Poem in my Pocket

I've been keeping this post in my pocket for a busy day.  The folks over at Redeemed Reader did a National Poem in my Pocket Day post back in August.  So I wrote a poem and posted it in the comments.  But I figured, I should really post my own poem on my very own blog, shouldn't I?  So here it is.

The Pockets I Do Not Check

Too busy and already
turned inside-out myself,
I don’t check the pockets.
I might find loose change afterwards
and it will sit on the counter awhile;
then someone will put a penny
in the penny racer
to trip over another day.
Once a ceramic bunny figurine,
once my son’s I-Pod headphones,
once a pocketful of crayons
(WD-40 is very useful
to clean the dryer,
and red-orange is no longer
my favorite color).

Finished socks

Here are the Stashbuster Spirals, finished with Elizabeth's sewn bind-off, photographed here, and then straight onto Primigenitus' feet.  He likes them, and I kind of think they are the coolest socks I've made.  I've already started a second pair of stashbuster socks for Secundus.  They will probably be mainly greens, blues, and yellows, but probably not as coordinated as this pair.

Tertia had her check-up this morning and got her required shot, then we took the vaccination record over to the middle school so we are legal now.  We even found her classrooms and talked to the Life-Skills classroom teacher, who is new to the school this year.  She seems very nice, but Tertia is unusual in that she will be going out of the Life Skills class for most of her subjects.  I get the impression this Isn't Done very often, so of course I'm a bit anxious about how her first few days will go next week.  Special Education isn't the ghetto it used to be, I have been assured many times by many special education professionals.  But when the special bus delivers you to the special ed class door and you're there for everything except lunch... well, that will not be Tertia's lot and I'm willing to be the troublesome parent to make sure she's as fully included as possible.  It's really a beautiful school building and she's very excited to be there.  Which is more than most 6th graders probably feel.

Farmer's Wife blocks

As promised, here are closeups of the latest Farmer's Wife quilt blocks I've done.
Block # 28, Duck and Ducklings.  Although I'm having a hard time seeing birds in this one, I do like the fabric combo.  It's a 25-patch grid, so each square finishes to 1 1/4" (scant).  Except for the big triangles which finish to 2.4", so I cut 2 squares 3 3/8" and cut them once diagonally.  I think.  I tend to forget the odd math for these base 5 blocks as soon as I do it.

Block #29, Economy. I wish they were all this easy.  Center square is 3 1/2", middle triangles are 4 1/4" QST's (cut diagonally twice; note this will mean the outer edges are on the bias which shouldn't matter if you immediately and carefully add the outer triangles).  The outer triangles are 2 squares, 3 7/8", cut diagonally once (HST's).  Again, I like the unusual fabric combo here; it's not something I would have normally put together if I weren't challenging myself.

Block # 30, End of Day.  I am seriously proud of myself for figuring out how to piece this without templates or weird cutting.  I cut four strips (2" wide each by about 15") and pieced two together at a time.  Then I subcut each of them into four 3 1/2" squares.  THEN I realized that I should have made the squares equal out to 3 7/8" but hadn't done the math.  So I figured the diagonal line from corner to corner would be the stitching line: I laid my ruler with the 1/4" line along the diagonal and cut 1/4" away from that.  I just had to make sure that I oriented the first 4 squares the same way before cutting, and then I oriented the remaining 4 squares the opposite way.  This does mean that you throw out the leftover triangles: if I had thought to do the math for a 3 7/8" strip set, I could probably have made two mirror image blocks, but oh well.  Fabrics are leftover from a quilt I made for Quarta, some old curtains from my mom's scrap bag, and the big print was from the Goodwill bin.

WIP Wednesday #9: Progress on 2 out of 3 quilts

I'm mostly finished with block 3 of the STARS quilt-along from Melissa at Happy Quilting.  I'm making 4 of each block for a twin-sized quilt.  I'm going to have to start repeating fabrics soon.  I'm also thinking I need a bigger design wall.

The Farmer's Wife blocks won't fit on much longer, either.  I have 30 of them now - made 4 this week.  I still have 3 to blog about individually but that can wait until tomorrow. 

No progress to report on my MIL's quilt that I'm machine quilting.  Hope to get a little more done this week.

Progress has been made on the scary  basement organization project, too.  I bought a couple of wire storage shelves at Target and some pegboard at Home Depot for the tools.  (There was a second picture too, on the other side of the doorway, of the painting supplies on a shelf with more pegboard.  But it was sideways and when I rotated the picture, it vanished, never to be found again.  Why in the world does it do that?! You'll just have to take my word for it that I did 2 shelves and 2 areas of pegboard).

See that white stuff painted around the ductwork?  That's my DIY asbestos mitigation.  Four years ago we had the very old furnace replaced and the professionals took off the asbestos around it; but there was still the asbestos tape around the old ductwork, and they left us a little jar of rubbery stuff to paint over it and just leave it in place.  I just this last week got around to doing that, in the areas that I could reach.  There are plenty of areas I consider out of my reach in the crawl space around the other side of the brickwork; only the cats go there.  And they're probably not going to sue me for any asbestos-related illnesses they might incur.  Although you never know, these days.

As usual, the link-up party is going on over at Freshly Pieced.

