Being sick sucks; being sick as a teacher sucks even more. The job is physically and mentally challenging on a good day; trying to do it when you’re feeling shaky is harder, but the alternative is writing sub plans, assuming your classroom will be a disaster and no one will get anything done, and betting on the fact that you’ll feel better tomorrow…like is THIS the worst day of this illness? Or will that be tomorrow. And it won’t matter tomorrow because it’s a lab day (not leaving that with a sub) AND back-to-school night and one teacher on your team is already going to be missing. Plus you don’t really know how you’re going to feel until you get up in the morning, and then it’s too late usually to get a sub so a bunch of random teachers will have to be in your classroom. So yeah. That’s where I’m at. Today is NOT independent work mostly. There’s a bunch of talking and excitement I’m supposed to be pushing out (with what energy?) and then lots of walking around and encouraging. Meanwhile, the honors kids are trying to work ahead on everything, because it’s how they roll. They don’t know how to just let something sit. And wait. I understand that. I want the blank papers done too y’all.
I’m still ironing…so very slowly.
Not sure why it’s so slow.
Last night’s…
I just laid out the 400s. Some of them were already ironed to flesh bits, but mostly not. I might be halfway; I might not. It’s impossible to say. I feel like I’ve done a lot and question why I am not done yet.
I washed out the dye painting that needed repainting…
Doing some crazy stuff with distilled water in the laundry room, because I think my really hard water bleaches some f the dye out.
After drying…much better.
So yeah, the dyes I mixed at the end of July are still working.
I also washed out one of the glue resist pieces…
It needed more glue removal. I think it’s good now. They’ll both go through a regular machine wash at some point.
And then I finally made it to ceramics.
I’m done underglazing. Just need to figure out when it can go in the kiln.
I have a neck that fits in that hole sitting in my damp box, ready for me to build a head. And maybe a bird. That was the original plan anyway. We’ll see how that flies. It’s nice to have progress at least.
This AI conversation…interestingly, I heard one pundit talking about how we needed to stop separating AI from the techies who built it/own it. To hold them responsible.
They designed this system to make them money, and in doing so, endangered the future of billions of humans. And the big dumb guy says all we need to control it is a smart president. Oh well.
I’m sick. Definitely worse than yesterday. Hoping the meds kick in. I’m supposed to have pilates after school and it’s too late to cancel without a penalty. I’m watching a squirrel yell at something in the neighbor’s yard. I need to be better tomorrow. Doing a lab while sick is hard. Labs are hard anyway. It’s not even set up. I need to go in this morning and try to get through that. I started yesterday and it got too complicated. I really just want to go back to bed. Too late for that. Time to bully through. Ugh. And grades are due next week, so I just grade nonstop at the moment. Also not fun. Hope it gets better…the cold at least.
Kathy Nida 