Can’t Be Done Yet

One of my quilts, One Paycheck, is included in a book that is coming out just now, Quilts and Human Rights…

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I had forgotten about this…with communication stretching back to 2014, it’s not surprising, right? One Paycheck is about being homeless and a mom. I’m looking forward to reading the book and seeing some of the other quilts that were included.

So when I’m slogging through the last two weeks of teaching or a pile of awards and my printer’s being cranky or driving around doing errands even though I asked a kid to do one of them…it’s cool to get an email that reminds you that yeah, you make art, and sometimes it matters. Plus I got into a book!

Oh man, I went to bed too late…second time this week. I told you, my brain is already on summer break. It just can’t figure out why I’m getting up so early in the morning. But I finished most of the team’s academic awards last night…now I just need to do the fun awards and hope my printer cartridge doesn’t run out in the middle of it (you know it will).

Back to the tracing of course…

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I know this phase is totally boring for my readers. Like every day, she shows us another picture of Wonder Under lying on a light table and her pencil. And maybe a cat or a cup of tea or her phone. Like SHEESH woman, get on with it.

And then I try to get creative…like there’s the three yards of filled-up traced pieces that I get to start cutting out at some point, right?

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And a close up so you can reiterate to yourself how crazy I am…like some of those pieces are crazy tiny and what the hell is she thinking, and holy crap, they’re numbered in the 1300s or something.

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But here’s the thing. This is one of the most calming, meditative parts of the quiltmaking process for me. I don’t have to think very hard about colors or ironing, it doesn’t hurt my hand like cutting stuff out does…it’s just meditation. Which is probably what I need right now. My SIL said I sounded cranky last night and I was. Still am this morning. It’s the nature of the beast…the end-of-year teacher. Too much to do in too little time. Not enough of the relaxation I need right now. Really, honestly, right now I need a nap. Yes, I know it’s only 7:30 in the morning, but shit. I’m tired. And done. And I can’t be done yet. Really. I can’t. I can’t.

I’m through piece 1300-something. Another hour in. Traced an octopus, some arteries, some grass, one lung, and some cactus. I have the tiger left to do on one breast and then the heart and the whole other side (breast plus arm). Plus the head. Then I’m done meditating and on to cutting.

Relief in Sight…

Workload increases…deadlines abound. I feel like I’m going to drop ALL the balls. I’m in the middle of printing out 25 bingo cards for graduation…we have the kids play graduation speech bingo. What words would you put in that? It’s kind of amusing. Plus plans for awards and field trips and all that stuff. It’s all whirling around in my head, as I dream of the Saturday AFTER all that. Even the Friday, because all we do is check out, although that’s kind of overwhelming in itself: room clean, books counted, technology signed off or out. Turn in your bandaids! God forbid we be trusted to hold onto those over the summer (OK, it’s more logical than that…they do refill all our first-aid kids over the summer…but all I used were bandaids). I might panic soon. Except there’s no point.

Lots of changes for next year…again, I could panic, but why? This is what three years of meditation and counseling can do for you.

I graded quite a bit yesterday, plus we took the dogs for a walk and saw the baby owls that have been growing up in a tree on that walk. It’s the first time I’ve been able to see them, so that was cool. See if you can find three owls in the photo below…

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And there’s one in this photo…

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The one time I don’t bring my normal camera. Sigh. And then this hawk as well…

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It was a wildlife-filled hike.

I ended up having to do dinner because girlchild was sunburnt…it’s interesting how many times we plan to have her make dinner and I do it instead, but it’s some weird recipe SHE was gonna do, and then she comes in and helps for the last bit, mostly to plate it, but whatever. So that was last night. And then I was sitting on the couch post-dinner, really trying to motivate myself to stand up, and I saw a show announcement, but it was due this week, and it has to be mailed (so old school), so I got up and did that. Entering online is so much easier than making CDs and packing them up, but whatever. And it’s a long shot, but why not try?

So it was still a late start on the tracing front, but I was efficient last night. This is my normal setup, although most times it’s tea, not wine.

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Phone (keeps track of time and distracts me when I get bored), drink, mechanical pencil, Wonder Under, drawing…TV is off to the top right. Another distraction.

I filled almost this whole yard with tiny pieces of tracing…

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Last night was…um…the crane, all of it, all 100+ pieces of it, and then a piece of seaweed.

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It doesn’t sound like much when I put it that way, but I’m almost through the 1100s now, so well past halfway. I did about 200 pieces in less than an hour and a half. Lots of feathers last night. At this rate, I would be done in four nights, but I also know that at least two of those nights might be a wash. Plus I still have to do student awards and those take FOREVER.

