If You Only Knew*

I’m apparently reading a book no one else wants to read. Usually, I get a book digitally from the library, and it always checks out all my holds at once…they’re never spread out over time, like when I requested them, but I’ll get four all at once and then I have 21 days to read four books and I kinda do a library panic, because I can’t just HOLD ON to that book. When the time is up, they’re just gonna stop my loan and that’s it…if I’m on page 161 of 400, it doesn’t even matter, because the Time Is UP. (Yes, I have a lot of fines at the library for overdue books, the real kind, not the digital kind…why do you ask?) So I have this book and it’s warned me that it’s due in three days and I’ve been reading it, but when I started, there were only like seven days left on the loan, and it’s not a particularly short book, and I do go to work and cook dinner and walk dogs and occasionally try to have a life, so I can’t just READ READ READ even though there are times when that’s all I’d LIKE to do. So there was no way I was gonna finish in three days. Just no way. So I have a choice…I can buy it, which I only do very occasionally, because money and data and why own it when I’ll only read it once (I have a very good memory…generally I don’t like rereading books because I remember too much and it’s like someone gave away the story to you already, spoiler alert, except my brain is that someone). Or I can re-request it. Usually every book I’m reading has at least 3 and sometimes 300 holds on it, so I won’t get it back right away, which is really annoying, so then I’ll stay up to 2 AM reading it instead of not finishing.

I can’t stay up late enough to finish this one…it would be an all-nighter and odds are I’d fall asleep in the middle of it due to tiredness caused by not sleeping caused by stupid hormones and age and IDK what else (I had this vivid and terrifying dream…moment…of a coyote while I had the puppy out and the leash was stretched out and nothing actually happened because I woke up instantly and painfully with my heart trying to beat out of my chest, it was so realistic). So I re-requested it. And the library sent me this message, chill out my dear mamanao (that’s Malagasy for Yo’ Mama) cuz no one wants this book but you, so as soon as it seems like it’s gonna come back to us here at the library-yo, we’re gonna check it right back out to your sweet self. Don’t you even worry your old wrinkly head about that sweetie because it’s yours…for as long as you want it…(because no one else wants to read this).

Huh. OK. I’m not really offended. It’s the fourth book in a series of nine and I’m not even sure number nine is out yet, but apparently most people make it through the first three books and then quit. Losers. I’m going for the gold. (It’s the series that the TV show The Expanse is based on, and I happen to really like it.)

In other book news, I read the wrong book for book club this month, so I’m not going. It’s OK. I read June’s book. Whoops. I think I forgot to request May’s book? Or I requested it but it never came, because everyone else had requested it too? I just don’t know. There’s no book posted for July yet, so I can’t pre-read…but that’s OK, because July is vacation. Except this year, it’s a fake vacation because of jury duty looming over my head all month. Aargh. I can still go to book club though.

OK, so I drove to San Ysidro yesterday after school and it was pretty easy traffic-wise, hallelujah, because it’s a long way, just to pick up my quilt, but I think a lot of people went to that site for a bunch of other meetings and stuff, so that’s cool. It’s a nice space, even if it’s far away. Then I came home and walked the little dog, because he’s been way too hyper lately, and the big dog still needs to rest her foot. And then cooked dinner. Late. So it’s kind of amazing I got anything else done at all honestly. And I wish I had gotten just a LITTLE bit more done. I get to the end of the evening and think that a lot. Damn yourself for taking that 20-minute break in the middle of the evening there. Damn you for needing to take pee breaks or heat up your tea. If you’d just worked harder, you’d be done and on to the next task. Yeah. Workaholic much?

This is why there are only like 20 pieces left to cut and I had a hard time stopping, but it was after midnight and I kept thinking I could finish, but then it was approaching midnight thirty and ladies and gentlemen, I really need to be able to function like an awake person at school, so this is just not acceptable. But Art Brain is whining because SERIOUSLY LOOK HOW FEW PIECES ARE LEFT.

Ugh. I did not finish. I will finish tonight and then I will sort them and then hopefully I will have enough energy to start ironing tonight…or maybe I will trace the other one for a while. They both require standing, though, which is sometimes hard after a long day at work. But progress! Shut up, Art Brain. You’ll be fine. Teacher Brain needs sleep to function. She pays the bills…well, most of them.