In which I rage against pointless bureaucracy

The good news: the massive Latin quotes reorganization project (phase one) is complete, and the quotes have been filed in their appropriate weeks in my lesson plans for ALL THREE LEVELS that I teach.  And that's for the whole year.  And the dates of this school year have been synched into the monster lesson plan template, too.  Which means that, just possibly, I could just tweak the assignments and be able to turn in the entire year's lesson plans at the beginning of the year.  I usually do them a quarter at a time, but let's go for the whole year.  It will be my 12th year at Cedar Tree.  My students will get a quarter at a time syllabus, and the quotes will be on it so they can use it as a study aid.

The bad news... I am completely out of patience with the passive-aggressive bureaucrats who decided that they were going to play mind games with me today, and I'm going to rant for a bit about them, right here.  So, Tertia, the one with Down syndrome, is the only one of my 4 kids in the public school system.  She's going into 6th grade next week: we've had the IEP meetings and the planning meetings with the school, and everything.  I'm about as confident that she will have good help there as it's possible to be with the government schools.  We've been getting automatic calls all summer about how we need to provide proof of vaccination for TDAP and varicella, and I explained to the one actual person who called about how she has her appointment this Friday where she will get the one shot she needs, and the actual person said fine, as long as we get the vaccination record into the office before school starts.  I went to the school office today to pick up her schedule (after another automated call) and took her with me.  To be honest, I was hoping I would be able to see some of her classrooms and get a little orientation tour, just for my own benefit... Tertia has been with her 5th grade class already.  Well, it was a little scary walking in there with all the other kids, who are a lot taller, knowing that Tertia was going to have a lot of big changes thrown at her all at once, and hoping her natural positive attitude would hold.  But when we gave her name to the office lady, she said, "looks like all I have for her is this paper," which was a repeat of the incessant demand for vaccination records we've been getting all summer.  They have not prepared a schedule for her (and her schedule is going to be complicated) because they didn't have the little sheet of paper.  When I asked why, the singularly unhelpful office lady said, "Well, she won't be a student here if she doesn't show proof of vaccinations."  I had explained about the timing for her Dr. appointment.  It was a total "no soup for you!" moment.  The Schedule Nazi.  So, after her appointment I will have to drive back over to the school (not sure I can trust it to a fax) and hand deliver her vaccination record, and hope that by then they will have her schedule and any special information ready for us.  I'm worried they won't even set up her bus schedule until these people get their little slip of paper.

Administrare -- in Latin, it means to manage or attend to things, but it also carries a bit of the idea of a servant's heart.  Tertia and I could both have used a little of that today.  I'm really spoiled at Cedar Tree.  Never take for granted the prayer before important meetings, and the idea that the school exists to serve parents and children.  It's always a bit of a rude awakening NOT to find that in the public schools.

Oh yes, and Quarta has Veggie Tales sing-alongs playing while she's doing dishes.  I can do without Larry the Cucumber singing Kum ba yah in my one good ear today.  Grr.

When Summer Ends

Media vita in morte sumus.  The death of summer, the death of the hope that I will get my longed-for organization accomplished, the death of my very last nerve as I spent the afternoon compiling a massive table of Latin lessons keyed to appropriate quotes and tried to pack it all back into my master template before some random electron cloud might come along and scramble the whole thing.  (It didn't, but I have that kind of relationship with MSWord, so you never know).  Note to my students: I've cut some of the repetitive quotes and you will have to work for your bonus points from now on - they'll be retroactive.  And much less of the silly ones.  I'm keeping "Avis est, aeronavis est, Supervir est," but ditching "Sanctos Subjunctivos, Virvespertilio!" and "Me transmitte sursum Caledonii."  (Most 6th graders don't know who Scotty is even in English.)  When it's all done I will have a much more streamlined master lesson plan, but there is much more of the dread formatting that must happen.  I must steel myself with folk music and knitting.

I have a recurring fantasy this time of year that someone will come along and make all my phone calls, organize my schedule, do my grocery shopping, and plan my carpool for me.  I'm avoiding all of that myself, and re-reading the first three Harry Potter books -- now that's going back to school in style!  Maybe by September 12 I'll be good to go, doing my level best to channel Professor McGonagall.

Plums, puzzles, and patchwork

We have a lovely plum tree in the back yard, a bit overgrown, prone to broken branches and with at least one squirrel's nest up high.  This year was kind of a slow year for it; we'll most likely eat all the plums fresh.  There have been years where I made plum jam, plum chutney, dried plums for school lunches, made plum leather for school lunches, froze them by the quart load and gave them away to the neighbors.  I have to put the plums in my plum-glazed bowl (from college Ceramics class) every year.  This year I actually took a picture and blogged about it.

Nostalgic for Ohio?  I was after helping Quarta put together this 500 piece puzzle my mom gave us over a decade ago.  I should get a puzzle like this for all the states we've lived or vacationed in.

Farmer's Wife Quilt block 27: Darting Birds.  I needed more red in the quilt, and this definitely is more red.  Now I'll need to put even more red in.  That's not a bad thing.  I started this block by making a grid of eight 1 7/8" squares for the HSTs.  There are 4 additional brown check 1 7/8" squares that I cut diagonally into triangles, and four brown 1 1/2" squares, and 4 red 1 1/2" squares for the heads, and two 2 7/8" red squares cut diagonally for the birds' bodies.  I really like how this block turned out.

I've been busy but not in a bloggy way the last few days.  I need to photograph what I've done so I'll feel more productive: organizing the basement, back-to-school shopping, estate sale shopping (!) and cleaning house (ugh!)  Secundus is running cross-country for the local public HS this fall, and practices have started for that.  Personally, I'm hoping my lesson plans will format themselves with a minimum of input from me, and dreading the moment when I actually have to start digging in.