Not quite done

I did the last bit of the straps on Honeycomb last night, did the three-needle bind-off to attach the front to the back, wove in ends, and sewed the side seams.

By that time, I didn't have the energy to try picking up stitches for the bands, so that will have to come later. Probably not today; this is the day I have my late afternoon class and get home around 7.

I also re-measured the swatch and realized that the gauge varies from 3.5 to 4 sts to the inch depending on where you measure. Argh. So I don't know, it looks like neither needle is going to be ideal. Maybe this is just not a good yarn to work with. Or maybe it will all just average out in the final sweater.

***

I'm burning out fast on the promotion packet. Part of it is the sheer compulsive attention to detail it requires....everything in the right place, everything found and organized. (I still have not found my post-tenure reviews for 2005, 2007, and 2009, but I suspect I can get copies from the secretary; I think they keep all of those. It's also possible that they weren't done in those years; at one point we were told post-tenure review only had to be every three years).

There was also a bit of micromanagement that came down from On High that makes me annoyed and frustrated, and I'm trying to decide if it frustrates me enough to go to my chair with it (she is not the originator of the dictum) and point out that what I am being told NOT to do is actually something that has worked well for certain students in the past. Or whether to just do a quiet, passive-aggressive adjustment of how I do things so I'm complying with the dictum but also not doing the extra I used to do. I don't know. It annoys me. I hate being told what to do because damn it, I'm an ADULT. And also being told what to do when I am already teaching 15 hours, when I taught 8 hours in the summer, when I taught 14 hours last year...and never saw any kind of thanks or bonus for going over what we're expected to do, well, it annoys me.

Many years ago, at the end of the school year, one of our teachers crafted awards for all of us, based on some specific trait of our personalities he wanted to celebrate. Mine was the "Extra Mile" award. (I laughed kind of bitterly, years later, when I realized what the Scripture that came from was actually referring to, as the metaphor that the statement originated from). And yeah, that's something I've prided myself on over the years. But when you're going the extra mile, and someone tells you, "No, don't do it that way, do it THIS way" when "that" way has worked for you and your students....well, it's a temptation to just sit down by the side of the road and go, "You know, I'm tired. I think I'm gonna stop going that extra mile now."

I don't know. I'm going into one of those emotional cycles where I feel like no one appreciates anything that I do, that I'm just the little cog in the machine who would only be noticed if it broke. And knowing that's how I feel doesn't stop me from feeling that way.

So it doesn't help to have additional rules handed down to me in the name of Uniformity or whatever.