Puppy is an asshole by the way. I know y’all think he’s cute and all, but he poops in the most random places on walks, and at least 17 times, which is just annoying, and he won’t sit and wait patiently while I pick it up. He tries to race around on his leash and pull on the hand that’s picking up his crap even when I tell him to sit and then he freaks out if you tie the bag to his leash and then he wouldn’t go to bed last night until I told him he was being an asshole.

Little dogs. Assholes. Yeah, he’s adorable, but…

*Shinedown, If You Only Knew

Nobody’s Right If Everybody’s Wrong*

As far as I know, the girlchild is currently on her way to Kenya…she should make it back to Boston by sometime tomorrow morning, our time. What is that, 29 hours? Something like that. She has one friend flying the whole way with her, which is good…better to have them with buddies than on their own. If you are Facebook friends with me, you can see the 250 pictures (or so) that she posted yesterday…well, assuming you know her name. The cat just put her belly in my morning tea. Gross. Anyway, I think girlchild had an awesome and appropriately difficult time and she’s coming back to classes, a job (or three), no real home for at least a week, a car that needs service, a computer that needs service, and toilet paper. Those are all manageable. Really.

Meanwhile, I tried to make art, lots of it, yesterday. I’m feeling the deadlines breathing down my neck. I’ve had this drawing lying around for a while…the last time I worked on it was April 15…then I switched over to the one I’m working on now, because it has an earlier deadline. Plus I had these empty spaces and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I wanted this to be a comprehensive history of what Kathy is as an artist, and I’m not even sure I can remember all that.

So yesterday, I felt like drawing and I added a bird…

And the sun and a cloud up top…because most of my quilts seem to have those things. I forgot to put an alien ship in…maybe I’ll add that.

Long and skinny…

And then I numbered it, but sort of randomly at times…I decided to add fingernails here because all the other hands had fingernails and probably no one but me will ever notice this one hand without fingernails, but it would’ve bugged the crap out of me, so I added them. And had to use letters to number them, because I was already in the 200s somewhere else.

Oh well. It wasn’t the only place I messed up. It’s 904 pieces plus about 5 or 6 lettered pieces. The little dots on the film are going to be embroidered or painted or something more sane than cutting them out of fabric.

After I numbered, I kept cutting out on this one. I have almost 10 hours into the cutting since Thursday. And I’m not done. I’m not really even close to done. So much for my estimating. You just never know. There’s not a ton remaining in the lefthand box, but there’s more than an hour’s worth.

So maybe I’ll finish tonight? Maybe? Who knows. I should be ironing sometime this week though.

When I was getting ready to go to bed, I realized I had 3 out of 4 animals in the living room with me…

The other one was on Calli’s bed when I got to the bedroom…in the dark…

Calli wouldn’t get on her bed until Kitten moved…apparently cats are scary.

I need to drive a ways this afternoon to pick up a piece from a show. Then hopefully walk the small hyper dog. Then cook and consider my options for the night…I think I will continue cutting, but maybe I’ll start tracing too. We’ll see.

*Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth

She’s Like a Chemical*

Two boxes winging their way to the girlchild in Boston (even though she’s not there yet)…check. College graduation announcements heading off to foreign parts…check. A chunk of the weekend schoolwork done…check. A huge blogpost for one of my art groups completely written, just missing one photo…check. Grocery list made and ready for shopping…check. Calendar created for the week and mostly populated with daily to-do lists…check. Not bad. Could always be better.

I finally got the video of the snake swallowing the lizard processed. Some day I will remember to hold my phone sideways. I swear.

Meanwhile, a baby possum is wandering around my front yard…not sure where momma is. Pretty sure he should be nocturnal, or at least hiding. Not sure if I should go out there and catch him…and do what with him? Yeah. Wildlife.

I cut stuff out for a chunk of time yesterday too…trash on top, to-be cut on the left, already cut on the right…

Mostly that was at night. I need to do more, obviously. Lots more.

