Under the Couch Where My Shiny Stuff is...

Today was alright! Work was actually pretty great, which is nice --it is satisfying to have a ~good day~ at the workplace every once in a while (and slightly surprising to occur in this, the last full week of the year).

Not the last week, mind. I have a day and a half of work next week. It's not great!

But yeah, classes 1 and 4 went well-as-expected, class 2 was just fine, despite my co-teacher having meetings literally every class 2 this week, my circle idea went really really well (well enough that I forwarded it off to the circles team and assistant principal to be all ~hey look at this~), I spent class 3 prep hanging in the break room with three other math teachers I like...all good things!

It was the annual "professional development the week before break" PD, which is never very serious. It could be a better meeting: they could give us a longer time to just....hang out and eat cookies and chat with coworkers. But we did a cute little "family feud" style game, which was fun ("what excuse do students give for cutting class? survey says....."), and I won one of the raffle gift baskets for the scholarship fund. It is...uh, the third time in like....four years that I have gotten one of these. I am only putting in $20 worth of tickets, which I feel is a very reasonable and normal donation to the scholarship fund! I am just very lucky!!!

In actuality, the real trick is that my policy is to look at the ~13 baskets, say "no booze, no gift cards (boring!)" and that both focuses my tickets marvelously, and means I'm not going for the "high value" items. Look, I can't help it that all my coworkers like booze and amazon, I will be over here squeeing over my backstage pass to the school play and several chocolate bars and little leather handmade notebook and set of keen gel pens! It's still not as sweet as the year I got homemade cookies every month for the rest of the year, but it's pretty good.

After, I managed to make it to the holiday show rehearsal, which means that I've made it to one rehearsal this year, which might be more than last year. I got to see all the dances we're doing, and throw my name a couple places in the script. Just have to figure out what to wear or whatever (bonus points for something I can rush home and not change before darting off to the train).

After, I spent a bunch of time rifling through email and YouTube to try and put together a bookmarks collection of all the holiday shows I've been in (every year I've taught, including 2020, when we did a socially distanced one over zoom). Eventually copies, and home again home again, where my Getting Things Done kinda ran out in favour of playing video games.

But I did help get the dishwasher emptied and a bit of kitchen task, and I ran my last load of laundry --I haven't put any of it away yet, but it's clean at least. I did a bunch of closing and organizing tabs, and a very little bit of other like, electronic organization. Not, like, dealing with emails or anything (don't be ridiculous) but at least some brain management.

Now I'm upstairs to write my words and listen to music and do some Chrimbo-present-pre-planning. It is....uh....the holiday is quite soon actually, and if I'm going to contribute to my family's usual wretched excess, I should get on that. I wonder if it's too late to just use the heifer international catalog I got sent to buy everyone goats...

~Sor
MOOP!

I am having a lovely day!

SamSam is in town, and I elected to play hooky from work (more accurately, use one of my increased number of personal days THANK YOU UNION I LOVE YOU) so that we could hang out today and also because my work-brain is _fried_ and so it's a very very nice concept to just...not be there for a day. Here's some of the things we did:

*We went to Amanda's house quite early to watch the biathalon, since Amanda and Sam are in the same biathalon group chat. I find this extremely pleasantly baffling, but it was very very good to hang out on the couch with some friends and enjoy them being very excited about a thing. Occasionally they would give me context, or I would ask a question, but mostly I just got to watch people be excited about something, which I find splendid. We also watched the kittens be doofuses and just generally chatted, which was splendid!

*Home for a bit of lunch, and then we grabbed our ice skates and headed off to the rink near the school, which has open skate for a couple hours on Friday afternoons. We skated for a little over an hour and it was pretty grand! Sam likes ice skating _immensely_, which makes it a delightful sort of thing to do together, even if I'm not particularly good at it. (I don't really regret that I've fallen out of Tech Squares, but I do miss that particular part of Easthill. I want more dancing on skates!)

*After skating, we walked on to Make&Mend, which I only really went to the first time like six weeks ago. I think going at least every month or two is probably a really good idea for me, in terms of getting to see interesting crafty things and also to support something that I want my neighborhood to be.

*We walked home, which was...not as pleasant as it could be, since cold and windy, but we did swing by Saus in Bow-Street-Market on the way. So cold and windy but also french fries!

*Once home, we collapsed for a while and had good nap. Woke up enough so that they could read me some book and I could eventually make dinner, and this is all a really nice precursor to another couple days of hanging out together.

Currently I am writing words and they are brushing my hair out and we're listening to music and that's all reeeeeeally good. I am happy for this!

~Sor
MOOP!

Thought to myself "I should go make a dreamwidth post", and holy shit, I knew it had been a while when I posted the anniversary post, but I hadn't realized it's been basically a _month_. Blugh. Blugh!

(we just figured out Blues Clues, y'all. :P)

Here's some stuff that's happened between Racheline and Patty's wedding and now:

*I have been struggling pretty hard with brain stuff, which is okay and happens, but is annoying! It's all the usual culprits come out to play --don't wanna do any grading or actual work, just want to burrow and hibernate because that's the correct way to do things when the sun goes away.

*I am real sad about living in the world I live in in 2025. I am sad that capitalism. I am sad that transphobia. I am sad that rampant xenophobia that's fucking up the lives of my students. I am sad, and it's hard and weird to just go on as normal.

*Tonight the polycool went out to see Club Drosselmeyer! I've been vaguely aware of this weird little Boston tradition since 2017, when I saw their unrelated show Save the Munbax, but never actually managed to try this one. It was fun! It's a lightweight puzzle hunt mixed with immersive theatre mixed with a dance floor. We had a very nice time, I think, and appreciated that we could sorta split up in ways that let those of us who wanted to just chill and work on puzzles do that, and those that wanted to go chat up all the characters do *that*.

*Thanksgiving was really good --Tuesday and I did it jointly with our collective families, down at my parents house. It worked out unsurprisingly well to have Cameron be in charge of the kitchen, with me providing big-sibling-bossiness as backup to their decisive understanding of what needed to happen. The driving from here and back was much less good, and I'm excessively grateful that I have train tickets for the next big trip.

*I don't know what else I've had in the way of ~adventures~ it's mostly just been the everyday. I liked the snow this morning, that greeted me when I went to bells. I've been trying to work on some projects, like actually getting the downstairs closet resorted and bringing some stuff I don't need to the school for coat drives and clothing swaps and the like. I'm teaching SCD this month at Cambridge class, so that's exciting! My weird tiny dance that I run is also really exciting, even if it's not as flashy --I feel good about it though!

My life is mostly good, but the ADHD and the seasonal stuff have been harder than usual. Millions of little ways to improve on that, I suppose. I picked up Habitica again, and that was helping for a time, but has maybe slipped out of grasp some. Hopefully tomorrow (don't look at the time, I mean Sunday when I say that) will be a good chance to catch up on a little bit of that.

Goodnight, I love you

~Sor
MOOP!