canoe + clay: stressful week = weekend warrior

I was burned out by my job and menopausal malaise before the Covid pandemic that I almost quit to run away. I also didn’t do much pottery though I was running and not eating a lot. I then came to my senses because my teaching comes with this great promise and perk of a comfortable retirement income if I can do it with some longevity. I've stuck it out. Four years has elapsed, and I’ve since gone through both a full evaluation and an expedited evaluation. I was lucky to realize the need to not muck it up and the need to just suck it up and power through. It’s stress time again, and so I’ve been working out and doing a lot of pottery to offset the anxiety and worry.  I’m still a little sore from this past Saturday’s ocean paddling. 

You can’t see me in this clip because my steers person and coach, Bel is wearing the Go Pro camera on top of her head—that’s Bessie in front of her, and in front of Bess is Gary, and I’m in front of Gary. I’m in the 3rd seat! I’m always in the 5th seat in practices and competition, and so this time I’m behind the iako within the ama, which meant I had to call. Hut! I was shouting at every 13th stroke to which there was the response of hoo! Practice was different, and I loved it. 

I also got busy in the clay studio. One of my former students reached out to me to donate pottery to her reunion fundraiser, and so I hand built this sushi platter. There's an inscription at the bottom, Miss Lapid says hello.                             

And during that stressful last week, I went into Clay Life and made this air plant manse.It was tottering a bit, and so I took it outside yesterday, and ground the bottom on concrete surface, which righted it nicely.

I set the air plant mansion on the greenware shelf for candling, and since I had scraps from the sea platter, I made a sea mug too.

It's got an Isak Dinesen paraphrase about salt water as the cure for anything: sweat, tears, or the sea. Gotta love that ball point stylus for punctuation marking. And because Patrick was laid up from his knee replacement, I went into his garden and harvested all these tomatoes and boiled sauce and made marinara with lots of onion and garlic in order to empty out the fridge a little.

The refrigerator and freezer are over full again because I bought chicken thighs and ground beef and a steelhead trout (it had a styrofoam tray which was the form for my platter), and so the plan this week is to cook chicken karaage and kabocha and sweet potato and eggplant and summer squash (which I'll have to procure from the produce store because the summer garden has none) as well make an instant Dan Dan noodle sauce. I'd also like to go the clay studio and make some text mugs that say, solve the problem; carry on; don't be a rat bastard. Those were things I used to say in my English class that I don't know if my former students will remember. Hopefully all the busyness will temper a very stressful observation and evaluation meeting over the course of the week.