It Ain’t Going Nowhere*

My internet here in this office, with this computer, is getting worse and worse. I had 85 videos to watch yesterday, short ones, but 85 nonetheless. So I’m sitting here with video after video freezing, frustrated as hell, but then the internet or my computer figures its shit out and its go go go. So I got them done and all…there’s a wireless card on its way here that may help…or I may give up and wire this room…because the wireless sucks. Hopefully it’s fixable. All that was after picking up my sewing machine, where the guy who fixes it actually noticed one of the inconsistent issues I was having and fixed it (he thinks), plus playing dodgeball at school as a team-building exercise. I don’t like dodgeball. I didn’t like it when I was a kid; I like it even less now. I don’t have the reflexes or good eyesight to catch, I don’t have the upper body strength to throw, and I’m not that kind of competitive, the kind where you have to bean someone to win. We came in 2nd place, which was kind of a surprise. And here’s the thing. There were a few staff members out there who are new, who I don’t know at all. So if I’d been paired with them at a staff meeting, I would have been open-minded about meeting them and getting to know them. But the one who hit me hard? Well, now I just think he’s an asshole. So I’m not sure the team-building worked.

Whatever. I’m too cynical some days. Moving on.

After grading all those videos, I made a good dinner, one I will make again, although once again, the recipes are totally clueless about how long stuff takes to cook…30 minutes, my ass. But relatively easy, once the time adjusts (to an hour, fuckwads, an hour). After that, I revised the copyediting bid…apparently he totally miscalculated the word count…so instead of a nice sum of money, it’s an OK sum of money. Less time? Less money. Pros and cons. I’m a little relieved on the time commitment, but then it almost doesn’t feel worth it. So conflicted!

Then I cut stuff out for a while…

Which apparently I was also doing LAST year on September 17 at night. Weird how that works. Pile of trash on the left, cut-out pieces in the middle, lots still to be cut out on the right. That’s like 2 hours of cutting. It looks like nothing. More of that tonight. Although grading too? Ugh.

Kind of pitiful.

Plus I have these guys following me everywhere.

At one point this morning, after one person left for work and the other person wasn’t out of their room yet, I had all five animals in here…

Two cats are not in this picture…one is on the chair behind me, and one is hiding behind the monitor. There’s no being alone in this house.

Which is probably OK.

*Alison Moyet, Invisible

Mysteries of Our Disguise Revolve*

We each have our method for dealing with stress…mine was hiking for 5 1/2 miles on Saturday evening. I was going to be waiting around for the social stuff to happen anyway. I had worked all day, either on school or art. I need more exercise. I wanted to see how far I could get…I could have gone farther, but in the end, it was good that I turned around when I did…the timing was better.

I do this hike all the time with the dogs…we go about a mile and a half out and then come back.

Scarily, that is a coyote, completely ignoring my presence, about 20 feet from the path. Where I usually walk the dogs.

Boychild says only one adult fatality from coyotes. Thanks kid. Appreciate it.

OK, well then. I was hiking late afternoon, trying to beat the heat…it was warm.

Here’s the weird bridge that’s not really a bridge.

It’s California. There’s always cactus.

It took like 20 minutes for my incredibly slow computer internet to load these photos. But here are the birds that I haven’t looked up yet (heron? egret?) that I saw at the turnaround point…the point where I realized I’d been out for an hour and needed to turn back if I was going to get any dinner.

The birds were totally worth it.

It was a nice hike. Yes, I always worry about hiking alone. I told two people where I was going. I told one of them to call the police if I wasn’t back by 7.

It was an awesome hike. Didn’t affect my blood sugar at all, unfortunately. My body is confused.

Before all that, I did do some ironing. I left this chaotic pile of fabrics…

With only these pieces left to iron on Saturday (it didn’t happen)…

And the to-be-cut pile like this…

Oh yeah, so I painted this birdhouse about a million years ago when one of the big fires was trashing San Diego County…it has flames and a dead tree. Boychild finally nailed it to a tree.

Hey! Remember these? Never going to get done at this rate. I have 10 left. I got 2 done last night. Sad, really.

And then after grading a good chunk of the day (I think I worked for about 10 hours this weekend on school stuff), I finally went in and finished ironing the fabric for this quilt.

There’s about 8 1/2 hours of ironing in here, plus 93 colors. I like lots of fabrics, apparently.

And here’s the pile that now needs to be cut out. I finished the new season of Call the Midwife, plus at least two YA movies that made me cry. Hell, Call the Midwife made me cry. I think I cried on the hike too. Obviously some shit in my head that needs to get out somehow.

So then I headed out to the living room, the couch, with dogs, to cut out pieces…I didn’t get very far, but it’s a start. Happy that…

Tried to pick something to watch that wouldn’t make me cry. I don’t really do comedy. So killing it is! Watching The Sinner…don’t tell me it will make me cry. I don’t wanna know.

