My morning self wishes my night self would fall asleep earlier. My night self feels less tired than my morning self, but does try by going to bed earlier and meditating and doing all those good things, but my brain is the culprit…overthinking like a bomb about to go off. Ah brains. So necessary to our existence and so problematic. Today’s brain is surveying what will need to happen and wondering if today’s body is up for it. Hard to say. I’m sure we’ll rise to the occasion, but I’m not currently feeling it.
Besides grading and cooking and finishing a book, I just trace things…
Lots of things. Last night, I just traced cacti.
It took me about an hours to basically trace what you see to the right, minus the lizard, because I’d already traced him. I started with the agave and then did all the cactus behind it. It’s a little over 100 pieces there, so I’m back to my 100 in 1 hour.
I’m sticking to my estimate of three more nights…so now it’s two more nights of this. About 200 pieces left. Then I can start cutting them out, which looks just about as boring as this on social media. Ah well. We can’t always be exciting…in fact, I rarely am. Ask my students. Even when I have them rust steel wool and dissolve magnesium. Not exciting. Didn’t explode.
Ah well. It is what it is. And today it is more rusting and dissolving, plus some hammering and bending and conducting of electricity (damn, someone probably should have checked the batteries), plus some oil pasteling and doing the pilates…ending up the day with guess what? Oh yes, tracing of the Wonder Unders.
I spent about 5 hours yesterday afternoon dealing with the day job. I posted things, filled in pandemic contracts, calculated percentages on finished contracts, graded things, organized some calendar stuff, graded some more things, input some grades, and created one assignment. Unpaid hours, yes, but my prep period today is a whopping 45 minutes, so you can guess how much of that I would have gotten done today. Today I’m sure there are about 4 contracts that will close, so they will need percentages, plus who thinks I graded everything?! Anyone? Anyone? Yeah. That. I got lost in the weeds on the assignment I was doing. I had this issue last year with this assignment. I need to write down what I expect to get and save it somewhere so I can read it next year before I start.
I’m also rocking a stuffed-up nose, but have tested negative multiple times. My team says “take a day off,” and science would be OK (they wouldn’t finish the assignment, but whatever), but art would be a clusterfuck. And the next three days are labs and demos, so no guest teacher can do that. I’d have to either have them watch the video of it from last year’s Zoom or make up some completely different lame filler assignment. So I keep testing and stay masked and take meds for the cloggage.
Sleep has been problematic the last few nights as well, so I’m not feeling it. The whole get up and go. Nope. Drinking tea now to counteract the nope.
I did trace a lot of Wonder Under this weekend, more on Saturday than Sunday, due to my plan to never do the day job on Saturdays. Also, I was listening to the Surface Design Association conference stuff on Saturday morning, so I pieced the next block in Molli Sparkles QAL…
Piecing is not my forte. Directional stuff too…although I’m OK with both those things.
Here they are with the other parts…
Quilt of Chaos! I’m not even trying to make things match…just using lots of black and white prints. Things I can control. Sort of. Because piecing.
There was still another SDA thing, so I pulled the pieces I had cut for the scarf I didn’t start in last year’s QuiltCon…I watched the videos and took notes and bought the materials, but never started. So I pinned them down in a gradient of sorts…
Basted them all down half-assed and started stitching.
Well that’s fun. My official ‘listening to meetings on Zoom again’ scarf.
After SDA was done, we headed to Visions Art Museum to see A Better World, with my quilt Bill! Bill! Bill!.
It’s a nice exhibit to see in person, and looks great on museum walls…
The exhibit is up through early April…check it out!
I did some stitching on Chirp…this is the second of four of the fourth type of flower, with a pain-in-the-ass stitch going around it…
I’ll be good at it by the time I get to the fourth flower of it.
