It's been a strange week, in some ways. Classes started, but they started on a Wednesday. I don't have Wednesday classes, so I went to my two Thursday classes, and then it was Friday, when I also have no classes. In terms of getting back to a "normal" schedule, it was a gentle re-entry.
In terms of weather, it's also been strange. On days when we were supposed to have torrential rain, we did not. On days when we were supposed to have clearing skies, we did not. It's been a week of wooly clouds; it it was colder, we might have snow, except that we wouldn't, because we haven't had much in the way of precipitation.
I've been enjoying the gray skies as I've stayed inside, cutting and stitching small pieces of cloth into larger squares that will some day be a quilt. As I make more squares, I end up with an even larger collection of scraps to make into larger squares. Will I ever run out of cloth? How big a quilt am I creating? Right now, I'm just enjoying the process, being present in the moment in a way that I am so rarely able to do.
I know that soon my free time will dwindle--I will need to be working on seminary projects and getting reading done. Part of me wants to work ahead, and part of me wants to enjoy these last days of more free time.
Yesterday I had a few minutes between talking to my spouse on a video chat and heading over to my sister's house. I decided to go ahead and vacuum. It's amazing how many threads were on the floor. When I got back home last night, I had forgotten that I vacuumed, and when I opened the door, I was struck by how my seminary apartment looked like it had been deep cleaned.
I went to my sister's place earlier in the afternoon than I might have, so that I could avoid rush hour traffic, which begins around 3. While I was there, my sister and her spouse were online doing their jobs, and I did a training session for online teaching job. I did not find the new approach to syllabi to be so complicated that we needed the training session--do most faculty never have to do these kinds of editing on their syllabi?
The darker undercurrent of that training is why we are shifting to this new way of doing syllabi. There's legislation in the state of Florida, all sorts of legislation about what we're allowed to teach/mention and what we're not. As a teacher of composition, I'm not as affected as I would be if I taught History or Sociology. Plus, my course content comes to me created by others, full-time people who need to keep track of this kind of legislative stuff. When I communicate to students, it's along the lines of "Great examples!" or "Can you develop this point further?" I want to believe I'm not likely to be hauled into court over any of this.
After we finished our online work and training, we walked the dog and went to get my nephew from dive practice. Then we made homemade pizza--we ran out of tomato sauce, so we made a white sauce for the last pie. Yummmmmm.
I wish I had some of the leftovers with me now, but I left them all there; in truth, there wasn't that much left. I had an easy drive home, which was a relief; I don't drive much after dark these days. I'm glad to know that I haven't lost that skill.
Hopefully, as I get back to seminary work, I'll find out that I haven't lost those skills either.
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