Friday Tired

Hey. It’s Friday. I’m Friday tired. Maybe more so. I find sitting for so long makes my feet swell up or something by the end of the week. I think it’s the chair or the height of the chair or just sitting for so damn long, but by 7th period, I just can’t stand to sit any more. I don’t get the kids who try to work while lying in bed, because I’d just fall asleep. Oh wait. Some of them do. Their camera is off and I’m talking to them and typing to them and there’s nothing…except probably some drool and snoring on the other end. I get it. This is hard.

My district officially made the announcement yesterday that kids would be going back September 9th. At my school, they will phase in in groups, so our kids probably have another 4-6 weeks until we switch. I wonder which kids I will end up with…and whether I will be teaching for multiple schools. Sounds hard. It’s all hard. Just give me a plan period with my co-teacher so I don’t go insane trying to plan it all myself. She scales me back. Then I scale her back. Then she makes things and I edit them. Or sometimes I make them and she makes me edit them. We always make it too long, too much to start. Right now, especially, too long is not working for any of us.

I’m trying out a different teaching location in the house today. I tried it back in April, but it was too hot. It might still be too hot…we’ll see. It’s more an internet test, because I got kicked out of Zoom 5 times in one class period yesterday, and that gets old. Tuesday was hellacious. All day getting dropped, sometimes just on the laptop; sometimes on all the devices. Fun stuff. Also I broke the toilet on Wednesday.

OK, the parts were just old and they were making noise, leaky noises, so I fussed with it and broke things that were plastic and probably 20 years old. So I don’t feel really bad. Plus I’m the one who had to go buy the kit at Home Depot after work so I could make the boychild install it.

He wanted to wait a day, and I’m like no, I need a working toilet so I don’t have to go down the long hallway in the dark at 4 AM and by the time I get to the other bathroom, my body is like (a) nah, I’m good. Don’t need to pee any more, and (b) now I am also wide awake PERK. Fuck that. I need sleep.

So it’s fixed. Now if I could get him to go fix the mailbox. Because IDK how to do that either and I don’t have the time or patience.

This was me trying to grade Wednesday afternoon at the vet with the old lady. Google Classroom has not been doing a good job with the iPad version of the app…

Which is unfortunate.

Wednesday night, I ironed a little. I have no idea how many pieces are left to iron because all I’m doing is all the little pieces in the body that AREN’T fleshy bits. So from the 200s to the 700s, but not all of them because a bunch were already ironed because they were skin.

Thursday night, another quick run at the ironing. About 45 minutes after 11 PM…

Yes, those piles look different. To me. Not a lot. I ironed a glove, a thermometer, some eyeballs, some virions, IDK what else. I’m getting close to done…

This is all that’s left…dirt, fire, blood, hair, lungs, heart. OK. That’s a lot. But I could bang it out in a night if I weren’t so tired.

I’m always tired at the beginning of the year. This is different, true, but the tired part is normal.

I stitched for a while as I listened to Beth Smith talk about the contemporary quilt exhibit she curated for the Oceanside Museum of Art…my piece is on the right, So Cal Mama. The slide show of the exhibit is on their website, so you can see it.

They’ve installed the show and it will be up until February 21…their hope is that businesses will open by then…

I don’t have a list of the other artists. This video will be up on the OMA site soon.

At least we could see the show.

Swallow Me Whole got into Quilts=Art=Quilts…so I’ll be shipping her off in a few weeks…

And here’s the morning, hopeful but predicting warm…

I’m hoping for the chance to stand up and walk around between classes. I’m hoping for everything to work techwise. I’m hoping that the tea kicks in soon. I’ve been trying to go to bed earlier and it doesn’t help most nights…I can’t fall asleep earlier. I’m hoping to get some ironing in. The man and I have a date night planned for tomorrow, but we’re a little nervous about the dinner part. We’ve agreed that if we get there and the table setup worries us with proximity to others (tables 6 feet apart does not mean people 6 feet apart), then we will apologize and get takeout. I’m hoping the girlchild’s interview goes well. I’m hoping the weather starts to cool off. I’m hoping the new schoolroom setup works better. We’ll see.

I Like Goals…

I’m trying to write in the morning again, and I suspect I won’t finish. I’m in a meeting for a kid that started before I’m officially “at school”…and it’s complicated, so I’m pretty sure this won’t get done until later. And with a vet appointment later, I’m going to have an issue getting it written.

It’s going to be a long day.

Monday night, I did the crazy thing of picking all the flesh fabrics for the largest figure…and these are all the pieces that WEREN’T flesh colored…

So right now, they’re all covered up so cats won’t make a mess in there. Here’s all the flesh bits laid out with Kitten supervising…

So I did about 4 hours of ironing Monday night because the girlchild called me from her drive back from Maine to see her cousin, who’s starting college this week there. So then I just kept ironing stuff down. I probably should have done some schoolwork. Oh well. Here’s everything I’ve used so far…

This thing. So not helpful.

