I do write to clear my brain. Otherwise the words pile up in there and cause havoc. It’s currently 10:20 PM on a Saturday night. I have words in my head and I’d like them out.
We hiked almost 7 miles this morning, and then I did some schoolwork, stitched down the rest of the quilt top, and sandwiched and pinbasted it. It’s been a busy day. There are piles of fabric in the girlchild’s room, and I happened to find something the right size and shape (a rectangle, by the way) for the backing.
I’d already checked for batting. Check!
I did a significant part of the stitch down on Friday night, but I knew we were getting up early to hike, so I quit.
In retrospect, I would have been up for another hour and a half if I’d kept going last night. It was easy enough to finish this afternoon.
Pinbasted in no time.
It’s what we do on a Saturday night. It’s good…it means I can quilt a bit every night this week. I do need to do some thread shopping tomorrow though.
Friday night, we gamed, and I graded some and stitched some.
The cat is no help while grading. Actually, this was my setup for science and art on Friday. Cleanup still happening for demo the day before, art ready to go, rocks in place.
This morning, we hiked Los Penasquitos Canyon, starting at the Mercy/Black Mountain end.
There were quite a few people…
It was much cooler than it has been, much cooler than it will be this week.
It’s mostly flat.
The man is training for the PCT, which will be mostly not flat.
I, however, am training for nothing.
Except regular exercise.
I had to put my phone in my bra for a bit because people don’t understand how to share the trail and there was some chance I’d fall into the water and I wanted my phone as high up on my body as possible.
I didn’t. Fall in, that is.
Anyway, stupid people on trails. What can you do?
Avoid them. The man getting his zen on.
We actually passed a half naked guy (young) meditating with a pointy zen hat on.
So there’s that. Rocks, sand, poison oak, and a baby rattlesnake.
No real rattles yet. The man moved him off the trail.
Good thing because the next group coming along had two small children.
Strange pods…
Pro: We were done by noon. Con: I’m exhausted right now.
This is a pretty suburban trail, right between two rows of houses. In two weeks, we go camping…and two weeks after, we’ll be near Joshua Tree, although I have an art thing to do, so mostly the man will hike and I will not.
I do enjoy hiking. There are limited numbers of hours in the day, though…so tomorrow holds a few hours of work in it. So I’m ready for the week.
This week is already full of meetings.
And hopefully quilting…
I so want to be a cat. I’d be less tired, I think. Hard to say. Interesting to clear one’s brain right before bed. Hopefully it will help with my current tendency to have weird-ass, scary dreams. Because that’s been the last two nights, and I’m kind of done.
Oh yeah, Fire and Water got into Quilt National. That’s cool.
It was the throwaway quilt. You pay the same for 2 or 3 entries. I needed a third. I figured the big one would get in, if anything. It didn’t. This one did. It’s a quilt that was made for another show and didn’t get in. So was the last Quilt National Entry. It’s weird…I get in every OTHER year. 2013. 2017. 2021. Freaky. OK, consider sleep. And whatever is sneakily walking out on the slope. And making more art.
Hoo boy. Nasty nightmare in the middle of the night, NOT school related, shockingly. Also a cat who thinks that banging on the window and blinds is a way to communicate her dislike of the presence of some animal I never saw out there is acceptable 2 AM behavior. Trying to calm the breathing and heartbeat after that. At some point in time, I’m exhausted, so I sleep.
I keep looking at this one page on the science curriculum, hoping they update the thing I need that will find me an extra four hours a week or so. Or not. It helps me plan, and without it and without my partner, who is planning as well, but for a very different type of instruction, I have to try everything about 14 times, moving things, moving them again, moving them yet again. Is THIS logical? Or is THIS logical? None of it is fucking logical; that is the problem. The curriculum itself doesn’t always flow logically for me, so I tweak it and then tweak it again. Sigh. Next week, I find myself with too many quizzes and tests and not enough content. I will have to pillage from the following week to make it less about Take This Test and This One and This Other One that I will never have time to grade. Because that’s the other issue. What do I actually have time to SCORE? In between Zooming for hours a day and prepping for more hours a day, I never have time for phone calls or emails or catching up on late work that kids have turned in or grading new work that they’ve turned in. It’s all about planning for the next week, and never catching up with this one. It is definitely worse and harder than it was before everything switched. And I feel like the higher ups are more interested in pleasing parents and giving them what they need (they are our clients, I know) than realizing that they are burning out huge swathes of their staff. There has to be some give and take, and I’m not seeing that. I guess the crash and burn will happen at some point, or they’ll never see or hear the distance-learning staff, and the in-person staff (who has to be just as buried as we are) isn’t saying anything because they don’t have time to in between 10 classes of teaching the same shit over and over.
Speaking of teaching and voting, because my ballot is here and will get done this weekend…this guy is in my district and man oh man does he drive me crazy with his arrogant bullshit.
I almost took a Sharpie with me to the grocery store last week so I could have the man stop the car while I defaced one of these signs with “Not All”. I didn’t. But I thought about it. It’s good to see that someone found a legal way to do it. He’s certainly pissed off a goodly chunk of us. You vote how you want. And I hope he sees this and isn’t just defensive and dismissive. I think he will be, but I hope he’s not. I’m ever hopeful about politicians.
