Hey. It’s been a week. Yeah. It’s only Wednesday. It’s OK…there’s only three more days of school until I get nine days off…nine days I need…not just for my sanity and for rest and recovery, but also to get a shitload of work done so I can get my head above water for school, and also to do all those medical things that I can’t do during the school week. Or weekend. Dental, vaccines, dog needs eye surgery (fun times), etc. On top of all that, the Man was laid off yesterday…we knew it was coming, but were hoping it’d be after the holidays. Oh no. Let’s do it now. And my co-teacher is now officially out for the rest of the year…which I also knew was coming, but now that it’s official, and I realized I have 2/3 of the school year left, well…sigh. Yeah. I will figure it out, but I’m also already tired of it. I want to draw more. I don’t want to lug home a big bag of stuff to grade or spend 6 hours on Sundays prepping and grading or always be pulling my computer out after school, trying to get control of the assignments. It’s just been a constant slog since August 2020. And I know my team wants me to do training over the summer again, plus I’m probably going to have to pilot the new learning management system they’re already piloting, but that’s my brain being anxious about things that are 7 months in the future, and that’s just stupid. Deep breaths.
What’s today? More magnets. I swear, I had to say “PUT THE MAGNETS DOWN” about 17 thousand times yesterday, but today, we move the fuck on. Well, honestly, I’m debating in my head whether to flip tomorrow’s lab into today and just fully torture myself, then give them the academic assignment tomorrow. I was revising the week last night (after grading two classes of packets, after going to the dentist, after teaching all day, after a parent meeting, after a phone call with my doctor in the morning about how I need to eat more plants. And change my deodorant. And retire.) and I’m still not sure about what we’re doing today. It will be a seat-of-the-pants decision. So today it will be “PUT THE IRON FILINGS DOWN” instead, but hey, whatever. They’re learning. I think. Only one magnet broken so far (KNOCK ON FUCKING WOOD Y’ALL), compared to last year’s flurry of brokenness. What does one DO with broken magnets? I don’t know. If I glue them, will they hold? Will they still work? What does one do with magnets that no longer work? Yes, that’s a thing. Middle school kids suck the magnetism out of bar magnets.
OK. Well. So no decisions. The plus is that today is way mellower than yesterday. No parent meetings today. No dentist today. Pilates today. Some semblance of an assignment in my head. And the quilt is at that sweet almost done but very meditative stage where I just pull it onto my lap and start stitching (dark blue thread in the dark; always a good choice). I won’t finish tonight, but I will finish this week. Then hopefully to the photographer this weekend…that’s the plan anyway. Meanwhile, we have daily pictures of binding being sewn down.
Very exciting…
Dehairing is also in its future. I had a cat trying to burrow under it last night. I’m like, hey, no, the Supreme Court is not for cats to lie on (but then, maybe it is…maybe the next Supreme Court quilt has a giant cat lying on them so they can’t vote for stupid shit).
Yeah. Maybe. Last night I also did my active shooter training, because I hadn’t done it yet. Put it off.
If you’re wondering about being a teacher, there are regulations for armed assailant training now. There’s also going to be a re-enactment (I’m sure there’s a better word for that) over Winter Break I think? We got an email about volunteering for that. Yeah no. It’s bad enough that we do the drills with the kids. I’m not doing that shit for any reason.
Oh yeah. Well. OK, I should go to school and set up the lab stuff for the stuff I wasn’t going to do until tomorrow. Tomorrow’s self will appreciate it. And then find a filler, I think. I have one…I need another. And then do the things so I can go to Pilates and move my body and then come home and do more school stuff and then stitch some more. A day at a time. There’s a new quilt in my future, and that’s a good thing.
Kathy Nida 