She mostly sleeps, but sometimes is in my personal space a little more than I need her to be.

I’m still listening to the meeting…but the mom is late, so I’m trying to get this done. Like that. That cat.

It’s still hot, but not as bad as it’s been. I think today is supposed to be a bit warmer. And tomorrow. I’m done with it personally. These guys are still hiding from the parents’ dog.

Last night, I wasn’t able to deal with ironing…so I quilted the small Patreon quilt.

For the next Patreon video, I’ll probably show some finishing techniques…I will be binding this small piece, but I have some others that will be finished in other ways.

OK, well I finished…so today I will teach. I will go to the vet. I will try to get some work done at the vet. Ha! In the car. And then hopefully I will exercise and make some art. That’s the goal. I like goals. They help.

The Mondayness of It All…

So it’s Monday morning on the first 5-day week back to school…and Zoom is out nationwide. You know, the program we use to actually DO online teaching with the kids? The video thing? Yeah that. I’m amused. It may be back up by the time we start school, but this certainly complicates shit. Last week it was the program we use to log all the kids in…this week, Zoom. I’m ready to go when they are, though. Attendance might be an issue today. I’m laughing.

In other news, it’s still warm here, although it’s cloudy and not so bad at the moment…it’ll get warmer later. I look forward to the months where it’s freezing here (not really, because we don’t get snow) and I have to wear socks. But right now, I’ve got those two fans on me at 8 in the morning and I’m supposed to be working. So I’m going to do that and finish this later. You won’t know the difference, because it will all get posted later. Just know that I thought about starting this in the morning. I even resized all the photos, but the girlchild called and it’s Monday and that’s just a thing. A thing that slows us down. The Mondayness of it all.

It’s still Monday, but now it’s after 6 PM. I just finished working…well, maybe. I really should do more, but I’m not sure I have it in me. I started at 7:30 AM, took a break at lunch and to water stuff after school, then drove to school to drop stuff off, and then back here to finish what’s on my to-do list. There’s still one thing on there, but I’m not sure I have enough brainpower to do it right now. So there’s that.

OK, so Friday, we did cover pages for our first unit, and although most of them did it online using Google searches for images and super-quick font and color choices, I couldn’t help but go old school.

I showed them how to do this, but I think I only had one kid try it. I’m going to color it in and then upload it onto mine…just because. Sigh. I miss this.

Friday night, I walked…first time all week. It was a long and tiring and hot week. Friday was no less long, hot, and tiring…I just couldn’t take the lack of exercise any more.

It was late and kinda cool and sorta nice.

I was a slow-moving sloth in the heat and tiredness of it all though. My feet were hot at the end, so I used the pool…

I’m not much of a swimmer, you may have noticed. Mostly I think the pool is for the dog.

I continued the walk at Lake Murray on Saturday evening, part of my plan to reinstate Date Night out of the house and out and about, minus the crowds at art openings and restaurants…

It was cooler outside…

Plus the whole sitting at home thing just sucks. Ask him…or her…I don’t know how to sex an alien.

I also got some stitching in Saturday night, but mostly I was tired…

Sunday, I used up most of the sourdough starter discard to make the next two weeks’ worth of frozen pancakes for a quick breakfast…

And then Sunday night, after working on school stuff for about 4 or 5 hours, I finished stitching this…

It needs a bath, some ironing, a hoop, and then a place on Etsy.

Then I did the stitch down on this Patreon reward…small is easy!

She got some ironing as well…

And then I pinbasted it…

So she’s ready to be quilted tonight.

The last hour of the evening was dedicated to ironing the newest quilt pieces onto fabric…

I didn’t get far…

Only a few colors so far…

But I did lay out the next 100 pieces of Wonder Under so I’d be ready to go tonight. I hope. Movement in the right direction.

The boychild is cooking dinner. I need to go dip my feet in the pool again. I watered everything, finished a packet for a kid in a shelter, talked on the phone to a bunch of people, made a vet appointment, and I think I’m ready to teach tomorrow. Although I think I have one other thing I need to work on tonight. I just can’t remember what it is. Oh well. So be it.

The Two Newest…

I finally got some new work photographed. I finished one in early April, but like no one was leaving the house then, except the essential workers and crazy people, so I held onto it until I finished the big one in July, and then dropped both of them off. I’m still really paranoid about leaving the house and interacting with humans…it’s like my introversion has gained a legitimate excuse for more hermitude than normal. Hopefully I’ll be able to reverse that…in like a year or so when it’s OK to come out.

Anyway, I keep forgetting to post about these, so here’s Hold On, drawn back in February (?), you know, when COVID-19 was barely a twinkle in your daddy’s eye…

She’s 53” w x 43 ¼” h. She’s obviously about climate change and our general destruction of the planet…

These things are always heavy on my mind…

Although apparently I also had missiles on my mind…something to do with North Korea, I suspect, with the president pissing off people who like to blow shit up.