Well, most of them. This was the best part of the debate, besides Kamala Harris asserting her right to speak and seeing Pence’s face when that happened. Respect. To the fly. And Kamala.
On the art front, I’ve managed an hour or so of stitch down…
One night out of the two…not bad. Hopefully there will be more tonight and tomorrow, although there is a ton of planning I haven’t done and we have gaming and a hike in there as well. Plus apparently I need to grade shit. It won’t take long to do this part. I checked this morning and I have enough batting, and surely there’s enough fabric in this room for a backing.
Part of the reason I didn’t get any done last night is that I needed a moment. A long moment. It was about a 3-1/2-hour moment. I got out of the house and walked (oh hallelujah, some cooler weather)…
The neighbors are all doing Halloween, and maybe they always do and I just don’t notice because I would be walking elsewhere or at the gym.
My students have already asked if Halloween is safe, the candy part, because that’s the only part they care about. Personally, if the little screaming midgets in my neighborhood come around, I can throw candy at them from my deck. It’ll make up for all the screaming they do in general. Plus I won’t have to go near their not-socially-distanced havens for disease.
Yup, I’ve got that old lady thing DOWN. The second part of my break was Zooming with my stitching friends. I had zero brain power, so I just stitched things down.
No embroidery, no embellishment, just sticking it to the background with thread. After the pandemic, I will hopefully be able to embellish. Right now, I just don’t have the energy.
Speaking of energy, I’m trying to muster enough to get out of here and go to the other computer and figure out what I’m teaching today. I teach two science classes Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday, I repeat what I did Tuesday and Wednesday, which means writing it all down, because my brain has already forgotten what it did two days ago. And I have to finish writing a rubric for Gestalt and Zeitgeist, which I’ve never taught, but I guess is in my head. Somewhere. Some would say not Gestalt, because there is never a Less is More aspect to my work. I definitely come from the Richard Scarry world of art…fill that rectangle with all the shit you’ve got and see what it looks like.
This bunny or one like it might have been what pissed off Kitten last night. She seriously whacks at the blinds until whatever it is leaves.
I’m surprised I’ve never found a bunny skull on my property. Those coyotes are slackers.
She looks all sweet here.
Because she’s gonna sleep all day while I work. So she doesn’t care if she kept me up for an hour or so last night, banging on the window.
Good things: It’s Friday, so there’s a break from Zooming for two days. We’re hiking tomorrow. The weather is cooler (don’t even look at next weeks’ temperatures; they will make you cry). I can finally vote and turn my ballot in and know that my state will protect my vote. I’m not sick. I have a job. I can do my job, even though it feels like I’m carrying a ton of bricks and people keep piling more on top. I might get to sleep in tomorrow morning. So there we are. Go forth and conquer Friday.
Woke up with a plan to get all this shit done. HA! Because the world is what it is, internet down, nothing responding, Fuuuck. Because I’m an ONLINE teacher and to be an ONLINE teacher, you have to be (wait for it) ONLINE. Fuck me. It’s OK. I’m obviously back online, but it was 30 minutes texting a Cox Cable person to get it back. Yes, there IS an outage (no fucking shit ma’am). What is your name? I Already Gave It To You, with my phone number, my 4-digit pin, and my firstborn. Not really. He’s still around. Somewhere. So while she was trying to PING my modem back into responsiveness, my brain was panickedly (that is a word, dammit) trying to think about what I would have to take to school with me to teach today, which included two computers, all their cords, an extra monitor, my doc cam and all its cords and connectors, plus a pile of papers and a clipboard, and FOUR ROCKS. My world. Right there. Plus food, enough PPE to scare off a Trump, and probably a Taser to keep people away from me. Because school is the LAST place I wanna be right now. But it’s close and it has internet. They could run an extension cord for me and I could just hang outside, far away from anywhere anybody ever goes. There’s that little amphitheater outside the library, right? Sigh.
So panic over. For now. Sunscreen. I would need sunscreen.
ANYWAY. Fuck me. I had a plan for this morning too. So I have been working too much. Yesterday I quit at like 11 hours…better than the previous day. NOT FUCKING SUSTAINABLE, Universe. It’s a job. I get paid. It’ll be OK if some kids don’t have grades.
Sigh. Like I said, I quit work “early” yesterday. I think it was around 9:45 that I started looking at background fabrics for the new quilt, because I thought what I had picked was too dark. It was. I picked a new one.
Much better, although I suspect I have no thread for quilting that color. Easily managed. I pieced the background and ironed the whole thing down…
And hopefully tonight I will give myself the time to start the stitch down. I lost this morning’s planning time, though, so I will need to be uber-efficient during my prep today (which is quite long, but in the middle of the day and without a team member to focus my not-ADD brain, which is still kinda ADD, I do not function well). I flit like a psychotic butterfly, honestly. Bits and pieces get done, but it’s easier for me to focus on tasks in the morning and evening.
Next stage of the quilt, though. This is good.
You know, I miss this this year.
Although my 8th graders do kinda piss on everything.
Monday night, I chose to exercise over art. I didn’t have the energy for art anyway. But notice the dog and the two cats (and the 5 pieces of wood…I used them for the lab demo last week) all accompanying me on my stationary bike ride.
Easy for them.
Also yesterday morning’s sunrise was nice.
This morning, we had fog. And internet issues. OK, off to work I go. In the other room. Where hopefully the internet is stable and strong.
