Busybusybusy

I thought I'd start the day with a little light blogging - over breakfast, and after an hour at the gym. I pushed myself this morning, adding extra time and effort to my cardio regime. Exercise is good for anxiety...
Why am I anxious? I have a tendency to do everything-at-once, or nothing-at-all, and I've entered an everything-at-once phase. I knew it was coming; I've been relaxing hard, preparing myself for it. And it began with my extra hours at the college.
So far this term I've been doing five hours a week there, three on Thursday mornings and two on Friday mornings. I now have a block booking for five weeks of five hours at the other campus with the Foundation degree group. On Friday, straight after the other one. Last Friday I left the house at 8.15 am (leaving the Youngest in bed as she had an Inset day - she probably stayed in bed all day, on her laptop chatting to friends on MSN or having babies on Sims2) with a banana and my dressing gown, and I returned at 5.00 pm after 7 hours straight modelling. To wash up, cook dinner and go out to cover the box office for an amateur play at our Arts Centre.
It wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. The work that is, not the play. When the tutor phoned me to arrange this she'd said I could have half an hour for lunch and a short break in the afternoon too and I got the impression she was some sort of slave-driving dragon with a bunch of hyper-keen students who'd push me to the limits. Of course they were all very laid back.
I deliberately wore a loose two-piece skirt suit (green velvet, if you want to know) so I could do a quick change and sprint to the car to drive over to the other campus in time. But when I arrived (confusing the Receptionist, who'd thought I was a visiting tutor and tried to send me to pick up the registers for the day) they were all on their coffee break, and by the time the tutor had faffed around re-arranging the furniture and draping old ragged sheets to her satisfaction we were twenty minutes into the session anyway.
She seemed most concerned that it was cold in the room, and had two heaters pointed in my direction, although at the end of their flexes they were still several yards away. I assured her that I'd known that particular room much colder - for some reason the life drawing/art room is in the basement at the far end of the long two-level building, and the heating wasn't on for the winter yet. Institutional rules. Anyway after three or four shortish 'warm-up' standing and squatting poses she suggested that I drape my dressing gown over my shoulders for the longer sitting pose.
The students were all 'women of a certain age' (conversation over lunch was mainly about children leaving home), very friendly and a cohesive group in their second year of the course. One was in a wheelchair, but I only saw her for the morning session because she had a fall at the start of the lunchbreak and went home. It seems that in order to get to the disabled toilet, she has to go out of the back door (a fire exit), get into her car and drive round to the front of the building, on a higher level, because there was no lift. She'd slipped getting into her car. The afternoon session started late due to a heated discussion led by the tutor as to whether it was allowed to help her once she'd fallen. Health and Safety regulations stipulate that it was not the responsibility of staff or students, and that she was supposed to have a 'helper', who was still in the pipeline, having being caught up in red tape and bureaucratic fuddle.
Once it had started, the exercises turned out to be fun - for me to watch. The students had five minutes to start an 'interpretation' of me, then had to move anticlockwise with their materials (own choice of media here) and continue for four minutes on their neighbour's, then move again and work for three minutes... Mayhem, laughter, complaints. The complaints being largely that it was impossible to follow someone working with ink and wide brush when you're working with a fine-line pen, or charcoal, or cont'e, or whatever.
They discussed the results, then moved onto the next exercise - clockwise this time, and leaving the media with the picture so they had to get used to working with unfamiliar materials. Some very interesting results, but nothing you'd want to hang on your wall (although I was rather taken with the one which had me looking like a Borg from Deep Space Nine, with a distinct monocle). I look forward to further sessions with this group.
As to being paid for all this - it's still in the pipeline too. I phoned the Arts Administrator this week, who suggested I call back and speak to the Head of Art, who told me he was waiting for the year's assessment of hours from the tutors...
OK, back to the real work of the day - finalising my lesson plan for the first session of the poetry course I'm running - starting tonight. And printing out ten copies of the poems and quotes we'll be using. And reviewing yesterday's Diploma course session and journalling it and reading all the hand-outs and putting them in the right place in my files and... waiting for the rain to stop to go into town too.
At least the Children's Book Group event I'd organised at our local library on Saturday morning went well, as did the presentation I was involved in at my first meeting of a professional association on Saturday afternoon, in Bristol. And my first live interview on local radio was postponed until next week. By which time I'll be worrying about the session I have to lead for the Diploma course... Why do I do this to myself?