July microblogging: Sam Gribley, you were my first boyfriend

Yesterday's prompt, which I forgot to address, was to write about a favorite childhood book. My all time favorite book from my pre-teen years was Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain. It's fantastically nerdy, without a shred of fantasy; the tale of a city boy who runs away to the Catskills to live off the land for a year. It sparked all sorts of personal nature study for me, and inspired my early foraging efforts, as I learned about edible wild plants in the area where I grew up. It made me excited about camping and being out in the woods, and probably spurred me on to do things like rappelling and canoeing as I got older.

Now, years later, I discover that this wasn't the only book George wrote about Sam Gribley! I am so getting my hands on these!

Here's some milkweed I came across in West VA, in my cousin's area. No, I did not eat them. Yes, the pods are edible.

July goals: a month of mini-blogs

Following Dianne Sylvan's theme of 31 days of smallish bloggery, I launch here. She has a months worth of prompts. Not saying I'm going to do them all, but there does seem to be blogfodder therein. I'm having a hard time blogging; the book of faces and the instant gratification gram are chewing up my social media time. It's a problem, though.

Here are Sylvan's prompts, should you be interested...

http://diannesylvan.com/archives/5183

July's goals are simple. Enjoy my summer. I am off work til July 30, and I need to do 2 things...clean my crazy house, and figure out some way to set some boundaries around my work life. Because last year was just 180 days of drinking from a firehose, and it wrecked me. This year, far less, and far less stress over it all.

To that end, I'll continue to work at sustaining my meditation practice, and do some enjoyable things. I'm signed up for a qigong class at my church, and am also going to the Dirty South Yoga Fest at the end of the month. So it looks to be a month of mind-body practice, which I desperately need.

Leah's coming to visit in 11 days, and I'm so excited. It'll be good to have witchy company. We are going to the pagan-flavored Mystic South conference - hey, I'm all about the con this year!

But I'm facing the stiff challenge of getting my guest room and office ready to house her. The Clamcave has become the repository of all my chaotic mess from the end of the school year, and it's first on my list to bust a move on, starting tomorrow. I should have begun today, but ended up playing D&D all day at Jessie's so no housecleaning today.

Other goals for July (though I hesitate to make any more, because the aforementioned ones are lofty as all get out) are making a good effort in my brother-in-law's Workweek Hustles on the Fitbit platform, and cooking and eating more at home. How this jives with my newfound love of festivals and cons, and my party girl Leah coming down, I'm not sure...

I'm also doing Tour de Fleece. Clearly I haven't learned anything from the year's biting off more than I can chew, though I really only have to spin 10 minutes a day...

striking gold in the salt mine

It's a deeply rainy weekend, kicking off what appears to be a solid week of the wet stuff coming up, if my phone can be trusted. I've turned a corner, though, and since Imbolc, and a luminous ritual with my Druid group, I've been fairly on the up-and-up. Even the flu, which came this past Sunday, and stayed til yesterday, hasn't really gotten me down. Oh, I took 3 days off to work, and a lot of Tamiflu and tea, but I'm feeling better. Spring, which always seems to pop up in GA in February, is working its magic.

I was struck with a thought about my work this morning. We are deep into ACCESS testing at school. ACCESS is the annual test of English language proficiency, that most of our students take. It pulls me out of my teaching job for 5 weeks, to give group written tests, online tests, and 1:1 speaking tests. Now I don't really like tests, and think we give far too many in our current educational culture. ACCESS is mostly performance-based, though, and isn't ridiculously rigorous, as tests go. I don't hate it, and it does give the examiner a good idea of what the ELL student can actually do, in English. What I realized, though, is that by being involved in testing children, I get to avoid the regular weekly meetings at school where administrators talk about testing. Because the testing schedule runs all day, and doesn't follow the rest of the staff schedule. Win-fucking-win!!!! ACCESS can go on all year, as far as I'm concerned...the entire month of February is simply going to work, testing children, working after hours on my various extra-curricular projects and afterschool club, then coming home to enjoy home life. No lesson planning, no collaborative, data-centric meetings of any kind eating up my nonexistent planning time. It's going a long way to ensure my enjoyment of my job, right now.

Thing is, I really still enjoy teaching, and like the kids, the families, and my colleagues. But our school has turned into a Georgia Milestones-CCRPI-obsessed, numbercrunching score-mill, and our planning periods have been hijacked by time with administrators and coaches pushing one or another initiative down our already choking throats. It has raised everyone's stress level, and to be honest, it's happening in every school in the district, so I can't even escape with a transfer. The one good thing (and really, finding a silver lining in this stormcloud is as a stretch) about it all is that it has caused me to move my retirement plans up a lot. I am planning 3 more years in the field. Slightly more than a Peace Corps assignment, right? I'm just about ready to start counting the days. I never thought it'd come to this. And really, if I weren't so deep into it, I'd just leave, but I do like the money, the benefits, and the dubious retirement potential.