The title of this podcast episode, For the Teachers Who Are Not OK Right Now, made me tear up. Angela Watson doesn’t have any great solutions, because there aren’t any, but after working for 5+ hours this afternoon and evening to get science ready to teach and art mostly ready (well at least for tomorrow…I’ll get to the Thursday/Friday classes when I can, and no, I haven’t graded much of anything, so fuck off), the thought of doing this every Sunday for a year makes me want to pull my hair out. Notionally, eventually I’ll have access to the curriculum slides for the unit I’m actually on (our fault for jumping ahead a unit because their order made no sense). I could also (and may next week) blow off making my slides, but it helps me not have to read the tiny tiny script they put in the 500-page book (that’s one unit, y’all…one). Plus I’m a visual person and the slides help me make sense of what I’m teaching. It’s fine. Really. I was having a shitty work weekend until I heard another teacher’s story and thought, well, I’m not that bad off, really. Which is a sad tale.
I quit working around 9 PM last night, after 5 1/2 hours of just lesson planning mostly science. I’ll have to finish a video for the demo I’m doing tomorrow, plus all the art assignments for later in the week, during my prep today and tomorrow, plus plan NEXT week, because I haven’t even looked at that. At least I have curriculum for science, mostly. Art is a whole ‘nother basket of crazy. Times two, because I’m teaching two levels. I’m glad I have contact with the art teacher, because she’s saving my ass. I feel bad, though. I don’t feel like I’m helping her enough. I’ve been teaching long enough that I know how that feels and looks, and I don’t want to be that person.
At 9 PM last night, I came in and finally FINALLY after two weeks of other stuff that needed to be done and nowhere near enough time or energy to do anything, I got the rest of this sweetheart ironed together…
She just needed the fire on her head and the ground beneath her…
Now I just need to iron her to the background, stitch down, then sandwich and quilt and bind. All of which I am free to do now. (Note to self: don’t take on any other shit right now.)
I also entered an art show, so that’s a thing.
On Saturday, I finally (on the last day) finished the SJSA Remembrance block for Nicholas Bils.
It’s a sad story.
Nicholas was putting golf balls with his dog at a closed public golf course and his dog was off leash, both no-no’s in COVID times. The park rangers chased him and caught him, putting him in their vehicle. He had no weapon, but as a schizophrenic, had issues with running from police before. They did handcuff him, but not very well, because he managed to get out of the vehicle as they approached the downtown jail.
He ran. An off-duty police officer leaving the jail, who hadn’t been involved at all, drew his weapon and shot him in the back. Nicholas died from his injuries.
I watched videos of his mom and brother talking about Nicholas. His dog, whose name was Rio or River (hence the river in the background), is hopefully OK and with the family…the hearts are for his family’s love, which was incredibly apparent in the videos. His mom kept saying, “Why is my son dead?” Damn good question, San Diego Police. Damn good question. I live here in San Diego County, but hadn’t heard about this case at all until I was assigned Nicholas as part of the SJSA Remembrance Project. We know the cops aren’t trained to deal with mental-health issues. They also clearly need training on how to handle situations without a gun. Although I feel for the young man who has been charged with second-degree murder in Nicholas’ death, I hope that he and others come out of this situation with a reticence to shoot first, ask questions later.
Saturday also included a socially distanced art meeting to jury in new members…
It was warm. But nice to see other humans. Maybe we can do this…meet with other humans safely about art and other stuff? It would be nice.
Nova guarding my school notebook. She’s apparently there now too…
Sweet kitty…I need to write in that notebook in 15 minutes.
This is the day we see all the kids with shorter classes. I think I’m planned and ready. I never feel ready. It’s supposed to be hot again today, but then get 20 degrees cooler by Thursday. I’ll take that. Tonight, I’m hoping to get some much-needed exercise in, although I’m cooking tonight, which might make it difficult if it stays hot late…and then iron the quilt onto a background. It’s about time I got this thing done.
My computer is trying to download a video from iCloud that I need for my Patreon. I tried to do it last night, and nothing was showing up. At first, the computer said it would take two hours (for a 90-second video) and now it’s down to 2 minutes. Wildly inaccurate, if you ask me. But it’s where I’m at…not believing the technology. Seriously, I’m still looking at the weather app for this week, going into October, with temperatures of 104-105 degrees for the next few days. Ugh. I’m gonna die here in the no-A/C. I’d like the app to be wrong, but I’m sure it’s not. And I know the download speeds vary for the internet, mostly because my internet is a cranky bastard (I was gonna write bitch, but no…let’s not land all the bad shit on women…we get enough of it as it is)…yesterday, it kicked me out, or Zoom kicked me out of class 4 times in one 45-minute period. I suspect today will be the same. When it’s warm, it’s worse. Hopefully not, since I’m doing a demo today. Boychild and I set up stream tables in the living room (you know, like you do) and tested them.
The animals were fascinated. What’s really fun is the sand needs to be wet to do this, and it’s supposed to be hot as hell today, and I’m not just doing it today because all the schedules changed, so it needs to stay set up until after I teach on Thursday. Ah. Well. Life is interesting. The cats want to be in it. After today, I’ll move the trays outside until Thursday, although we’ll have to cover them out there as well…don’t need to make a bug nest or some intriguing place for a skunk to poop. Who knows what will happen with them.
