Meditation. Lots of it. School issues. Kid issues. Insurance issues (everything costs too much and all the bills are due during the only time of year when I don’t get a paycheck.). College issues. Too many little tiny fussy details and it’s HOT here. Brain turns to mush.
All I want to do is make art and everything else keeps getting in the way. Today will be that, over and over again. Even school…I have to go to school today. That’s just wrong.
So yesterday, I traced a lot, like over 3 hours of tracing…
Kitten was absolutely no help at all. When she’d try to lie on the paper or the Wonder Under, the plus of the light table is that the glass is really slippery, so I’d just slide her over, out of my way. And sometimes she’d stand right back up and plop right back down. Bitch. No really. I love my cat. And yes, the glass is cool. I use LEDs so there’s no heat off that sucker, or I’d be dying right now of heat exhaustion. You can’t see the fan pointed at me. Actually, for some part of the time, girlchild had the fan and I was sweating. Sigh. Need another fan. I did break the one in the studio, so it’s on my list.
It was nicer to trace at night. Nice and cool. View of my neighbor’s drone over the driveway (I’m hoping he doesn’t have a camera on that thing…because I flashed it last night).
I’m getting closer to done. I think I just have the head to do…maybe one arm. I quit when I was too tired to stand any more.
Then I decided I wanted to finish watching the season finale of Orphan Black, so I sewed bindings for a while…
I got about halfway around before I was really tired. Then I went to bed and didn’t sleep. I don’t really know why. Too many of those details racing around in my head, bumping into each other. Time really gets away from me sometimes. I have a huge long list of things to do today, and so many of them are just BLAH. And I keep fighting the kids over the damn dishes. Seriously. It’s Not Mine, put your shit away. And jobs and their anxiety and stress, which doesn’t help with mine.
I should wake up and meditate. And then I should do it again right before bed.
But I don’t have time! Amusing that.
I am trying to straighten up the house and organize it and get rid of stuff too…although I tossed a bunch of papers yesterday and then had to make more to try and get all these insurance quotes straightened out. Waiting on one more, and then I can toss the whole pile.
But I finally hung the last three year’s of SAQA auction purchases…
They’ve had hanging slats for about a year now I think…the one on the right is one of my older pieces, pre-divorce, believe it or not (so fucking ancient). It’s one of my favorite pieces…Caught in the Headlights (2002). And yes, my kitchen is a disaster. I’m working on it.
Here’s Lorie McKown’s My Three Sisters II, Susan Lenz’s Death of Desire, and Helen Conway’s Transition: Brick Lane II.
I have 4 others in my bedroom, so that’s 7 years of donations to the cause. I don’t make auction quilts (they’re way too small and always due in the last trimester of school, not a good time for me), I don’t have hours to donate, and I don’t have a ton of money, but I do try to buy a small one of these every year. Last year was going to be a no-buy-year for me, and then I sold a bunch of the bird quilts and made enough to be able to breathe last summer.
Same with this Jette Clover piece, Interjection 1, purchased as part of the FFAC 100 artists donation to cancer…I donated one and bought one.
This year…this year, none of that is on the table. Deep breaths. Sighs as well.
Today? Doctor’s appointments, school shit, lots of details (apparently that cat up there on the light table? She wants food. Demanding beast.). Hopefully some more tracing will get slotted in there, so I can get that part of the project over with and move on to the next piece. I’m also trying to get my freelance copyediting business up and running, and to exercise in there as well and maybe even sleep more than 5 hours a night. Really. I feel like I should be able to sleep on vacation! Stupid brain.
Make art, support artists, buy art. Meditate regularly. Don’t get swallowed by details…
Kathy Nida 