summercomfort

woooooo survived until spring break!!!

The faculty Shakespeare play was fun! There was so good disco music, everyone wore things that were far too shiny, and I was able to make a program Tuesday night that I'm pretty pleased with. One of the things that I've enjoyed about this play and last year's, is that I got to cut up some of my old pants and "upgrade" them to be something wearable again. Last year it was by putting in safety pins, and this year it was by flaring my old jeans with leopard print. It really brought home this sense of "oh, the new fashion is really just taking the tacky stuff in your closet and doing things to it" -- like, cut your parents' old work shirt and sew it to your jeans, etc. But like... we don't do that as much anymore?? It's like ... new fashion is about buying new stuff off the rack. Is it the curse of fast fashion making all of this more accessible? Is it the decline in basic sewing ability? I wish more people felt comfortable just modding their clothes.

One of my big goals this Spring Break is to work on the Citizenship Comic.
- Quest week is week 16 of the year, and by then I should hopefully have 15 pages done.
- What's left to do before Quest week (in 10 days) is to ink 4 more pages, shade all the pages (15), then ideally add historical text, or at least a title page for each section. I think if I spend ~3 hrs per day working on my comics this week, I should be able to get there? Maybe I can do some sort of deal with Miss R re: she gets youtube time while I get drawing time?
- After Quest week, I'll have 10 more weeks until the Supreme Court decision comes down (my self-imposed deadline), and ~11 pages to do (plus the historical notes pages). Which means I need to do 2 pages on a few of those weeks.
- And then I'll be done!!

General tidying/logistics I need to do this week:
- pile next to my bed
- tabletops downstairs
- get haircut for self and Miss R!
- move phone photos to computer
- laundry
- sent out Quest panel slides

Gross things that I need to do this week:
- call the car people again to tell them to register my car insurance (UGH)
- taxes
- call dentist and make appt
- get plane tix for summer

I think what would be helpful is to have at least 1 activity to do with Miss R every day so that the week doesn't turn into a big blob.

omgggggg that was the cough that wouldn't leave, urgh.

Let's see...
- whirlwind week of interviewing 3 candidates was horrible, but we have actually successfully hired 2 of them, and I'm pretty excited!
- then it was a week where Miss R got sick about halfway through the week, which threw everything off-balance. I was coughing a bit and descending into illness, but it was also the weekend of the comics pop-up so I just kind of .... pushed through it.... which is ultimately not great, because this week I really should have just called out from work, but instead I dragged myself into school and taught my classes while hacking my lungs out, yay. (I was masked and made sure to stay 6+ feet distant, and I only had to teach 3 classes, so it's actually not *that* bad. And I stayed in my car in-between classes so that I wouldn't infect anyone.) Wed-Friday was parent teacher conferences on Zoom, which was its own flavor of miserable, but at least I wasn't infecting anyone, and I did get to catch up on some work on Thursday. Friday afternoon (yesterday?!!) was when I finally started feeling better and getting energy back. And Miss R finally felt good enough to go back to school after missing 9 days, so ... yay!
- Just in time for the resumption of Chinese school today, and tomorrow Miss R has a joint minecraft-themed birthday party! Wow she is entering the double digits!!! I printed a bunch of minecraft block textures at work and last night I made some minecraft cubes (crafting table, furnace, cake, and chest).

Spouse is awesome and has made a Creeper piñata :)

So tomorrow is the big party!

Gotta remember to do tomorrow morning:
- make Minecraft cake
- buy candy to fill into Creeper
- maybe buy some chips/salsa? uncertain
- maybe buy some gluesticks and tape?
- disambiguate and put colored cubes in bags?

Gotta remember to bring:
- tape!!!
- boxes, made
- boxes, raw
- scissors and maybe exacto knife. ruler
- markers for folks who want to draw directly on the boxes
- cake!
- creeper!
- bandana for piñata hitting
- picnic blanket or tablecloth
- foods and snaxxx (cheese balls, chips & salsa)


Oh, I finished the Community Center in Stardew Valley on Year 2 Summer day 10, so now.... I've got nothing to do except to wait for Grandpa's approval, I guess. (I'm so disinterested in the late-game stuff lbr)

the last update was actually my annual Spring Gala links, so here's my actual update (I guess I'm doing weekly ones now instead of daily, which... I guess I'm fine with. Maybe when I get less busy I can do daily ones?)