I do have a prep period in between the two classes today, and I start with my smallest class…I’m more worried about the huge class on Thursday with a bunch of special-needs kids. It’ll be fine. I’m sure.
Here’s the temperatures…should keep the sand drying out (not what I want, unfortunately)…
So yesterday was like the first day of school again, except now I have three grade levels and three class preps and 40 more kids than I had last week. But I’m not in the classroom. Pros and cons. Today all my peeps go back with actual kids and we’re taking bets (not really) on how long it takes to shut school down with the first case of COVID. They’re in cohorts, so one will go home at a time, but you still know it’s going to happen.
At the end of the day yesterday, after managing a bunch of stuff I wasn’t ready for and also wasn’t completely comfortable with (ah, what’s new, 2020?), I rested briefly.
This space is over-crowded at the moment…and I need to figure that out, but right after that picture, we were setting up the stream tables and then I was running around watering, folding my laundry, making dinner, setting up the slides for today’s teaching, trying to figure out how the fuck far I can get in the lesson in an HOUR. Ugh. An HOUR. Too long. I’m hoping to get them to a certain point and then push them off to finish on their own, but yesterday, they were leaving when I said, hey, this thing needs to be done, and then it wasn’t. Sigh. So conversations need to happen today.
In good news, I think I said this before, but the quilt I haven’t been able to touch in a week (or more?) is tentatively sold. A deposit is on its way with a signed agreement, and as soon as I can get the two things off my shoulders that I need to finish this week, I’ll be finishing that one up.
She’s still in this stage. Not much ironing left…and then stitch down and quilt. Close to the end. Then I need to make some smaller ones.
First, though, I needed to finish this…
There were some very tense moments when she tried to collapse, but I have a strut inside right now that hopefully will help. Also, hopefully, she doesn’t explode in the kiln. I’ve tried to be really good about air spaces and all that. But you never know. Worst case, her parts will be by the side of the labyrinth we’re building.
It’ll be better if she’s whole though.
OK, well now I just need to figure out how to get her to our amazing ceramics person and her kiln before her deadline. I think I’ll need an assist on that. Then onto the fabric piece for SJSA, and then I can get back to the one on the ironing board. Which is sold! Good thing…money is tight right now. Not getting paid all summer is hard.
OK, survive today…only three classes instead of all six. Time to prep for next week, hopefully, or even beyond. Teaching art is still difficult for me (after the first day!). It’s not the same as in person…it’s really hard. Plus I don’t know the program we’re using very well, or any other programs, and there’s the matter of getting kids supplies when they can’t come in or won’t come in, for whatever reason, and what supplies actually exist and how to grade this shit anyway (I really don’t remember what I did a million years ago). It’s a lot of mental energy that I don’t have at the moment. No exercise in the last two days either, and it’s going to be hot as hell today, so that will make it hard. Hoping for a walk, if merely to clear the brain. Everything changes. We adapt, we adjust, and then it changes again. It’s a rough year for everyone…but teaching has been incredibly difficult. I’m not having fun right now, and I hope that changes…it has in the past few weeks been fun again sometimes, but right now…ugh. Nope. Not.
I try not to be the person who counts days from this to that, although I have a Countdown app that always has the holidays in it, the week off for Thanksgiving, three weeks for Winter Break (I know, lucky!), two weeks for Spring Break, eight weeks (unpaid those) for Summer. And then the trips…last year was the Arizona/Utah National Parks in Spring, a couple of winery trips (one right before everything shut down in March), a trip to Portland and another to Joshua Tree National Park. All good. But right now, the numbers in my head are how many days to the election? How many days I’ve been mostly stuck at home (it’s a lot, over 6 months, just like the rest of you)? And the big one, how many days until I can go back to school? It’ll be at least 365 more, I think. That’s the hard thing to contemplate. Up to now, I’ve had a teacher team to plan with, dealing with the same kids, the same schedules, the same curriculum. As of Monday, I have none of that. Or very little. I’ve felt incredibly isolated as it is, but this is throwing me. It’s OK…I’ll get through it. I’ll survive it. I have a job. I’m mostly competent at it. There’s too much right now and I’m so fucking sick of 15-hour days focused on school school school, but I will eventually either get a handle on that time suck or I will quit and copyedit full time while selling one loaf of sourdough bread a week, because that’s all I can manage to make. It’s hard to say how close I am to that moment. I’ll let you know.
So the artmaking is sporadic and I have to fight for that time and yesterday I was told I should be watching education-related videos WHILE I am making art, because that’s time I could spend on school stuff that I’m not. Eye-opening. And don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I’m already in a half state of crying on a daily basis, and I think that might push me over the edge.
This shit sucks, y’all.
And then I wake up this morning, not really sure what I’m teaching today. I’m sure it’s on a calendar or a post somewhere; I just didn’t review it yesterday like I usually do because I couldn’t. And I checked my email, and Bigger in the Outside was accepted into Excellence in Fibers VI…
She’ll also be at the Front Porch Gallery in Carlsbad after this weekend with two other pieces of mine. The Excellence in Fibers show was supposed to have a corresponding museum exhibit, but that’s postponed until we don’t know when…if ever. Like many things this year. I guess the acceptances motivate me to make more? They don’t actually at the moment. It’s more a matter of where to put my brain that ISN’T school. Making bread is just as useful a place. Maybe. I don’t know. I know I’m not getting any peace out of artmaking right now, but then, maybe I never did. It’s meditative, and maybe without it, I’d be jumping out the window and running as far and fast as I could. We just don’t know. Because I haven’t stopped making it.