I traced a little on Friday night, then about 3 hours on Saturday night (the man had a show and I didn’t go)…
And another hour last night…
I’ve got 6 different yards of giant sky pieces that I’m trying to fill in with the smaller pieces of the body and plants and all. I hate waste…
This is taking a really long time to trace. I’m at 15 1/2 hours and I’m only in the 900s. It will go over 20 hours, I think. Usually it’s about 100 pieces an hour, but those big swoopy pieces were time-consuming…some in the time to trace them and some in how to fit them best on the yard of Wonder Under. I should finish some time this week though…
Great sentiment.
So survival day. Just get through it. Come home and nap? Not sure. Staff meeting about suicide today…annual notification of what suicidal kids look like. Yeah. We know, unfortunately. Let’s talk, though, about banning books that might help some of these kids, but not banning guns. Oh…you don’t want to talk about that? I’m shocked. Sigh. This country is so fucked up sometimes. With that, I’m going to go teach the next generation to think…maybe.
Y’all, never apologize for mailing me a check. Seriously. Someone just did. Actually, she apologized for not TELLING me she mailed a check. I’m still good. There’s a check coming. Thank you…you may have made my day. Continue on! Mail me more! Checks good. Bills bad. That’s how it works.
Meanwhile, ugh, I am tired. Yes. I know I keep saying that. I woke up this morning groaning. I have a neck/shoulder thing that started the first week back after break and keeps coming and going. I was supposed to have massage/chiropractor today after school, but the masseuse has COVID. Fuck me. Well good luck to the chiropractor on moving things. Laughs hysterically. I know, first-world problem. Also PAIN. Also I think I slept so hard last night that I didn’t move for hours and I was on that shoulder…not the best choice, tired sleeping body.
It took me a while to fall asleep, though. Not because of school (common) or life in general (also common), but because I’d taken about 10 minutes last night to cut out pieces for the next Molli Sparkles Cut It Up challenge block, so I could sew it together (actually sew THEM together, because I’m making two because I couldn’t just pick one), and I’m lying there post-meditation with a cat on one knee (awkward) and another cat under my armpit (see shoulder pain above) and all I can think about is that I didn’t cut the corner squares and I wonder if they’re the same size as the other squares, like I don’t have the fucking instructions pulled up on my computer. Actually considered getting out of bed (no no no) to just cut them out at midnight instead of falling asleep like a normal person.
It’s the things you can control, right now. And I can carefully cut out squares and sew them together and it distracts my brain from the other crap that I can’t control. Like how I’m going to fit 3 hours of work into a 51-minute prep period today AND get tested for COVID.
Last night was nice otherwise…spent time with stitching friends and stitched a really annoying stitch (Pekinese) which is taking for-freakin’ ever. Then cut out these blocks (not enough of them though) and then traced. Most importantly, figured out how to add PBS Passport to the TV so I can watch All Creatures Great and Small (when the TV is not bogarted by people watching political angst) while tracing.
I haven’t been taking enough pictures of tracing, because it all looks the same. I did finish the FUCKING SKY last night though. I’m on piece 495 and it’s body parts. Finally.
I have to admit that this photo is from Wednesday night, when I had not actually finished, because I was so tired last night that I didn’t photograph the pile of Wonder Under. I think I have 5 yards of Wonder Under in process at the moment…with big swoopy pieces on them and lots of spaces in between that will hopefully get filled with plant and body parts. I’m 9 hours and 40 minutes in. LOOOOng baby.
So this is our science prep room fridge. We’ve been making too many or too few copies…no happy medium. So this is our new number. Plus an inspirational message.
Because we’re only halfway through the school year and I want to pull all my hair out and crawl into a pillow fort.
I’m reading Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence. I love Erdrich. I don’t love that this book is set in Minneapolis during 2020, with COVID and poor George Floyd and all that, but I do love this.
Because I have that too. It’s weird. I’m never sure where it comes from. Like there’s another person inside me and this is them. If you haven’t seen my quilt Swallow Me Whole, it’s in Virginia right now for the Excellence in Quilts exhibit that opens February 15…some of that is in there. I guess I could put it here too.
