how quick bright things come to confusion

I have two days left of school, which is probably good, and then I slam into summer with several weeks of Very Exciting. I'm going to drive to MD and back in the span of about four days. Somewhere in here I need to finish preparing for my ESCape classes. I have to pack?!?! Maybe all my stints on crew mean I'll be able to pack a lot lighter than usual for ESC/Scots (lolno).

Tomorrow I should figure out everything that needs to be done in the school building before I depart for the year. Packing up. Printing things. Recycling many many pieces of paper. Submitting grades and paperwork and the like. (The printing things is sneakily a "prepare for ESCape" thing to do --I want to have some properly formatted dances or What Have You. I seem to recall I did quite a lot of this as a work-in-company with Veronica last summer, I probably won't have the MD time to do that again, but it's worth noting that MD does have printers. And so does MA. It's not the end of the world if I fail to print things, is what I'm saying.)

I've been playing lots of Stardew Valley, which I'm quite into, even if I'm getting a little stuck on some of the plot bits. Not looking anything up is a bit of a drag, but also feels very very good when I do figure things out myself. I am glad to have realized I can go back through the library and reread the books I've found --I was worried those were one shot readings, and I'd forgotten the early ones. Anyways, no spoilers, I'm a bit into my second summer.

Went to service ringing today, for probably my last bells for a month. So that's...a lot. Luckily it did not emotionally overwhelm me, maybe partly because I've had a low-key headache for a few days now. I arrived at Advent in time to help ring down, and then we did a mostly nice extent of Cambridge at Old North. (It was only mostly nice because everybody spontaneously exploded when we got to the plain course, and we limped through and barely made it. Sigh.)

Yesterday was pride and I wrote up a bunch of thoughts and should probably post them somewhere, instead of just manually sending them to various partners who like hearing about my life. I suppose there are others of you who like hearing about my life as well or whatever.

I finally picked back up the Endless Photo Organization Project the other day, and sorted a handful of photos. I forgot to note the number at the beginning, so I have no idea how many things got tagged. It's nice to get back into the swing of the project, and extremely nice to have set the whole thing up on the external harddrive, so switching it from old computer to new was essentially trivial. I wish I could figure out a few more keyoard shortcuts to speed things up a tick, but I'm feeling pretty okay with the mousing that has to be done.

Having finished words, I should do at least one of the dishes and going to sleep. Goodnight!

~Sor

MOOP!

It's extra help in the library time!

After the first half of the year, I got rather into the habit of expecting 0-1 students, usually on the low end of that range. But then I've had a few weeks in a row of the pre-calc teachers sending me students to make up tests and things, or do body doubling, and suddenly this week I have _three kids_ hanging out with me. Two are doing tests (one mine, one a pre-calc kid) and the third is finishing up work with me semi-helpfully remembering how limits work.

(I have not yet cynically said "I suppose you can see how often this gets used in the real world" but it's coming)

We're very much at the end of the year, and things are pretty self-paced, which means sometimes in class I can even grade a test or two. Which is good, because the major work task I have right now is, uh, grade all the tests. And everything else that is outstanding. And shake my head and sigh at the students who are obviously using AI, badly. (I miss when they were using photomath badly, at least that wasn't --as I saw someone describe genAI today-- "smarmy").

I had a fourth student arrive! I briefly had FOUR STUDENTS at once which is an absolute record for library help! This was another one of my kiddos even, and I was able to help him grasp the trig stuff he managed to miss entirely, and then throw the test at him to finish up. It will be much more successful than the two days he spent staring at it in a panic because he didn't know any trig.

***

In my real life, I have begun playing Stardew Valley (edit: no spoilers please), and decided it is the Bee's Knees. This shocks basically no one who has ever met me. Am I able to moderate my playing? I will be! But, uh, not quite yet. I need to calm down about it a little bit, or get _really_ strict about playing a day at a time and pausing in between each day to go accomplish real life tasks. (To be clear, I started it on Saturday, and finished the first day of fall yesterday, so we are moving along real nice. But also I did like eighteen hours in two days so UH.)

I'm also doing my reading (I have two days before my check-out pops for Drop of Corruption and I'm only about two thirds done), and getting ready for LCFD weekend quite soon (where hopefully I will not have an infinite amount of grading to do, although I am apparently going direct from work to my ride's house to camp. So I'm packing whatever I haven't already graded! (note to self: This means you'll be packing the work laptop, and shouldn't need to also bring your personal one).

Tonight is the high school graduation, and I've kinda just decided to go direct from school to there. This might be annoying in terms of baggage, but I think it will ultimately be fine. Worst case scenario, someone steals my work bag and I am very sad oh no.

The hardest part about Stardew Valley is that right now it feels _happy_ in a way that means I should probably talk to my therapist. Because Saturday was not otherwise particularly happy, and Sunday was better but also not exactly joyful and HM. What exactly am I looking for here? Control? Simple well definied tasks? An extremely imposed bedtime that I can't avoid no matter what? A morning routine that can always be the same followed by a variety of pleasant ways to spend the afternoon and evening?

(Sunday was good because I was helping LB move, and community is good. It's nice to get to pretend to be butch sometimes, and there was a lot of walking back and forth between old and new houses in pleasant weather. But it was also a lot of social-with-people-I-don't-know which can be fun or can be hard, and LB being extremely efficient which was actually great but then meant everything was done in like...three hours including the eating lunch at the end part. And back into my own head we go!)

***

The real answer is I'm looking for "not being burnt out" and video games can feel like that, kinda sorta sometimes. It is unfortunate that the only real cure for burnout is "rest, prolonged" and I don't get access to that until mid-July. And then I need to figure out the rest of my plans, like when I'm going to Maryland and the like. Sigh.

okay, I think I have figured that out, and also I think I'll be in town for about two weeks, assuming the timing works for my mom. Which means I should definitely _actually see people_ in MD, and also like, I dunno, go to a bells practice? Note to self, send some emails closer to. But as always, it's primarily a chance to hang out with my Cool Mom.

And then I'll have queer Scottish on the 7th, and then two full weeks of very little planned¹, and then into the school year! Huzzah!

***

We keep going. Tonight there might be ice cream. I do like that part.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: I uh. god willing and the creek don't rise, it's very little planned, but that little is a _lot_.