The SJSA Remembrance block is still in progress…I traced it on Wonder Under a few nights ago…it only has 116 pieces, so it’s not horrendous. And then I started cutting them apart one night, Tuesday? And didn’t finish.
Last night was my now-biweekly stitching Zoom, so I quick cut the rest apart, and then after the Zoom call, started ironing them to fabric. It’s not ideal, because I still have the last 80 or so pieces from the COVID Daughter piece on my table, and it’s precariously on my ironing board, waiting for me to come back to it (I want to!), but I got about half the pieces ironed down to fabric.
I quit when I got to the flesh, because I knew I was tired and couldn’t handle it. And I also knew I needed to do schoolwork. Yes, I took a break from about 6-10 PM…and then went back to work. I did also make a trip to Home Depot for new roller blinds to block the AM sun from my work spot and to pick up and drop off stuff at school after hours. I saw two people and waved. That was all.
Anyway, I’ll finish ironing the pieces down sometime in the next 24 hours and then cut them out…I might actually do some of that during gaming tonight. It needs to be done by 10/3.
I’m still working on the clay vessel for the labyrinth…
If I do a little each night, it hardens enough by the next night to support the next few inches.
So after the Wonder Under was done last night, I pulled this out and got a few inches higher.
I’m not going to be able to go high enough to put a full torso in, but that’s OK. I was trying to fall asleep last night (ha! What a fucking joke) and my brain told me how to finish the top, wherever it is.
Here’s my fat cat odalisque.
I want to be more like her.
And the girlchild has been gone for almost three months now, but we are still finding remnants of her cooking experiments…
I obviously don’t clean anywhere near enough.
OK. It’s the Friday before everything switches again and I gain 40 students and two more preps and two more grade levels and minimal support from anywhere, whatever, and grades are due Sunday and I was grading last night at midnight, fuck this job and COVID and the stupid government for not doing its job and stupid people for not wearing masks and staying away from each other and I need to get some exercise this weekend, maybe even this afternoon, plus get everything under the sun done that needs to be done and maybe a little less of the crying stuff because I can’t see to type or grade shit when I’m doing that. Peace out y’all. It’ll be different in a few days.
Man. Nope. Woman. What a day. May the honorable RBG rest in peace. May my ever-patriotic-my-ass government behave appropriately and stop trying to write off 70% of the fucking population. You want riots? Nominate another knee-jerk white guy who thinks rape is all in a woman’s head to the Supreme Court of my land. Or a guy (because you know it’s a guy) who thinks that LGBTQIA is something we can teach out of someone. Or who thinks that BIPOC aren’t human. No, that’s not a threat…it’s reality. Y’all don’t fucking listen unless people are burning your Whole Foods down and then it’s like, oh STAHP. Why are you so violent? You get nothing! So many people ALREADY GET NOTHING. Sigh. I know RBG wanted so badly to survive long enough to see a new president. We all wanted that for her (and us).
This is where I sit every day to teach immigrants, kids, survivors, and she had their back. Don’t tell me the law is the law…if the person looking at the law doesn’t think women have rights to their bodies, in fact, doesn’t think anyone but White Men have rights to their bodies, then the law will not work for anyone but them.
Y’all, I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed. I’m scared of what dumbassery McConnell and his cronies are going to do next, because instead of being responsible for their constituencies, they’re gonna do what the rich white guys want. So I’ve got some emails to write to Republican senators. How about you? I’m hoping this link works. If not, go to my Insta @knida and find the RBG post with all their email/contact info. This is wrong. Don’t let them fuck us over again.
I’m lucky to have a job right now, I am. It’s hellacious at the moment. It’s going to get even harder for a while, and then maybe I’ll find a routine that works. Yesterday, I started working at 7:15 AM. I ate lunch standing at the light table while sending emails to parents and kids. I sent 138 emails yesterday, at least. And that doesn’t count the back-and-forths that happened when parents or kids had additional questions. I had a meeting after school and then went back to work. I finished the emails and grading one assignment at about 8 minutes to midnight. And then I looked at my class lists for the week after this upcoming week, and I counted the kids, 40 more than I have now, huge classes, less time to teach them, way less time to help them, I looked at my emails with all the stuff I needed to manage before grades are due sometime next week (I think they caved and gave us next weekend, but not all of it), and I went to bed and cried. And that is where we’re at right now. And I have a job. I can pay my bills. I’m lucky.
I taught yesterday morning with the noise from about 15 guys and loud rancheria music while they finally fucking plastered this pool.
Please may they be done. My students are like, what’s all that yelling? And I’m like if those assholes down there let out a puta or pendejo that my kids can hear, Imma gonna go down there and light them up. If they did, I didn’t hear it. But my patience with the neighbor’s construction is down to negatory right now.
Here’s a typical moment in my teaching life right now.
Guess which kid is paying attention? I’m laughing. The “hold on im eating” kid? He won’t be mine after this week. I’m good with that. I know he’ll be replaced with an equivalent kid who’s trying to get out of the work and being a jerk about it, and I might start meditating during class, but…well…this is what it is.