But I am all about finding me some joy right now, and that includes ways to transcend the drudgery.

I have also just registered for 2 pleasurable escapes, thus spending all my disposable income for this month. One is my spinning guild's retreat, to be held in March, in a big rambling house not too far out of Atlanta. The other is the 2nd annual Mystic South conference, coming up in July. Both of these events are serious good times, and feed my soul. I'm hoping a friend from up DC way will come down and stay with me for Mystic South again. A couple of facebook messages, and yes, she confirms it.

And now, my dears, I am leaving this cozy chair for a bit of spinning and Olympics gawking.

Once more into the breach!

It's mid-January. The light, promised at Solstice, has finally started to creep back in. Days incrementally longer, and the deep freeze of last week has finally broken - today's high is 65F. About damn time, too, as I was getting tired of being cold. Our house is not well-insulated, and we spent all last week swaddled in layers of wool, polar fleece, and thermal underwear. Most, if not all of our freak 2 inch snow is finally gone.

I was so cold, from the deep freeze, that I actually finished a pair of knitted gloves, that had been on the needles for years - years! They worked out well, and I'm now over my glove-knitting hump. I will make more! The pattern is Ringwood on Ravelry, and it's a free pattern. Yarn is my handspun, a Knitty n' Color superwash merino from stash. Now it's on to finish my Slytherin socks, and the Iba sweater, which would have also been most welcome in last week's 16-degree temperatures.

I'm thinking, seriously, this time, about taking a long break from social media. It occurred to me at church today, during a talk on The Transcendentalists, how much senseless noise I get in my life, from Facebook and to a somewhat lesser degree, Instagram. The Transcendentalists got inside their own heads by spending time in quiet, in the woods, in solitary industry, in reading, or in stimulating conversations with like-minded friends.

Epiphany! 

Oh I love keeping up with my friends, but I'm sick of the rabbit holes, and am frankly stunned by the hours and energy whiled away online that I could be using to do something or nothing else. I'd kinda been planning a break at Lent, but am thinking to make it earlier. Trouble is, I do use social media to calendar things like our D&D games, and various pagan activities. So I can't get completely free of it, but I can damn sure reduce it. I logged out of both Fb and Instagram, and removed the apps from my phone as a start. I think the hard thing will be to break the habit of checking the feeds - gonna carry around some knitting with me for awhile, and just leave my phone on the charger at work, as I go to my classes, so I'm not automatically reaching for it. Yes, I text my spouse, sister, and friends at work, but it's not like I have to be available all the time for this activity. So, new venture, to try and make some space in my life.

Right now, it's time to prep some food for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast; Asian coleslaw, shoyu eggs, and prepack my lunch. Then a yoga video (kind reader are you familiar with Adrienne?) and maybe a little bit of spinning.

Irma the Bully: Hurricane Snow Days

In case you haven’t heard, there’s been a new girl in town the past few days, and she’s a bully. That’s right, Hurricane Irma. We pronounce her name “ear-ma” as we have a friend of the same name. She rolled into Atlanta yesterday, quite early in the morning, and proceeded to darken our skies, dump some rain, blow hard, and then, as we thought she wasn’t that big of a deal (hey, man, we didn’t even lose power!) she took out a tree in the yard. A seemingly healthy poplar, not even a tree we were stressed about.

Have you ever seen a tree fall? I happened to be glancing out into the backyard when it happened. It happens at the roots first; they just lifted up out of the ground, as I stared in shock. Slowly, they erupt, as the trunk leans, and then gravity takes over, and the weight of the thing makes it fall faster, til the resounding thump jars you back into reality. Our fence crackled like it was made of toothpicks, and everything shifted a little. I was shocked and saddened, but the rain was falling too hard to go out and check it out. Besides, I was a little scared of more trees coming down on me.

Today, I went out and checked it out. So many trees down in Atlanta right now that this one is not a priority, so we won’t even call a tree removal service yet…they’ll laugh at us. Tree removal, fill dirt added, topsoil, fence repair. It will be interesting to see how our shade profile changes with the loss of yet another poplar. Some shade plants were spared; I will go into the area and grab them; a pretty yellow-green Hosta, and some beloved wild ginger plants. I’m already considering the landscaping possibilities, though this is a bit down the line.

Beyond that, I knitted through the hurricane. I cast on for Bonnie Marie Burns’ “Iba” sweater (link) and got through the neckband, and then did a bunch on the raglan line, only to realize that I was screwing up the edging and central back rib pattern, and so I ripped it back to the neckline. Gah…metaphor for my life. One step up, two steps back.

