It's extra help in the library time!

After the first half of the year, I got rather into the habit of expecting 0-1 students, usually on the low end of that range. But then I've had a few weeks in a row of the pre-calc teachers sending me students to make up tests and things, or do body doubling, and suddenly this week I have _three kids_ hanging out with me. Two are doing tests (one mine, one a pre-calc kid) and the third is finishing up work with me semi-helpfully remembering how limits work.

(I have not yet cynically said "I suppose you can see how often this gets used in the real world" but it's coming)

We're very much at the end of the year, and things are pretty self-paced, which means sometimes in class I can even grade a test or two. Which is good, because the major work task I have right now is, uh, grade all the tests. And everything else that is outstanding. And shake my head and sigh at the students who are obviously using AI, badly. (I miss when they were using photomath badly, at least that wasn't --as I saw someone describe genAI today-- "smarmy").

I had a fourth student arrive! I briefly had FOUR STUDENTS at once which is an absolute record for library help! This was another one of my kiddos even, and I was able to help him grasp the trig stuff he managed to miss entirely, and then throw the test at him to finish up. It will be much more successful than the two days he spent staring at it in a panic because he didn't know any trig.

***

In my real life, I have begun playing Stardew Valley (edit: no spoilers please), and decided it is the Bee's Knees. This shocks basically no one who has ever met me. Am I able to moderate my playing? I will be! But, uh, not quite yet. I need to calm down about it a little bit, or get _really_ strict about playing a day at a time and pausing in between each day to go accomplish real life tasks. (To be clear, I started it on Saturday, and finished the first day of fall yesterday, so we are moving along real nice. But also I did like eighteen hours in two days so UH.)

I'm also doing my reading (I have two days before my check-out pops for Drop of Corruption and I'm only about two thirds done), and getting ready for LCFD weekend quite soon (where hopefully I will not have an infinite amount of grading to do, although I am apparently going direct from work to my ride's house to camp. So I'm packing whatever I haven't already graded! (note to self: This means you'll be packing the work laptop, and shouldn't need to also bring your personal one).

Tonight is the high school graduation, and I've kinda just decided to go direct from school to there. This might be annoying in terms of baggage, but I think it will ultimately be fine. Worst case scenario, someone steals my work bag and I am very sad oh no.

The hardest part about Stardew Valley is that right now it feels _happy_ in a way that means I should probably talk to my therapist. Because Saturday was not otherwise particularly happy, and Sunday was better but also not exactly joyful and HM. What exactly am I looking for here? Control? Simple well definied tasks? An extremely imposed bedtime that I can't avoid no matter what? A morning routine that can always be the same followed by a variety of pleasant ways to spend the afternoon and evening?

(Sunday was good because I was helping LB move, and community is good. It's nice to get to pretend to be butch sometimes, and there was a lot of walking back and forth between old and new houses in pleasant weather. But it was also a lot of social-with-people-I-don't-know which can be fun or can be hard, and LB being extremely efficient which was actually great but then meant everything was done in like...three hours including the eating lunch at the end part. And back into my own head we go!)

***

The real answer is I'm looking for "not being burnt out" and video games can feel like that, kinda sorta sometimes. It is unfortunate that the only real cure for burnout is "rest, prolonged" and I don't get access to that until mid-July. And then I need to figure out the rest of my plans, like when I'm going to Maryland and the like. Sigh.

okay, I think I have figured that out, and also I think I'll be in town for about two weeks, assuming the timing works for my mom. Which means I should definitely _actually see people_ in MD, and also like, I dunno, go to a bells practice? Note to self, send some emails closer to. But as always, it's primarily a chance to hang out with my Cool Mom.

And then I'll have queer Scottish on the 7th, and then two full weeks of very little planned¹, and then into the school year! Huzzah!

***

We keep going. Tonight there might be ice cream. I do like that part.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: I uh. god willing and the creek don't rise, it's very little planned, but that little is a _lot_.

