To sleep? Or to art? That is the question, the perennial question. I don’t seem to be able to balance those two out appropriately…probably because I try to do other things like cook healthy meals, exercise, meditate. All those things. Really, I think my job is getting in the way of having a fulfilling life. In fact, while I’m writing this, I’m trying to come up with something to occupy the smart, quick workers in my classes who will be done with their assignment about 20 minutes into class while my less-motivated kids flail and whine and complain that I am actually expecting a product that requires brain power. I got this. I can do this.
Can I do this? I decided yesterday that I really wanted to try to get this whole damn drawing traced before Spring Break officially started, which is Friday at 3:30. I then slapped myself around some, because that would mean I can’t go to work for the next three days (tempting, certainly), which isn’t an option (my team would kill me if I wasn’t there for the field trip), so then I thought that maybe I could do it by Monday, but then I need to cut all those pieces out (THAT’S why I’ve been saving all those episodes of InsertCrappyTVShowNameHere) and try picking fabrics, and now it looks like I will be in upstate New York for at least three days or more during Spring Break and it’s looking pretty grim in terms of getting the ironing done.
Oh well. I still cleared my evening (meaning I ignored all the grading I brought home and anything else like yardwork or cleaning or whatever) because hell, I barely saw my kids yesterday (but I did run errands) and I basically didn’t talk to anyone at all after about 5:30 PM, and this is what it’s going to be like when they go to college. Every day. Depressing.
I lied. My brother and SIL called me (yes, I am that pitiful that they call me and check up on me, mostly because they bought this talking Mr. T thing at Archie McPhee that said things like “quit your jibber jabber” and “pity the fool” and they just can’t NOT share that with me) and talked to me about snow and Ivy League schools and my brother’s and my grades in high school and college (apparently I had better grades than him in high school because I applied myself better…a lot of good THAT did me, right?).
Anyway. More pictures of my favorite fusible, Wonder Under. I’ve been using Wonder Under to make quilts since um since (holy crap, I had to go look up my list of quilts to figure out when I started doing that) since January 2001, my first fused quilt (besides the one where I learned how to do it in the first place) was When Laundry Attacks…
clearly a feminist portrayal of the burden of motherhood. Seriously old-school Kathy. Love her hair though…best use of Australian aboriginal fabrics ever.
This is the picture I use for all my avatar thingies, whatever they’re called, when I have to put my photo somewhere and I can get away with not using a REAL photo of me. But look how few pieces there are in that face! Holy crap, I’ve gotten complicated. She doesn’t even have EARS! I just realized that. Weird.
Anyway, so Wonder Under and I have been best buddies for a good long time, weathering the years of paper that released without warning all the time to the years of paper that refused to release. I think they’ve finally gotten the recipe back to normal. I buy it by the bolt.
So I’m up to three yards for this quilt (it will go much higher than that)…
I’m in the water section now, so lots of pointy wavy bits. Then tonight, assuming I trace tonight, I think I will finally be tracing one of the three humans in this quilt. Well, one is barely human. Presumably he was human at some point.
I traced for almost 3 hours last night…with my tea and everything spread out over the couches…
What were YOU doing last night? Probably something way more useful or productive or sociable. Not me! I am none of those things. OK, maybe I could argue productive in terms of producing art, but sometimes I wonder to what purpose. Not last night, though. The purpose? Distracting me from my actual existence, ironically by tracing a quilt that is about my angst about my actual existence. I know. But it makes me feel better. And at least they will have a lot to write about when they write my biography.
Kathy Nida 
Yesterday I spent the day in Oklahoma. Son is in pilot training at Vance AFB and yesterday was track-select day. That means he found out about the next phase of his training. He’ll be learning to fly cargo and transport planes, not helicopters or fighter jets. Afterwards we went for Korean food for dinner and then dropped him off so he could start memorizing for briefings today. Sleep wasn’t great here, but not an abnormal amount. Anytime I get 6 hours it seems like a fair deal.
Being alone… my kids are gone now. He was the baby who grew up in my house, and he hasn’t lived with us for 7 years. But Jim is here. Putting aside the heartbreak of losing him, I don’t know how well I’d hold up living alone. Potentially I’d become even more of a hermit than I am now…
After wonderundering, do you lay out the pieces as if they are puzzle pieces and fuse them down? And then raw-edge applique? I’ve tried fusibles before, probably not that brand, and sort of hated it. If it isn’t going to stick, it’s not worth making the effort. Just an exercise in frustration.
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Love “When Laundry Attacks”.
Crazy, perhaps impractical suggestion I’ve refrained from making before: consider getting a short-term roommate when your kids head off to college. I did this when I divorced, rented a room in someone’s house for about six months. It was nice to have company when I wasn’t slaving at the startup. The situation wasn’t stable enough to go on too long, but it got me over the breakup/what comes next hump.
Or, you know, not.
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