I haven’t posted for over a month, which is probably the longest or close to the longest I’ve ever gone without writing. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say, or that I’ve done nothing. All in all, retirement is working out well for me. Time goes very quickly. I am never bored. As I suspected, the best part is sleeping late when I have trouble getting to sleep at night. I feel much better now that I am not sleep deprived.
It seems that this area of my life has been supplanted by the stitch meditations, and if I have something to say or post, the quicker, easier choice has been in social media.
Right now I am working part-time remotely in a temporary project scoring fourth grade writing tests. I’ve been doing it for two weeks. My eyeballs hurt, and my heart hurts. Why are these young kids expected to do these tests? Most of them don’t seem to understand what is expected of them. Occasionally I’ll get a very good writer that doesn’t understand the instructions.
I’ve made a lot of jokes about working for the Robot Overlords, but it really does concern me sometimes. Since I applied in December, I had no human contact (and that was by chat) until a week into the project. I still don’t know who my team leader is, and when I ask, I get no answer. I was told by a team leader to inform the scoring director of my upcoming two week absence, but the scoring director brushed me off when I asked how I could contact her in the proper communication channel. She said she would contact me. She has not.
However, I did get paid yesterday, so…it’s not a bad gig to work from home. At least I’m not grading the same prompt repeatedly. There’s some variety. I suppose at some point we readers/evaluators will be replaced by AI.
When I begin, I thought that I might work 8 hours a day up to 40 hours since I will have to leave the project early. Now my eyeballs are saying differently. As if staring hard at the computer screen will make the students understand! I feel strongly about giving them the most accurate evaluation that I can. 20 hours is probably going to be the maximum that I can stand. I usually do a few hours in the late morning/early afternoon and then a couple more later that night.
I haven’t gone to the studio as much, but when I have, I’ve worked on the pages for what I am calling my Dark Forest book. I couldn’t find the color and texture of paper that I wanted for some of the pages, so I painted some of my handmade papers an almost black green. I feel eager to go ahead and bind the book and finish the cover, but I am still deciding on whether to embellish or write on some of the pages within, and I know that it will be better to bind the book after I finish the pages. Some ideas: text from the Hobbit about Mirkwood. Wendell Berry poetry. Other poetry about wildness and forests. Sketching or stenciling inside. Leaf prints inside.
Last weekend we were at Oak Island with friends, in a lovely little cottage on the Intercoastal Waterway (salt marsh) side. I think my favorite part was watching the big storms roll in with good friends who appreciated weather watching as much as I do. I used my Merlin app to identify a colorful painted bunting! Afterwards we stopped at Lake Waccamaw on the return home and visited with my sister and niece. A male wood duck came near Lisa’s back porch and I was able to see this shy bird up close, as well as a pileated woodpecker from ten feet away across the road on the canal side! And about as many gators as I’ve ever seen (in the canal), I think. I haven’t become blase about the gators quite yet.
I walked a bit on the beach with the “girls” but I can’t do a whole lot of walking right now. I will get a steroid shot next Wednesday and hopefully it will help with the walking pain when I go to England with my sister and friend in two weeks. I am determined that I am going to walk again on that beautiful coast path in Cornwall.
Today I need to plant some seedlings that I grew in upcycled plastic jugs – two kinds of snapdragons, black hollyhocks, and coreopsis. Juliet tomato seedlings will be ready to plant in containers soon.
So, you may not hear much from me on this blog or Substack (which, quite honestly, I am waffling on continuing, AGAIN) for several weeks. I’m trying to save my eyeballs for my work and for my stitching.
slowly she turned 