Kathy Nida

A faucet that was fine earlier today, but when used to fill a bucket, which was used to clean a floor, which was peed upon by an ill cat, which had more blood drawn today, which is continuing to cost money I don’t have…when said faucet will not stop dripping, will not tighten up, will not even budge past the place where dripping is irritating, water-wasting, we have a rebel drip. A drip without a cause. A drip upon a drip. A drip is a drip is a drip.

So much for poetry. And plumbing. Some kid is singing in the bath…it sounds a lot like a dying puppy.

The cat is holding her own, no weight loss, but still dehydrated, so I have to up the frequency of subcutaneous torture. Not eating enough, so I need to make her foods more palatable…to a cat…which I really have no experience with…and honestly, all the other animals in the house would be quite happy to eat her food, all of it, so I don’t understand her problem.

I’m still working monster hours. My head’s been hurting since Monday night or so. It comes and goes. I have gallons of work to do. It may never stop.

The students are working on their yarn paintings. This is mine, which will probably never be finished because I don’ t have time to get it done.

Here are some of the kids’ work. Some is good, some not so good, but the effort seems appropriate.

Even when I give them rules like “use one color to outline everything,” they know better than I do.

I think this one will turn out well.

One thing about art projects is that they take forever to finish, days and days. And yet, I never have any free time…I have to babysit too many of the kids. One kid dribbled glue all over a chair in class before he left, on purpose…apparently my yell to get him to come back and clean it up was heard across the district (600 square miles).

Here’s the postcard for the local show I got into.

I shouldn’t call it a local show just because it’s in my home town…it has internationally known artists in it, so I think it will be enjoyable. Come to the opening. I’ll actually be there. Hiding in the corner. I’ll be the one wearing black. Details on the homepage.

Desserts made by girlchild for cooking badge, Girl Scouts. Not really a COOKING badge…mostly food prep.

I now have new front brakes, four new tires, and a new battery in my car. Bad car things come in threes.

“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade.  It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.”  ~D.H. Lawrence

The Eyeball. A big ball of viscousy goo with magical powers. When I don’t like the worksheets my book provides and I can’t find anything on the net, I draw and make up my own worksheets (reminds me…I need to translate it into Spanish).

I had asked a friend to turn a pdf into a jpeg so I could post it.

Tell me if you go. The exhibit specifics are on the homepage. I don’t know if you’re allowed to take pictures. Apparently 10,000 people a year come to this show. My quilts meet more people than I do. 

I drew last night, but it’s not done. And it’s about a friend of mine and her personal troubles, so I don’t know if I’ll post it. Or if I’ll ever turn it into a quilt. But I drew. Her disturbance disturbed me.

It’s Blog Action Day. I did not know. I’m recycling old yarn leftovers from friends and strangers in my classroom starting today, making those yarn paintings. I’m recycling margarine and cottage cheese containers in my class, styrofoam meat trays, and all sizes of cardboard boxes, which I cut down and glued for stability for the yarn-painting backgrounds. I switched to reusable bags at the grocery store. I’d like to start a rain barrel, but we don’t get enough of it to make it worthwhile (plus there’s this West Nile problem, so I’d have to do it right). The kids and I have talked about a compost pile once the pumpkins are done pumpkining. In the summer, I hang my laundry out. I’d like to do more. It’s on my mind. I need a recycling bin in my classroom. Next step.

It actually rained here in sunny Southern California…a whopping 6/100’s of an inch. It seemed like more. Today it is back to beautiful clear blue October skies and a touch of chill, but mostly warm. I’m wondering if yesterday’s weather was part of my mood problem, although today’s sun has not improved it. Grades are due Monday, so I am stressing about that, even though I am much further along now than I usually am on Sunday before they’re due. I graded Friday night on the couch, Saturday morning in a Starbucks while getting new tires, Saturday afternoon at the computer while getting new brakes, and Sunday morning in the kitchen. Still not done, but I’m done enough to do progress reports.

