55% Eclipse

OK. School. 48 days of it. With an eclipse today and Eid tomorrow. I think half our kids will be out for the first 2-3 days for one of those or some weird combination. We only get 55% of the sun covered today, so I’ll pull out the class that starts right after the peak…I’m not sure about the class before, because my prep period is the first 40 minutes or so…I don’t know that my 2nd period will be able to see anything. We’ll see. Also they are ‘fun’, so I’m not sure I want to deal with them outside.

East Coast gets an earthquake…we had a 7.something a week or so ago that I didn’t even feel. Californians. Seriously.

I did buy some weird plants last week…so we’re fucked.

Anyway, should be an interesting day…mostly an exhausted day…ending with a 2-hour staff meeting about literacy. Ugh. What are the odds that the woman in charge of literacy will have any interesting things to say today? I’m so not in the mood. Don’t know if you can tell. Pro? I slept last night. I don’t usually sleep well the Sunday before we go back.

OK, let’s do the art stuff. I cut stuff out Friday night but forgot to take a picture. Actually, I thought I had taken a picture, but it was not on my phone, so did it ever really happen? Here’s Saturday night’s progress.

And last night…I’m almost done.

I’m hoping to get my sewing machine back today or tomorrow so I can quilt that piece that has to be delivered in less than two weeks. If not, I’m probably going to Mom’s. I should probably tell Mom that.

I also finally remembered to take clay pictures. This was at the beginning of yesterday’s session…

The sponge was supporting the arm after I attached it. The wings are for support only. I have holes in the arms to support fabric wings I’d like to make. I wasn’t sure how big to make the supports in the beginning, so I erred on the side of way too small, so yesterday, I added more…

They’ll be hidden from the front by the fabric versions, which I obviously haven’t made yet. Let’s see if this thing survives the kiln first. And we’re weeks away from that happening.

Here’s the chest…

And the back…

I started a head/face, but I’m not sure about it.

It definitely needs a lot of work. And more head stuff. This clay is pretty soft and so I left it to harden up a bit. I’m hoping to go back today to work on it some more.

I also had started to make a mug and realized very quickly that it was way too big to be a mug, so now it’s a planter. I feel like that’s how clay works sometimes. That sculpture also started as a mug. So there we are.

It’s currently upside down so the lip on the top will dry mostly flat. Otherwise it starts sagging.

Those are clouds. The next clay I buy will have more grog in it. I already know that. Although I like how smooth this is. So there’s always trade-offs. The real trade-off at the moment is how much time I can do ceramics each week and still have time for everything else. Augh.

I found this while doing yardwork the other day…

Happy owl pellet.

We had Annie for 24 hours…

Yes, that’s a quilt she’s cuddling with.

A sighting of one of my sold quilts on social media…

Always cool.

And a Saturday evening hike…

Lots of water, lots of flowers…

An alligator lizard…

And some dumbass version of an alligator…

Why do we have to spray paint nature y’all?

Baby bunny not quite smart enough to realize we can still see it.

Does not bode well for its survival.

Well, we’re back. Mostly to crazy rat-race tendencies. Not enough time to do anything. Ugh. Gonna go take my meds, pack up my lunch, find a sweatshirt, make more tea, and gird my loins for the sleeping and whining and phones out and hopefully a cool eclipse experience and a chill staff meeting (ha…that last one). Then time with clay and fabric, and maybe sewing. Hopefully. Yeah.

How to Do Things…

Oh hey. Apparently I missed Wednesday. What did I do Wednesday? Talked to someone who is going to stabilize the stained glass near my front door (it’s big, it’s old, it needs help). Went to the ceramics studio and forgot to take pictures. Remembered why I like going places late at night so no one will talk to me. Why do older men always wanna tell you how to do things. And then they say, “I don’t want to tell you how to do it” as they go on and tell you how to do it. Sometimes that’s helpful, but dude, see the airpod in my ear? Only one, because I’m female and we don’t feel safe with both in? Well maybe I’m bringing both next time. Graded some stuff. Went to pilates. It was a pretty chill day, honestly; so chill, I forgot to write. I don’t do well without routines. Well, let’s put it this way, I use routines to get shit done. And sometimes I ignore all that and get nothing done. I did finish my book actually, so that’s a thing.