It's not Wednesday, which means it's a day of the week eligible for Wednesday Books. (I don't know why I'm so contrary about this, and I know occasionally I've messed up anyways). It's been a while, let's catch up!

Finished Reading Recently

We left off with me just barely having started Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters. I got through it, but am continuing to feel Pretty Weird about the fact that I don't love the Witches stories nearly as much as I love the Guard stories. I did like all the Scottish-play references, because I am a theatre nerd (even if I'm not that kind of theatre nerd).

I then did a very necessary and very burnt-out reread of all seven Murderbot (by Martha Wells) books in rapid succession. They continue to be Real Fucking Good, and I continue to enjoy having verdantry to samebrain at and send random screencaps or whatever when I need. Three is still my absolute favourite golden retriever puppy of a character, but I had an unexpectedly positive reaction to 2.0 this time around. The seventh book is still the hardest to read, due to [redacted] but I still love the ending so goddamn much and all the hope for the future it seems to provide. Man these books are good for me.

After I finished Murderbot, I returned to the Disc with the next guards book: Jingo! This uh. This is a book about colonialism and racism and war and UH. Like. UHHHH.

Look, all of Pratchett's stuff has this horrible timeless quality to it --I say horrible, because it's less like "applicable to humans everywhere" and more like "goddamnit, we _still_ have to protest this shit?". And reading a book which is very blatantly drawing some parallels between us, the upstanding white British folk with our stiff upper lips and sensible demeanor, and them, the brown-skinned desert-living barbarians with their foreign ways and horrible traditions......yeeeeah, we still have to protest this shit?

It is nice as hell to watch Vimes annoyedly realize he's being racist and have to figure out how to be Less So. It's _amazing_ to watch him wield his privilege like a weapon, as extensively as humanly possible. The only reason to have power is to help those who don't have it, and Vimes gets that.

I was unexpectedly okay with the haha-very-funny joke of Nobby-the-horrible-gremlin being put into a dress and getting in touch with his feminine side. Like. I mean, there were some parts of it that were transphobe-adjacent, but most of the humour was very solidly on "Nobby Nobbs is a horrible gremlin" and not "men wearing dresses is inherently funny". And honestly, even with the first part, it felt pretty okay to watch him be like "no, it was genuinely good for me to explore my gender by doing some of this"

I've done at least one babysitting of The Local Toddler, so we read a small handful of books --not nearly as many as last time, because we spent most of the day outside at the playgrounds instead. But we got through a few:

Hooray, a pinata! by Elisa Kleven felt _ridiculously_ familiar to me as the kind of neurospice who builds connections with toys and plushies and fictional objects. Very sweet little story!

Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall I have maybe read before? Not sure. It's a trans allegory and it doesn't try to be subtle about it. Reading parts of it really hurts because dannnnngg yeah, it is hard when other people see you in a way that just isn't true.

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins was entirely forgettable. There's counting. There's a nice cast of multi-racial inoffensive children. There are cookies. Great literature, it is not, but it won't hurt anyone.

Bootsie Barker Bites by Barbara Bottner I read after the toddler was in bed, just finding it on the floor and giving it a shot. And it was _delightful_! It includes a child being belived by their parents about something they find uncomfortable! It includes the triumph of brains over brawn! It includes girl children who are horrible little gremlin bullies! (I mean, obviously we don't like bullies, but dang, it's weirdly refreshing to see visions of bullying that look familiar to my childhood and ALSO let girls be rough and physical and scary sometimes!). It was a fun read and I didn't predict the twist and was pleased when I got to it!

Last thing I've finished reading recently was the entire archive of the webcomic Subnormality. If you've been around the internet for a while, it's the one with too many words and the immortal human-eating Sphinx as a regular character. I'd read batches of it before, but not in ages and ages, and it was nice to see how all the threads warp and weft. It's absolutely pretentious as shit, but still made me cry at least a couple times, and wrapped me up in a general hope for humanity --even when it's being cynical as fuck, it never seems to stop hoping. (The lead singer of the Generals is my favourite character, by far).