I put some positive things in there, things we’re trying to put in to counteract the crazy, like those windmills harvesting wind energy.

It might be too little too late, my friend.

Even the bees are dying out. So she’ll get entered in some shows in the next few months.

And then in April, I drew this giant beast of a quilt, Coronawood…

She’s 77″ w x 81″ h. Did I say a beast of a quilt? Yeah, she’s large. I just kept drawing until I thought I should stop.

Those angels have shown up in a quilt before…although less angry, I think.

This Earth Mother isn’t really sure how to fix anything. None of them are.

Why Coronawood? In the beginning, and even now, it sometimes seems like this is a movie, a made-up thing, not that I don’t believe in the virus, I really really do…I just don’t believe in all the made-up shit that people are using as excuses to not wear masks, to not stay home, to not slow the spread, to not take this seriously. It’s like a bad movie, made up in Hollywood, like a Sharknado series of the COVID type. And I keep waiting for either all the red shirts to die out (Star Trek reference, sorry, geek alert) or for the good person to show up who will solve it all and make humanity human again.

Seems like I will be waiting for that happy ending for a long time.

Remember Flatten the Curve? They aren’t even saying that anymore because we so obviously couldn’t even do that for very long before our need to party, gather, holiday, dine out, drink in a public establishment, or whatever took over.

This is why I’m teaching at home…for a long time. Because of this virus and our inability in the US to believe in science and elect intelligent officials…or at least officials who have the brainpower to realize they don’t know everything and trust the science to the scientists and the doctors.

This quilt is beautiful and haunting and deadly. I wonder how many COVID quilts I will make before it’s something we can fix or heal or vaccinate or avoid or whatever. Maybe one more? Maybe 200. Hopefully toward the lower number.

Happy Saturday all. I’m gonna take my heat-rashy elbow pits and my tired brain and try to art something before I have to work on school shit all tomorrow. I’ll post these two over on the Recent Work page in a bit with prices…interesting that, a conversation about prices, since another Etsy piece sold yesterday. My prices are all based on how much time each quilt takes to make. It’s actual real math. I have a formula. They’re worth it. Thanks to those who help me make more by taking one or two or three off my hands. I love to make. I also need to pay off my daughter’s college loans and eventually retire from teaching (not soon, don’t panic). So I charge appropriately for the making. Enjoy them!

Paltry Progress…

Hey, so let’s see if I can post before school today. I don’t have much time, but I don’t have much to talk about. I’m tired. Sitting for this long is hard. I want to do jumping jacks in between classes and maybe run a mile to get my butt and back to be friends with me again. But whatever. Kids are learning something, although it might be that they’re learning how NOT to be a jerk on a collaborative assignment. Sigh. We’ll get there.

It is Friday though, and that’s a plus. A short week with the kids, although it hasn’t been a short week by any means. Next week will be the challenge…5 days on every day. I really need it to cool off some more so I can walk in the afternoons. Maybe tonight. Also I said I’d post photos of the two newest quilts, and that isn’t happening today either.

I did iron last night…I did NOT iron Wednesday night. I was too tired. Here’s last night’s paltry progress…well, I did some flying COVID virions…like they do…

And the arm of death. Or something. I’m not really sure. A bird. Little bits and pieces on the other side of the quilt. I ironed about 100 pieces, which isn’t bad for the second day of school. Hopefully I will get more done tonight…

It’s coming along, slowly but surely, which is how I get everything done during the school year. Except housecleaning…it usually gets short shrift…although I need to vacuum so I can do Pilates without being covered in dog hair. Bleck. So I’m about 200 pieces in with about 630 to go. Small progress, like I said.

I had a stitching meeting last night and finally finished the top of Folk Tails by Sue Spargo. It was the 2015 block of the month, but I didn’t start it until 2016. Four years then. Well I don’t work on it regularly…that’s probably part of it. But it was a very enjoyable quilt to make, with all the animals and details in it. I enjoy doing some embroidery after eating dinner, just a half hour or so, although for a good long while, I only worked on this at my monthly stitching meeting, which used to be in person in a Barnes & Noble bookstore coffee shop, back in the old days, when we could meet in person. Now it’s every two weeks on Zoom.

Now I just need to sandwich, pinbaste, quilt, and bind. Quilting this one is a little scary. I’m sure it will be fine. Laughing over here. Tears coming out of eyes. Well, that might be because of school, but whatever.

It’s Friday. I’m gonna teach all day and then hopefully walk my tired body around somewhere and then iron for a bit before I collapse. Tomorrow includes Pilates (my body says thanks) and a mammogram (my body won’t say thanks, but it’s for the best), and then whatever art I can fill in around that.