Someone was impressed with my organization of all the fabrics used by color. Really that’s just so I can put them away easily (and because it looks cool). Right now, the office is kind of a mess…almost every drawer is open and rummaged in…when I’m ready to iron the next quilt down, I’ll put everything away again.

But for now, it’s a disaster. Semi-disaster. It’s been worse.

Sunday. I would love it to be a day of rest, but really, I’m going to do some work now. And then some artwork. And shit, I gotta make lunches for the week. Damn. OK. Well, at least I have some focus now.

*Elvis Costello, Pump It Up

Definitely No Logic to Human*

Summer weather creeps in with a headache and beautiful skies. The headache is mine. I think it just needs more caffeine and for the drugs to kick in. My weekend to-do list is feeling overwhelming at the moment. Gaming was cancelled last night, though, so I finished ironing the fabrics down, but then I looked at a calendar and panicked. It’ll be fine. Really. It will. The last one I made for a show was rejected this week. It’s OK. It’s an awesome quilt and I’m glad I made it. It will find a place to be seen. They all do.

This one I’m working on is a bit different from most of what I do…not by much, but it’s different enough. I think that’s a good thing. It was always a drawing I knew I would come back to…it needed time to be drawn. Yeah, so like 4 years of time. Ironic…it’s for a show about time.

It took about 12 1/2 hours to pick all the fabrics. I think I estimated 10-12 hours, so that’s not bad. There’s a ton of grays in it, so that was hard. I still think I have gray fabrics hiding somewhere…I guess that’s a sign that the studio needs a deep clean (it does).

Before dinner even arrived (hell…my previous dinner plans disappeared and I was too tired to do anything else, so pizza it is), I had ironed a small cat down (it’s not a quilt without a cat, is it?)…

And then after dinner, while still watching Lost in Space (Dr. Smith-not-Smith is evil…and my favorite character is the robot), I cut some more pieces out. No rest!

It looks like I’m almost done, but that’s just because I only took some of the pieces with me…the rest are sitting in my office in a big bin. Nowhere near done. It’s OK. I have a good start.

Then after dinner, I started on the fireplace. The plus was that it’s a limited palette, even though there’s a lot of pieces.

Got all of them ironed down. It’s funny that I bought a yard of the bottom left fabric, the main stone color, and I only used a tiny piece of it. This is how I ended up with this crazy stash in the first place…it takes forever to use up a half yard, but that’s what I usually buy. Might need to rethink that…but then there are sometimes pieces that need the space. You never know…

This is the last 50 pieces or so, all the stuff on the fireplace mantel.

I was repeating fabrics in the key and the clock and the teapot etc., so I just laid them all out in one go. Then looked at a real clock. Almost midnight.

Organized all the pieces…yeah I ironed for almost three hours last night. Pretty good for a tired old lady on a Friday night. There were 127 fabrics, mostly browns and grays this time.

Here’s the other box that needs to be cut out now.

I have about 2 1/2 hours into the cutting…there’s gotta be at least 5 more to go. Hopefully done this weekend, so I can start ironing. I have a chunk of time next weekend laid out for this…but honestly, I need to be ready to stitch down next weekend. Sounds a little crazy. But I can do it. I’m parceling the grading out at work, realizing with state testing, I can get a bunch done at school, so I should use that time wisely.

Yesterday, I was sitting here at the computer and heard a scuffle outside on the slope. I peeked out through the window and saw this snake trying to swallow a lizard. A large lizard. A lizard that had already lost its tail. Interestingly, the snake was vertical on the tree trunk, and the lizard was still hanging on at this point…it hadn’t given up.

I’m processing the video now…for you science geeks out there. I know. Weird. I’ll post it here eventually…YouTube is being cranky.

This morning was the vet with the old lady. Her foot still bugs her, but it’s getting better. The doc confirmed our treatment (which was to use up all the meds from last year, because we already paid for them and they are not expired)…

She is finally improving…I didn’t see any until Thursday. Gotta keep her quiet though, so no walks for a good dog this weekend. The puppy needs one though.

OK, to-do list is calling. I need to pack a box for the girlchild and mail it to Boston to meet her there. She’s back in the big city of Tana in Madagascar, ready to fly out in a couple of days…or NOT ready, probably. She’s got work for next week or the week after, then graduation with us in Ithaca, and then a summer job at school. I’m personally looking forward to NOT having a job for a while. Well. You know. Vacation. 28 days. Aargh.