Yeah. That.
These were sort of fascinating.
The repeating of shapes but not. Plus the pops of brown.
Wednesday’s sunset was glorious…
Stand in the parking lot gorgeous.
The girlchild is in Paris…
I’m a little jealous.
Oh yeah. The QAL from the beginning of this post. I need more squares of the stuff on the left.
Not hard. I can do that. Of course, I picked directional fabrics because I’m crazy.
OK. Going to school. Gonna do everything I can. So is my chiropractor. Then I can come home and collapse? Or keep tracing. Yeah that one.
‘Tis Wednesday and I am trying to type this while a senior cat headbutts my chin and licks my hand. Also my right wrist hurts…and trying to figure out if it’s (a) all the computer grading I did yesterday, (b) lifting weights at the gym, or (c) tracing a few really big pieces of sky on Wonder Under is really pointless, because I think it’s all of them. Note to self: take computer off stand to grade. Also go find the wrist brace because last time you wore it for a day and things were better. My chiropractor is already going to have fun with my neck and upper back on Friday. Let’s not add other injuries from your silly job. Tiny little laptop keyboard plus bad angle of body and wrist. Silly.
So I’m not feeling like there’s much progress on the tracing, because I’m up in the big swoopy bits of the sky and the pieces are huge and a pain to fit onto the Wonder Under, so they take much longer to trace than all the small pieces I was doing over the weekend.
I think the first night, I only traced like 25 pieces. But they were big and fussy. Last night? Last night, I started on piece 411 and finished on 441. I’m still in the sky, but I’ve moved from the back right to the back left, and there’s not a lot of it left. So that’s a plus, because I’m used to doing about 100 pieces an hour and this does not feel like movement. I’m 8 hours in and still in the 400s. I’m only getting about an hour and 15 minutes of tracing each night during the week. I went to the gym last night, prepped breakfasts AND cooked dinner on Monday night. Tonight I have an art meeting on Zoom, tomorrow a stitching meeting on Zoom plus science planning. It’s hard to get time to make things right now. But exercise is important and so is the socializing. Most of them are back on Zoom for now, until omicron fucks off. I’m still getting a few quarantine contracts each day…wait. I don’t think I got any yesterday. Is that possible? Knock on wood, knock hard.
I will go back and fill in all those little spaces with the smaller pieces I’ll be tracing tonight or tomorrow night. I hate wasting Wonder Under. I save pieces that are bigger than 3″ square for when I need just a small piece to retrace something (happens all the time) or when I need to make a label for the back of a quilt.
Speaking of quilts, there are three in Escondido at the California Center for the Arts right now in the California Fibers’ exhibit Surface, Substance, Structure…So Cal Mama…
I Can’t Be Your Superwoman…
And Portrait of the Artist As a Young Woman…
I haven’t made it up to the show yet. It’s up until March 6, so check it out.
And I also have a piece in the A Better World exhibit at Visions Art Museum, Bill! Bill! Bill!, a tribute to Bill Nye.
They’ve been closed for the last week or so; I haven’t seen this exhibit either, but I did see it in person when it was at Road to California? I think? Can’t remember where…it was pre-COVID, though, so fuzzy brain. It will be there until April 3. Lots of opportunities to see Nida originals! OK two opportunities.
I’m trying to finish up Sue Spargo’s Chirp before this year’s block of the month starts, ironically because I haven’t finished last year’s either. Silly, but a goal anyway. There are 24 flowers around the edge.
There are four of each type of flower. I have finished three of the types, so 12, so halfway! Woo! Wait, this also might have something to do with my wrist hurting today…those yellow cast-on bullions are a pain to do.
Every flower has them. I’m getting better at them. I guess that’s the plus. I did start the fourth flower type last night, but this is not a fast border to stitch. I suspect they got complaints, because last year’s easy BOM had a super basic border. I like a complicated border, but when you think you’re almost done and then there’s still 6 months of work (I do these slowly), it’s a hard mind thing.