Permission to Take a Break

I’m not sure when I thought I would write this blogpost. Back in the old days, I would get up around 6:30, take my shower, get dressed, feed the animals I’m responsible for, grab a cup of tea and something that approximated breakfast, and I’d sit down at the computer and bang out a blogpost. I did that almost every day, Monday-Saturday. I took Sunday mornings off most week and the occasional other day, but pretty much this was how I cleared my brain for the day and dealt with any lingering anxieties from weirdass dreams and the previous day’s existence. Then I’d brush my teeth, take my meds, pack my lunch, and drive to work to teach all day. Come home, repeat the next morning. Work was a separate place you went to and although as a teacher, it’s really hard NOT to bring it home, at least it was at a different location and sometimes you’d treat yourself and leave the pile of papers and the work computer AT WORK, where they belonged. Permission to take a break.

Ah, no longer. I basically live in this one room of the house, venturing out only to pee and heat up my tea, with the occasional walk down the hallway just to move my legs. And here I am, at 10:30 at night, writing the blogpost I was supposed to write this morning. In the same place I sat all day. School starts earlier now, so I get up 15 minutes earlier, and granted, this was the first day of online school, so maybe I’ll get into a routine and there will be less morning panic about whether or not I have everything set up right (we didn’t. I was retyping a Google Question at 8:09 AM for a 9:25 AM class, which isn’t actually THAT abnormal, but I don’t like it). Two computers, three monitors, this is before the boychild brought in two pieces of wood that go across from the left desk to the printer shelf, notionally for the mouse…

Or also for a tripod that holds my phone, which is dialed into the Zoom class so I can show the chemistry demo.

That’s calcium chloride, cornstarch, and baking soda on the red plate. Don’t get excited. I didn’t blow anything up, although we had color change, gas, temperature change, and odor, all created in one fell swoop. Fun stuff. Totes would do this lab in person. Maybe in 2021.

School…exhausting teachers everywhere, every August and September, but especially in 2020. Rumor has it my school will be back in person on September 9. And my guess is that it will take about 3-4 weeks before at least one cohort is quarantined. Ah well. It is what it is. Kids will learn something this year. They will survive. I don’t subscribe to the theory that this is going to put them all behind. It might even drill some resilience into them. Some of them. It’s worse for the kids in schools that already struggle to bring kids up…losing a year when they’re already a few behind…but I believe some kids will still get it, they’ll still find a way to learn in the chaos of all this. And it’s not like we did this on purpose, invited a pandemic into our midst. Oh wait. Maybe some people are making it worse. Sigh. Vote dammit. Vote vote vote. Like our lives depend on it.

What else? I did iron the small Patreon piece together on Monday night…

Making small things is sometimes fun…

It didn’t have a lot of pieces and went together fairly quickly, in maybe an hour…

I got it ironed onto a background…

I’m hoping to get it finished this weekend.

I sold two pieces on Etsy, so that was also nice. I figure it’s about 30 decent bottles of wine.

I’m joking. I don’t need that much wine. Not yet. Give me a month and I might change my mind.

Then last night, I cleaned up and set up to iron the new Daughter quilt together. This drawing hangs in the background of my school Zooms, so I have to remember to pin it back up every day before school starts.

There’s boobs on that thing! Oh my. My office isn’t huge…I had two fans going last night, but it was still a million degrees in here.

The ironing board gets moved around and out of the way on a regular basis, then pulled back to the middle of the room for this stage. For reference, the desk setup I showed you earlier is to the right of the top corner of the ironing board. Like RIGHT THERE.

I got just about the first 100 pieces ironed, most of the first human figure.

I’m totally exhausted tonight and not sure I have the energy for any of it. I’d LIKE to iron. I just don’t know if I have the energy. It took about an hour after school started of just sitting there before I could think straight again. And then I did Pilates and book club, which is part of the tired, but they were both things I needed.

It’s still hot here…

Which explains the prostrate animals everywhere.

I think it was actually a tiny bit cooler today.

Definitely cooler out on the deck in the late afternoon…

But also buggy as shit and I was so tired, I needed a cup of tea to do Pilates.

The first week is always exhausting, wherever you are. My team ate lunch in a socially distanced matter, with my being dialed in on FaceTime. We talk about kid issues during lunch, so it was useful. I’m still glad I’m not on campus. I miss everyone, I miss my room, I miss my materials and my setup, but I don’t want to be there right now.

Getting used to early mornings again.

At least the sunrises are occasionally pretty.

I made this Monday. Still not airy enough.

But it tastes good, better than what I get at the store.

This is not the lizard that belonged to the tail from the other night…well, first of all, it’s a gecko, not a lizard…

Second of all, the lizard was tiny and this is not.