But progress it is. I’m looking forward to the week of the 20th, when I have no school and plenty of time to iron to fabric…plus I should be able to draw as well. What a relief.

Something to Point at…

The closer I get to the end of the school year, the louder my art brain yells about free time and summer days and being on vacation. It’s hard to focus on school stuff at all, because people around you are lazing around, leaning back, taking a break, when we have a run for another 9 days, a sprint if you will. I mean, you can do anything for 9 days, right? OK. I’m pretty sure I can come up with something that I wouldn’t be able to do for 9 days, but right now, I keep telling myself I can get through 9 more days of students and teaching sex ed and dealing with whininess and hyper behavior (oh wait, that’s kind of my household at the moment).

I did take Saturday off though. I had to deliver a quilt to Oceanside, but I got to enjoy some art there (more later) and bought some teeny tiny art, two by high-school students and one by an adult. Go ahead, you guess which is which…

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Top left is the adult (female) and the other two are high-school students (both male). Interesting pieces.

Then I spent a few hours roaming Art on Adams (more pictures later) and seeing mostly mediocre art with some standouts.

Sunday was a whole shit-ton of grading and school stuff (see that’s what happens when you blow it off for a day) and I think every day from here on out will be like that unfortunately. I did make it through all the makeup work, so that’s a plus. And my aide can input grades today and tomorrow.

I finally finished (well, got to a point of ending stuff and frustration) at around 9:30 PM and headed in to trace stuff. Midnight spent most of the time trying to lie on the drawing. There’s the girlchild talking to her…

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Simba is still a spaz, even with a cone on his head. Here he is trying to get me to play with his toy while I’m tracing.

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Girlchild was bored, so I handed her the coloring books I ordered from Jamie Fingal…I didn’t buy them to color, but because my art group is planning on doing a coloring book and I wanted to see what hers looked like. You can find them at that link. Girlchild’s been quite happily coloring while watching TV, in between job applications and brief spurts of cooking madness.

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Cleaning the kitchen is still not her forte.

I traced for over 2 hours. Girlchild had gone to bed because she was tired (I should have noted that as a clue it was getting late…because I stayed up way too late).

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I’m in the 900s now…still not halfway, but getting close. It’s 9 1/2 hours so far…I keep having to adjust my time estimates. It’s somewhere around 20 hours total, I’m guessing, depending on how fast I go. Last night, I was quite fast…250 pieces in 2 hours. I completely lost track of time, which is always nice. I traced cocoons and poppies and passionflower vines, plus a hand, some pine branches, and up the arm, minus the crane. That’s where I stopped: at the crane’s foot.

OK, so I plan to do some more, hit the halfway point even, tonight. Grading may get in the way, but hopefully there will still be time. Remember my goal to have it all traced AND cut out by the time school got out? Eh. It’s looking a little more difficult…but we’ll see. It’s OK…I set the goals with the realization that I might not meet them, but sometimes I’ll beat them. It gives me something to point at.

Plod on…

So when the kids are here, I can’t blast music in the morning. Well. I guess I COULD, but…it would be mean. I didn’t realize I’d gotten used to being able to do that whenever I want. To their credit, they tried to organize the kitchen counters yesterday, but there’s piles for me to deal with, and I don’t have time. This makes me laugh. Because that’s why the kitchen looked like that in the first place: Time. Not enough of it. Been the story of my life. Really, no. It’s just that my priorities are different. Probably most people don’t come home and grade for a couple of hours and then trace Wonder Under for another hour or two. Or iron a few thousand pieces of fabric. Or quilt around a uterus. Boychild wanted to know why I had expired coupons. Plus they found one of my reproduction folders (I was looking for that…it has the printouts of circumcision in there…I was trying to explain that the other day). And the girlchild’s senior photos (whoops. I’m pretty sure I should have handed those out to people like last year. I suck.).

Hey, I am not a perfect parent. For one, it’s just me here. For another, there’s no manual for how to fix this and do that. I’m winging it. After spending all day with 7th graders. I can’t be amazing Supermom. I can just be me.