I went to Ray at Night last night, a monthly event on Ray Street in San Diego where a bunch of galleries open up at night for an extended time…it was OK. My friend Mary came along and messed around with some of the exhibits…

Naughty girl. There was a new exhibit by Kevin Peterson, whose work I know I’ve seen before. Unfortunately, his website (for me, anyway) currently has a big blank at the top…which is probably the work we saw last night…lots of little heads, characters, cariactures, he called them Maniature. His work is a little creepy, but I like it…I imagine buying like 15 or so of the little heads and installing them in the bathroom, right across from the toilet, so they’re watching you. It may be that I’ve taught middle school a little too long. Another funny thing about Kevin is that his biography on the back of the postcard starts…”Born in San Diego in 1980, like all artists…” Um. Dude. I was born in Anchorage in 1967. I guess I’m not an artist.

Speaking of not being an artist…if you’re not being an artist, you finish a couple of pieces back in July, but you put off photographing them for months on end, so you can’t enter them in shows, which is really stupid. I photographed them yesterday evening, which is good, but it reminded me that I’ve only finished 2 things this year, and that sucks big time.

Walking Time Bomb, which you’ve seen before, but this is the official, not lying on the floor with a cat lying on it, photo.

Same with Drowning Mary’s Baby, previously seen all kittywampus on the floor.

Now I can enter shows with them. Sigh.

Frida joined us for dinner last night after the art walk.

A friend called this morning with bad news, which hasn’t lightened my mood at all. And there’s a headache squeezing my temples together. Shouldn’t start a sentence with “and”…how many times did I write that while grading?

Even my right eye is twitching. Signs of stress. When I don’t make art for a long time, I get really growly. I’m there.

We start yarn paintings a la the Huichol Indians tomorrow. I actually made the kids take notes on the symbolism and history, and then I handed out a bunch of printouts of yarn paintings. Told the kids they had to try drawing and identifying some of the things…one was really funny…didn’t know what it was, until I figured it out…imagine your middle school art teacher yelling out “PEYOTE!!!” in the middle of class. Only the Natives had any concept of what that meant.

I promise to take pictures of some of their paintings. I hope I can get them to be serious about it. They seemed engaged today. Then I had to spend $50 on tacky glue, because Elmer’s weren’t doin’ it. Too watery. Hope I get reimbursed.

I have 2 hours of grading to do tonight. The toad got crickets, but I haven’t seen him eat one yet.

I have drawers with strange things in them.

I seem to like doll parts.

Here’s one of the hand assignments a kid did. Hope she doesn’t mind being posted.

They’re all still searching for my MySpace page…silly children.

I said it before. I miss drawing. I miss fabric. I miss making art. Off to work…

I read my blog, I see no quilts. I see fabric piled up being made into nothing. I look around my studio and feel guilt. The guilt gets chased off by the part of my brain that tries to keep me sane, the part that says “HEY! Your blog title actually says it’s about ART, not QUILTS. You’re showing art…the stupid samples you have to do to show your art class how to be artists. That counts. Suck it up.” That part of my brain keeps me sane, but it’s not very nice sometimes.

Here’s two shoes in ink…

The kids had to draw two shoes and pick a camp: 3-D with shading (which we’d gone over in class) or patterns (which we’d also gone over in class). I did both to have a partially done sample of each (pencil lines still showing). I felt like I was the lamest art teacher in the world when half the class didn’t get it. I thought since we’d already done it in pencil and practiced the penwork, that everyone would understand what to do, get on with it, do the work, be engaged. Ha. I spent most of today, which should have been a low-maintenance day, everyone drawing and getting it done, dealing with behavior issues. Ha. Ha. I suck at this. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m trying to teach something that is second-nature to me, that I’ve been doing for so long that I don’t even remember how to explain it, and what I need is to be able to work with smaller groups for periods of time, but the class is so freakin’ huge, I spend most of my time disciplining the 6 malcontents who shouldn’t be in there, but should be in a class for behavior training. Why don’t we have a class like that again? Like a middle-school etiquette class…when the teacher asks you to pay attention, what should your eyes and mouth be doing??? Yammering away and staring at the chick next to you? BUZZZ!