OK. So I’m officially panicking about school again, because yesterday did not feel productive except in the plant-buying department, and now I have to plant them, so that’s on today and tomorrow’s list. The buying has been on the list for over a year, so I’m doing well. And I didn’t get two I needed. Also doing well. But I finally got down to Native West Nursery, which is all California natives…think the stuff you see when you go hiking. So I picked up some native ceanothus and some other fun stuff that should appreciate my slope. And maybe then I can stare at the chain-link fence less and butterflies more. That’s my plan anyway.

The Little Barn is the retail section; it has native seeds too, but I was afraid of the checkout bill if I looked there too. So I didn’t look. So I can go back. Limited hours though.

That was yesterday…all the errands I never get to. I went to Freeform Clay in National City, because they’re not even open on the weekend, and I needed glazes. Buying them online just seems weird. So I did it in person. Hopefully I did a good job. So many decisions. I don’t have room on my shelf at the studio for them, so I will have to do what I see other people doing: carrying in boxes of stuff. It’s not like I’ll be glazing every time I go in. I did take one picture on Monday or Tuesday, whenever I went in before…

But now one arm is attached, the other hand has an arm, there’s another bug on the torso. So many changes. I was going to go in yesterday evening, but I was tired from all the driving around San Diego County, and then school whacked me upside the head. Fucking A. That will be the next 10 weeks. Begging for time for art. Anyway, hopefully today, I’ll get the other arm on and decide about head and heart. Probably need shoulders first. I can only build for about an hour before I have to let it harden up. I made a pot on Wednesday too, because I wanted to try it. This sculptural piece actually started as a mug that went wrong. I do want to make a mug, and that was the plan, but that new one would have been way too big…like think about pouring the whole teapot in and having to boil more. So it became a pot. For plants. I need to decorate it. I can still make a mug, although I’m running out of shelf space. Finish the pot, keep going on the sculpture, then make a mug. I can do all the things. I figure an average sculpture for me will take all month to build if I’m back at school. Two days a week. It’s OK. I’m going to be OK with it. I knew the next 2 1/2 months would be hard.

In art quilt news, I’m still missing a sewing machine. I called yesterday; they said ‘soon’. I’m like, ‘how soon’? No answer there. It’s fine. If it gets to next weekend and I don’t have it, I’ll go over to mom’s and use hers for the thing that needs to be done by the following weekend. With binding. It’s small. I’ll be fine. Although I should think about binding fabric today or tomorrow. Next weekend just got more busy with family coming to town. This weekend…I was going to go to my guild meeting, but the FEMA inspector is coming by. Hopefully with a check. OK, that’s not how it works, but I’m hopeful. Anything to make up the shortfall to pay for the carpet would be nice. I also need to finish my taxes so I know how much I owe. I’ve been slogging through the data on that. I’m getting there. Slowly.

But I am working on the third unfinished quilt for this Spring…I started ironing onto fabric Monday night…

Then Tuesday was a clusterfuck of doctor’s appointments (meeting with surgeon in late April, thing in eye is not discernable by anyone but my brain) and an opening of Trauma at the Hyde Gallery at Grossmont College…this is my piece Doctor’s Orders…

And me with my eyes dilated, trying not to squint too badly. Woo! Not a way to see an art exhibit, by the way. The show is up through April 18. It’s a college, so the hours are during the week.

Back home to iron more things…all the flesh. Side-eye provided by Kitten…

Stayed up late to do that. Like you do.

This is all that’s left after that, all the non-flesh, non-background things. It doesn’t look like much, but it took two nights to get through it…

Heart, cat, trees, etc. There’s everything used by Tuesday bedtime.

Then Wednesday…

More color!

Then last night, I finished it off…

A closeup of the pile that now needs trimming…

It took 6 1/2 hours to pick the fabrics…

Only 71 fabrics…and a cat head. In case you think there’s ever a time Kitten is not in the room with me. She’s here. Old and decrepit, sometimes smelly, skinny, needs pets. But here.

So tonight, I’ll start trimming.

I trimmed three trashcans worth of yard stuff Monday and Wednesday…found this…

Totally molded on those branches. I always feel bad removing them, but that plant needed major trimming. NEEDS. I didn’t finish. Maybe not today, because rain. Plus planting supersedes trimming. Also found this…

Looks like some predator bird lost hold of dinner. Sorry. I popped it off the branch and into the undergrowth for some small thing to eat. Ew gross though. Aged alligator lizard.

Some other notes. The Man. Asleep. But the sisters are being nice to each other!