Sigh. I’m having a hard time with the new curriculum. It all needs to be rewritten. I feel like every year, we start over, and then shit happens, and we can’t make it better, because next year will be different, and then the following year will be different again, and I can’t listen to you people who just call this a bad flu. I think about my teacher friends going back and the kids going back to their families with whatever they got at school and I know we are just waiting until someone gets sick, and hopefully nobody gets really sick. Hopefully no one dies. That said, this kid is gonna survive on cucumbers and tomatoes he found on Mars. So I can laugh.
I ironed on Thursday, because I had stitching Zoom.
Everyone wants me to talk and socialize at the end of the day, but I’m too damn tired to do that and I don’t really want to talk about school over and over again.
I did for a little bit, because I wanted to make really really sure that my 80-year-old-plus friend wasn’t going to go sub at a school.
She says she’s not.
This is almost done being ironed together…there’s the fire above and the dirt below. Then iron it onto the background. Straight up, I don’t think I’ll get to work on it this weekend. I have ten tons of schoolwork and two other things I need to get started. As soon as I’m done with this, that’s what I’m doing.
This is for realz right now. This one and another one who was running across the carpet with two cats after it…
The man caught that one in his hands. But I didn’t find the one who kamikazed off the fireplace hearth. I hope this isn’t one who’s coming back, for god’s sake, save yourself!
All my screens and windows need washing too.
OK, gotta work myself out of overwhelmed and depressed into something better. Some outdoor time today, plus some artmaking I committed to. Tomorrow, I’m going to Visions Art Museum to see the current exhibits, before everything closes back down next week. Hopefully the museums will stay open, because I have a ticket for the Contemporary Quilt Show at the Oceanside Museum of Art NEXT weekend. Sigh.
At some point, this poor lime tree is gonna grow limes beyond this stage. It’s still recovering from being replanted. Poor thing. It keeps trying. There’s an inspiration for you. This lime tree that keeps making baby limes and one day one of them will grow up to be my margarita.
Ugh. Monday, you were over the top. Remind me not to answer work emails at 3 PM…or honestly, ever. Without a 12-hour break maybe. “Dear teacher, how is my kid doing?” “I don’t know. They don’t come to class or turn anything in.” It was a day. We thought we could grade an assignment while monitoring the chat during a quiz, but the monitoring became overwhelming as the day went on, and I couldn’t concentrate enough on what I was grading…which required thought and long feedback, lots of it. Pro: I think this batch of kids is better than the last batch for writing claim-evidence-reasoning (probably because we told 6th grade they had to do some of the prep work). Con: They still need lots of work, work that is harder to do online. I have more to grade today, and an assignment that hopefully will allow that. We’ll see how that goes. Teachers can’t be ON all the time. We burn out. Yesterday was long and required a lot of energy and I don’t even think I got all the way through it. And I didn’t barely even TALK. Just typed in the chat while they took the quiz. Today is a staff meeting explaining our new schedules for the week of the 28th…which should be interesting, because I need to understand it myself so I show up for the right class at the right time. Which could be an issue. No worries! I will draw a picture to get me there. Block schedule, but online, with two subjects. OK. I got this. Three grade levels. OK. I still got this. Ask me in late October how I feel about it for realz.
Meanwhile, not much visible art has been happening. I’ve been doing research and posting on my Patreon and gathering show information, but my brain was too tired the last two nights to do anything more than that. I really really hope that changes tonight.
Our air quality is still off. Makes for beautiful sunsets and sunrises though.
Maybe they’d be just as beautiful without the smoke particles.
My most recent sourdough was also beautiful.
Lunches from this. I have become a character in Little House on the Prairie. Or something. I make my own bread. I never leave the house. Pa! Pa! OK, I left the house yesterday to pick up my sewing machine. Crucial stuff. Laura Ingalls never did that. I’ll leave the house today to walk. I need to walk. It’s been a while for a good long solo hike.
Simba thinks he’s a cat.
He barks too much to be a cat. Our hot weather popped back up for the rest of the week. Sigh. No thanks. I can do without. Just like the construction. I had to shut all the windows yesterday so I could teach over a concrete saw. Like just fucking be DONE with it! It’ll be done soon. It has to be.
Yes. My clothes are always covered with cat hair. But I’m at home, so you can’t tell.
Apparently they are very comfy.
I finished my book last night, Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. Apparently I have been saying her name wrong in my head for years. Very good. I didn’t much like the other book of hers I read, but this was good. What’s funny is that book club meets tomorrow night, and I was going to read the book for book club first, but this was so good, I didn’t. So I think it’ll be the first time I go to book club and I haven’t read the book. I might get some of it read today and tomorrow at lunch. We’ll see. It’s also supposed to be good, but I just haven’t seen anything but the cover yet.
That’s the closest I got to artmaking last night.
I made it in the office and ironed some brainless stuff and looked at this thing (the drawing, not the cat…she’s fine…it’s not her fault I can’t focus) and was too tired, looked at the clock and it was almost midnight, and I gave up. Part of my time issue was deciding to exercise at 10 PM. It needed to be done and there wasn’t time or mental space before that.
OK, wishes for today: efficient grading, some understanding of my future schedule, a successful teaching day, time for a walk, mental space for art, a calm and restorative dinner hour. Might be wishful thinking, but it’s my goal and I’m sticking to it. Better air too. That would be good.