Meanwhile, my California Educator magazine warns me about my online presence. “If you are ever questioned by an administrator about internet activity that could lead to disciplinary action, initiate your rights to have a union representative present before answering questions.” OK. I can remember that. “If you have a MySpace, SecondLife, blogger or other such account, know that you are responsible for what you post.” Duh. So be it. It goes on to say that I shouldn’t write anything I wouldn’t put in an editorial for a major newspaper. Already doing that. No problem. It then goes on to say “Your life before becoming a teacher was your life. Now that you have a credential, you have a morality clause in your credential and are held to a higher standard.” BooYah. I just read my credential and I see no such thing. I am required to report child abuse though. Yes, I understand that I am under the public eye. I understand that teachers are supposed to be perfect human beings. I know that parents have zero tolerance for us not being the angelic creatures that they would prefer to think of us as. Bah.

Anyway. I’m sure the guy who wrote this article would object to my blog posting on the whiteboard debacle, but I’m not pulling it. It’s the truth and I’ll get loud and obnoxious if there’s a problem. Turko would care.

Back to the art-making guilt. Grades are due next Monday, so there’s a push to get as much done as possible. The push may be all in my head, because if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a bit of a workaholic and a perfectionist. Bad combination. Want it all, need to do it all right, etc. blah blah blah. Fully aware of these issues, and yet they continue. I modify every year, and yet, here I am, grading into the night.

Spent an hour or so this weekend on a windswept soccer field where the umbrella tried to make a run for it. Boychild stole it and held on to it. I got a little sunburnt instead. He looks comfortable, doesn’t he?

Girlchild did not play particularly well. She’s not the most consistent creature in the world, but she still played OK…just not stunning. Something about her knee and someone kicking it. She has not inherited either parents’ ability to suck it up.

She looks remarkably cranky here.

Boychild is going to be Death for Halloween…last year my mom and I sewed all the costumes, spent a ton of money. This year, we buy. I alternate…

I may borrow the death costume for school, if the timing works out. Boy’s Halloween dance (which he refuses to go to…why would I dance? Why would I want to go somewhere with a bunch of girls?) may be a different day than ours, so we may be able to save money on costumes this year…or I might be a witch again. Girlchild is entranced by some Devil girl costume…looks somewhat inappropriate, so I told her it was a mom’s final decision. We’ll have to see.

Willow is home, although supremely cranky and looking sickly.

She is on subcutaneous fluids indefinitely, as well as a bunch of medicines that she doesn’t really like…hence the scratches in my arms and clothing with medicinal bits sprayed all over them. Fun stuff.

OK…grading now. I miss art. The girlchild is wearing the clean dishtowel as a superhero’s cape. Oh, and I need to google myself to make sure some student isn’t posting some lame MySpace page for me…

Well, obviously I still have electricity. I guess I must mean my personal energy. My day post-school was long. Girlchild at softball practice (for fun), boychild at art class, finally got all three of us in the same vehicle, and had to go shoe-shopping and then clothes-shopping. All feet have grown. My daughter now wears a size 8 in adult shoes; I wear a 9. My son’s feet are now bigger than mine. They have cooler shoes than I did growing up too. The girl’s shoes were majorly on sale, which made up for the fact that the boy’s weren’t. Wish I could persuade him to buy out of the sale rack…but he’s a fussy widget.

The girlchild grew out of all her pants from last year, and today it was actually chilly, so I finally gave up and bought some pants. The boy was forced to wait outside the dressing room. Why do they put bras right outside the girls’ dressing room? He was in tears in the car about the horror of it all…but had the brains to yell “I’m grumpy!” Oh really. I did not know.

The good news is that Willow is supposed to come home tomorrow late. And my ex ponied up a chunk of cash to help pay the bill. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in therapy. I thanked him.

Someone…I think it was the nurse practitioner who’s currently managing my son’s kidney therapy…asked if his dad and I had a civil relationship…she didn’t use the word civil…don’t remember what word she used. I know that if my son hadn’t been there, I might have answered that question differently, but it’s not openly hostile. We do function fairly well as joint custodians of the kids, but only because I do a lot of the official parent stuff. I probably would have done that even if we had stayed married, though. I don’t know what I would have had to do to set up a marriage that would have been as equal as I wanted it to be. Remastered the world, probably.

