Accreditation Week, with Sketches

Part of me is having trouble believing it's Saturday--my 3 days away in Savannah have left me discombobulated about what day it is.

In a few hours, my brother-in-law comes with a trailer attached to his SUV.  He will be taking away furniture that we don't want.  I understand why my spouse loves the 8 foot long orange sofa, but I'm thrilled that he agrees that it doesn't really fit with our much smaller house.

I'm hoping that it will feel like some progress, after weeks (months?) of feeling stalled on the home repair/restoration front.  The electrician came yesterday, so we are moving ahead with the kitchen remodel.  My spouse got some painting done.  We have ordered patio furniture, which has been coming, and it seems to fit the bill.

Still, I continue to wash dishes in the bathroom sink and bathtub.  I am weary.

Let me capture a few thoughts from the week.

--The news has been weird this week.  There's the case of the actor who staged a hate crime, but very badly--paying his "attackers" by check.  Then there's the case of the Coast Guard guy who was planning to kill lots of high-placed Democrats--he was discovered because he'd been researching mass killings on a Coast Guard computer.  Sheesh!

--I've been struggling to keep up with my weekly goals.  But writing them out on my tiny sketch pad each week helps.  Here's an example of what I've been doing, from a more successful week:

--I've been doing other sketching too.  On Tuesday morning, I had some time before the accreditation workshop, so I sat at the hotel window and made this sketch:

Here are photos of what I tried to sketch:

The other side of the river which is the more prominent part of the sketch:

--I have spent the week on lots of accreditation projects.  Few parts of my administrator life make me feel more inadequate.  But I'm trying to shift my perspective.  I'm not inadequate when it comes to all those tasks.  But when I look at a mass of data and can't find a pattern for why students aren't successful, I need to remind myself that there may not be a pattern.  Accreditors won't like that answer, but I am a woman prone to find patterns where there are none--if I don't see a pattern, it may not exist.

Of course, it may be that I'm too close to the situation.  I do wonder what might be found if I gave an outside person the mass of data.

--I'm sure there must be more to my week, but my writing time has run out--time to get the furniture ready to head to its new home.