I have a fan who lives near where Form Not Function recently opened at the Carnegie Center for Arts & History in New Albany, Indiana. My piece I Can’t Be Your Superwoman is flanked here by Helen Geglio’s Wisdom Cloak: Invisible Visionary on the left and Tracy Taylor’s The Distance Between Us on the right…

Definitely prime real estate on that wall…

Wish I could’ve seen it, but these pictures help…

She won an Honorable Mention, which is nice. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get my act together and post pictures of the two newest quilts, one of which has been done since March or April, but it’s taken me and the photographer a while to get our acts together.

OK, let’s be real…it’s after 11 PM, I’m exhausted after my first day back to work, and I get to do it all again tomorrow. It’s OK if I don’t iron tonight. Tomorrow is another day. I really want to iron. I enjoy this part of the process…but this is also one of the hottest rooms in the house with the lights on…it’s possible I might be able to replace the bulbs in here for cooler ones, which will help, but also it needs to be cooler tomorrow (it won’t be, I don’t think). Ah well. It will be cooler eventually. And I will get used to the schedule and rally sooner. And more often.

So Thursday is for artmaking and Wednesday is for survival and then sleep, which is where I’m headed now…completely backwards to when I usually write. And Friday is just Friday, part of which is Not Here Yet. Man I’m tired. Peace out. See you later.

Messy Around the Edges…

Ah yes. You should know that fully half the things I thought I could get done yesterday did not happen, but I did send 20 emails with mostly (hopefully) correct information about schedules. I remember now what I hate about sending the same (mostly) email to every student…finding all their parent emails, making sure I change the things that need to be different. It’s just time-consuming. The extra communication we do because it’s all online is a lot. My co-teacher is planning to leave her computer at work (she is going in to her classroom) every weekend. IDK how I will possibly do that and get everything done. I will try? Aack. We’ll see. It’s hard to find work/life balance as a teacher no matter what, but when it’s happening at home anyway, it just gets ugly.

I did get a few things done yesterday that weren’t work-related. I persuaded my sourdough starter to be happy and on my fourth loaf of bread, I might be doing it right. Of course, I haven’t cooked it yet, so WTF do I know?

This is what the weather app was saying yesterday.

Today it puts the high temp at 98 with a real feel of 108 (I can vouch for those real feels), and then Thursday will be the highest, with rolling blackouts from our electricity company. Now to clarify, I don’t have air conditioning. We sweat and run fans. And sometimes just stand in the open doorway of the fridge. I could put the computer in there and see how that works. I might have to go to school for a few days…I’d rather not, but we’ll see how it goes today and tomorrow, which are prep days.

Every day, Calli begs to go in the pool to fetch pine cones. She can only manage 4 or 5 short fetches (only one tiny swim, mostly just reaching out)…and then she’s tired.

Then we sit out on the deck until she dries off a little. I was doing bread prep during this time, so I kept getting up and going inside to mix something or so stretch and folds, but often I try to make it a break in the day, so I will read. Sometimes I don’t have the brainpower for reading, though. We all get that way. It has to be later in the afternoon, or the deck is too damn hot, so it will hopefully correspond to ‘after school’ times.

We watch a lot of hummingbirds out there.

Sometimes they hover right in front of me, trying to figure out what I am? I am never smart enough to get my camera going for those…too fascinated by their closeness.

Am I the only one who is going back to work full time and trying to figure out how to still make sourdough bread on a regular basis?

It was 10:30 PM when I finished the school emails and dinner and all the other things. That’s when I made art. I needed to sort the Wonder Under to make it easier to iron them all together.

Nova wanted pets, so I did that first. Then sorted…it only took 43 minutes, and that was with a dog-peeing break in the middle.

So much for getting ironing and cleaning done in here yesterday. I sorted.

And then it was late and I was hot and tired and eventually (too late) went to bed. I heard it sprinkling briefly around 5:30 AM, but it was dry by the time I got up. It’s cloudy right now, which is delightful and I hope it stays, but it probably won’t. Ugh. My hair is hot, my bra is hot, everything on my body is hot. I was looking at this slide show of teach-at-home spaces and was relieved that mine is not the only one that was messy around the edges, but I didn’t see any set up by a pool…which makes sense with the whole water/electricity thing, but I don’t know why I can’t teach poolside. Like computer on the side, me in the pool. It could work.

Here’s Kitten dealing with the heat in the paper box…

And my morning view. Ugh. Too early.

At least it was pretty. OK, working all day at things…weird because usually one of the major things would be putting my room back together, and who the fuck knows when I will do that again. But there is plenty else to work on…all on a computer, unfortunately. Then a break to wet the dog. I don’t know what MY exercise looks like this week, unless I walk in the dark (it’s a thing). And then I will clean up in here for real this time…I did start yesterday. I organized the remaining pieces for Etsy and cut the felt backings and put the felt back in the garage to get it out of the way. So it’s not that I did nothing. It just wasn’t enough. Hopefully today I can start ironing to fabric.

School starts in 2 minutes. I should pee.