Anyway, it's been 10 days since my last update. Let's see what's happened...

- Mock Trial kids didn't make it to county finals, so that's mostly done. I should sit down with the other teacher some time and plan out some coaching timelines, etc, but other than that, the "season" is over

- Met with the learning specialist at school, and she says she's going to recommend Miss R for a neuropsych eval, and the school is going to help pay for it, which is pretty exciting. Still need to send a follow-up email to ask for specific deets, but at least ball is starting to roll???

- Last couple of days have been pretty busy -- we were originally planning to drive up to snow zone for Mon-Wed with a different family (her newfound bestie), and do Chinese New Year in the mountains, but then we find out on Saturday night that there's a big storm sweeping through, from Sunday night to Wed night, basically making it impossible for us to get up there. Unfortunately, this meant that we've had to cancel our reservations, which are non-refundable. :( And also I had to scramble to find something else to do. So Monday night we did New Year's at our place, and then yesterday and today we drove to a random weird treehouse that I found on AirBnB -- it's apparently built in 1925 by a smuggler. Pretty cool, very quaint/rustic, but surprising comfy, despite the sloped floors and odd layout. Got back around 5pm today, aiyah. Miss R still wants to do snow play, however, so tomorrow morning I'm driving her and her bestie to the snow line. It's gonna be a ~3 hr drive each way, so ... kinda rough, oy vey. I hope to queue up a bunch of music to listen to, I guess? Or maybe an audiobook? egh.

I've got a bunch of to-dos, but this February break has been more full of logistics management than I'd expected. I did manage to finally send last year's photos off to print, which was something I'd been planning to do since Thanksgiving.

Hopefully after the drive-a-thon tomorrow I'll have some time on Friday to work on comic???

oops, 2 weeks have passed. yikes, I thought it's only been a week? And to think that I started the year with daily posting ambitions. But then again, it's been a busy month+. Hopefully things will be better from here on out, but I guess I shouldn't hold my breath, given our tendency to just ... keep doing more lol.

Quick accounting of what happened in the past 2 weeks:
- last last Tues I didn't go to mock trial, but I still had to drive the other teacher to mock trial, which led to a very hectic post-meeting hustling. But child was appropriately picked up, yey!
- last last Wed and Thurs were all days involving a lot of lesson prep and running around. Including a bonus trips meeting at lunch.

- last last Fri had the parent teacher conference, which went ... better than I'd expected. It seems like the math teacher is finally on the "Miss R has challenges and needs accommodations and support" train, instead of the "Miss R is underperforming due to unfathomable defects" train, so that's good. (note to self: send follow-up email about possibility of getting another evaluation earlier -- Kaiser says we're not allowed to retry until May, but the teacher said they may be able to move up that time frame?)
- oh yeah, last last Fri was also when the Mock Trial drama dropped, which was that the Mock Trial county organizer accused us of rostering in bad faith. In fact, we were just rostering in ignorance -- we didn't know about a rule that the Varsity needed to be staffed with 18 distinct people (last year was the first year of our team and there were barely enough to field a JV, double-rostered). Anyways, a lot of terse back-and-forths, as well as a lot of last-minute scrambling to rebalance our rosters and slot people into new roles at the very last minute (as in, the day before the trial)

- last last Sun was the taiko workshop, the last one in our current location! (Sad that we'll be moving, but there's thankfully both a new interim location and a new long-term location lined up. The new interim location probably won't be able to have Saturday AM classes, which means that we probably won't be going to taiko for a bit. But honestly that's fine -- mom is headed to China anyway, and we can have some chiller Saturday mornings. (oh wait, I just checked the slack channel, and we ... might be staying in our currently location until the new long-term location is set up? Which would mean no interim??)). Anyways, yes, taiko drama, but thankfully lots of competent people are on it. :)

- last Tues was Mock Trial, which of course meant I got home around 11pm. Really proud of the kids, though -- we got to semi-finals! Despite the last-minute re-rostering! Which, on the one hand, go team! But on the other hand: more time spent at Mock Trial practices, etc. Mock Trial has taken over my Tues/Wed/Fri afternoons for the last 3 weeks, aiyah.
- last Wed was our school's annual MLK day celebration. I ran a workshop about Confucian vs. Hollywood expectations re: "Asians", which was actually pretty fun, but also: tiring.
- Friday I was gonna have a chill day to catch up on stuff, but then Miss R didn't want to go to the all-day aftercare, so I had her along with me all day.