*Björk, Human Behavior

Tomorrow Might Be Good for Something*

I have my Star Wars shirt on for school. Wait. No I don’t. I have somebody else’s Star Wars shirt on for school (mine is not necessarily appropriate for school, so I borrowed). May the Fourth be with you. I’m prepared for being a hella bitch today in class to keep kids on task. I’m going to engage my inner General Leia. I will only have to do that in two periods…the other three have figured out that they need to work and are doing so. Then we have a talent show at the end of the day. I have no stage talent at all, so I will be in charge of standing over kids and using sign language and my piercing glare to get them to behave (strangely, it works). I’m already cranky and tired, like almost every teacher at my school…it makes you wonder how we survive the last 29 days. I’m never really sure how we do it. With spit and alcohol and an occasional donut. But we do it. State testing starts next week, so the world gets a little wonky for a few days. I think there’s only two kids in my homeroom that might drive me bonkers for 3 1/2 hours of testing. Wait. No. There’s three. Maybe four. Fuuuck. It’s OK. I’ll feed them and use that piercing glare again and more sign language. It’s doable.

I had my monthly stitching meeting last night, but I am feeling a need to get this quilt done ASAP, so I cut things out instead of stitching…

I got a good chunk of the pieces done…and then I came home and ironed more…although I was tired, and that doesn’t ever help. I finished ironing down the heart-shaped box and started on the hearth.

Picking the fabrics for that was harder than I expected. The grays of the fireplace are going to be a pain in the butt. I guess the plus is that once I figure out what four fabrics I’m using (stones, shaded stones, grout, shaded grout), I will just have to pile the pieces up and get them ironed. That first part though, picking them? That sounds really exhausting to me at the moment. I bought one gray I thought would work, but now I’m looking at it and I’m not so sure. I guess at some point I will just make a decision about it. It never seems to be as crucial once I get the quilt ironed together…it’s more like, why did I worry so much about that one piece? I guess that is in my nature.

When I was done with decisionmaking, I hung out for a while. There was a cat for a while in there too…

But the other cat is nervous about hanging out…so she was still in my office. With an ancient art quilt.

Girlchild was traveling around. She sent me a lemur…

I still have most of the last 300 pieces to iron down. I have 9 1/2 hours into the ironing, so I underestimated how much time I would spend staring at bins of grays…because mostly that’s what I’ve been doing. I keep thinking there must be another drawer of them somewhere. I have a fabric I want to use and I can’t find it. I’m not sure if it’s in the grays or the blacks…it runs right in between…but I just can’t find it and it’s one of my favorites. Yup. I have favorites.

Anyway, I’m not busy this weekend (yay!). I have gaming tonight, so I’m not expecting much out of myself after that and school…but maybe? And then tomorrow, after taking limpy dog to the vet, I’m hoping to iron. Like until I’m done maybe. And then I do need to grade stuff, but that’s always a thing. Ugh. Maybe that can wait until Sunday. It’s nice to have an unplanned weekend, because the next three are kind of a mess. What’s new? Yeah. At least I can still make art around all that.

*Matchbox 20, Unwell

Then You Can Start to Make It Better*

Well good news this morning…my foot wound from last week did not grow anything heinous and flesh-eating, according to the culture they took…this is particularly good news, because I keep forgetting to take the damn antibiotics, so I would probably be really sick by now if there HAD been something in there.

The second piece of great news is that my mammogram has not been scheduled for July 7, 2022…the scheduler typed it into the email wrong as Thursday, July 7 (go ahead, look at a calendar. I did.)…she really meant July 5 of this year. Now I just need to have no jury duty that day (I figured the day after a national holiday midweek was a pretty good bet). I was honestly OK with waiting 4 years, even though the letter they sent suggested more often than that.