A Perfectly Normal Sunday

So many days of hot. OK. It’s been two days of hot. But more are coming. It’s not going away. So I’m just becoming one with the sweat. And drinking lots of water. Here was Friday’s alternate desk report. I do have two desks and this one is in full sun in the morning.

It hit 104 degrees later. Fun stuff.

I’m doing lots of schoolwork at the moment, tweaking things, checking links. Everything has to be made new because online schooling is a thing. Our county has been under 100 cases per 100,000 people for the last three, maybe four days, so schools may open in two weeks. Scarily. PIVOT! The confusion between going from all online to some kids back in school full time and some part time is going to be very very real. So don’t REALLY get to know these kids, because they might not be yours in a few weeks. Sort of mind-boggling really.

You probably won’t get this if you’re not a teacher right now, but these two words, Synchronous and Asynchronous, are not only hard to type and say, but my English-learner kids don’t have a fucking clue what they mean.

I have to remind myself that A means NOT, so NOT at the same time. Except sometimes it is. The word HOMEWORK no longer has any meeting, right? If I can’t remember it,

I spent a lot of time on Friday yelling at my cable company and probably my neighbor kids learned some new bad words. But they are lying pieces of shit (the cable tech people, not the neighbor kids). I finally drove to the cable store (damn, if I’d known that was an option, I totally would have just done that), but still had to spend another hour with the online chat person to get it set up. So much for self-activation of the cable box…or for anything else, honestly. That was 8 people on chat, 3 on the phone, and one in person at the store. Hopefully this will solve some of the internet issues, although I might have to up the data plan at some point. And maybe speed, but we hope not. It all costs money…money my district is not reimbursing. Fun stuff that.

Friday was hard in many ways…I knew most of my teacher friends were at school, isolating in their classrooms, except they saw each other and talked with masks on in that socially distant way. I was home with the cats and dogs and the boy, who is an efficient PDF manager. With so much online stuff we’re doing, sometimes it’s easier to send something his way and have him manage it. I miss my friends, though. I miss planning in person and conversations where more than one person can talk at a time and the sound doesn’t kick out halfway through. I’m lonely here without all of them, and that will probably get worse when they go back in person. That said, I know it’s safer here, and since my principal already had to remind people to wear masks after 5 months of a pandemic, I know being at school would be an issue. I’m hoping there’s no issues with letting me teach from home…I won’t know for sure until I meet with Human Resources and all that, so that sits in my belly until it’s a done deal…and probably after that, I’ll still be paranoid that I’m going to be replaced or lose my job somehow. Deep breaths. It has to be done. Also, San Diego is threatening more rolling blackouts, so I might be in the classroom this week anyway. So there’s that.

I decided to try and get the 5 finished embroidery/wallhanging pieces up on Etsy yesterday so I could check that off my list, although I think there are 5 more that need finishing and to be posted. I’ll get there.

But these 5 are up. That’s progress.

Friday we gamed, but I also cut stuff out…

I think I had about 1 1/2 yards left at this point? Maybe? What’s funny is that I had a picture above and realized it was the wrong one. BECAUSE THEY ALL START TO LOOK THE SAME. Sad but true.

Saturday was warm, but I did Pilates in the morning with all three dogs…Simba came in later.

It’s hard to exercise alone in this house. Yes, Katie is back. She’s leaving today, coming back Friday, and staying for a week. It’s a little stressful for everyone, but she’s chilled out from 5 years ago, so that’s a plus.

Then I got my computer setup mostly done…

School laptop on a stand, wireless mouse, spare monitor hooked up to laptop, home computer on the side. Considering a board between the table (you can just see my sewing machine to the far left) and the printer shelf, just to move the mouse over. Might be useful. Now I can watch students AND run Zoom on the computer, and run something else on the other computer if I need to. Maybe Kitten will run that…

Still getting the paperwork all sorted and cleaned up. I also ordered new business cards, because I was almost out of the most current ones. They offered stickers as well (yes, they cost money, but the pictures were already uploaded and it wasn’t a lot more money…plus stickers!). They’ll all be here in September sometime, which is fine. It’s not a rush…just a checkbox I needed to fill in.

I did a lot of schoolwork yesterday as well, bits and pieces again. My focus is off, as always at this time of year. Fix this, fix that. Students are already contacting me on Google Classroom, parents are already signed up. I need to do about 50 things before Wednesday.

I did take a break after all the school and art business stuff and cut more things out after a no-cook dinner (cheese, crackers, and random meat)…

And I finished it all…so that means sorting tonight and hopefully starting to iron to fabric sometime soon. Which means putting a bunch of stuff away in the office/studio. Aargh. More cleaning. It took about 6 1/2 hours to cut out all the Wonder Under. The next step will probably take closer to 10 hours.

