quietlymagical

I slept like garbage and it has given all of today a weird vibe.

Okay, actually today was reasonable decent in the actual day of it all. My classes seemed to go well! Students were doing mostly working at their own paces, but also they were actually doing that! I spent my prep knitting, which is not like 100% most effective work choice, but felt good to be doing and is scads better than playing phone games.

And then we had our geometry team meeting with our department head to review our midterm data and talk about things for the future and I got as close as I ever have to crying in front of my boss. Frustration, mostly. It was normal levels of annoying work bullshit until we got to the point where it was like "maybe next year we have a hard deadline of end of q2 [instead of doing the midterm in q3 like we have the last couple years]". And so I ask "would my [SpEd] inclusion classes be expected to take the exact same midterm?" and boss is all "obvs yes" at which point like.......

...I literally cannot teach the Inclusion classes the exact same curriculum at the exact same pace as the mainstream Geometry classes. We are "only" about a week behind right now, but that's because me and my co-teacher have been extremely thoughtful about what we can cut out of each unit and then doing so. The classes just pace slower in general, compounded by needing to spend more time reviewing algebra skills, compounded by needing to spend more time on classroom management and norm-setting and behavior stuff.

So like. Either I give them a midterm where they do piss because they haven't learned some of the stuff being covered, or I give them a midterm where they all do piss because I've rushed everything so fast they can't actually learn it. "oh but you should have high standards of rigor for your students" _yes that's the problem_. If I didn't give a shit if my kids actually learned the material I could get through this stuff snaps easy.

It's just another step on a whole fuck of bullshit we've been having all year(s). Somehow I will make it work, I'm sure. (but first I must...¹).

So the end of my work day had me all verklempt and off-kilter, and unfortunately equity team did not really fix the problem (some weeks it is the best meeting I attend, some weeks it's more focused on the depressing business of dragging the rest of the school kicking and screaming into being anti-racist. The work is always good, but sometimes it's more draining than others.)

Played a bunch of phone games. Did not adequetely prep for tomorrow, by which I mean, did fuck_all_ at the school. Gave up at 6 and came home and did manage to bully myself into a PowerHour which helped. I reread the Adventures of Blue Avenger and did a wee bit more knitting and then ate dinner. Played some Stardew after. Now I'm writing these so I can go off to bed in a maybe-timely manner.

I hope you are well and that tomorrow is better for us all (I always hope this second part). I love you.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: It occurs to me that this essay might actually be worth opening up in the tab next to Good Girls Aren't Here and just having both of them permanent features of my computer. I certainly reference it often enough.

wriiiiite the words

I am very tired and don't wanna write the words.

Work today was pretty good but also hella unsatisfying because there was Serious Bullshit with classroom assignments and needing to last-minute move the classroom. I had like......fifteen minutes of warning in order to pack up my everything I would need for class five and move down to a computer lab. It was awfullllll and I'm not happy about it. Blah.

But focusing on the good stuff...uh....the kids seem to grok the Pythagorean Theorem? That's nice. Tomorrow we're moving into our special rights triangles and it's not totally rubbish as a lesson --we did good work last year! I had a good long talk with my mentee last week about his future (and need to send some networking emails on their behalf). Even though the kids are being forced into super dysregulating situations, they were mostly fine?

And yesterday I got a bunch of things done and also had a nice evening with a friend/comet. I didn't sleep enough, but that's Unfortunately Normal, and at least all my sleep hours were in a bed with the lights off, which is Unfortunately Abnormal right now. I'm working on it?

Went to demo team on Sunday, which was fine, and then dance tonight which was...like...it was pretty decent, both Keira and Beth pick good dances and stuff. But for one of them I was dancing on the larks side with my buddy DJ on the Robin's side. And one of the other dancers made some comment about how we had "switched sides just to confuse her". Which like. Fuck off. Fuck off fuck off fuck offfffff.

I understand that I need to be gracious and kind and help people slowly understand in a non-threatening way but also fuck offff. I know I don't pass. I know I will never pass. I know you don't see me as anything as a woman. But you're wrong and you will never know how absolutely hurtful it is to be told that there is an obvious gender box you think I should be in and therefore if I'm on the lark's side it's "wrong".

It was intermission after, so I didn't have to dissociate for that long, and I could go and sit with my knitting and talk to all the various people who came and sat by me and then Sharon asked me to dance. But it still feels bad. I appreciate that the teachers here are trying to normalize larks and robins¹. But the class does not actually get it, and as long as the dancers as a whole are just treating this as "weird names for men and women" nothing is actually going to change.