I parked next to this truck in the library parking lot. The owner (high school goth student) came back, so I couldn’t take pictures of the animals dug into the dashboard. I wish I’d had a vehicle like this back in the day. I drove one of these to high school…

a 1976 El Camino truck…we called it a Cruck, though, because it felt like it didn’t know the difference between being a car and a truck. My dad still has the truck…but now it’s painted lavender. Seriously. Actually, that picture isn’t of dad’s car. I don’t think I have a picture of it in its original maroon color. The cops in my old town used to pull me over because an El Camino in that neighborhood was suspicious.

This is a pile of 3 quilts waiting to get under the sewing machine. I have three-thousand hours of grading to do this weekend, so I will continue to look upon this pile with a sense of growing frustration. Next week is a lost cause. I did do another shoe drawing, but it’s at school, so I’ll have to photograph it later. I did the line drawing for the Huichol yarn painting example I need to do this weekend also. I only remembered to bring black yarn home, though, so I won’t get much done.

It’s about 8″ x 11″. I drew all the motifs from the Huichol yarn paintings I’ve been researching on the web. I’ve now decided that the things around the feet look too phallic, but they’re all over the paintings, so I’m going to stick with them. I think.

I’m going to bed. It’s sad that I can’t get anything else done, but the day has conquered me.

Perhaps you have no clue that I am a teacher. Perhaps you have just stopped by for the first time and you’re trying to figure me out. Where’s the art??? Good question. In my head. On a chair. Waiting to be made.

Being a teacher often causes me frustration, not because of the students (I expect frustration from them as I repeat the same instructions for the 10th time), not because of the parents (who expect me to contact them immediately if their child doesn’t hand in a single sheet of paper in the semester), not because of the hours (I’m on hour 10 right now, and I have at least another hour tonight when I finish this). Those frustrations…I expected them.

A good point before I rant and rave…this morning’s beautiful sky above school.

No, what causes me the most frustration is a lack of materials and money to buy them. What really pisses me off (as opposed to merely frustrating me) is the lame-ass bullshit that I’ve been dealing with for the last four months with my whiteboard. I had an OK whiteboard, not a great one, but a functional one. The teacher two teachers prior (got that?) had installed it herself, thus rupturing the water line to the room, causing floor issues and a lack of running water in my lab. That is frustrating, but it doesn’t usually piss me off.

Last May, the district was interviewing new janitorial staff for my school. They interviewed them by having them clean the building for a while. One of them, deciding my poor old whiteboard was way too dirty, cleaned it with Comet and a green scrubby sponge. Now if you know anything about whiteboards, you’ll know that is the worst possible thing you could do if you actually wanted to continue using the whiteboard in the manner to which you had become accustomed. Here’s what it looks like now.

Pretty bad, eh? Here’s the rub. Back in May, the day after the damage occurred, the janitor who was leaving (thus the need to interview new ones) ordered a new one. May. I said MAY. I kept asking about it as the school year ended, because the scratches in the board were making sure nothing would erase properly. I was promised that it would be replaced by the new school year…August. I can live with that. I don’t need it over the summer. The summer school teacher was not pleased, but hey, not my fault.

I walk in on the first work day in August, and the board is not fixed. I go whine at the secretary and the principal. Multiple phone calls seem to go back and forth, and while I’m gone, maintenance shows up with a 4-foot-long board (the boards that were damaged are 12 feet long…4-foot ain’t gonna do it). More phone calls. They show up with two boards, neither of which is 12 feet, and combined are 16 feet (running into the bulletin boards on either side). I teach how to measure in my class…maybe I should offer my skills? The superintendent shows up and examines it. Is that really necessary? The Money Chick shows up…yes, I know she probably has an official title, but she’s the one who tells us where the money is and whether or not we can spend it. She inspects it and asks me if the damage was caused by the pens I use on it.

Deep breaths. I did not yell at her. I did not throw things. I calmly reminded her of how it was damaged, by their people (I know she knew this already). Someone tells me that it wasn’t actually ordered in May. Or in June. Or in July or August or even in early September. They just ordered it. One month until delivery. They probably spent more money on the two bigwigs inspecting it than it really costs.

I just went online and found the right size, guaranteed delivery in 7-10 business days, $320. My district is inept. No, I didn’t order it. I spent all my money on the cat.

