March Break: What I Should vs What I Want

March Break came at just the right time. I needed to recharge my batteries, take a breather, and catch up. My week was filled with activities, but I didn't approach all of these events with the same enthusiasm. Here's a chart, which is a replica of my calendar.

2 of the 3 Cosplay Sisters making wishes come true at Toronto Comic Con!
Follow them on Twitter/Instagram at @CosplaySisters

Monday March 11	Tuesday March 12	Wednesday March 13	Thursday March 14	Friday March 15	Saturday March 16	Sunday March 17
Morning = Fix glasses Afternoon = Visit Morgan & Tracey Evening = Funeral visitation / Cross Fit	Morning = Oil change / Breakfast with Mary & James / Funeral Afternoon = Lunch with Denise	Morning = Get carpet estimate Afternoon = Help Mom clean her sewing room Evening = Cross Fit	Morning = Finish proposals Afternoon = Doctor’s Appointment & Make Up Class session Evening = Teach Marriage Prep class	Morning = Finish sewing dress at sewing store Afternoon = Finish glasses for costume Evening = Toronto Comic Con	Morning = Visit carpet store Afternoon = Drop off library book / Grocery shop Evening = Movie night with family	Morning = Church Afternoon = Breakout Con Evening = Mark school assignments, prep school tasks

(Apologies if the text does not appear nicely on the web page; I had to tinker a bit with it and it didn't always fit as it should.)

There were several tasks that aligned more with things I "should do" versus the things that I "wanted to do". Funerals are never fun, but I wanted to go to pay my respects to one of my mother's dear friends, Pat Puddister. (Rest in peace, "Auntie PP".) Errands weren't particularly onerous, as long as they didn't take too long. Visiting my friends was a definite bonus.  Racing to finish my costume in time for Toronto Comic Con was hectic, but satisfying.

Tangent time: I knew I'd be going to Toronto Comic Con for a day with my son and daughter, but only decided at the last minute that I'd try to complete my cosplay outfit so that I could wear it at the convention. This costume was more detailed than many of my previous creations. I had been working on it slowly for several weeks. With guidance from my Toronto Parks and Rec instructor, Natalie, I had made my own pattern, pinned and cut out the pieces, and pinned them together. My last step was a scary one for me - I had to sew them all together. I couldn't go to Natalie, so I turned to Cathy, the lady that I purchased both of my sewing machines from at Sew Here, So Now.

Cathy had offered, once I bought my machines from her, to support me in any way I needed if I was in the middle of a project. I tried to go on Thursday morning, but she wasn't in the store. So, on Friday morning, the day of the convention, I hustled to her store to finish the dress. I even forgot my cell phone because I was in that much of a hurry to get her help. (This is why I have no photos of the final steps I took. All of these photos are the shots of me working on Thursday to cut, notch and pin the other side of the dress.)

Cathy was rather surprised to see me there.
"You can do it", she said. "Just sew it."
"I just need you near", I explained. "In case things go wrong"
I wasn't sure how to lay the material out on my sewing machine to start.
Cathy showed me how, and also showed me a new setting on my Pfaff machine that allowed me to do "stretch stitching", which she said would be better for the type of fabric I was working with for this project.
My first attempt caught the material in the bottom. Cathy came over and adjusted a few things and then had me continue on my own.

It took a while, but I did it. I finished sewing the dress.Cathy's presence gave me the confidence I needed to get the basics done. I didn't bother with hemming the bottom, the neck hole or the arm holes, because there wasn't a lot of time. I still had to go home and figure out how to make my character's visor.

Here is a photo of the character from My Hero Academia that I was trying to portray: Recovery Girl. I bought the wig, boots, gloves and lab coat (thank you Value Village for the coat!), made the dress, and temporarily skipped doing the big needle cane and the belt. The trickiest part for the costume was how to mimic those big pink things on the side of her head. I actually found a visor on the ground and covered it with purple cellophane to look like the glasses. In the end, I settled on a temporary measure. I took two juice boxes, covered them with pink foam, and slipped them over the arms of the visor.

It worked! My daughter, the regular cosplayer, didn't have her outfit "con-ready", so she wore regular clothes. My son wore his Deku costume from the anime/manga My Hero Academia. We posed for photos and got compliments from other conference attendees. We even posed with other people who were decked out in similar, My Hero, outfits. My son doesn't like posing for photos with strangers as much as I do, but he survived.

Recovery Girl and Deku, aka me and my son, at Toronto Comic Con!

(I return to my regularly scheduled blog post thread.)
So, if all of these things were tasks I wanted to do, what was it that I didn't want to do?

Two things: cleaning, and doing school work.

You can tell that I wasn't too keen on marking, because despite all good intentions, I left it until Sunday afternoon to attack. I like the results of cleaning, but my husband will attest that I do not like to clean, and my mom wasn't thrilled with the idea of getting rid of anything in her filled-to-capacity-but-never-used drawers.

What does this indicate to me? I hope no educator actually gave any assignments to do over the March Break. If I didn't want to mark them or work on them, as the teacher, I doubt any students would want to complete them during a vacation. If students chose to do things related to school, that's different from feeling obligated to work. Not everyone is privileged enough to get to travel or attend cool in-town events during the week away from school, but the antidote for boredom is not giving school-related tasks. I'm sure that once the busy post-March Break school season begins, I'll regret not using some of my "free time" to finish things, but like I said at the start of this blog post, I needed a rest, and I got it. (No knocks against some of my teacher friends who spent their whole time working on school-related stuff - I'm looking at you, Salma Nakhuda - but as long as it was your choice, I accept and support you!)