OK. Time for me to get my ass out of here to school, where it’s a Wednesday, so I teach ALL the things, four different things, it’s like my hair is on fire…
Yeah. Welcome to my job in pandemic times. It’s never really a cake walk anyway, but this stuff just makes it harder. My morning science block will be like pulling teeth…I know because I did it with three classes yesterday. The afternoon block should be slightly better? Maybe? But then 6th graders in art. We are starting something new, though, so maybe that will help. It will feel less like teaching kittens to fingerpaint? Hard to say. Tracing the damn sky tonight though. That’s a thing.
The alarm went off. In my dream, I was measuring out spaces for desks, but someone had moved my classroom outside, on cobblestones outside some very old (read, not found in California) building. There were sea lions nearby and a million places for kids to disappear into and a billion things for them to be distracted by, plus they were all coming from different places and we had to find room for all their luggage. Teacher dreams, man. Oh yeah, the desks had to be 6 feet apart, but ALL the school was outside, so I could only have this square of cobblestones and all the desks had to fit in that space. Ironically, I never had to do this last year, because I was in the hell they call Zoom classes, where all the desks are far apart or nonexistent and all the children are distracted.
So many levels of weirdass trauma with this pandemic.
Anyway, my weekend was busy, but I did finish all my progress report grades, although sometimes I wonder what I’m teaching and whether I’m effective or not…
Sixth metal? I’m hoping. Although I still don’t know what he’s talking about. Welcome to my world. The assignment I thought was so easy last week was apparently more confusing than I thought. Ah well. So be it. One of the wonders of teaching a school that is 90% or more English language learners.
So what else went on? Well, I traced a lot…over three hours on Saturday night…
We went to a friend’s birthday party early in the evening, and then the man watched his show and I listened to mine. When I’m tracing, I really need something that is mostly listening, not much watching.
No closed captioning, no foreign language, no action without words. Last night, I only got a little over an hour in…more like normal.
I am a quarter of the way through, but as I was tracing last night, I found a whole section I hadn’t numbered, so now, instead of 1329 pieces, I think there are 1372. Stay tuned for more brain farts.
This weekend was also the start of the Surface Design Association online conference, which I signed up for, and happily listened (and watched) to many artists talk about their work, one while driving to pilates, another while finishing grades, and one while prepping lunches. I miss most of it this week, because it’s all during school hours, but they will be recorded. And Saturday morning will be another batch of webinars I can listen to in real time. Not ideal, but doable. When I wasn’t grading or cooking, I was doing the brainless stuff I can handle at the moment…tracing stuff for blocks of the month, which keep me occupied when I don’t have the strength or energy to stand and trace.
That’s all freezer paper for a block of the month on mushrooms. I’m fully a year behind and totally OK with that. It’s a time filler. I don’t make art every hour of the day. My brain needs a break from ALL the things. Hence working on this in the evenings…
Still not done with the 3rd version of the flowers. Time-fucking-consuming. But relaxing as well. Do this stitch over and over again on 4 flowers. Then do the next stitch.
I also worked on this a little bit…a different part of my brain.
Look at the pile of fabrics provided. What do you see? How do they all go together? She needs an eye and IDK what else. More flowers. Perhaps that is a hat and not hair, and she still needs hair. A bird on her head maybe. I think they’re all facing one direction though. We’ll see. This one is different than the other ones…an entire scene instead of just a woman. Interesting.
I didn’t go to Road to California, but one of my quilts did…the left one in that block of five.
I also had a meeting of one of my art groups (on Zoom). I miss that group in person, but it was a really long meeting too. We juried new members in, so I had spent time earlier in the weekend reviewing their work and their statements and taking notes. Usually we jury just from work, but it was nice to hear them talk about their practice. Definitely a plus.