Nova usually gets kicked off the bed by Luna, because Luna is a jealous asshole. But this went on nearly all day.

I trimmed the ferns and found a bunch of freesias underneath, and now they’re blooming, which is lovely.

I love freesias.

And this is my school self, lurking in the back of my head.

I know going back is going to be hard. But at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Speaking of light, there’s a thunderstorm that just popped up over us. Super dark and rumbly. Probably not a good time to go out and plant. It’s OK. I need to write warmups and posts for next week. And finish my taxes. And plant 11 things. And go do some ceramics. JAYSUS. That was thunder of the crashing type. Not so rumbly. OK. Maybe gonna unplug the computer. Make another cup of tea? Not a driving day today then. School? Ugh. I’ve worked almost every day on school stuff over break. Never done. We were supposed to go on more hikes and maybe a trip to a winery. None of that happened. Oh well. It is what it is. Survival mode again. Still need to go in and copy one thing for Monday. Not gonna wait until Monday and fight the copy hordes.

Here’s owl video…I’ve been hearing a baby at night…

And then it started hailing here…

Always fun.

Fun start to the day. Certainly makes you mentally redo your to-do list. Maybe that’s a good thing?

Drippy

I think I finally feel like I’m on break. Even though I put in about 10 hours on schoolwork in the last two days. Had to take an asynchronous course on writing. Of course. Like you do. Passed that quiz, no problem. The other one, ugh. Retook it yesterday and passed. So that shit is done and I don’t have to think about it any more. Still working on vocab slides for when we return. I got two weeks of school planned minus the vocab, so that’s a plus. Need one more week done so I can print a table of contents. OR I’m gonna pull the space stuff and make it one packet. Not deciding that today. Today, I am packing for two nights in a yurt! Not far, just Palomar Mountain, but not HERE, and I think that’s a plus. Also the nasty rain won’t start until we get back. I miss our long 10-day camping trips…sigh. I can’t even plan for this summer because I don’t know when I’ll have to do surgery. Sigh. SIGH. And I feel like I’m not getting quilt stuff done. It’s fine. This is just a short break until we go back and I get through this year that sucks and do things that make me happier. Speaking of…I went in early to my last ceramics class yesterday and worked on my piece, and some of the regulars were in there talking about the classwork, and the one they were talking about was MINE, which is still not dry, so hasn’t gone into the kiln yet. Which is fine, because I need to buy glazes for it, I think. I cannot decide. Next week, I will go to Blick and check out what’s there. I’m distracted by too many choices. And expense!

Then, we had glaze class, which was messy and overwhelming. Here’s all my fired pieces…

The cool cups and cactusy-looking things are NOT mine. Mine are all the weirdo things.

And then I glazed. Randomly. Because everything looks red and most of it will not be red. Which is confusing.

And the big ones were very drippy and messy and I think I tossed a toilet brush of glaze at one point. I am a klutz, in case you don’t know that.

The one on the left has three glazes on it. We’ll see how it goes. I suspect I may need to tone down glazing a bit if I’m actually going to do fabric pieces inside them. We’ll see though. They’ll be out on Saturday. Woohoo! Then I can try some fabric things. Three of those are actually pots that plants will go in. There’s a small tray. The two bigger ones are for fabric. I think. And the one that’s not fired yet.

Then I finished tracing the newest quilt. I’m gonna have so much stuff to finish when I get my machine back.

It took a little over 4 hours to trace that. I started trimming last night…

Got a lot done in just under two hours. It’s amazing how fast small quilts go. I still want to draw a big complicated one over break though…break that is disappearing as I write. Right? Ah well. I’ll get there.

In dog news, Simba had a rough day on Monday…very mopey, kinda sad, a bit flinchy, like he was in pain.

Poked all over him and couldn’t find anything wrong, and he seemed fine the next day.

Annie was quite glad to see me for her peeing event.

She has mellowed out a bit; she’ll be visiting us next weekend. Hope Luna is ready. No bullying!

Check out the owl video…

I keep forgetting to go out at night and listen for a baby owl again. I was so sure the other night, but maybe it was just mama? I don’t think so though. The moon is in exactly the wrong place for a lot of the night…it blows out the camera function, so it triggers from movement, but we either get fog or bright light and nothing else. It’s weird.