Kitten would like me to clear the light table off too…I will…mostly. But it’s a good place to stand and teach when it’s not unbearably hot out there. Although I’d have to move the monitor too. It’s doable. How mobile can I be? Hopefully pretty mobile.

There’s the girlchild, on her way to her second job? Or something.

She’s on a bike. Hopefully she bought a helmet today. She is in fact sticking her tongue out at me, probably because I haven’t listened to her new podcast episode yet. I started, but realized I wasn’t concentrating because what I was doing was taking too much brain power. So I’ll save it for when I’m doing something mostly brainless, like sorting Wonder Under or cleaning the office today. I’m also making bread today…the starter is happy with all this dry heat, unlike the rest of us. And I’m going to put all the felt I was using to back embroideries back in the garage, so it’s out of my way. Grocery shopping and laundry are on the list…so is panicking about school, in case you were wondering. Otherwise, it’s a perfectly normal Sunday. In a pandemic.

Bits and Pieces Together

Well that’s it. Summer Break is over for 2020. I don’t really know what to say about that. Many of you are as confuzzled by this year as I am. Do I feel ready for school to start? Fuck no. Do I feel relaxed and rested after the summer? Of course not. Who does? I’m currently running around (more mentally than physically), trying to get my internet to be happier with its existence (no thanks to Cox Cable for that…sigh…but they will be here this morning, replacing THEIR stupid modem that they claimed was mine. What a clusterfuck.), hoping to plan for the school year, hoping to HAVE a plan. I thank my co-teachers for their presence of mind, because mine is distinctly absent. Although I have bits and pieces together in my head. Just not the plan that ties them all together. I think honestly, after 17+ years of teaching, that I finally realize those prep days on campus, where we put our rooms together and set the stuff out that needs to be out and check in with our co-teachers and meet in person, those days are important to how our minds get ready for the year. I could go to my classroom, but I am anxious about being around people (in a way where I feel trapped? Anxiety is a fun thing…), plus at some point, they will probably use my classroom for childcare (amusing, considering the crazy shit that’s stored in there. Seriously, stay out of the locked cabinets and prep room.), and I will have nothing but the crazy setup(s?) that are in my house. I’ve been spending time trying to get those cleaned up and usable. We’ll see how that goes. Seven hours a day of Zooming with short breaks, one longer break, two might not have to be on Zoom, but at least one probably does because we have no science plans this year. Minor issue. We’ll get there…a little bit every day, I think.

It’ll be fine. FINE. I’m powerful AND jumpy. Makes me laugh anyway.

Here’s one of the work setups. Nope. Not moving the sewing machine. Somehow gonna fit a second (third? There’s a computer to the right on the desk there too) monitor in there. Ought to be interesting.

Yes, I was cutting stuff out during a training. It was a rancidly useless training. All three of them were. Too bad really. Actually, the third one, my internet was so bad, I couldn’t hear more than a third of it. My co-teacher tells me that was OK. It was beyond useless.

I finished cutting out all the pieces for my larger Patreon piece. I’m hoping to iron it together this weekend.

It shouldn’t take long, with only 111 pieces. Plus it’s tiny.

I also started cutting out the pieces for the COVID Daughter quilt. The first night, I got through 1 1/2 yards of Wonder Under, with Kitten’s help.

The second night, I was less efficient…

I got the other half of the second yard done, and and then about 3/4 of the third yard. So much math! So I think I have 2 full yards, a 1/4 yard, and a 1/2 yard left. Or something. Another night, maybe two. Hopefully. I want to be ironing fabric…in the heat. Laughing…it’s every August and September. Ironing in the heat, embroidering on wool in the heat. All crazy things. I think it’s only supposed to be 99 degrees today.

Explains it all.

We did get a bunch of things put away and moved appropriately yesterday during the three hours it took Cox to figure their shit out. Hopefully today will be quick, because I have 4 Zoom calls for school, and I can run them off my phone/iPad, I think…hope…

I love this. I would stitch this.

And proudly display the only Jesus thing in my house.

Can you see the chrysalis? It looks like dead wood. It’s leaning back from the tree trunk, held by two gooey sticky strings…

Man, this shit is fascinating. Here’s the next two generations…

I would’ve thought that big one was the same generation as the one in the chrysalis, but apparently not. Yes, I am watching Lemon Tree TV in my front yard on a daily basis.

Cats. Lounging around on everything.

It’s been hot. I get it.

Calli and her hedgehog.

She begs to go in the pool every day at the moment. I try to let her, when I can.

One of the things we cleared off was the hearth…my camping/hiking stuff had been there since the last trip in February, to Joshua Tree…because I thought we were going camping in April (yes, I know some people would consider two months enough time to put shit away, but their priorities are very different than mine)…

Well, we are camping in October (knock on wood), but this is also the location of the baby lizard and its tail incident, so I finally put everything away. It made me sad, but it will come back out. It will. Camping is something I think we can handle. We aren’t ready for AirBnB or hotels, but camping seems fine.