I have another art meeting (on Zoom) on Wednesday. Busy week. Long week. We’re back to 5 days of school finally. I’m just so tired all the time. I go to bed earlier than I used to, per doctor’s orders, but I don’t seem to sleep well…probably because I’m rearranging desks on cobblestones. YES, I know it sounds like rearranging chairs on the Titanic. Fully Fucking Aware of that. It’s fine. This week in science is demos and labs and rock stars. It all makes sense. Art is oil pastels. Hearing that I might have to continue to teach an elective next year…I wish I had one that was less labor- and brain-intensive. Art is hard. Teaching art is harder. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. It’s not like teaching anything is particularly easy, but there’s this sense of talent/skill that plays in art and I just don’t have the energy for dealing with fixed mindset and art for only one period. If I didn’t have to do science as well? Maybe. We have an art teacher though and I don’t want to be her. Anyway. I get no choices on these things.
Yeah. That. You can’t tell that’s what I’m thinking because my mask is on. OK. Gotta go to school with pennies and magnets (lab!) and hopefully grade a bunch of things about balloons that don’t talk about sexy metals, and then meet with my team about field trips (what??? Finally!), and then come home and do more of that tracing thing. Plus bingewatch that show I’m listening to, because it disappears on January 31 and that isn’t that far away. Plus get enough sleep and exercise. Got it.
I was trying to add a title to this but WordPress wasn’t having it. I get it. You don’t want me to post it? Ah well.
Beautiful skies this morning after a rough night. It’s November! As I look at the calendar, which says “Oh fuck, it’s nearly Christmas.” No joke there. It’s that crazy rush time. At least there’s some time off coming.
The weekend still had a lot of school work. I need it mostly done before I take the weekend off for an art/hiking retreat. I did cut more stuff out on Friday night…
And then finished it up, 10 hours in, on Saturday night…
And last night, I sorted all the pieces out by the 100s…
Tonight, I’ll need to clean up the studio, put all the fabrics away from the last quilt (which didn’t get into the show I made it for, ironically…or normally…however you look at it).
I do like this next stage, picking all the fabrics. It’s more creative than the last few stages, but still meditative. Lots of standing though.
We did break up the grading for a 4+-mile hike on Saturday, the other side of the Helix Flume hike that we did a few months back.
We really need to leave earlier if we want to meet in the middle…the parking lots all close at 6. There’s El Cap.
It was warm at the beginning, but cooled off nicely.
Once you get up to the level of the flume, it’s mostly flat. It’s the climbing before that which is a bit much. Starting on the El Monte Park side was easier…I think.
Definitely has been some fire damage up here, but a while ago.
Creative fence building. We only saw one group of people on bikes…otherwise, we were the only ones on trail. The only wildlife this time was birds and bugs. And fresh coyote poop, plus possible footprints that weren’t there when we went through the first time. It’s good to hike. This weekend, we’ll be hiking in Joshua Tree National Park.
The cats were glad to see us. Or maybe perturbed.
Nova looks perturbed anyway.
We tried the silly hat on Calli.
She goes to the vet today to suss out her tumor on her side. The one on her nose is the one that will probably kill her, unfortunately. Inoperable. But the one on her side is supposedly benign…just has opened up and is rather disgusting and smelly. Sigh. Poor baby. It doesn’t hurt her at least.
This was Saturday night’s dinner drawing…
They don’t get finished because someone brings the food. I don’t remember if I posted last week’s drawing…
This is about the only drawing I’m doing at the moment. There just isn’t enough time for all the work and the art and actual sleeping and stuff.
Old timey photo of the kids, circa 2005.
Back in the day. The neighbor kids yelled “trick or treat” from the driveway, where we left the candy in a bowl in the wheelbarrow full of dirt, a skelly arm, and a pumpkin. I wasn’t ready for 23 kids coming up the stairs to the door. I live on a tiny street without traffic, but the neighbors invited friends over. We don’t really have that many kids on the block. It just sounds that way.
