Simple

Some people sleep through earthquakes. Some of us have early warning systems that bark like little maniacs. And some of us have never slept through an earthquake, EVER. Yup. It’s funny though, because as I’m lying in bed, staring at the USGS map (yeah, that fucker is bookmarked), I’m thinking, “Only a 5.2? Really? That felt more like a…”. Being a Californian, we’ve experienced more earthquakes than most. And living in San Diego, we don’t actually experience a whole lot of them.

I didn’t have Calli last night. I wonder if she barked before the earthquake too? The mockingbird was quiet most of the night…I continue to believe he’s going out on dates, or if that guy was right, his baby birds are now fledglings and he feels safer about his nest. No need to yell at ME about your territory dude…because you’re in MINE.

Like much of this week, last night did not go as planned. No worries. I roll with the flow on a regular basis. Or is that roll with the punches and go with the flow? That’s one of the things that drives my kids nuts, when I mess up idioms. My brain does weird stuff with words…it always has.

But once I got home (and I did figure out how to get today’s lunch out of last night’s endeavors), I was mostly awake (tea helps me believe I am more awake than I am), so I settled down to tracing. I’m on a roll! Don’t you hate it when people misspell those. I’m on a role! NO you’re not. Unless you’re in a play. Web sight was one that amused me. Because you are seeing things. So that almost makes sense. There are more of course. Homonyms kick our uneducated asses on a regular basis.

I’ve been tracing for an hour to two hours every night. I’m at 15 hours and 19 minutes in. See if you look at artmaking as just spending an hour a day (if you’re like me and have a fulltime job…trust me, I’d do more than that if I could), then it’s not so bad. Eventually everything gets done, even if it’s only a little bit each night.

I started in the mid 1400s last night and traced through the mid 1600s, doing almost 200 pieces in an hour and 45 minutes.

Not bad. Last year at this time, I was quilting the first of the bathtub quilts. I end up tracing a lot of leaf parts in these Earth Mother quilts. Leaves are complicated little fuckers. I did a lot of flowers and leaves and arm parts and part of a snake and then more leaves.

Cuz there’s lots of them. When there’s leaves that are all part of the same plant, I try to trace the same part of the leaf in the same section (light side vs dark side) and then cut them all out as one large piece of Wonder Under. It saves trimming time at this stage. I’ll cut them apart later.

The kids are trying to help around the house.

I realize that doesn’t look like help, but the girlchild was known in her past for slamming doors and a particularly violent slam took out part of her door framing, so boychild pulled out the old nails and fixed it. It was on the white board list of chores mom left on the door.

Simba is entirely no help in all of this. Unless there’s an earthquake coming, and then he’s useful. Although if I ran and got into a doorway every time he barked, it would be silly.

His last cone day is today. His stitches are mostly healed. It’s unfortunate, because it allows us to control him a bit.

I have about 300 pieces left to trace. I’d like to say I’ll get some done tonight, but who knows. I’m pretty tired. There are only 5 days of school left and a lot to do. And I haven’t been sleeping well between randy mockingbirds and random earth shaking and just general end-of-year stress. Hopefully that will change soon. What do I look forward to in summer? A normal sleep and pee schedule. Lots of artmaking time. Simple.