Also, it’s Thursday, and although the theme of the day yesterday was apparently “I don’t get it” and nobody let me know ahead of time, so I could prepare for it, in general, the kids are doing their stuff. Sure, there’s a kid here and there who is just sitting there clicking keys randomly and pretending they know how to use a computer for something besides active shooter games and sending butt pictures, but mostly, they’re doing it. Now if they could just do it without my amazing babysitting prowess, because when I was a babysitter, I got snacks and an extra bump in pay if the kid was a pain in the ass. Like the parents knew it and wanted me to come back, so they’d slip an extra dollar in there (back in the day, a dollar was a big thing, you know?). None of my students’ parents do that. Maybe they should.

I was home late. I finished my book. It was OK. I don’t know if I care enough to read the sequel. I read it for book club. Eh.

Ironing happened, but there was a break in the middle for ice cream, because the decisionmaking part of my brain just stopped…right in the middle…like, there’s no way I can decide what color to make the lungs because I have officially used up all the decisionmaking nodes and I must recharge. Apparently ice cream is an important factor in that process, because I got up and did another hour and a half before stopping. The lungs ended up being a blue-green color…more on the green side of that range. I realize you wanted to know that.

This is a giant heart. There are 3 hearts in this quilt that are visible…

I stopped right after that, because it was midnight and the next thing was large and complicated. I can do that tonight. I have about 350 pieces left to do…so here’s the pile to be cut out…

I moved them into a bigger box. I have the heart-shaped box (yes, for real) and then the whole fireplace and all the stuff that goes with it. That’s it. I don’t think I will be finishing the ironing before Saturday. I can try, but I don’t think I can.

I didn’t feel like organizing these last night. I was too tired.

Girlchild disappeared off the net for about 24 hours without warning. It’s OK…she’s alive. It always freaks me out though. I know better than to freak out, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Turns out that they’re showing them around the country, so internet is spotty at best.

Plans for today? Hope nobody says “I don’t get it” because I might lose it. Literally, we made sample student website templates to show kids what theirs needed to look like, but then the kids thought they were supposed to copy them and mine were like a;klsdhgf;aklsdhf; for the answers and they were like, so what are we supposed to write there? And I’m like, where’s the website with the QUESTIONS and the TASKS and the VIDEOS and the ARTICLES. The one I told you to open AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS. It does not help that I have zero patience at the moment. I guess I must have an infinitesimal amount more than zero, because I don’t scream.

After school? Chiropractor. Not sure I like the new new one. Will decide today. Then stitching meeting. I finished stitching down all those balls! I have 7,000 palestrina knots to do next. So I might just take the quilt pieces and trim them instead. Then come home and hopefully iron for a bit.

I had a floating dead little animal in the pool, but the pool guy destroyed my net, so I couldn’t get it out. Luckily, a crow has pulled it out of the pool, but has rejected it, because it is too disgusting for a crow to eat. Sigh. Nature.

*The Beatles, Hey Jude

I Doubt She Does Receipts*

There are nights when I just want to keep ironing (or tracing, or cutting, or sewing)…when looking at the clock makes me realize an hour just passed and I didn’t even notice, and now it’s after midnight, and if I don’t stop soon, I might never stop. That was last night. I think I was in bed around 12:30. Not sure. I had the next two figures to iron down; I had decided they would be a different range of flesh colors than the other figure, but not different from each other, so that meant choosing all those pieces in one go. It took a couple of hours. This is what it looked like at about the halfway point; I had the entire male figure laid out…

And this lying on the table…the pieces up at the top are for later. They need to be ironed onto non-flesh colors…there’s a chair and a box and some bones and lungs and eyeballs and hair. The male doesn’t have much in the way of hair.

Then with the female figure added…that was probably 45 minutes later. It’s not a fast process. I look at every piece number, figure out what part it is, what it’s next to, does it need to be light or dark, etc.

Here’s all the number 1 pieces…the lightest ones…feet, arms, heads, knees, legs, butts…

That’s all I have left of that fabric…it’s obviously made it into a bunch of quilts. The biggest pieces tend to be out of the lightest colors.

Here’s the current pile ready to be cut out…probably need a bigger box soon.

I know I ironed pieces from the 300s, 400s, 500s, and 600s, but not all of them. That will be tonight…all the little fussy pieces that belong to the body but aren’t flesh tones. I’m about 6 1/2 hours in…I’m not sure how much is really done though. I can’t definitively say I’m halfway…too many loose pieces…after tonight, I should be halfway.