Speaking of uteri, I am full on into teaching human reproduction now, so my days are full of explaining spontaneous erections and semen and periods. It’s tiring, but it’s easy enough, except my voice is not trained this year…we talk less now that everything is online. So it feels like a stretch to talk almost all period. There’s some minor behaviors to deal with this week, certainly, but we should survive it. It’s almost a relief to get to this unit, because I know they will pay attention and I’ve been teaching it so long that it’s second nature. I used to have to look up the answers to a lot of their questions (because I like to be accurate), but now I just wing most of it. I looked up some data on cervical cancer yesterday. None of today’s questions require more than a basic knowledge of how stuff works. Although there were a couple of boys yesterday that wanted to know when their periods would start. Oh my. Parents? Are you telling them anything? Or are you just fucking with them? Because with those two? I’d be OK with that.

So that’s the daily grind. Grades are due in about a week in a half, so I’m trying to stay on top of it, but it’s hard. I’ll get there. The hard way.

Last night, I managed to go to the gym, finish my book for book club…in July (seriously, I think I’m a month ahead? Plus I am totally Gaiman over Pratchett…Pratchett is funny at all and sometimes really good, but not like Gaiman. Sorry if that’s blasphemy to you.), grade a pile of science journals (not all of them though, because the couch was co-opted by college kids and I was forced to work in here), and finally persuaded myself to come out and start tracing stuff. I was really tired, but I always want to get some time in.

Luckily, I was pretty efficient. Got over 100 pieces traced in about 45 minutes…that’s the channel changer on the light table…the girlchild went to bed about 5 minutes after I went in there, so I got control of the TV! This is another thing that I have to get used to…

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I did the section with the giraffe and started the leaves and grapevines above it.

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I didn’t do a lot of the grapes though. Look at the clock. It’s midnight. You’re tired. But you can see a whole pile of giraffe spots on the right…

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I cut those out as one piece of Wonder Under and then iron that down to one fabric…it saves time. Then when I cut out the fabric, I can cut out each piece. I can’t do the same thing with the grapes in the lower left corner, though, because they overlap, so they’ll have to be a variety of colors. If I were really smart, I’d figure out a 1,2,3,4 range for those and mark them now and draw all the 1’s together, then the 2’s, etc., but I don’t usually like thinking that hard at this stage. So I’ll just have a million small grapey pieces of Wonder Under floating around.

There is no shortage of small pieces in this quilt…with the big pieces tucked behind. Most of the lower torso is now done and I’m moving up into the upper ribcage area. I think I’m in the high 500s now…yup. Checked my notes. So a third of the way through…6 hours and 16 minutes. So 19 hours? Not a bad guess. So much easier to meditate with Wonder Under at night than to do work. That damn mockingbird is still torturing me every night. I had one night last week when he wasn’t out there until almost 3 AM…and then he was further away. I could barely hear him. Last night? He’s back at it, loud as hell. I’m tired of sleeping with a pillow over my head. I tried earplugs, but they make me feel all clogged up (doesn’t help that my sinuses are being all stuffy with allergies).

Anyway. I plod on.

Countdown

There aren’t many days of school left. I’m trying to get caught up, but little things get in the way. Yesterday I bid on a proofreading job…which meant a sample edit…plus some other stuff that needed editing…so I got no grading done. I’m behind. I need to focus today during prep, which is often really hard for me. Here…teach hard for about an hour and a half and then STOP. Then focus on grading stuff. Then teach again. My brain doesn’t like that, so it often refuses. Whatever. Plus I have yard duty before and after school for two weeks, which is a giant clusterfuck to my organization and schedule. Plus the kids emailing me about their grades. Please please give me a giant extra credit packet to fix my grade! I wasn’t gonna deal with that. Bloody hell.

School is making me cranky. Said every teacher the last month of school. Plus other crap. Think I’m gonna just crawl into bed and come out in July.

When I’d finished all the tasks at hand (and I’m sure there’s some I forgot), I did trace stuff. The first thing I did was a full trace of the owl that’s in this drawing…

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I think this is Owl 3.0. He was originally under a rib bone and a uterus, so I drew those bits out.

I’ve done two others (one of them multiple times)…here’s 2.0, still available.

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And 1.0 (although I didn’t think of him as that)…which I made three times in three different colorways for three different people…

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Yeah apparently I have an owl obsession. This new one is small…fits on an 8 1/2 x 11″ piece of paper, but has about 100 pieces. That guy up there has about 26.

Anyway, from there, I went on to the real business of tracing…apparently very slowly, because I only got about 60 pieces done in an hour…

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I traced a uterus and some tulips and the background stuff behind the giraffe. And then I looked at the clock. Time flies when you’re staring at a light table apparently. I’m on my third yard of Wonder Under, although I’m still filling in smaller pieces on the other sheets.

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Told you this wouldn’t be a quick one. That’s all three yards laid out on the table. You can see I just started filling in the third one on the right.

When I shut down the tracing, I sat down on the couch for a quick moment…just to relax a bit after standing all day. Midnight was looking for attention (I guess puppy got most of it this evening)…

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So there was some attention given.

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I spend a lot of time petting furry creatures. It makes up for being yelled at and dealing with teenaged crisis. And trying to bid on jobs when I have to BE at my other job. And getting left alone a lot when I really don’t want to be. Rough night. So today I go on to teach puberty (because that’s an easy thing to teach to kids who are going through it)…and tonight there is exercise on the calendar (yay!) and I will trace some more. And pet more furry beasts. And count down one more day until summer break.

Listen to the Body

Ah the challenges of the end of the school year, and your college-aged kids coming home, and a puppy in the house, and all the things that need to be done. The puppy now has been neutered…although it was problematic. Poor guy had one undescended testicle…I wonder if that’s why he hadn’t been neutered yet…they were waiting or they realized it was more expensive to do? It’s done now. But he’s not a happy camper…

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He does have plenty of people around to love him and help him maneuver with the cone, although all he really wants to do is lick his butt, and he’ll have to wait 2 weeks for that joy. He mostly slept last night…a very different puppy to the one we normally have.

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We all went out to dinner at the Indian place…oh my golly, I forget how good that place is. I don’t go at all when the kids are gone, unfortunately (I should order takeaway)…and I usually get multiple meals out of one dinner. Yummy.

Then we came home and rallied around puppy for a while, until the kids went off to bed or room and I started tracing Wonder Under on the newest quilt…which currently is called Earth Mother 2016…I’m assuming I’ll come up with a better name eventually.

I didn’t get far in the numbers, because the whole bottom section is a giant half Earth and the pieces are pretty large.

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So I traced the entire Earth part and got partway around the edge of it until I thought it was pretty late…and I knew I had multiple places to be this morning, so I needed to sleep. I didn’t have the mental energy to do a lot else last night, even though I brought home a huge pile of grading for the three-day weekend. One of the things that sucks about being a teacher is that every single three-day weekend is during school and you end up grading through at least one of the days. Sundays are already trashed by lesson planning etc on a regular weekend, so it’s nice to have one extra day, because it means I will try to treat at least one day of the weekend as a real day off…no grading, no errands, no cleaning. Just relaxing and reading and hiking and hanging out. If that works.

But I do hope to get more tracing done on this over the weekend…around the grading and the artist drop-offs and pick-ups and artist talk and all the other stuff. And right this second? I need a nap. Sad but true. Massive headache plus tired. Not a good mix. Might be worth setting the timer for 20 minutes and putting a pillow over my head. Just a quickie. Listen to the body…it’s telling you something.

Over the Hump

The household is full. All kids have returned home. Boychild is even skinnier again. Says the new jeans from last summer (winter?) are falling off again. He goes to college and loses weight. Bizarre.

They were all in bed before me, though. The girlchild didn’t sleep well the night before and the boy, well it was 2 AM his time.

Me? I was in the mood to deal with the damn drawing. First I filled in the hole with passionflowers…

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They popped into my head because I was searching for vines and I remembered these at a friend’s house. I used to have one bush here but it died. In the drawing, I wrapped all around the last bit of the space. Total drawing time was about 13 hours. It took 33 minutes to fill in that last space, done yesterday afternoon instead of doing any grading. Or cleaning. It was a long day of frog dissections followed by a doctor’s appointment. I was tired. I needed to draw…

Girlchild on the couch, Midnight on my drawing. It’s OK…I’m not drawing where she’s sitting.

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But they are lying where I need to be standing.

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I tried to photograph the whole drawing, but it was dark by then…

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Wow, that’s a crappy picture. Sigh. I’m still not sure about the big empty space on the right, but I’m thinking about it as I number the piece. I may add something before I finish.

Yes, I started numbering. Because I wasn’t tired yet. Well, that’s not true. I was tired. I just wasn’t willing to stop yet…

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I didn’t number the whole thing though. I got to about the middle of the torso and piece 536. My rough guess is between 1500 and 2000 pieces. We’ll see how wrong I am…maybe I will finish tonight.

I’m glad I finally made it over the hump with this one and finished the drawing. It was kinda kicking my butt. I just got stuck and couldn’t get it done. I think it was more about all the other things I was trying to get done and worrying over, and then I’d get to the drawing and I was too tired to suss out how to finish it. I have two more drawings I need to get started on…both for November due dates, so it seems like plenty of time, but not for two. I could easily do this one and one more big one before November, but I’m not sure about a third. We’ll see.

But first, I have to go to that place that gives me a paycheck (give? I work my ass off for that). The last unit finishes today, and then we start human reproduction after the long weekend. That unit is kind of easy, although hard on the voice. At least I have their attention. This is one of the units I get to keep for next year…although it will be harder to teach it without all the body systems and genetics stuff before it that we usually teach. We’ll have to think about that.

Misfit…

I’m listening to this right now…

https://www.ted.com/talks/lidia_yuknavitch_how_a_misfit_found_her_voice#

That word misfit. “All I had to do was be a voice to the story.” Telling the story can save your life. Funny that word misfit. I used the word “alienated” when I was living in Britain, because I so obviously didn’t belong, but honestly, there are times now, here in my own country, when I feel the same. Anyway. The art. It saves me.

Puppy was a barking beast Sunday night, so yesterday was full of my tired and student crazy. Some days you just wonder what’s going on in their heads. Classroom management is a moving target. Behaviors are awesome, and then they degrade into looney tunes.

So I was exhausted enough to nap briefly on the couch when I got home, with girlchild on the other couch, a cat on my chest, a dog perched on my hip. Then I managed to get my butt off the couch and take the big dog for a fast walk…she and I booked it around the 3 miles. Girlchild is still recovering from her existence, so I left puppy with her. Funny that one of the things I was looking forward to when I got home was the girlchild cooking, but I cooked last night. And then spent another hour trying to get the boychild’s room done…he comes home tomorrow. No, it’s still not done, but it will be. I’m close.

So what to do after that? Between projects…your brain just sort of flails a bit. Does a lot of “I don’t wanna” and “Don’t make me…” until I make it. I need this drawing to be done so I can go on to the next stage. An hour later…

I added a homeless woman, a series of cocoons and butterflies of unknown origin, and poppies. The right side is probably done. I think I might have something on the left wrap around the column in the middle, but I haven’t figured that out yet. There’s a space above the butterfly that bugs me.

And once that’s done, I’ll spend an hour (at least) numbering it. That’s probably not happening tonight. But maybe. Today is the start of frog dissections, so it’s two long hard exhausting days. I’ll be glad when it’s over. I love showing the kids the parts and how they all fit together, but the managing of all the stuff and getting through the whole lab with enough time left over for clean up makes it a difficult day.

But the good news is that I’m close to getting the next project started…although I’m half debating doing another smaller one. No. NO. You are going to do the big hard heavy one and then you will feel better about getting the next one on the list done, and maybe you’ll have time for a small one in between. Seriously, this project is daunting. It feels huge. Except it probably isn’t any more huge than the big one I did last year. So whatever. Just do it.

I Especially Need…

I had plans for art yesterday, but in the end, my job and life got in the way. I let myself be OK with that because part of life was picking up the girlchild from the airport and another part was taking a long walk with small beastie…he can do three miles, in case you were wondering…he wasn’t exactly sure he could do it about 2/3’s of the way through it, but he did it. Although it had zero effect on his rampant hyperness.

I have to say, although he’s cute and all (everyone says it), he can be a handful. This morning, he finally was calm enough to come near Kitten without hissing and growling occurring. But even then, they are at an uneasy standoff.

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Hopefully with some more people in the house, this will get easier, because I’m pretty low on sleep right now with Mr. Barkypants getting his fluff in a huff every time a bird chirps or an animal wanders past my house (it’s a fairly frequent occurrence). And for me to say I’m low on sleep is something…since I don’t get much in the first place.

Girlchild is asleep down the hall, although apparently she’s driving me to work because we’re down to one car. She’s been out of school for a week and a half, but flew to my brother’s house so she could see her cousins, who alternately charmed her and annoyed the crap out of her (as all good cousins do). Tree climbing was one of the things she did…here she is upside down in a photo she liked, but I edited for her, on the fly, on the phone (yes, I know you can do better, but compared to what it used to look like, I thought this was pretty good).

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Looks fun. I should try it some day.

So although I’m (as the girlchild says) a little salty that no art was made, there were good reasons for it. Although I graded and cooked dinner from scratch, so the first? Eh. It rules my life while I’m in school. The second? Good job.

It’s hard to explain to people what being a teacher is like on a regular basis while we’re in school when they just see your long “vacations” (we work through many of them or go to professional development, and summer is unpaid, so that’s not a vacation). Understand that there isn’t a single day when I don’t work…and I don’t get paid for those hours, any more than I get paid for the hours I do almost every single day after I get home from work. And even though I thought I was doing a bang-up job this year saving enough money to get through the summer, one big car issue just kicked my ass on that, much as it did last year…my cushion is now gone. Or it will be as soon as I pay that credit card bill. I do this every year, try to survive the summer. I don’t go on vacations anywhere. During the school year, we can’t take off for more than a few days without causing a ruckus. Every year, I have to rethink my plan for food and peeing during the day, as they move my prep period almost every single year. I’ve had 2nd, 3rd, 7th, and 8th, and this next year, it will be 4th with lunch following directly. Which sucks for a diabetic. It means I’ll have to remember to eat during class, and I can already tell you, I don’t remember that shit.

Anyway. As I get closer to my time off for the summer, for the time I need to recharge from a very difficult year, a year where the kids took months longer than usual to finally figure out the consequences of not turning work in (and some still haven’t figured that out), my brain is getting excited…not just for the mostly uninterrupted artmaking time, but also for being able to pee when I need to, for being able to have lunch out (things teachers can’t do), for being able to run errands during the week because the stores are still open, for not feeling physically and mentally drained by a particularly hard day…or week even. For getting my Sundays back! No lesson planning, no parent email, no updating the website(s) we use for school. No dragging grading with me to my parents’ house for dinner.

I’ve done other jobs. I know the difference. I deserve my unpaid leave in summer. Without it, you would have very few people returning to a mostly thankless job each Fall. Of course, we do it for the kids…not the money…not the time off. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need a break. I especially need a break.

Eighteen days and counting.

I Should Be Able to Pull That Off

Again with the sleep! Oh well…it’s often my own fault. I did choose to go to bed late. Well, the art brain decided it for me, didn’t it? Don’t have much control over her some days. At least I slept well for the few hours I slept. Today is going to be a long day, though, and not having enough sleep is not usually a good thing in those cases. Lots of tea…should help.

I’m still grading every night…trying to get caught up. Actually finished one of the major projects last night, so I’m feeling pretty good about that. But there are still 7 things on my to-grade list. That’s not so good. Oh well. I do what I can.

I wanted to be done with the ironing last night. I’ve spent a little over 5 hours so far.

I was talking about this yesterday…ironing the stuff on top separately so I could see where the pieces went…

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Then transferring that as a whole to the main section. It works pretty well, although the flesh color here is light enough that I can see OK through it…not great, just OK.

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This is where I should’ve stopped if I’d really wanted a decent night’s sleep…I think that was just before midnight.

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But so close! I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to bed with just that arm undone. So I kept going…

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Even though the last section was cactus with a million spikes…

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Yeah. I like it. And it’s not even on the dark background yet. Or stitched or quilted or anything. The outlining quilting will totally change her.

See now I’m at a point where it’s hard NOT to work on her every day. That’s a good thing. Although I already know I’m busy every night this week and Saturday I have a 4-hour training, so the odds of my getting anything significant done on her before Sunday is pretty low. Which sucks.

If I were smart (which sometimes I am), I’d get a binding on the other quilt I recently finished so I could hand sew it at one of the meetings I’m at. I took a quilt that needed finishing to a staff meeting once. Just to sew the binding on. I had a male principal (7 out of the 8 have been male) and he was livid, sure I wasn’t paying attention. I wonder how people in the education business don’t understand how people’s brains work. I pay better attention in afternoon meetings when I have handwork, because (1) it keeps me awake and (2) it entertains the part of my brain that is completely bored and wanting to act out. I had the same issue in my summer high-school government class, and he flipped out too because I was knitting. So I don’t sew things in school any more, even though I want to. I have a union meeting today and I often draw or grade while the meeting goes on. I still take notes and pay attention, but honestly, I’d be paying more attention if I were sewing.

No, I’m not teaching my students to sew. I think in their case, at least at their level, it wouldn’t help the attention span at all. Plus needles and scissors. I can’t even let them have rulers on a regular basis. Being more online has helped a bit with ruler dumbassery in the classroom…we just don’t use them as much. But I don’t stop the doodlers. I was a doodler. I still am.

Hopefully tonight I’ll get her ironed onto a background at least. That will be progress, and it’s not a huge step, so even though I’m probably not getting dinner until 9, and I’m about to fall back asleep now, I should be able to pull that off.

Should.