I was just looking at how many hours I was spending on art stuff in the last month and realizing I need to keep track of the ceramic hours if I want to be able to price anything I make. I’m not really planning on selling pots and trays…I do need to make some things for the house though. But the ones that eventually get fabric, it would be cool to be able to show them in an exhibit, although shipping them could be difficult. We’ll see. Keeping track of the time is something I should do for a while though. Just for info. More info good.

So it seems Medicine Tribe might be a band, which is fine…it was the skull on the back shelf that got me.

Anyway, I need to eat and pack and read my book (oh wait, that’s not required to get us to Palomar…just desired). And get more greenery in the trash cans. And probably do some other stuff I haven’t thought of yet. Hoping for trees and fires in firepits and peace and quiet and no to-do lists for a few days. It’s not much but it’ll help my brain fog…which has lifted a bit since Saturday and Sunday, so that’s good. Maybe I’ll grade something else today so that I’ll have less to worry about when I get back, yeah? Maybe. I’m not feeling motivated to do that at the moment, but I know next-week’s self would appreciate it. So there’s that.

Glorious Bit of Sky…

Glorious world. Hmm. Not a good start. Glorious SKY…that I can attest to this morning. Well, only in one direction. Don’t look south. Very grey and cloudy. Glorious BIT of sky. There we are. I can see that and stare at it. I should’ve gone to bed earlier…every night of my life, but I have not. Unless I was sick. Which I’m not (knock on wood; everyone else is). Yet. Wait, no, this is not a time for ‘yet’. I will NOT get sick. Ugh. Anyone else have a fuzzy brain? Hell, it’s not even fuzzy…it’s just like not vacuumed and the cat puked somewhere but you can’t find it. YET. There’s a good use of that word.

OK, so lets get through this because apparently I have to go to work. I checked. It’s a yes.

Monday night, I finished sorting. Or maybe it was Sunday. I think it was Monday. Fuck.

Apparently I also started ironing that night…

I didn’t get very far. And I laid out the 100s first for some inexplicable reason, and then didn’t want to waste the time to put them back in the box and start over with the less than 100s, so I just started at piece 91 like the brainless pile of art brain that I am right now.

I did none of it last night, because I was in school meetings and/or teaching from 8 AM to 5:30 PM (got to school at 7:40) and then went to ceramics, not home until 9 PM. Not ironing after all that. I did make something…

It may all collapse (the sponge and newspaper are currently holding everything up)…

The holes are for hanging fabric down into it. I don’t know that this one is as successful as what I did last week, which is still drying, but these are all experiments anyway, so we’ll see how it goes. I did sign up for a membership though, so there will be more. Experimenting. At least through summer. We’ll see how it goes after that. I need to be able to go in and work for an hour or so and then leave it to set up a bit before I go taller. So I need more time.

I have decided that every unit cover page I do for science this year (and maybe forever) will use rainbow colors in the title, just to fuck with the people in my district who say that rainbows are dangerous and should not be student-facing. Even though we teach the science of them.

Yeah, I still have some coloring to do. I realize I am so behind, so buried, at school right now that ugh. Fuck it. I am trying. I need all the to-do’s to go the fuck away. After I count cow eyeballs today. After I find the fucking screwdriver so I can get the damn bucket open. IDK what the fuck I did with it. The prep room and materials are kicking my ass.

Trying.

Yeah. I teach both at the moment.

OK. Fuck today. It’s nuts. Gonna get through it the best I can. Hopefully someone will feed me when I’m done.

Mit dem Geist sitzen…

I don’t know what’s happening to the school weeks, but it seems like the first two days are the hardest. Tuesday nights, I’m like, WTF just happened. And why? Yesterday was a masterful example of that. But I made it through…and am hopeful that today has less stupidity involved. But probably not. I had to hand back last week’s homework and tell them to redo it. They hadn’t been explicitly taught by ME how to do it, but I gave them everything they needed in order to do it. They just didn’t use any of it. Not the notes, not the slides, not the genotypes I had them write on their paper and told them to use. Mind-boggling. So I guess the plus is that I don’t have to try to come up with another homework before break. I had two and needed a third. Otherwise everyone (but 6 kids) would have started the trimester with an F. I saw a teacher video about apathy the other day. Yeah. I care way more than they do about their grades. And promotion. And going to high school. Sigh. That’s not entirely true. Some of them care. Just not enough of them. And I realize as a parent that a lot of the dumbass behaviors we are seeing is precisely because some of these kids are worried about going to high school.