Oh, and I don't think I ever properly mentioned it, but I had been reading The Pushcart War aloud to Austin, and did finally finish it. And then quite soon after, observed one of my favourite students holding her own very beloved copy and we had a mutual squee.....and then I learned that apparently subsequent editions have changed the dates of the book to place it "in the future" which makes absolutely zero goddamn sense given that _nothing else is changed_. So her copy, published in like 2014 or so, sets the pushcart war as beginning in 2026 but does not otherwise _remotely_ reimagine a world that is different from the one in my much older copy, which sets the tale in the 1980s.

Currently Reading

I have been a mess with library check-outs and holds and stuff. I have two physical books I really need to return to the library, like, months ago because I'm probably not going to read them at this point, and I have two digital books that I need to re-hold because I didn't manage to get to them when they were checked out to me. Arg!

What I am actually currently reading though is A Drop of Corruption, which is Robert Jackson Bennett's sequel to his excellent The Tainted Cup which I read last year. I'm through the first part and definitely having as much joy about the worldbuilding and any moment Ana is on screen. Din is...going through it, and I hope he works himself out okay. I like that I've observed at least one of the Clues that was later confirmed, although I wasn't nearly smart enough to answer the first mystery that was presented. Anyways, I have like five days before that ebook evaporates, but I think I'm on track. Finding excuses to walk places and read as I do seems to be really helpful for how my brain handles books.

A couple weeks ago, I needed something to read as I walked to (actual in-person!) therapy, so I broke out my Gutenberg ebook of Dracula, and read up to the current day. I think my hope is to actually go ahead and read the whole thing _not_ as a daily, since I haven't managed that either of the previous two years I've been subscribed. But I haven't read anything since, so I'm behind either way. I did get far enough to get to the part where Jonathan is looking out the window and being all "that sure is my host climbing around on the outside of the castle like a big lizard". Delightful!

What I'm Reading Next

More Discworld, probably. I'm currently at a slight loss for specific cravings, although Tho read Scholomance on my recommendation, so maybe I grab that again. I could for reals try Fire Logic (third time's the charm?) or try to get and finish How To Be Perfec.

I should have some free time in mid-to-late August and I'd love to spend some of that doing like...a thorough read-through of the stuff on my bookshelves I've never gotten to. I also had something push the "Transmet?" button in the back of my brain and like ugh, we all know Warren Ellis is a creep and the books have some serious problems, but also I think I was rereading the entire series more often than once a year during the first Tr*mp administation and I'm probably due for more of that.

Yaybooks!

~Sor
MOOP!

Returning to the real world has been rough.

I think part of it is that I didn't sleep well --the whole previous week, I managed to actually get out of bed on the first alarm without hitting snooze multiple times. Today....I did not manage that. Part of the problem is waking up and it being _cold_ and part is just being tired and cranky. But I definitely spent _way_ longer in bed than I should've today.

I did make it to work, and then it took over half an hour to get my 40 copies finished, which like...fucking hell, I wish I worked for a school that had sufficient materials, etc. For all that I'm part of my union's bargaining team, this is really not something that has made it onto the list, because it's just...stupid. It's stupid that we don't have sufficient copiers in my fucking building. At least the one in my wing was even actually working today, just slow as fuck, and being behind literally one other person fucked it all up.

But it was mostly okay, just...braindead. I am burnt out and tired and really want to go back to camp and be at Pinewoods again. I do not want to be in school anymore. The children are tired and I am also tired. I liked the parts where I could do simple mindless physical labour instead of abundant emotional and mental labour.

I'm also just real tired about being _busy_ all the time. I know where my break comes --right after Scottish Sessions-- and there's a _long_ way to go before then. A lot of said way is quite good! But there's a lot of it. Union meetings, dance meetings, eventually preparing my ESCape classes.

Stuff costs energy, especially when the background radiation is _real_ bad right now. I hope I can find the energy I need to do the stuff I want, and I hope you can too.

~Sor

MOOP!