It's still hard

My student who lost his mom came in to talk to me. I gave what help and counsel I could; he is going to try to make up the exam this week even if it winds up being his "drop" exam. But yeah. I kind of know where he's at, though in his case - she was diagnosed with what took her one day, she was gone the next afternoon, which is different and (I think) more awful than the long slow decline that you know how it's going to end.

But yeah, a little gutted after talking with him, all over again. It's being part of a club you don't want to be a part of. And I guess it's now my turn to try to give comfort and advice to people newly in the place I was 7 months ago, even if things are still a little raw for me.

He thanked me for my compassion but really, what else can you do? It would be monstrous not to be compassionate to someone in his position. I'm always uncomfortable when people act like my doing what I see as pretty much the bare minimum of "being a decent human" is something special and unusual.


I'm also trying to carry on and remain as calm as I can in the face of....everything. They're now telling older Americans not to leave their homes unless necessary, and I suspect my mom is going to hole up except for minimal grocery shopping (and MAYBE church, I don't know) for the nonce. She has books, and like me, she has fabric, and I know she's doing a lot of sorting of things and stuff like shredding old financial documents that no longer need to be kept but that which my dad was never comfortable disposing of. But gah, this all sucks. I'm hoping no cases show up in my general region this week or next; I do want to do one last "fun" shopping trip to Sherman (and on a weekday, during spring break) while I can.

I'm also hoping the virus avoids this area because I would not be happy about having to finish the semester online. I'll do it if I have to and I'm a *bit* better prepared than some of my colleagues, though I have never done testing online, I guess I can figure that out (we have a thing called Respondus which supposedly limits people browser-searching while they take the exam, but of course if someone is on their *phone* at the same time...)

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Daylight saving time follies: I drove in after the buses ran, to avoid the poorly-supervised middle-school kids on my route who like to stand out in the street. But there was a v. small child - looked maybe 5 or 6 - out walking all alone, in dark clothes. I saw them, another car nearly didn't. I'm glad I didn't have to stop and "render aid" while waiting for the paramedics to treat the child but it did give me a nasty turn to see the near-miss. I also had someone nearly back out of an apartment parking lot into my car as I was slowly coming up the street.

I dislike driving to work in the dark and it was extra dark today because it was raining (and will be, I guess, much of the rest of this week)

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I added on a couple more rows to the Endless Quilt (the Tabula Recta/Vignere Cipher) one on Saturday. I think I have eight more rows to go and it's HUGE. I'm hoping it's not too big for the local longarmers - it's probably about 90" by 90" when finished, but smaller dimensions for the patches would have made it a little TOO small...I am looking forward to starting something new, with brighter colors, for my next quilt. I have three possibilities - all with pink in them - the Chandelier quilt (floral fabrics and a pink background), or the most recent Jelly Roll I bought (from Lulu and Hazels' - thought I had a photo but I guess I don't - or a quilt that is a very simple, two-print-and-background design called "Homebound" and I want to use a unicorn-print and a castle-print fabric for it, and a pink "grunge" print (snagged at Kaleidoscope Quilts' closing sale) as the background (I might also use some of that to bind one of the quilts I need to bind...)

I've found that either listening to Pandora or the BBC app on my phone is the best thing, the best way to get "background noise" while I'm sewing. I used to play CDs, but the CD player in my bedroom broke and I never bothered to replace it, and local radio is....worse than Meh for choices.

I also need to get back to handquilting on the one in the frame. Because if it turns out Tabula Recta is too big for the longarmers to handle....well, I may have my next handquilting project. Or if I can't get the big piece of typography fabric I bought for the backing to come out with the required 6" extra (or whatever it is) on each side...I'd probably have to get a King size batting, too....