Well it’s a short week for me, but I’ll need to do sub plans for Friday. Then next week is even shorter because of Veteran’s Day. Then one full week on and a full week off. Work to do before all that. Grades are due next week…which is difficult. Ah well. I did go to school on Saturday and get one art assignment out of the way…there are two due Friday though and I won’t be there to collect them, so that should be interesting. Bad timing on the retreat, but I didn’t pick the days, unfortunately. OK. Off to work. It’s time.
I’m glad I’m an artist. I’m happy that I can come home and not think about how the floors need vacuuming and mopping and probably someone should empty the dishwasher and there’s a load…no…shitload of work from the day job to do, but you know? I’m home so I get to do some art. I actually want to finish my book as well (working on that…it’s been a shit month, y’all)…but I make time for the art because I feel like crap if I don’t. If I didn’t have that, if all I came home to was the dirty floors and the full dishwasher, I think I’d go bonkers. It’s like a whole ‘nother planet I can go exist on for a while, so that hopefully I can go back to work the next day without losing my mind. Or crying. Which is where I was at about 10 minutes ago. Then I sat down and resized the THREE whole pictures I have from the last two days, and realized I get some weekend time (flu shot, hike, lots of grading, mopping floors, watering the plants, maybe other shit, IDK at least I don’t have to be AT school because school is exhausting)…and that is a good thing.
I’m cutting a bit out every night…
On top is the rest of the 3rd yard, the part I haven’t cut. Then last night, I was on Zoom with friends for a couple of hours, so I managed more…
Got the third yard cut out and a goodly chunk through the fourth one, because it had lovely large pieces on it. I’m almost 8 hours in at this point. I do clump pieces together that will be the same fabric, like all the letters on a sign, so that saves cutting time at this stage. They don’t really need to be cut apart until the fabric stage. So there’s progress. I might be done by the end of the weekend. We’ll see.
I have a piece in this show, opening Friday, November 12, from 3-7 PM.
It’s at the San Diego Mesa College Gallery. Looking forward to the opening, since I have the day off. I might make an artsy day of it…there are a couple other shows I want to see that I haven’t been able to get to.
Girlchild sends costumes for Simba. He never really likes them. Apparently we need better lighting. We also need a dog who likes wearing the damn things. Speaking of costumes, I will be donning my Slytherin robes in a minute for school. I don’t know why we have Slytherin robes and it’s supposed to be warm today. These things are heavy as hell. We’ll see if I can keep them on. I also have a loaned Porg, since we are supposed to be doing Disney and I don’t love that. Oh well. What I need to do now is go to work and bang out 6 (I think it’s 6 now) contracts for kids out on pandemic concern (6 in one day…hopefully one will go away), make at least 2 videos for said kids, and do about 17 other things in a short amount of time without losing my mind. It’s not a safe bet. But classes are shorter today (those long block classes are more tiring for me than the shorter ones…I don’t know why)…so that will help. So will sleeping in a bit tomorrow. And cutting more things out tonight.
One of the things that’s changed at school from before COVID is the number of videos we make. We used to make a few explaining how to do complicated things like writing a Claim Evidence Reasoning paragraph or how to create a website, and occasionally we’d record parts of a lab so the absent kids would have access. Now we make videos for absolutely everything, and it’s so time-consuming. I lose part of my prep to either making the video or recording my co-teacher. If there are multiple parts to the video, I’m sitting here at 9 PM trying to figure out why they’re not on the cloud yet and downloading them in some other way. In the morning, I’m stitching them all together and editing out the parts with kids’ faces or blank time, then waiting for them to upload back into Drive or onto Google Classroom. I have some from last year that might work, but mostly we have to redo, because everything is in person this year and it looks different than the online version. It’s a lot of work. And that’s on top of keeping track of the other stuff the district keeps throwing at us. And just grading. When do I do that? I don’t know. Whenever I can. I’m never caught up, even when I spend 8 hours over the weekend trying to get there. Ugh. This year is not normal. It hasn’t been normal in so long, and every once in a while, I’ll be showing an example drawing from an old unit, and I’ll feel the tears rise up in my eyes, because that unit was from right before COVID hit. It was when we didn’t even know how complicated and hard it would be. And we don’t know when or if it will ever go back.
