Tomorrow is Spring Break

It's official now. Spring break is here. Though my class ended at about 11:30 am on Thursday, other classes were still going on Friday and Saturday, and I went to the Saturday until about two. The instructor wanted to leave earlier than that, but he doesn't chase me away if he has to stay for some reason, and despite his best efforts another student had to stay even later than that.

I divided up a 50 pound bag of plaster today. So that made a bit of a mess. I meant to cast three tiles today, but the third one still needs some work, and casting the first one took longer than I expected. I was mixing plaster, and I got some of it on my shirt. I was standing right next to the sink anyway, so I tried to clean up a bit. So then I go back to the plaster, and it sets up while I'm in the middle of pouring it. So not only is that cast not near as good as the other one, but it took more than an hour to clean out dried plaster so that the next person could use the equipment.

The next batch of plaster I probably poured too soon, but I didn't want the same thing to happen a second time. It looks alright, and it will have all week to dry out anyway.

Next, I put slip on one of the vases, and that didn't go as well as I hoped either. Mostly, I just painted little squiggly lines, but I would have liked them to be more uniform. They got progressively bigger, but I didn't notice how far off they were from the first one until I got back around to the beginning. The main design in the center looks good, but the sides are off. I guess it doesn't matter. It wasn't the most symmetrical vase to start with. It will be a good test of the process anyway.

Damn. I meant to bring home the box. We're supposed to sand it, and I figured that there was nothing special about the sandpaper in the lab, so maybe I'd get away with at least doing that at home.

Not that I'm actually supposed to be at home. My husband has wanted me to go with him on the last few trips, and I've put him off. I almost went this week. I probably would have gone, but then I remembered about spring break and put it off one more week. Anyway, I did want to go. The last few weeks I was trying to do extra work in class so that I could go without feeling guilty about it. But now I'm not so crazy about the idea.

To start with, I was told to pack light. Non-sequitur. Not so much in the usual way of "What will I wear?" I don't really care about that. I'm going to spend most of my time stuck in a motel room anyway.

My problem is what to do with all of those hours being stuck in the motel room. I really don't want to go without my knitting machine. But taking the knitting machine isn't exactly packing light, is it?

And we are going to the middle of nowhere, Texas. I don't even know if there will be a swimming pool or a hot tub or anything. Probably not. But I don't even know for sure that they will have the Sci-fi channel. I might be stuck for a week someplace that doesn't even have decent cable.

But the real problem is that last weekend was not exactly wonderful, and it did not put me in the mood to want to spend an entire week with the man.

Worse, I am remembering that last trip before Christmas. It was a disaster. Is that what I can expect to happen again? Should I set some ground rules before we leave? Would that just make it worse?

You'd think he'd would just know, this is the way things are, these are the rules. But, somehow, he doesn't know that. So you have to explain to him, this is the way things are, these are the rules. And then one day something comes up, and you have to remind him about a rule. So after the rules have already been explained to him, and after he's been reminded about one in particular that same day, he still doesn't get it. And then he gets mad cause things aren't going the way he wants.

It's almost like he expects our problems to magically go away because we go out of town for a while. He thinks the rules don't apply. If anything, they apply more then. If he does something to upset me at home, if I absolutely cannot take it anymore, I can leave for a while. I can go visit my mom or go see a movie or something. Or maybe he'd be reasonable and leave me alone for a bit.

But we can't do either of those things when we go out of town. We're both stuck in the same motel room. It can be really awful.

Not that it's always awful. When we go away for a while, it is usually very nice. If it wasn't usually nice, I wouldn't go so often. But because of school and such, it has been almost three months. And that last time was really bad. The weird thing was that he just had this puzzled expression on his face, like he didn't understand, like he didn't even remember what the problem was.

So I don't know if I want to go. But I probably will go. So I'd better go finish packing.