So less of that. I had a sex-ed curriculum meeting after school…the ‘last’ one until APPARENTLY WE ARE MEETING AGAIN NEXT YEAR? WTF. I did not sign on for all this. Ugh. I left early to go to ceramics class, which was fucking awesome because it was slab night and all we did was slam clay into the table. I needed that outlet. That was fun. I had an idea last week to try to make ceramic bases/forms that could pair with fabric, so this was the first idea…

It’s a box that hangs on the wall, but the body parts are on top. I’m imagining a little quilt hanging inside the box. I’m hoping anyway. We’ll see how that goes. I also made a tiny tray, just because I wanted to try the rollers…

Not perfect; I ran out of time. Next week, it’s make what you want…so I need to figure out what that is. And then I think we glaze. And then I consider whether I can pull off a membership here. I want to. We’ll see.

I did iron Monday night…

Almost done…just have a bunch of bugs and a bird to do, hopefully tonight. I’m borderline exhausted. Or maybe it’s just people related. We’re going on a field trip. My team is driving me bonkers. I just need consistency and that doesn’t happen. Plus the kids are whinier than heck about going. ‘My friend isn’t going so now I don’t want to.’ Your friend got suspended for hitting another kid from behind. You should pick better friends. I’m not redoing all the lists. You’re going. Shit. I think I have to redo the lists if that kid isn’t going. Oh crap. I’m out. Seriously.

FOCUS ON ART.

This year has been burning me out since September. A teacher friend yesterday said something along the lines of ‘oh yay, we only have one trimester left,’ but I’m like, I don’t think I can do another one. I just don’t have it in me. Next time someone tells me to call a parent, I’m gonna quote the district on self care.

I wish that were true, but it’s not. I always give a fuck. That’s part of the problem.

My meditation app decided to teach me German last night.

Luckily he didn’t talk in German, although it might not have mattered, because I stopped listening and just started counting the breaths. It was all I could handle.

Final picture of Nova conquering the scratching toy.

Oh wait! I have video of Kitten making her toothless face…

She is a good kitty. And I love her goofy face.

OK. IDK what to say about today. It has to be better than yesterday. Well, except that clay stuff was fun. I just came home and read my book. I couldn’t do anything else. Tonight is pilates and book club. Hmmm. Not sure I’ll be mentally aware for either of those. Tomorrow is the field trip. Yikes. We couldn’t get buses for Friday…that would have been better. Coming back for a Friday…ugh. It’s OK…I’m going to finish ironing fabrics tonight so I can get to the next stage of this little quilt, so I can eventually start drawing the big-ass crone quilt that’s growing in my head. That’s a plan.

Bandwidth

So. Midweek. Full school week. Not heavy on the meetings, unlike the next two weeks. I should enjoy that while it lasts. Not a lot of normal quilt art happening, for a variety of reasons. Grades are due in less than a week. I might actually have them done with a margin for once. If kids stop trying to turn everything in late. I had to rush to grade an academic assignment so I would be able to give them two days to fix it. Of course, you give them a deadline and they ignore it and try to resubmit for days afterwards. And then they tell you it’s HAARRDD and you show them that they didn’t even read what you gave them. It’s hard because of that. Not because, like they say, I didn’t teach it to them. They literally didn’t look at the information provided. That shit is always frustrating. I refuse to dumb down all the assignments for the post-COVID laze. It’s been a rough trimester. For all of us. I’m certainly looking at being 2/3s done with the year and feeling like I just can’t do another one. Another 12 weeks? Can’t. Uh uh. I’m so tired of the planning and the adult incursions on my time. The kids don’t really bug me this year. The adults? Ugh. Too much. Admin: Here do this. And this. And you have time for this, right? I took on one thing my team asked me to do (of the many) and they didn’t tell me it involved this Portrait of a Graduate thing the district is pushing, that I really don’t get, you don’t have buy-in from me, but all of a sudden I need to write an elevator pitch for it? I don’t have a pitch. Y’all haven’t inspired me INTO a pitch. Sigh. I have homework. I get paid for it, sure, but what I’d like is time to fix my house and make art and read my book. Ugh.

Yeah. So. Good times. Make shit up. Google it! Hey, I’m just like my students sometimes. I understand it. I don’t have the bandwidth at night, when I get home, to do homework. And I do so much of it as it is. Why did I agree to add more? Sigh.

OK, so in the art stuff, I’ve traced nothing in the last two days because I need to get grades done and that baby quilt done by Saturday. So the last two nights, after grading, I quilted.