The pro is that I hand Oreos to a bunch of kids and all of a sudden they can sort of explain plate motion. Much harder to do on Zoom. I remind myself of that.
I’ve been cutting pieces out on the new quilt since Sunday night…it’s slow.
I made it onto the second yard of Wonder Under. These are the yards with a million pieces on them.
Not really. But there’s an hour and a half of cutting between those two at the top and you can barely tell. I didn’t even finish one yard last night. It’s fine. Cutting while sitting on the couch and watching British mysteries is not all bad. It’s a good end to the day.
I walked when I got home yesterday. I almost persuaded myself that it was too late and I was too tired, but then I fought the tired (I’m really good at that) and shoved the headlamp into my pack, because it’s not like it’s going to be getting lighter in the next few weeks…and I did shorten the walk somewhat because I had to cook dinner last night.
I saw this leaf and its friends on the ground and I kept walking for about 20 steps and then couldn’t stand it because that leaf was imprinted on my brain, it was so beautiful. So I went back and took a picture and then freed it on someone’s lawn.
It was happy to be on a green lawn. Very contrasty.
I did stay late at school last night to force myself to grade all the art warmups…this one amused me.
Interesting kid.
Anyway, today is more plate motion, more Oreos, more grading, more trying to catch up, more explaining, more meetings, and a flu shot. Plus exercise and book club. Which is a long drive but that’s OK, there are friends at the end of it. And those are probably more important than anything else. It’s the one thing that makes this year easier (?) than last year…maybe not easier, but better? Having friends around me to plan with and discuss kids with and have lunch with. That’s the difference. It helps. I don’t feel as isolated as last year. The work is still hard and overwhelming and please don’t think that little bit of friendness makes up for all the crazy shit we’re dealing with otherwise…because even the kids aren’t really an issue (just a couple)…it’s the workload that’s not normal and over the top and that’s the part that burns us out the most.
Anyway. Here’s to exercise and friendships and getting as much done as you can and taking breaks when you need to.
I feel like I should follow up the last post with It’s Monday! Like you don’t know what day it is. It IS Monday. Pros: It’s a new week, I finished grading all the science units AND projects over the weekend, and it’s supposed to rain here today…good for plants. Cons: Monday. Tired. Worked all weekend so I don’t feel ready or rested. Pros: All the stuff for school this week is copied and organized. Cons: We planned a week where we are ON for four out of the five days. Granted, we are ON with Oreos on 1 1/2 of those days. Y’all, I don’t like block schedule. Those periods are so LONG and kids check out unless it’s AMAZEBALLS the entire time. Which sometimes it is…like Thursday and Friday. That is exhausting though for the teacher. This week, I will be demonstrating tectonic plates with Oreo cookies…and magma with corn syrup. It’s cool, but it’s a lot of being ON all the time.
Other exciting things for this week: I need to find a Halloween costume in my stash that will not be too hot to wear in the mid- to high 80s. It should be Disney-themed, but I might just fuck that off, because I don’t have the will or the brain power. I’m supposed to dress like my opposite gender on one day, but I think I already do that every day. Maybe I don’t have to wear a bra that day? That would be AWESOME. Not an issue in middle school at all. I can totally get away with that.
Oh man. My brain is on a roll.
So on Friday, I finished tracing all the pieces…
That’s 6 yards, some with a ton of tiny pieces; some with some whopping big pieces. It took a little over 17 hours to trace them all…not bad for 1500 or so pieces. It’ll probably be at least 7 or so hours to cut them out. I didn’t start until last night…
The day job ran the weekend. That’s about 40 minutes of cutting stuff out. Expect to see shots of that pile growing each night until it’s done.