These are the current fabrics I’ve used. You can see the first figure’s flesh run on the bottom left, and the next two figures are in the top left box, on the bottom of it.

One’s more peachy than the other. It probably doesn’t make that big a difference in the long run, but in my head it does. I might be the only one who notices.

So today is a long day, with a 2-hour curriculum meeting after school (I tell you, this week sucks), so I’m hoping to get at least an hour done of the ironing, but I can’t guarantee another 2 1/2 hours like last night. Last night, I was on a roll. It was hard to make myself stop. Even when I’m tired, art brain shuts all that off and wires my brain off normal time and onto art brain time. I seriously remember looking at the clock at maybe 10:15 and then it was almost midnight. I love that…until I have to get up to teach the next morning.

Calli’s foot is still bugging her, so I’m going to try to find a vet appointment for her in my crazy schedule…not sure how. She does still sleep well…

She’s a goofball.

*Arctic Monkeys, When the Sun Goes Down

Tomorrow Gets Me Higher*

I’m very much in my head these days, with one quilt in progress and another drawing that reappeared on the light table so I could finish drawing. My brain is trying to schedule everything else around the artmaking so I can get two quilts done in the time it takes to make one. I still don’t know for sure that I can do it, but I can try. The drawing is rolling around in my head, because I know it’s not done, but I don’t know exactly what it needs. Something came to me the other day, but I was driving, so that’s not the best time to record ideas, and though I thought I could totally hold onto that idea (and in reality, it’s stored in my head somewhere), I lost it in the moment. It happens. It will probably come back. I do a lot of drawing and coloring in my head. It’s like art brain is at an easel in one of the cleaner corners of my brain, pushing the to-do lists aside, ignoring the demands of my job, and it draws…colors…stares at the paper for huge chunks of time until something is decided.

So somehow my art brain thinks it can work on both of them…and I’m not sure it’s wrong. I know at some point last night, it hurt to stand any more (a lot of standing happens in my job), so I sat…if I had the second project at a sitting stage, I could have gotten another hour of artmaking in last night.

After grading and making dinner and then more grading, then into the disaster area that is my studio. I have a plan for fixing this corner, but it requires a chunk of money and time that I don’t have at the moment. There is a cat in that photo though…can you see her on Batting Mountain?

I think the other cat was in there too…he tends to stalk Kitten a bit. He has a few places he likes to be in here.

I picked the first of two flesh runs. The two old people will hopefully be more beige or gray. This is the younger figure, the one on the rug.

I ironed for a couple of hours…and got about 200 pieces done. Way more efficient than the night before…

I didn’t add much to the pile…just flesh tones and the rug…which ended up being dark green.

I have about half the 200s to iron down, but that was the next figure, so I quit. That’s a big chunk of time to do the next figure. My feet hurt, I was tired, and I need to finish my book before the library ends my digital loan again. Without even asking me. How rude. So I read for a short bit and then gave up and went to bed.

I have to cover the pieces I’ve laid out when I’m not ironing, or I will come back to a cat lying on them, with Wonder Under stuck to their fur and chaos everywhere. The top right box is what I’ve ironed down. Not enough…

Gotta keep going. So much standing today in my future…

It’s a crazy week. But this is progress, and I like progress. I like to report on progress. Really, this blog is just to make me do stuff every night. It’s my motivation.

Calli has hurt her foot…she’s limpy. I don’t get home early enough from school this week to take her to the vet. I’m hoping her grandpa figures out his work schedule and takes her, or it will be Saturday. She’s sad about it.

She did this last year around this time too. Foxtail? Arthritis? Sprained not-ankle because dogs don’t have ankles? I just don’t know. Poor puppy.

OK, off to school for an early meeting that will inevitably be frustrating because of a certain staff member who’s definitely not in it to help kids, and then teaching website stuff and plastics all day…we moved the tables in both science classes yesterday to try to deal with some behavior issues. My 8th period pretty much freaked out about it. So the rest of the classes today should probably do the same. Exciting stuff.

Then home to ironing…

*Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure