave me 6 weeks, and then bowed out. I’m not seeing a light this year, and I suspect last year kinda traumatized me (OK, more than kinda), so I’m just depressed about all of it this year. Put your head down and get it done. Not a fan. That said, here’s a bunch of paper roller coasters half done…

Amusingly, they are supposed to BE done today. We’ll see how that goes. I remember now that the lazy sit-on-your-butt and do-nothing kids drove me crazy during this project, so I’m glad I shortened it this year. They’ll get it done…or not. I’m OK with that. They can still do the academic part without the coaster done; they’ll just lose effort points.

Today. They build. I manage. They have a quiz. Ha! I grade tonight. I quilt tonight. At least I don’t have to wake up in the dark tomorrow morning. Pro. And I think I get to hang out with some friends tonight, briefly. That’s cool.