Day of brain chaos. Trying not to think too hard about school and what I need to do, but that’s what kept me awake when something woke me up before 8 AM this morning. My brain…ruminating about school. Even though yesterday I spent time planning a good chunk of the week with posts and warmups and then grading some stuff, my brain can’t leave it. Even with a walk on Friday and a walk on Saturday, my brain can’t just drop it. On the one hand, that’s useful…it’s always trying to solve a problem on the side, over there, in that corner, while I’m driving or dropping off my sewing machine to be serviced or cooking something, but sometimes…just once in a while…I’d like it to just stop for a bit. Leave it. It’s the same brain that helps me make art…I do so much of the work in my head and work it out while I’m doing other things, it means when I’m actually MAKING, a lot of the thinking is done.
I did find myself some down time yesterday. I stopped for a while. I needed to.
In two weeks, everything I’m doing for school will change again. I’ll think about that in a week and a half. There’s no point in doing it now. Well, except for some planning for the art stuff. I maybe should go find the state standards. Maybe.
Friday was a weird day, because I had tree trimmers here…they trimmed 5 eucalyptus…
cut my palm down to the ground, cut two other branches that were issues, and took out a sucker eucalyptus on the neighbor’s side of my fence, which may or may not be my property. But I had permission. So it’s all good.
They are sad trees now, and so are the hummingbirds who had nests in there, but there were some branches that were an issue for winter storms and even summer winds.
I have lots of trees. I love them all and would prefer they just happily grow, but the house and neighbors and probably my house insurer prefer I trim them occasionally. So I do.
It was a pretty noisy day, so noisy that I moved the classroom setup back into my office with the shitty internet, and I explained why to the students, but still got, “Miss, are you running a blender?” “Yup. All day. Margaritas!” No, not really. I don’t say stuff about margaritas to kids. That’s the chainsaws and the chipper/shredder. It’s a good thing we moved the quiz from Friday to Monday. It will hopefully be quieter. Oh ha! The neighbors had jackhammers and saws going Friday until 6 PM and then Saturday and Sunday as well. No jackhammer today, just saws. I’m done! Turn off the shit. I want my quiet neighborhood back dammit. Well, quiet except for me teaching about rocks. On Mars. The rocks…not me teaching.
We took the dogs on a short walk on Friday…it was finally cool enough and the Air Quality Index had come down…it went back up on Saturday though.
There’s a local mostly flat loop that Calli can do easily enough…
Everything is very dry and prickly…
The boychild won’t let me plant artichokes because they are invasive…
They’re also fascinating.
Ah well. Maybe the next Daughter quilt will be an Artichoke Daughter. Away from all the serious topics (can I do that? Am I allowed? Will I allow myself, is more like it.).
Friday night, I managed some ironing…the weird death arm and a bird and three virions.
One of my quilt guilds actually acknowledges that some people work and have a social Zoom meeting at night. It’s one of the reasons I joined…before COVID…because they had meetings I could actually go to.
Still ironing the background bits together…although the snake overlaps onto the ground in the front.
So here, I finally got the stuff behind on the left and the stuff behind on the right all in the correct spot so I could start ironing the stuff in the front in the middle. Yeah. It’s confusing to me too. No worries. It will all make sense eventually.
I just iron quietly on the Zoom and listen to other people talk, just like it would be in real life. Maybe I would talk a little more in real life but honestly, I talk all day. I get tired of it.
Luna in a box. Nova by the window, waiting for a bug or a lizard to come close.
On Saturday, we went down to Balboa Park and walked around a little bit.
It was too peoply. I’m looking forward to cooler weather so we can go somewhere inland and less peoply…somewhere more hike-like and less walk-like. But it was good to get out. Yes, we still have smoky haze…air quality was 150 yesterday, which is still much better than Northern California, Oregon, and Washington…but not good. Right now, it’s down to 100. Better. But not good.
We were tired after, grabbed dinner, and came home and watched random stuff on TV…some Banksy, some political stuff (video below related to it), and a through-hiker in Utah, who was traveling through some of the stuff we visited last year. I just stitched stuff down, Sue Spargo stuff I can’t even show you, because she hasn’t published it yet. Brainless stuff, but that’s what I needed. Sometimes that’s what I need.
The political stuff included Emma Gonzalez’ speech from the March for Our Lives, which might have been the last political march I was in? I can’t remember. I know I’ve seen this speech before, but it still makes me cry.
Fuck the dumbass who called her ‘just a lesbian skinhead.’ I hope she becomes President. Or cures cancer. Whatever she’s got passion for. Those kids…I love when I hear passion in my own kids, my students (but my own children too) for something. Change something. Fix something. It can be small. Just care about something. Kudos to Emma and the rest of those kids who tried to make change, tried to make the fat old white guys see some sense.
No art last night. No energy, no art.
Sleepy Nova instead.
This morning, the man found a snake outside the front door…
Pretty sure it’s a gopher snake…
I don’t have a lot of gophers, so hopefully that’s his fault. Or hers.
Most of today was getting shit done. Hung a towel rail, did the grocery shopping, dropped my sewing machine off for service, and baked this beauty.
She looks really good. Which is nice, because she’s a good part of my lunches this week.