- Yesterday (Saturday) was long, but fun -- Miss R attended a friend's bday party, which meant Spouse and I got to eat some momos for lunch and do some grading at a different boba shop. Then, after Chinese School, I went to the birthday party of the Mock Trial coach. It was the first time in over a decade since I've gone to a party with adults who I don't know, so that was pretty exciting. Everyone prepared powerpoints to rant about their various pet topics, so that was very fun. After some thought, I decided to talk about the history of Chinese Romanization, which led me down some very fun rabbit-holes on Friday night. Watched a lot of people get very drunk, learned about Filipino monsters (and the fuckability thereof) and eggnog as a tiki drink. There were some very funny presentations about polyamory, the diversity of desserts, a loving roast of someone's shorts, and goats as the superior species. But also: got home at midnight.

Basically it's been back-to-back full days until basically today, sigh.

But hopefully things will even out! I don't foresee our Mock Trial team winning County (the top-ranked team in our country was 2nd in State last year), so Mock Trial stuff should end next week. I've already drafted a plan for next year to make Mock Trial more sustainable for me (main goal: I personally need to stop being at mock trial by 4:15pm so that I can get my post-school day downtime.) Taiko drama seems to be mostly evening out, and there doesn't seem to be any new major events for the next few weeks. I re-re-re-drafted page 3 and 4 of my Yamashita comic, so now I can re-enter the inking stage, which feels good. (phew! finally!) I want to power through a bunch of it in the coming week, which will hopefully mean I'll be caught up on my 1-page-a-week goal. (Currently I just finished page 3, and it's week 5??? of the new year).

I think the big thing that's been really draining lately is just the amount of executive function energy and teaching energy it takes to herd Miss R through her homework every day. This morning, it took her from 9:30am-12:30pm to do 1.5 pages of math problems. It was about 20 minutes of actual doing of math, and the rest is just ... focus challenges. And there's going to be more tonight. And it's a thing where the more tired I am, the more snappish I get, which then leads to Miss R shutting down more. I think we need to have a clear talk about this, and come up with some better recognition of what's going on, to wit:
- a way for her to clearly evaluate and indicate her level of spoons at any given time. Right now, sometimes she's able to focus for 5-10 minutes, but sometimes only 1-2 minutes, and that sense of "backsliding" is very frustrating to me.
- once we figure out her level of spoons, maybe there's different methods that trigger at different levels? Like, if she's only able to focus for 1-2 minutes, she really needs some non-screen-time rest so that she can bulk up to 5-10 minute focus chunks.
- also, we need a way to shortcut the avoidance/resistance chunk of time. Like, that time could be much more productive on both our parts -- I have better things to do than sit there and wait for her while she curls up in a ball or does all sorts of avoidant behavior. Maybe a "you clearly need some time to ramp up to this. How many minutes do you need?" And to make it clear that that time isn't spent avoiding, but rather doing something else??

I think it was Wednesday when I last posted? So what's happened since then? Well, Wed afternoon I went to my first Mock Trial practice, which was a scrimmage, and it was very cool to see the kiddos do lawyerly things. Thursday was a lot of lesson prep and lesson delivery, followed by going to comickers. I got a panel done! Friday was more class and then I was able to be helpful during the Mock Trial prep, which I was happy about. And then I rushed home because me and mom had our annual "retreat", aka we have dinner, gossip, talk business, and stay at a hotel overnight. It was pretty good -- I pitched my idea for a full app version of the Chinese curriculum, and mom tentatively okay-ed it. Saturday we went to our taiko class, and found out that we'll have to move dojo locations again. This tends to happen every 3-ish years, because we're big and loud, oops. Thankfully there seems to be a decent option available. It'd mean some changes to the weekend schedule, but it doesn't seem like we'll be immediately homeless, whew! Saturday had the usual Miss R angst around Chinese homework, followed by Chinese school. Then, we thankfully had a relaxing Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon was our taiko workshop, and then Sunday night Miss R had a sleepover. The two kiddos ended up staying up until midnight playing minecraft :3. Which brings us to today, which is a Homework Day. Poor Miss R, needing to force her ADHD-inattentive brain into grinding through so much homework!

