Kathy Nida

I’ve traced three quilts onto Wonder Under in the last week. Two of them are cut out and ready to be ironed. The other one is waiting to be cut out…maybe tonight. I’m having problems getting in the mood to deal with fabric. One of the problems is the mess in my studio, which was attacked seriously today. I’m getting there. I tossed out a bunch of stuff and put away a bunch of stuff and all in all, I’m getting there. Getting my head where it needs to be to figure out the color schemes up there. I don’t do it on paper. It’s a little Colorforms board in my head. Maybe when I get really old and senile I will have to color it in on paper…

I forget every year that it takes me a while to tune out school and find the art part of my brain. I checked school email today and it’s drama drama everywhere. One interesting thing is that I will probably be a union rep next year. Not sure why…civic duty? The screw up of the union rep who lost my paperwork and almost lost me my representation during the pink-slip days? Whatever. I don’t always agree with the union…or even the need for a union…or the way the union works…but my dad always told me growing up that the only way to change things you don’t like is to take them over. OK, that’s not quite what he said…I’m sure he used less aggressive terminology. Maybe.

Mostly today was about trying to get girlchild to take on puppy duties (peeing and cleaning up and feeding). She is very much like her dad in that she can sleep through all babies crying, so I was up at 1:55 AM peeing a puppy. And 6:15 AM peeing a puppy. And then I wondered, hey, wasn’t the dad supposed to have puppy at night? We’ll see.

I don’t want this to just be a blog about the puppy, so here’s my mom with the puppy…

Everybody loves puppies in pictures…just not in real life. Mom loved the puppy.

Today is my baby brother’s 40th birthday, so here’s a picture of him too, but without the puppy.

No, that’s not a straw growing out of his shoulder. I suspect there’s a kid down there somewhere poking him with it and he’s just trying to ignore it. He’s been a good baby brother over the years, and since I know some people don’t have the luxury of siblings that are still amusing and weird and yet supportive in many ways, I offer you Jim…who had to survive school after I screeched through there, all anti-establishment and anti-authority and independent suburban punk, and he did survive it well, flying under the radar when necessary. I hope the next 10 years find him the perfect job that allows him more time with his family, and no major issues when those three kids hit middle school (ha!).

He doesn’t read my blog either, because he doesn’t have time to read anything, although I sent him home with all my Agatha Christie when he was here at Christmas.

Speaking of books, I’m reading. Because I can. I’m reading two teacher books, one on professional development in science content and one on general class management. I’ll let you know later if they’re any good…at the moment they just feel like a slog. I did finish Jim Lynch’s first book, The Highest Tide, and it was a good read.

I know it was recommended on someone’s blog and I don’t remember whose, but it’s a nice story about a 13-year-old boy on Puget Sound and some weird marine mysteries.

I finished that today and started a book my dad loaned me, because he hasn’t read it yet and I want to be sure he gets it back soon…

I’m not always a Minette Walters fan, but so far it seems good. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished it. I got so much reading done today because we had the first of like 5 doctor’s appointments…I scheduled everything for the first week after school because I didn’t want it messing with my whole vacation. Today was the podiatrist. I have had plantar fasciitis for 3 years now, and end up going to the foot doctor about once every 6-8 months. I would go more often, but I would have to take time off work, so I try to schedule them for vacations. We’ve managed to get rid of all the pain in one foot, but the heel pain in the other foot is just not going away. He X-rayed today and there is a large bone spur…whee! You can’t see it in this X-ray…

But that’s my foot! If I could have figured out how to move the computer to the next picture, I would have, but I was afraid I’d mess it up. He also shoved a massive needle in the heel to try to break up a bursa in there and to reduce the inflammation. He says I get one more shot and then we have to talk about surgery (yikes), but the plus is that we did manage to fix the other heel with only shots and orthotics, so I’m thinking good thoughts that don’t involve scalpels and files and yucky stuff like stitches. Erg. He also strapped it up good so it could rest and hopefully help everything to go back to normal.

Sometimes this works for a couple of weeks. The hope is that because I’m not teaching (and walking 45 miles a week) right now, it might actually have a chance of healing.

I did actually ship off the three quilts to Santa Cruz today. It took me about 5 hours of label-making, label-stitching, Home-Depot-shopping for dowels and hardware, dowel-cutting, hardware-installing, cat-hair-removing, box-making, quilt-rolling, box-label-making, napping, and driving to get those three suckers out of here. What a pain. I have one more to ship to Texas for the show in Birmingham, England. Hopefully it won’t take nearly as long.

There was a soccer game on Saturday, so I drew.

It’s actually kind of amazing that I was able to draw, because the girlchild was playing against the team that she had tried out for back in March and really wanted to get onto that team and was rejected for her best friend. It was a traumatic time for all of us (although maybe worst for daddy)…and the girlchild’s team won! We weren’t expecting that, but it was nice for her (and perhaps for her daddy) to have that victory. It’s hard for girls this age to accept rejection…hell, it’s hard for us old ladies too, although I don’t take art rejections personally (Quilt National, I’m talking to you!).

So I’m going to keep cleaning. I’m actually looking for a couple of things in this disaster area of a room (as usual). I finished the binding on 3-Piece Family and I want to do a bunch of embroidery. I found the thread, because I always put it away in the same place (good kathy), but I can’t find my needle book. I know when I had it last and I know what it should be in, but I can’t find the container (or the other stuff that was in it). I’m wondering what I did with it. Wait a minute…I just had a brain twiggle. Nope. It wasn’t there either. I keep thinking if I let my brain wander around thinking about where the container MIGHT be, I might just remember where it actually IS. Hasn’t worked yet…second day trying.