I’m currently watching my school welcome breakfast announcements, but the sound is awful (it got better…it was them, not me…for once). I’m not on the wifi, because who knows when the Cox guy will show up and I have to be on this welcome thing. It’s so weird to see people sitting so close together. It’s OK…I’m not required to be on it for another 28 minutes, so I have time to finish this. I have to admit to always hating the real first-day, whole-district gathering. It’s always in a church and is just too perky for me. I know it works for some people, though, so I guess that makes it OK. I think most middle-school teachers are more cynical than other teachers. Maybe not.

If you do have kids or grandkids in school, please keep this in mind. Actually, keep it in mind at any time you are having shitty thoughts about teachers…

This is so true. We’ve put hours in so far, mostly not reimbursed. Not paid. That’s the way it always is, and this year won’t change that. So many things need to be translated into online work, or when we go back, into socially distanced or hybrid work. No one is doing that for us, and as we saw in the training yesterday, the online applications aren’t doing it for us either. We listen to all the news stories too, we listen to what our district says (and roll our eyes sometimes), and we see what you all say about us. I don’t need to be a hero. I just want my kids to feel like they’re learning something and that we care about them. I’ll work my ass off to make sure that happens.

OK, today is All Zoom All Day. Hopefully with new and improved internet. We have gaming tonight, but I think I can cut stuff out as well. Art this weekend, as well as school stuff…that’s unavoidable, unfortunately. Be well, all…be safe. And if you’re anxious like me, meditate, exercise, deep breaths, lots of nature (find the chrysalises!), and good thoughts…

I Don’t Need Shoes…

We are a week out from starting school with kids. First we have to contact all of them and make sure they know how to sign in to a class and get their schedules and class codes and Zoom links and internet (holy hell, my internet has been awful today)…but I need to know WHO I’m contacting before all that happens. Ought to be interesting. Meanwhile, temperatures (actual temperatures of the air) are rising and everyone is hot and why do I have to start wearing a bra again? Sigh. Ugh. So here’s something about being an online teacher. I don’t need pants. I don’t need shoes. OK, I might stand up and do something for class, but odds are, I don’t need shoes. I might need slippers when it gets cold, but not shoes. It will be a shoeless school year. I will have to wear a bra most days though. Time to get used to those things again.

Today, I made a bunch of videos about how to use certain apps and websites, and posted those, and started trying to do some other school stuff. I sat through a total waste-of-time training. Hopefully the next one is NOT a waste of time, but you know, when you have to turn your camera off so others can’t see your extreme eyeroll and because you know you have one of those faces that everyone can read…well…that does not bode well for professional learning.

Deep breaths, new school year. I see you and I will get through you, hopefully still standing…on my bare feet.

Yeah. Think some of the crazy through a little bit.

I did finish tracing the Wonder Under last night…820 pieces (or so…had some with a’s and b’s because I missed numbering them) in exactly 11 hours. Weird to be exact like that. So this is about 5 1/2 yards of Wonder Under…

Covered in little drawn pieces…so that’s probably 6 hours of cutting stuff out…

I also am still embellishing these squares and rectangles…only getting through about three a night…

It’ll get done eventually.

Here’s the fence…actually done…

And here’s the Bird Poop Caterpillar chrysalis finally…

Its horns finally showed up. Apparently they show these red horns when they feel threatened, but I never saw them. There’s about 5 more caterpillars on the tree…yes, I sacrificed lemon tree leaves for these future butterflies.

I walked yesterday. Apparently I’ve done 150 miles in my hiking boots since March 2nd…

Yes, my hiking app keeps track. Impressive, eh? Well, it could have been more.

This bird was definitely perturbed about the tree disappearing.

More rocks getting painted and left outside…

I love those.

And last night, trying to go to bed earlier (and failing)…the moon was beautiful and orange and my phone camera just couldn’t handle it.

Kitten slept right through it.

I don’t know that cats care about the color of the moon. OK, another training starts in 18 minutes. I’m not feeling good about this school year, I have to admit. Those people dissing us teachers for “not wanting to go back to work” (yes we do…we want more than anything for it all to be normal again, whatever that is)…you don’t know what our job is like…at all. I’m just watching all the experts with their advice about going back, and all the not-experts and what’s happening in schools that are already open. Masks, no masks, cohorts, no cohorts, hybrid, no hybrid, testing, no testing. It’s all very scary. I’ve actually considered in my head what might happen if I can’t go back to teaching, or if the district screws me over in some way and I lose my job. Dear Ivanka…I have done many jobs in my lifetime…I’d like to continue to use my years of teaching experience to impart my love of science to 7th graders…not start over yet again. I already have two other jobs I do that aren’t enough to support me. Deep breaths…I said that earlier. I think it’s the bra that’s causing the breathing issues…I should do something about that.