Nothing fancy, although it’s for a baby girl, so I quilted a little woman power in there.

Both the woman power that’s gonna bring her into this world, care of my good friend…

And the power that’s been sheltering her for the last 8 months or so…

On the back…

I quilted her parents’ names into it too. Going for all the good juju. Anyway, I stayed up too late last night to finish the borders, so I could start binding it tonight. I should be able to get it done in time. Baby shower is Saturday.

It’s gonna feel good to have all these have-to things done so I can do my own thing, to be honest.

I went to my second ceramics handbuilding class last night…coiling. I love coiling. Although I did not use the extruder…I think I’ll try that in two weeks, when we get to do whatever we want.

I did ceramics in college quite a bit. But honestly, I don’t really think of what I do in ceramics as art? It’s more like what I do with embroidery. It’s a creative outlet and I enjoy it, but it’s more meditative relaxing process than creating something that evokes something for me.

I’m considering a membership at the studio. It’s reasonably priced and I can go in whenever. Sounds nice.

Then I think about my time and what little of it I have at the moment. I’m sacrificing artmaking and gym time for this. And it’s totally worth it and fun and I’m loving it…

But I’m not sure what to do with it long term. I might get a membership in the summer, if there are any available…

Or…I don’t know. I’d like to think I could carve out some time, but this school year has been so bad and I don’t think it’s getting better. Certainly not if I have to fit surgery in before the end of the school year. No call yet. Damn health carrier is getting a new scheduling system, so they’ve basically shut down scheduling completely until it switches over this Friday. Sigh.

Anyway. So there’s that. That pot is gonna slump some more. One of the issues of trying to build so fast in a short period of time. Normally I’d work for an hour and then let it harden a bit. Didn’t really have that option. Ah well. Not sure what I’m doing in there anyway, except playing. Which is fine. I’ll have a lot of pot shapes at the end probably. I’m not very good at the practicality of it.

Monday night, I stitched during book club. Kitten did not help.

Just stitching things down is about my head space at the moment.

OK, so today, my kids are making pedigrees about a genetic disorder using a genealogical history we reviewed yesterday. They got to choose their groups. I’m wondering if I should have done groups of two instead of four. I’m seeing some loser behavior going on. As usual. Sigh. Well hopefully they’ll do the things today and tomorrow and I won’t have to work too hard at getting them on task. Yesterday, all I did was talk really. I need a break from that. I’m trying to plan the next unit, but I need about three hours of blank headspace to do it. Not sure when I’m gonna get that. I really did spend most of yesterday explaining inbreeding and intermarriage. Fun times.

The pool pump died yesterday. Expensive replacement. How am I supposed to pay to fix the house when shit like that keeps happening? The fridge will go next. I’m surprised it hasn’t already. It’s been going for a good long time and appliances don’t do that any more.

Pilates after school, grading again, then making dinner. Hopefully getting that binding on that quilt. Dreaming of art stuff. I’ll get there…soon. My art drive is strong, always has been. 18 school days until Spring Break…not that we have anything planned. Sigh. Except stuff here. No money except to fix shit.

Give Them Cookies…

My days are still off. Whatever. I think I know they’re off at the moment…certainly I chant the current day in my head over and over just as a reminder (THURSDAY THURSDAY). I’m kind of exhausted and braindead, but also getting stuff done, but really not all of it or enough of it. Y’all know how that goes. I know that my car key fob battery died yesterday, so I have to set the car alarm off to get in the car. That’s fun. I did it in the school parking lot, then went to one place to buy a battery (nope), set it off again, went to Pilates, set it off again, used the internet to find another place to buy a battery (double nope), set it off again, and then a third place (triple nope, the internet is a big bad fucking liar), set it off again. The Man says I can take his car today, which is good, because otherwise I would set it off at least four times that I can think of. Good times. I was so exhausted by the time I got home that I just sat on the couch for about an hour (reading and drinking tea and petting the dog) until I could deal with dinner. I had to deal with the trash and compost crap first when I got home. Not good times. At least I got to read. Always pro that.

