Ugh. So the last three nights of not sleeping well are starting to hit now. It’s not something I choose to happen…it’s just either my brain overthinking shit or the Man and the cats and the dog taking up space in many ways. I’m sure I’ll hit exhaustion level again soon and be able to sleep through cats leaping over me at 3 AM and dogs rearranging themselves perpendicularly to me in the middle of the night so there’s nowhere for my legs to go. Not quite there yet. The morning meetings don’t help; having to lose that last 30 minutes…that’s hard. Ah well…no more of those until next Thursday…knock on wood. Definitely feeling it this morning though. Yesterday, I could still bully through. Today? Ugh. No. Would like to go back to bed. Still fighting the sinus stuff…my doc is out this week, so the sub doc (who may or may not have reviewed my file…wanna take bets?) said to use Flonase and Sudafed. Um. Yeah. For like weeks now. It’s fine. It’s better…just exacerbated by talking all day. Just like my knees are aching from walking all day. We’ll all adjust.
Cool art news…My Body. My Choice. got into Form not Function. Over 350 submissions and only 20 got in. Glad it was her.
She has traveled well. Maybe she continue. She’ll be at the Floyd County Carnegie Library Cultural Arts Center in New Albany, Indiana, from January 16-April 12. May that go well.
The ironing stage of this quilt has been slow. I mean, I’m doing an hour every night, but I’m not very fast about what gets done in that hour. This was poison oak and brain parts, I think. Oh, and a string of Christmas lights…
Last night was the esophagus, arteries, the heart minus the flower bouquet inside it…
And the cloud parts on the leg, but not all the stuff inside them. I still have stuff in the 300, 400, 700, and 900 boxes that hasn’t been ironed. Plus all the innards where the belly is cut open. I have one intestinal fabric chosen, but the rest is still an unknown. You can see the colors are piling up…the cardiovascular reds. That green/yellow mix is what I picked for the esophagus…I’ll try to repeat some of that down in the digestive system. Reality is not really where I roll. So I’m not halfway done…still. Getting there? Slowly. Tonight will be a challenge…there’s a lot going on. There’s a pottery tour this weekend and I’m hoping to put a couple of ceramic pieces in. We’ll see if that happens.
I’m still slogging (happily) away on this one…
The clay (and I) were being slow and sluggish last night. I basically did the ribs and another fish on the foot on the right. I need to do the other leg, add a few more details, and then figure out the top half. Or third. I might have to do this in three pieces…not sure the head will fit otherwise. I can’t get up to the highest drying shelves (not tall enough), so I’m trying to figure out how to make it in pieces again. Like the last two, but bigger. And odds are, I’ll use underglazes on this as well, so that will be time. I can move it to the drying rack for that though. I only have a smallish space for storing stuff. The racks are really full right now (pre-holiday rush?).
We’re doing electricity in school right now. I was trying to demonstrate static electricity with the balloon sticking to the wall…it only worked 2/5 times though.
Frustrating…last year, it worked every class. My exhausted self…this one bright kid…what are we supposed to write if it didn’t work? Well here’s why it didn’t…something is not neutral or not enough electrons transferred to make it work. It’s all invisible, so I have to figure out why it didn’t work when it should have. The wonder of science. Maybe he’s not cut out to be a scientist? The current academic thing I’m grading…I can get through 11 assignments in an hour. I have 128 kids. The easiest ones to grade are the kids who didn’t do any of the academic parts (but almost all of them did something because they started in groups) or the kids who totally got it (2 so far). It’s interesting that the things we teachers think should be easy, the kids flail on. Makes us feel like bad teachers sometimes. Although we know WHY they fail…and it’s usually a combo of laziness (just wanting to copy things) or a lack of problem-solving or reading instructions. The average reading level at our school is 2nd grade. So everything has to be so obvious. So far no one is failing, but there are a lot of beginning-level answers. I’d rewrite it for next year, but I won’t be teaching 8th grade next year. I won’t be back to 8th grade until I do the combo year again in 2027. Hopefully the other teacher will have made it awesome by then!
To continue on Monday’s commentary about the 10 commandments. That wall is there for a reason…
Sigh. No news from my district about teaching sex ed this year. Who the fuck knows what that will look like. I expected to hear from the committee people about how we were going to meet again, yadda yadda. Nothing. Radio silence.
This amuses me.
Too real. Also I need to get my act together on the gift stuff. Ha! Not sure when.
I love this…
It’s my angry self…the part that just wants to finish my book this morning. Not happening. Gonna go sit in a meeting instead. Not cutting heads off with swords…yet.
OK. Meeting. Then teach…static electricity labs today. Some possibility for yelling there. Depends on the ability to listen to instructions. Confetti and salt are involved. Plus balloons. Then pilates. Home briefly, to ceramics meeting, home again for dinner. I would say grading? But I don’t think there will be brain power for that after all that. So let’s just say ironing will happen? Hopefully. Get those damn intestines done.
Kathy Nida 