Today, we are off again, for more rain, and diminishing winds. I will write my long-postponed lesson plans, and read 2 chapters for the Master Gardener class. I could use another day, but I suspect DeKalb will pull itself together…we really didn’t get hit that badly.

I feel the intense need for a stash fluff, as I have seen a moth in the office. Inspection of the yarn and fiber reveal no presence of moths, but I am paranoid. I have some cedar oil, and will oil down the inner part of the cedar chest where the fiber stays, and re-inspect everything. Most likely (I keep telling myself) it’s a stray ball of yarn or bit of fluff that has found its way under the couch or chair that’s growing moths. Still, my terror rises.

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9/12/17

so it begins...in which i make resolutions about work-life balance

School, at least for teachers, started last week. Kids come in tomorrow. Given that we had a packed schedule full of meetings, registration, and no occupancy permits for trailers til Friday, I don't think the first week went half bad. A building full of new staff, including 10 new teachers, so there's the potential for fresh happy attitudes.

I am already hearing the rumbling of job dissatisfaction and griping about admin, via social media, though, so I'm remembering that this is the year that I'm going to re-set my boundaries...

1.  Ground, shield, and center before my feet touch the pavement of the school property. Do NOT tap into the crazy. I can't be effective in my work when I'm sucking up my colleague's complaints, my administrator's pendulum-like energy, and the simmering vibrations of 1000 children. Yes, all this sounds woo-woo. But I just do better by taking a moment.

2.  Make mornings less frantic. Pre-cook breakfasts for the week in the form of baked oatmeal, shoyu eggs, grabbable fruit. Pack lunch the night before. Have my clothes ironed, and ready to wear. I allow myself 45 minutes to actually prepare myself, and I don't want to spend 15 of that running around trying to assemble food, and deciding what to wear.

3.  Be outside as much as possible. There is no need to spend traveling time using the halls on campus. Outside time makes me happy. Eat lunch on the porch of the trailer if the weather is at all pleasant. Open doors and windows.

4.  Purge, purge, purge. My trailer and my office are jam-packed with teaching materials that I no longer use. Re-home this shit. I was supposed to do that last year, but last year was a battle of motivation and moods even to figure out what my job was, as a writing teacher, so this year, I will start anew with the shedding years of teacherhoarding. I'm hauling the stuff to the thrift stores, too, not dithering around waiting for coworkers to decide whether or not they may need it. I will set up a box, labeled "OUT" and when it's full (or easily carry-able by me up to my car) I will drive by the donation center en route home.

5.  4:00 is go-time. Gym time, walk time, yoga time. Last year, I worked so late, getting so little done, spinning my wheels, and then I'd go home exhausted and depressed. This year, I'm just going home. I am under no illusions that I can bail every day at 3, but I CAN make a cup of tea and work til 4 and call that my late days. By setting 4 as my exercise time, I'll be more likely to get out. I may need to stay later for Nature Club and school gardening, but since that's my pet project, that's the exception.

6.  Initiate Project Z. Get some sleep. Screens off by 8pm, soothing music, chamomile tea, clean bedroom, melatonin, whatever it takes to get some Z's.

7.  Pace myself. Stay on top of lesson plans, grading, deadlines. This is so very not in my wheelhouse, but I'm going to try, if for no other reason than to save my Sundays from being hysterical spinning.

There. I've put it down there. I want to reassess how this is working, after a few weeks, not because I want to scale back any of it, but because I need to recommit to it.

mast year

It's that hot, humid, rainy, intense part of the summer, where I find myself not really wanting to go outside, and then coating myself with mosquito repellant, pushing out there, and being glad I did. Still, it takes effort. We live at the confluence of 2 creeks, slow-moving Georgia streams, and in some thick kudzu-bounded woods. Muggy and mosquitos are our 2 Ms, down here.

From the looks of it, it is going to be a mast year; acorns are already ripening and falling, and for the first time I can remember, in the 8 years we've lived here, our beech tree is loaded down with beech nuts.

I've not tasted them; they are tiny, and seem mostly shell, under the prickly coating. I assume they are edible, assume the local Creek people ate them, in the past. 

While I find a mast year exciting, in the sheer number and variety of acorns underfoot, it does seem to be associated with increases in tick-borne illnesses. Any increase in rodents around here is sobering, as we live in a house with a crawlspace that's adjacent to the basement, and rats sometimes attempt to set up shop in our living space. Fortunately, I am not squeamish about the snappy trap, and thus am able to keep the little bastards at bay. 

Today is hot and still already, at 7:30am. I am going to try to maintain a steady pace of housework and practical activity today, as I have to be back at work on Monday. It is past the time when I should be taking the river cure, or savoring the "last ice cream" or the "last walk in the woods" or somesuch. I am just trying to have a little bit of grip on my sanity for the next few weeks...