Rant Over.

Willow (the cat) is OK…still at the vet, and my savings from the summer is now gone. But she is alive and doing well, as well as any cat with renal failure. Her owner, my ex, says I should put her down. He’s not dealing with her at all. Very helpful.

Do you know what this is? No?

 This is a gummy worm slab. You get a gummy worm slab by leaving a bag of gummy worms in the car during 90+-degree heat for a few days. Cool, huh?

I like to try and take action pictures. This is my attempt at getting the dog catching frisbees.

She only looks a little strange.

I’m gonna be fine. I finished all the grading that I could do tonight, so now I have to draw a couple of samples for class. It’s not as fun to draw when it’s a “have-to” instead of a “want-to”, but it’s better than nothing.

A good thing tonight…the new show Pushing Daisies is actually amusing. I hope it stays that way.

Any show with the following dialogue: “I’ve been ruminating and by ruminating I mean thinking and not chewing my cud…” gets my attention. At least for a while.

Long day. High maintenance day at school, lots of prodding kids to THINK THINK THINK. Tomorrow’s lab is POKE POKE POKE (nervous system lab). I didn’t get a chance to prep tomorrow’s lab because I had to drive to pick up yarn donated to the classroom. The positive thing was that I shouldn’t have to buy hardly any yarn…maybe a bright yellow and a purple, and that’s it. She had a ton of stuff from her friend in town. I was so happy.

The oldest cat, Willow, is at the vet tonight and for the next 3 days. She’s sick, probably terminally. But she was feisty enough to yowl at the thermometer up her butt, and she purred and head-butted me for attention, while flicking her tail angrily because I dared bring her to the evil place of poking and prodding. So I listened to the vet trying to kindly tell me she was on her last legs, although not her last last legs, and I signed her up for IV fluids. She’s lost 5 pounds since I brought her in back in February, and in February, she’d lost 4 pounds. She may perk up and live a few more months or a year, or she may not. Here she is at her fattest.

She’s not actually my cat. Juni was mine, an anniversary gift. Our second cat, Rusty, was an oops freebie adoption that a friend regretted afterward, so she ended up with us. Rusty became coyote dinner (before we stopped letting them out), and Juni moped horribly, so we got Kiwi. She was a sweetie, but also coyote dinner (you think we would have learned…actually, it was one of those things we fought about). We had both been to the pound, but with conflicting ideas of what the new cat would be, and one day Willow just showed up. She’d squawked her way into my ex’s heart with her half-Siamese yowl. She was a cute kitten, but grew up into a fat, smelly, neurotic, peeing, scaly-skinned disaster. In the divorce, she stayed here because he said he would put her outside (big fat coyote dinner), and after losing two to coyotes, I wasn’t doing that again. After Willow, Limbo followed us home one night as a kitten while we were walking the dog, a German Shepherd. I was 9+ months pregnant, so he never left (although his name tells you his status in the early months). Midnight was rescued out of a tree about 2 years ago. Three cats left right now. I’ve had seven cats in my lifetime. I’ll probably have at least seven more. I hope Willow gets better. Cross-eyed and whiny, but still looks up at you as if you’re going to fix her world. This is actually Limbo…the only boy in the bunch.

Yes, I’m a big softie. Speaking of, I’m in my 1st period class, teaching them the wonders of the placebo (how do we say that word, class? Place-Bow. No.) when this kid who is um shall-we-say-annoying opens the door and whispers “Ms. Nida”. “What?” “C’mere” “Why?” “Just c’mere.” OK. I do. Curiousity killed the cat. Hands me a toad. “Mr. PE Teacher said to give you this.” “Thank you.”

I am Science Teacher. Kids hand me live animals. So now we have another toad, and we decided to try and keep this one.  He’s not endangered. He may not even be a “he”…I don’t know how to tell. I keep calling it a frog and the other science teacher gets upset with me. I like toad-like creatures. They make great noises and aren’t yucky like spiders. Hopefully he will be a successful classroom pet.

I did finally sandwich the quilt from days ago, but I’ve had no time to quilt. I have about 17 hours of grading to do tonight, so there’s no hope there either. Wish me luck. I may carve out time later this week.