I've been making steady progress on my comic, which I'm feeling pretty good about. If I continue at the pace of 1 page per week, I should be able to get it done by June. Ideally I can hit get a little more than a page done every week, in which case I'll have some buffer time, which would be amazing. :) It feels nice to have a focused project with a concrete deadline, even if it means setting aside some of my other projects. I'll re-evaluate how I feel come February.

And I think I have a way to make the Chinese homework slightly less onerous, which I'm also hopeful for. (Basically: getting Miss R to do the character writing portion in the car on Thurs and Fri, and doing the app recording section at home). That said, tomorrow I'm going to be going to the mock trial evening competition, which means I won't be there to help shepherd Miss R through her next chunk of English homework, alas.

Things I keep intending to do but not getting around to:
- cleaning out the car
- cleaning out my side of the bed
- prepping Chinese school checks and W2s

oof, another 2 day gap in update.

Was it only yesterday that we had the taiko new year's? Spouse woke up early to make food, and then we went to rehearsal, followed by mochi making, followed by performance. Around 2pm was when I hit a wall re: energy and ability to People, so 2-3pm was pretty miserable because I was still trapped at the taiko thing and there was still more socializing to do. I crashed after I got home, and then crashed even more at night. But at least the event was done, and I got to have freshly-pounded mochi in ozoni soup, which is the best thing ever.

Today was the first day of the semester, so there was a lot of running around getting curriculum pulled together, but tomorrow should be more relaxing because it's doing stuff I've already done before. Whew! Really looking forward to a morning where I get to slow down and plan for the semester and send some emails and update some google forms. \o/

I should also: clean up my car (long-overdue), and get to drawing my comic again.

I think when I'm more tired I can hear more of the electricity in the lights

ugh, I was less productive than I'd hoped today, so I'm a bit behind on grading. But I was also really sleepy the whole day, egh.

Did get new yarn so that I can continue crocheting my blanket, though. At this point this is my 4th ball of yarn?? Anyway, it's finally feeling blanket-sized, so I'm pretty happy about it.

Other than that, frittered away my evening reading fics where Tim Drake is sad. What an excellent and bountiful genre! Hopefully my brain will be sufficiently rested up that tomorrow I'll be able to plow through a bunch of narratives. :)

first day back at work, woo? It was mostly meetings and an afternoon activity session, so I got one revision graded. My goal for tomorrow is to get all of my 10th grade revisions graded and evals written, which will hopefully put me on track for the rest of the week (it's going to be mostly eval writing.) I might need to find some different off-campus locations for grading, though, especially if there's going to be students on campus. I have a really hard time doing grading while on campus. I think it's that I find it hard to turn off my "there are other people around who I might need to engage with" brain off. It's like, threat-analysis, and it impedes my ability to grade, lol. Hmm... maybe I can go to the library?

Anyways, it's been raining a lot, and driving home today was pretty exhausting -- heavy rain, winding highway, and I'm driving slower because I'm constantly worried about skidding when I hit a wet patch, ugh. The drive home took 1.5 hrs instead of 1, and by the end I was ... pretty done. Something to consider is whether it's worth it to ask Miss R to take the late shuttle back to my campus so that we can drive home the shorter way (30 min instead of 1 hr), at least during the rain days?

I should write about the taxi drivers in China before I forget, but it's also late. (We watched some of Free Guy while I drew comic, so I actually feel pretty productive...)

wow, I'm not used to daily updates yet, but ...

Wow, what a thing to wake up to, Trump having arrested Maduro???? Yikes. And planning to govern Venezuela? Double yikes. Just yesterday Spouse was wondering if there was going to be a January surprise, and lo and behold, here it is. I'm curious what the international response is going to be, outside of the statements and reprimands, but holy cow. On the way the taiko, when we'd just heard about the arrest, I was like, "best case scenario, everyone scolds Trump enough that he returns Maduro and helps facilitate a democratic election", but hoo boy.