I also made naan from scratch…
Which isn’t as easy as my daughter makes it look, but I eventually got the hang of it. Mostly. Rugs are for catching the shit I dribble from the counter to the stove, right? Yes. They are. The minor issue is that I just mopped those floors and washed those rugs. Whatever. As soon as I clean, it’s dirty again.
I also did some research for the one project I need to work on this week…read up, watched some videos, printed some pictures and words. I’ll hopefully get a good start on that tomorrow night. And the other project too. We even had a socially distanced dinner with the parental units. First time in a long time. The plus is that I crossed a bunch of things off my list today. The minus is that it’s almost 10 PM and I’m exhausted (didn’t sleep well last night) and I’m not sure what to work on next. I have one thing I need to grade, but I don’t feel like it. Maybe I should just iron things together and accept that I am allowed to have some non-work time at night, even when everything is not done. Everything is not done so often! And work will always be there. Speaking of work always being there, the rumor is that work is checking Facebook pages and schooling staff about what they say. Huh. Well, I’ve been blogging about my job(s) and everything else…since 2004. Maybe even 2003? Can’t remember. If they’re just gonna decide to school me now, I’m gonna ask where they’ve been for the last 17 years. Is my job perfect? Of course not. Is my district perfect? Oh heck no…no one is. Am I perfect? Well we know the answer to that. I wouldn’t stress about everything under the sun on a daily basis if I were perfect. So Hi! See me waving at my work. Howzit goin’! I suggest you start reading way way back. Let me know when you’re done. Then we can talk.
OK, iron for a bit, sleep early (ha!), then get up and conquer the world. Or whatever you can handle.
I had time to write this morning. That was even the plan. Eat breakfast, write, then work. But the internet was not on my side. The first download failed and the second one took 35 minutes, so by the time all that happened, school was imminent. So I gave up. I think I had most of the pictures resized by the time school actually started, but I need a good 30 minutes to write most days, and I didn’t have that at all.
So here we are, Friday evening, going into the weekend. There’s a pile of schoolwork hanging over me. What’s new? I found out today that when my school goes back to some hybrid, some online, I will be teaching 3 sections of 7th-grade science online and 2 sections of online art. ART. Online. Hmmm. So the last time I taught art was in 2007. And not online. Minor issue. I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll figure it out. It’s better than some of the things I was worried about, like multiple grade levels of science I’d never taught before or teaching with different schools with admin I’d never dealt with, so this is probably the best option. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, but I have 2 weeks to figure out at least the start of it. Lots of work. You should always have credentials in stuff you like, by the way…which is why I don’t have a math or history credential.
Anyway. So that’s new. From now until December 15th or so at least. I won’t have a prep with my science co-teacher; we’ll have to meet after school, but I think my prep will be figuring out what the hell online art looks like. I’m sure there are standards.
OK, so I was totally exhausted Wednesday…worked 11 hours with Zooms and online meetings and all, and then kept working because shit was in my head and I needed to get part of it on a doc or something. So I kept going. And at the end of it, I had no energy for anything else. I think I read a bit of my book.
Thursday was a bit better…I had a shorter day and managed some stitching that I can’t show you online because I’m not allowed to, but then I started ironing…
It’s working pretty well…I got 100 pieces done…
I was tired, but this felt pretty good compared to more sitting…
This is the figure behind the main figure…
Hopefully there will be more of that tonight, but who knows. I’m tired and I have a book and a half to read before Wednesday and a ton of work to do and really I should be able to do Date Night, because it’s not going to be 114 degrees this weekend hallelujah and the fire down here is almost out. Woohoo!
Also in the art realm…and the teaching realm…I miss drawing cover pages for science.
I hope I can figure out how to do drawing online without too much trouble. We’ll see.
Those morning smoky skies…
You can see the neighbor’s pool is progressing…with more jackhammering today…which I am just done with.
Our air quality is finally in the almost normal stage.
So weird. Pretty but weird.
So the cats just follow me around when no one else is home. Nova was directly behind me while I was teaching…
And Kitten was actually in class at some point…
And then was reviewing the teachers’ edition of the new curriculum…
And then Luna was way too close and personal to the computer setup…
Uh huh…
This seems problematic…
But she didn’t chew on anything and only batted at my hands a little bit…
I spent all of today moved back into the internet-iffy office, because I had tree trimming going on…probably a good thing because they were jackhammering next door again. Ugh. Please stop.
This was in the book I’m reading…perfect to think about right now.
Finishing with this crazy shit.
Every time I read another attack on women’s rights, I am thrown back to a particularly contentious argument I had multiple times in the past where I believed there was a conspiracy against women in this country, and at this point, you could add immigrants and BIPOC and racial rights and gender rights and geez a whole bunch of other things and you would still be right, that a huge chunk of things I care strongly about were and are under attack. And that’s not OK. And someone I cared a lot about at the time was telling me I was wrong. It was all in my head. Fuck that. I wasn’t wrong. I’m still not wrong. There are people who want to limit women and BIPOC and immigrants and anyone who doesn’t fit their idea of “THIS IS WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT”. And I wish those people would stop trying to make everyone like them. Because they aren’t all that.
Vote dammit. That mail-in ballot is coming in about 3 weeks and I’m ready. Gonna sit down right away and fill that out.
OK, weekend. I’m thinking about dinner and waking up a little bit more because it’s after 6 PM and getting shit done. Yup. Hopefully thread and fabric and pens and paper.
Kathy Nida 