It didn’t give me enough energy to work on the baby quilt, unfortunately. I got an email that I needed to meet today with the boss, losing another prep period, and I’ve already lost the other three this week, so I spent about an hour last night trying to make sense of (and find) all the assignments for the next unit. Trying to get my head around the logical story of it. Because the other (mostly newbie) teacher was like, oh yeah, I’m all over the place, and I’m like, hey how are your kids dealing with that? Hmmm. So yeah. Please ask me again why I don’t have time to do all the extras at school. So hopefully today and tomorrow’s prep-sucking meetings won’t take ALL my prep, so I can actually copy stuff and create stuff and make sure next week isn’t a clusterfuck. I mean, it might be ANYWAY. Yesterday’s assignment certainly threw them. Shouldn’t have. I blame Trimester 2 lazy ass didn’t do any of the work last week (so many blank papers). So I gave them more time (not a ton), and today we move on. Lots of blank stares. Lots of my reminding them that they have stuff in their folders that will help them. One kid is like, “so where do I find the answer?” and I gently touched his head. And nodded. Figure it out.

The next academic assignment will be easier.

ANYWAY. School. Fuck me.

Art though. Also maybe fuck me. All over the map. The kids and my ex gave me a ceramics class series for Christmas and I had my first class on Tuesday night. We started with pinch pots. I made a lot of random things. I didn’t have a plan (obviously).

I think I decided four of them were plant pots. That one on the right is too heavy on one side. It might fall over.

I can’t really explain any of it. I was just messing around. It was very meditative.

That’s definitely some sort of figure on the right. Anyway. Next week is coiling, which is my favorite, but they have an extruder, which I’ve never used before and am totally looking forward to messing around with. Woo! And I have to think about what larger project I’m going to do in Week 4. I might become a member. I don’t know. Maybe for the summer? It’s open 24/7 to members. I could go in there for three hours and build random garden ornaments.

I worked on this a little on Tuesday night when I got home. It’s cool. They need feet. Also they need to be a lot older for what I really want to do next.

But it’s a place to start. I tend to draw indeterminate/young age. I will need to practice old age. More wrinkles? Not sure.

And then I finished this one. Not sure about it.

But I numbered it. It’s small, but there’s 313 pieces (because I never know when to stop).

So blurry. Amazing photography. Really. I can start tracing tonight. No, I haven’t finished the baby quilt or the other art quilt, but this one is for a deadline, so I should do it first. Wah. Whatever.

I’m really proud of this. We have a certain publisher/author we use for all our homework assignments. They’re called thinking probes. But there aren’t many for the genetics unit. I made some other stuff, cobbled together from quizzes that were part of assignments I was giving (I don’t do a lot of quizzes), but I needed something for GMOs, and I’m sitting there staring at one of our thinking probes…I can do that. So I used AI to answer a question that AI created about GMOs, and then I used the names of the other science teachers as the friends…

Although one of them wants to change their answer to something about bringing dinosaurs back. Which I might change for next year, but I’d already copied them for this year. I’m so proud of this one thing. I was trying to use AI for a lot of things yesterday, because I don’t have anyone really helping with this grade level. AI is like a sort of competent and sort of knowledgeable friend. Not a great one. Either friend or competent or knowledgeable. Although it gave me a good BAD answer. ANYWAY. I did this one good thing yesterday.

Simba is stuck with just us this week with the boychild gone. We couldn’t find his lion toy when Katie was visiting…we hide all the toys because she eats them. But he found it and brought it to me the other night…

Wanted to make sure I saw it again last night…

DON’T TOUCH IT THOUGH. Yeah. I did.

I just don’t send it at that point. Really. Fuck that.

OK. Today. Is a lot. We have the district coming by to see what we are doing with literacy, which means a lot of outside during advisory with our kids, trying to get them to mingle and talk about the book so we can give them cookies. Sounds hard? You’d be surprised. Then I need to remember to do literacy in science (it’s been a rough month y’all…I’ve been slacking) so they can see it when they tour through, although if they don’t come in the first ten minutes, they won’t see it. So there. Then teach about pedigrees…next part of genetics. I revised a lot for this so they would have to do big chunks on their own. It’s my new thing. Less direct teaching, more putting them on the spot to do their own work. We’ll see how it goes. It helps me get the grading done, for sure. I just sit at the table with the kids who won’t get on task and grade…they are remarkably compliant then. Although some birdwalk like crazy. Whatever. So yeah. I need to make more tea and go to the place that exhausts me. Run errands after school. Hope my battery shows up so I can drive my own car tomorrow (my jellybean stash is in there). Zoom with stitching friends. On the couch. Stitching. Nice. SLEEP for fucks sake. Really need that. Start tracing that quilt and try to get my head behind it. Goalz.