Anyway, after Thurs and Friday where there wasn't anywhere imminent that we had to be, so I could just laze about the house and sleep or not sleep as I wished, today was a proper Saturday, which meant taiko in the morning and Chinese school in the afternoon. Thankfully I took a few hours yesterday actually grading the Chinese homework, so it wasn't too bad, but I was suuuuper sleepy during taiko. It was a little frustrating that ... well, we were short a person for doing solos for the upcoming performance, and I was like "well, if you really need someone, I can fill in," and the senpai first did a lot of humming and hedging, and then was like "you're definitely staying in your currently assigned spot, and I don't see that changing." And I was like, omg, either it is a call for volunteers or you are appointing someone. Don't pretend to call for volunteers if you really just want to appoint someone. This is actually a direction that the taiko group seems to be going in that I'm not... super happy with? Like, I understand that there's a certain degree of "if you don't know this song you probably shouldn't perform it," but now there seems to be a "solos need to be pre-vetted and some people shouldn't perform because their poses aren't good enough", and I'm like ... I joined this group because it's about playing and having fun? Like, sure, the level 3 folks probably want to do a lot more form refinement stuff, but that's one of the reasons I'm staying in level 2? And this performance is literally a "friends and family" celebration? If you invite people to watch, wouldn't you want a change to perform a little more, even if your stance isn't perfect? I'm just not a fan of the movement towards gate-keeping.

Anyways, I'm working on a crocheted bucket hat for spouse with lots of cute flowers on it because he said that he wanted to look cute. :3 I started it on the plane, and I think I'll probably have it done tomorrow. If it looks nice I can do other ones. :) I'm really excited the spouse is looking for a new look! He's going to get his ears pierced, so I'm excited to get cute earrings for him, too! :DDDD

Tomorrow is a pretty relaxing day, with boardgames playdate in the morning, and some afternoon no-child time, so I can probably do the things then that I didn't get to today, such as Chinese school payroll stuff, and maybe I can do a little lesson planning so that I can hit the ground running on Monday. (I think it's probably best if I call the car lady on Monday or Tuesday, when I know she is at work)

After the disaster of the China trip last summer, we decided to stop going in the summer. So instead we went over winter break. It was pretty good! I think we had a good balance of visiting new places and visiting family. It was 2 days in Shanghai, followed by 2 days in Chengdu (well, actually overnight train + 1.5 days + overnight train), and then 2 days of the weekend with fam, followed by 1 day in Suzhou, 1 day as my bday, and 1 day of cleanup and travel home.

In Chengdu: Sanxingdui was amazing omg the bronzes were ones I hadn't seen in books before it was so good. Pandas turn out to just be bears who are kinda dumb and inexplicable, although their thumbs are legit pretty cool, and apparently their tails aren't black? Honestly artistic renditions of pandas are cuter than the real thing. Next time will need to spend more time in Chengdu city proper.

Takeaways:
- having 2-3 days to deal with jetlag was great. 3 days is better than 2, but 2 days was doable.
- seeing dad from 10am-noon was pretty successful. Don't expect him to do much walking or activities outside the house.
- it was good to clear out the weekend for seeing other fam, but next time maybe we can clarify which day (which would allow for more travel/tourism), and have them come to our place (less cleanup, bigger table, less obligation on family members to cook)
- the overnight train was a big success, Miss Rutabaga loved it.
- Could probably have spent an extra day in Chengdu for fuller experience
- Direct flights are so worth the extra cost. We had such a bad time flying back -- delay after delay of sitting on the tarmac, ugh. What should have been a 16 hour experience (door-to-door) became a 28 hour one (pfah!)


- maybe pre-order some winter clothes and have them delivered to dad's place. If this is going to be a regular experience, can even consider bringing some of my 2nd or 3rd tier shirts and pants and leaving them there


Oh, on the plane, I watched Superman (2025) and Free Guy. Free Guy was pretty fun and cute. Superman was better than I'd expected. I got to skip the part where he turns himself in (which is like, my emotional squick), but the rest of it was great. I was leery of having a Justice Gang of a bunch of b-listers, but it actually turned out really great! Mr. Terrific obviously stole the show, but also casting Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner is perfect re: his blend of douchebaggery + still a good guy. I also loved that it wasn't a superhero origin story, and in fact jumps right in *after* a big fight re: Boravia, and *after* Lois and Clark got together. That was really refreshing. I like that Lex Luthor got to show off why exactly he's a formidable enemy: his smarts, his resources, his mania, his obsessiveness. Clark is so sweet and much-beleaguered. Such a soft boi who is just trying to dog-sit for the weekend. I love that Krypto's desire to chew on toys becomes plot-relevant. :). I ... really don't like Ma and Pa Kent tho? I don't know why, but I have such a different mental image of them. Probably from Unpretty's fics, tbh.