Eggy Weggys

Today we drop eggs. It seems wasteful, even anathema, to drop eggs, but the kids do learn some important stuff. Like slow it the fuck down. Make sure it’s padded. Don’t make it fucking heavy. Today they will learn that their designs will bounce…and that’s a bad thing. They also (probably more importantly) learned to research design issues and work together to create a design on a time crunch. And that if they don’t do any work, they get no choices as to who they’ll be working with…they’ll be stuck with the other kids who didn’t do any work and if they want to participate, they’ll have to start working. Also pretty important. Some of the most important stuff kids learn in school, honestly…the stuff nonteachers probably don’t even think about. For me, I’ve been shaky for two days, but improving…part of it is that food is not something I want to eat right now. My body is still undecided about the necessity of food and lets me know that it’s problematic on a regular basis. But it is getting better. I’m keeping it pretty bland. Which is boring. But I don’t wanna eat anyway, so it works. I do need more energy today to manage this drop. I’ve been doing a lot of sitting, not walking…although yesterday was better. I hit my steps yesterday even though I sat a lot. We’ll see. I’d like to go to ceramics today, but that’s probably overreaching things. Maybe tomorrow, when I don’t have to put out a bunch of energy just to get through the day. Might be better.

I have no photos between the crash and about 48 hours later. This is Monday night, before the food poisoning hit…I finished cutting everything out.

And then nothing for two days. Last night, I came into the office and set up the ironing board again, put away all the stuff for the cat, and got everything ready to iron tonight.

It won’t take long. It’s not big. It’s not complicated. The next big one is rolling around in my head, not solid enough to come into existence yet. It will. Soon. So ironing tonight I hope.

I’m still working on the Quilt National post…it has most of the photos, but missing lots of writing. I’ll get there.

This is what coming back to school after being gone for three days is like.

She cleaned it up, but not before everyone started yelling about inertia. I’m not sure HOW it’s inertia? It was a balance thing. I guess once it was off balance, it was inertia, until the table stopped it. I’m actually highly amused they used science to try to explain it. You’re not sure you have an effect, and you do. Strangely.

My daughter got me a clay stamp with my initials in an eye…very cool.

I haven’t been able to go in and try it yet, but it looks awesome. Way easier than my chicken scratch current version.

Simba was very cranky the other night. I get it dude. I’m with you.

This was a good book…just finished, by A.G. Slattery.

And too real. Especially now. Some ideas from this book are percolating for the next drawing.

OK. Need to go in and get ready for this onslaught of egginess. And energy. I usually have a lot of energy for this…not so much today. I did finally manage some grading yesterday (I did a ton up until Monday night) and some planning. Sex ed starts next week and the packets are here but there are chaotically incorrect amounts of them. All the things are happening at once…we run out of days and everything has to be done, whether you like it or you’re ready or not. Pros and cons to all of that. I think I’ll be OK with some more rest and some more food. I’ll manage to get everything done or throw it out. There’s two packets with some throwaway possibilities. Yeah. We get by, teachers. We don’t have a choice. So many unqualified and inexperienced people telling us how to do a job we’re quite good at when left to do it. OK. Eggs. Eggy Weggys.

To Get Me Through

Oh hello. Friday is here. I have very little of my voice…unfortunate, because the new sex ed curriculum is EVEN MORE talking than the old one. I’m depending on tea today, and hopefully I can find (and make work) my mic system. It’s fussy as shit, so I’m not confident it will work.

We have officially reached the time of the school year when you just do 10-hour days every day (10? Let’s see…left at 7:45 yesterday after sending three emails from home, probably started at 7 AM, and came home at 4:30 and then worked mostly until 9:30…yup) until you collapse and hopefully that’s graduation day. I’m not fully planned for next week. I need to grade three thousand things (that’s after grading a ton the last two nights). My house is a disaster. Fun times. I am going to the ceramics studio after school today. I went Tuesday, but just to make sure stuff wasn’t drying out. Tonight I’m going to do some underglazing on the sgraffito piece. Meditation. Before I come home and grade another three thousand things. Fun times. I keep saying that. I hate the end of the year. I really have not enjoyed this school year. I have a cart full of supplies from the other grade level who just dumped everything off, apparently for me to clean up and put away? I put away all the egg drop stuff yesterday. That was a fun thing though. We dropped 47 eggs and 7 survived.

Bethany did NOT survive.

I. Am. Overwhelmed. And the contractor and the stained-glass guy are both trying to schedule with me, and I’m like, y’all need to schedule with EACH OTHER. Leave me out. I can’t even answer the phone for 7 hours a day. Y’all are grown men. Figure it the fuck out.

Hopefully that works.

I’m ironing. It’s brainless at this point. That’s good, because so am I. Wednesday night…

Thursday night…

With Kitten hiding under the ironing board. IDK who the fuck numbered this thing (it was me), but the arm is on top and should be numbered after the torso (it’s not). So fussy. Who drew this thing (also me)??? I actually like it. It’s OK. I almost gave up when I got to the leaves though, and some of them need to overlap the heart, and it’s numbered higher, which it shouldn’t be. So I was obviously tired/out of it when I numbered it. Blame my school self for that. Suspect there’s another three nights of this…It’s actually pretty small. Still no sewing machine. I’m calling today. I know the part shipped. Insane.

The Man is still enticing crows.

And apparently other birds. OK. Teaching body image and decisionmaking today (ha! that last one.). Yesterday, we changed seats for sex ed. I let them pick one friend to sit with to help them feel comfortable, but these two boys (at two different tables) both were mouthing off about what SIDE of the table they needed to sit on, and I finally blew up, explained that they are constantly trying to interact with people across the room, so I made them face the other way so it would be incredibly uncomfortable for them to do so and obvious to me that they were doing it. I explained (rather loudly) that it was incredibly lame that I was having to babysit the behavior of kids going to high school in two months at that level, and if they kept arguing with me, they would be out. They shut up.

My patience is low, bottom of the barrel…with adults and children. Sorry. I’m doing my best. All the emails about how to redo things? Go look in your email. Stop asking me how to do it…it’s the same way we’ve been doing it all year. Follow the instructions I’ve said all year. In fact, if you were here last year, all three 7th-grade teachers, one of whom was me, also used the exact same instructions. Sigh. Double sigh. Fucking sigh.

OK. I’m walking dogs tomorrow at some point. I’m hopefully taking a break to go to my quilt guild meeting. I’m doing ceramics tonight. I’m ironing every night. I’m drinking chai tea because it makes me happy. I bought a piece of monkey bread from our student coffee store, to be delivered today during first period. A treat. To get me through.