I really did grade most of the weekend. I had about 50 videos to watch with a smattering of slide presentations to check if there was no video. But they’re done. This is a good thing.
I took a break in between Periods 3 and 4 to go for a 3.6-mile hike…
I just needed a break…and some exercise. It sucks to spend a weekend this way, but if it means I can come home all this week and NOT watch videos, I’m OK with it. The end of the trimester is coming up, and I will be out of town the weekend right before grades are due, so I’m trying to get all the last-minute shit out of the way…because my art class will be slamming me with two projects right before the end of the trimester. So there’s that. I know…it’s my fault…but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ll figure it out. This school year is not low maintenance.
Cat forts…
They like them.
This lizard has moved into the camp chair I left outside.
It’s there every time I get home. The chair is mostly broken, which is why it’s out there…I guess it’s now a lizard home.
OK. Well I’ve got about a million things on the to-do list this week, but I’m hoping that art will happen in the form of scissors cutting Wonder Under every night. Maybe I’ll be done by the weekend? That would be nice…to be ironing onto fabric next weekend? It could happen. I’d need to clean up in here, of course. No Halloween parties for me…just fabric? Maybe. Oh yeah, it’s school photos today. I’m not in the mood. Think I have some animal snouts somewhere I could use for that…should find those. This week also includes reviewing my insurance because it’s open enrollment, plus a flu shot, book club, some exercise, some planning (hopefully a lot of planning), and a Zoom stitching meeting. Plus a chiropractic adjustment while in costume. Things to think about when choosing one’s costume. Hmmm.
Man, this has been a rough week. I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. You roll over and groan and think, oh shit, I have to get up and teach and things…then I realized we’ve been doing labs all week, labs with MATH IN THEM (the horrors) and MATH IS HARD. So today we have to finish everything up and I’m going to do the math bits for them because otherwise none of the answers work. Sigh. Seriously, if another kid tells me a block that fits in my hand is 83 centimeters long, I might scream. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Yesterday there were tubs of water on every table for science, then I had to deal with a group who thought it was OK to draw on the blocks we use for measuring…
OK, I’m a middle school teacher, so I see a penis in every drawing they do…maybe it’s a butterfly or a person…I just don’t know. I do know I reamed them. Especially when one outed the other and then that one outed the first one. The third kid…I’m like, get outta here…you’re innocent. Sigh. Then the art class came in and we did glue in there, so it’s like all the bad materials in one day…water plus triple-beam balances plus glue.
Today there is nothing on their tables…well, until art, and I can deal with that short term. There’s also a chance I’ll have to sub during my prep period, so the fact that I have 7 thousand copies to run for next week…well that’s irrelevant. I can do those at midnight, without moving, because the alarm will go off.
My job is frustrating me a bit. Some people are like, well why don’t you quit? Sigh. To do what? That pays me enough? It’s not that I don’t love my job…there are parts of it that are really great and amazing, but these COVID years and trying to retrain kids “if I didn’t tell you to do that during a lab, then don’t do it!”…amazingly dense behaviors…ironic since we’re trying to explain density. Maybe we should just hand them a marshmallow and a chunk of metal and finish it up with that.
I will be in a better mood this weekend. Hopefully. After a hike and some book reading. Plus maybe finishing the tracing part of this quilt! I had a Zoom meeting with quilt friends last night and traced during that…
So between that and the hour and 20 minutes I did on Wednesday night, I have almost 16 hours in and about 115 pieces to go.
I should be done tonight and on to the second exciting stage (in photos) of cutting all those fuckers out. Yeah!
We bought Simba a new bed and it might be too small and a cat might have already claimed it.
Sigh.
OK. I will survive. Gotta get out of here and pick up my co-teacher and head for school. It’s Friday!
Kathy Nida 