There's no wrong side to dance on. There is especially no wrong side for me, a nonbinary person to dance on. There is especially no wrong side for anyone to dance on when the role terms are Lark and Robin and have nothing the fuck to do with anyone's gender.

Oh hey, I figured out why I am so tired and draggy and don't wanna write the words. :/

Anyways, I will continue to quietly dance when and where I can with people who are willing to ignore conventions based on what genitals a doctor thought you had when you were born and instead take into consideration, like, who's taller if the dance has an allemande in it. And even that is negotiable.

I'm gonna snuggle Austin and go to bed.

~Sor (they/them)
MOOP!

1: (I am _genuinely thrilled_ that Beth is restating the terms every evening, and also that she is doing a much-better-than-average job of not using gendered pronouns with ungendered role names. Unfortunately, better-than-average means "occasionally says "their partner" instead of "her partner"" but baby steps!)

We're bad at everything. Let's write down the things we've done today:

• Brushed hair


• Braided hair


• Ate Breakfast, also caught up on comics and even read a bit of Dreamwidth finally (I miss y'all, it's another symptom of the same Problem that is my brain right now.)


• Unloaded dishwasher, reloaded dishwasher


• Brought the load of laundry that's been in the dryer for three days upstairs finally (thanks Rey for basketing it, sorry to have left it)


• Brought a bunch of laundry downstairs, started it (load two is just in the washer now, and load one in the dryer)


• Switched my stuffies from their hamper into a steralite bin, eventually this will turn into like...one of those ottomans that opens up and you can store blankets (or stuffed animals) in but then it has a surface instead of being an amorphous blob sticking out of the top of a hamper, bonus, was able to use the hamper for my spare quilts/heavy blankets, double bonus, went through the stuffies a little and have some I can maybe give away.


• Folded most of the laundry from that old load, while putting it away, successfully went through underwear drawer and pulled out the "good enough to keep but I'm not going to wear it regularly" stuff to put in the "save for Pinewoods" box
  
  (At Pinewoods I would like to have approximately three pairs of underwear a day. If I do something absolutely batshit crazy this year, that will change, but I want to have the option to be able to wear clean underwear always.)


• Also socks, pulled out a handful of pairs I don't like so I stop wearing them by accident and being all :/ about it, also pulled out all the pairs that I know have big holes (they're currently due for the trash, but I may put some into my scraps bag instead)


• Got stuck in a serious yak shaving rabbit hole but I think I have finally managed to put the additional music I wanted onto my phone, and also I have taken off last year's photos, which is important because now my phone should run smoother? Anyways, that took forever but now I can listen to music while I do additional chores? Seems fake. I'm into it!


• I also reset the "accessories" boxen, which technically go with socks --long stockings, tights, kilt hose and accessories, suspenders and belts, scarves/pashminas. It's been a while, so that was good.


• I'm now sitting down to eat lunch. Laundry load two is on my bed upstairs to put away, load three is in the dryer, four in the washer. (I'm aiming for like...six? It wouldn't be so high, but a) I have been slipping on the "own more than one set of sheets so that you don't get trapped with an unmade bed by having all your sheets dirty at once" and so I need to catch up there *and* there's been some sort of funky smell in my t-shirts boxen for a couple months and I'm not sure what's up with that, but I think step one is probably just wash _all_ my t-shirts.
  
  On the plus side, that latter problem doesn't seem to be anywhere in my dresser except my shirts, so that's a good sign? I guess? I mean, mostly it just means there's probably not, like, a dead mouse behind my dresser or something (a thing I would not be able to rationally deal with)).

***

I wrote all of the above earlier. I've since finished all the laundry --it appears that the shirts no longer smell, so success-- and gone to demo team and hung out with Maia some, so all of that is quite good.

I couldn't maintain GOGOGO the entire day, but also like, I shouldn't have to? I shouldn't in general? It is important to do mindless fuckoff stuff as well as Srs Useful Stuff? Yeah.

I hope you are well. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

I have started occasionally experiencing selective mutism.

And on the one hand, I don't actually think this is all that new an experience to me. I think I've always found it hard to talk sometimes, I've just not had a good language to refer to those times in any useful way. Selective Mutism is good language, and enough people are starting to know it that it kinda even is a useful thing to indicate to others on the rare occasion it matters.

But like everything about me, I don't _really_ have it and should probably not appropriate from other people's struggles just to sound cool. Especially because I don't actually have it. If I need to talk, and am experiencing a no-talk moment, I just step out of the no-talk and do what I need to do until I can return to it.

The phrase "slightly upsetting and marginally poetic" comes to mind, for no reason at all.

~Sor
MOOP!