More tonight. By then, I’ll know if I’m copyediting 102 hours over the next 5 weeks or not. Stress!

*Portishead, Sour Times

All That Pressure Got You Down*

It’s one of those Saturdays where the to-do list looms large on the biggest post-it note you can find, but all I want to do is finish ironing fabric for the new quilt and maybe read my book. Yeah. Well. Welcome to adulthood. First on the list is trying to use up all the food my parents left here before absconding to Spain and Portugal for a million days. Luckily, the boychild is here and he has some of those Depression-era genes in him that allow one to use up ALL the foods in one or two meals. Except he doesn’t like lettuce, I think. So I’m in charge of eating lettuce. MMMM. Lettuce. Perhaps my compost pile needs some help.

What is on said to-do list? Well, grading, of course, and tending to money issues and the compost pile and making sure art paperwork is done or ready or shipped or something. Prepping for school for the next few weeks…I have a kid who will be gone for over a week and will miss every measurement lab we do, but still needs independent work and won’t have internet. And I don’t have a textbook. So there’s that. Fun stuff for a weekend. I’m on Day 3 of uncomfortable headaches that eventually go away. Ugh. Oh yeah, I also need to go shopping for small plastic animals that will fit in a graduated cylinder, but I forgot to bring the damn thing home, so I’ll have to go GET it, and then go shopping. I also think the Golden Retriever might be showing signs of diabetes, so I should set an appointment for her. Ugh. Meanwhile, where my diabetes numbers were looking good last week, this week they have sucked and besides being totally stressed out and exhausted, I’m not sure what was different. Damn pancreas. Behave, you bastard.

My goal is to kick a lot of the to-do list hard this morning and then find time to iron later today. And maybe even go for a walk. Although I won’t have any dogs. That might be better? I don’t know.

My office floor last night…only two…the other one is outside the door. I was grading before this. I made it through one small period and half of my most challenging period…it’s big and full of kids who are not great at English yet, so their writing is difficult to grade. Trying to be fair and helpful but realizing they can’t figure out a run-on sentence yet (I’m reteaching that on Monday…)…it just makes it hard to grade. I’ll finish today.

One cat hiding behind the monitor. I was doing work stuff on here. I think. And ordering stuff. Very important stuff, like the salmon oil for the old lady dog’s food, those things for my tooth flosser, and some sort of card for my computer that might help with the fucking slow internet. I still need to contact Tivo, but their call center is in the Philippines, and there’s a typhoon. Might be hard to get through. I know if I were in the Philippines and there were evacuations, the last thing I would wanna do is talk to some entitled white chick in California about why her Tivo won’t connect.

I did eventually iron stuff. I was happy to iron stuff. It makes me feel less stressed to iron stuff. Picking colors pushes all the other stressful stuff out of my head. Ahhhh…look at all the pretty fabrics.

OK, it actually looks pretty chaotic now because I didn’t organize by color. My brain likes rainbow order. I can’t explain it.

A box full of pieces! I’m getting closer to done. I probably have about 100 pieces left to iron. I could easily kick that out today. That’s the plan too.

Get it done.

So the boychild was hacking things again. There’s a plan to get the overgrown jungle under control.

OMG. It’s a fence I haven’t seen in years. I’m not really sure what will happen to all this space once he’s done hacking at it. It might just be easier to find the little dog out there. I do feel sorry for the bunnies though. It’s gonna get scary for them.

Finally I managed to get a photo of all three dogs in one space. Not moving. This is harder than you might think. They know how to sit, but they are stubborn assholes and won’t listen.

We haven’t tried walking all three yet. I used to do it by myself. It’s doable. Pain in the butt, but doable.

OK, so grading and small-plastic-animal purchases and cleaning up and compost pile and hopefully ironing and who knows what else, but maybe Netflix could stop recommending YA movies that make me cry because I remember being that awkward and having so little confidence back then and it’s so much easier now to exist. Although I could do without the bills and taxes and the horrendous number of meetings I had to add to my schedule the other day (30. I had to add 30 meetings to my schedule.). Yeah. And I need a walk. A long one. With headphones. Maybe dogs.

*Chic, Le Freak

Should Have Been Easier by Three*

Some Fridays are a surprise. I get to the end of the week and I’m not even mentally there yet. I still have energy and brain power. The weeks with back-to-school night in them? Yeah no. Friday is a blessing, but also it’s a good thing I will be sitting for most of the day (I’m demonstrating how to make a webpage), because I’m sorta dead on my feet right now. Too many meetings, too much jocularity with parents, not enough rest apparently, my body is sort of screaming that at the top of its lungs. OK OK. I hear you. You can sleep in tomorrow. I promise. Sunday too. I’ll be nice to you. Seriously, there’s enough sick people around that I need to promise the body something or it will succumb to some cold or sinusy thing that I really don’t want. I do have a sore throat, but that often happens after back-to-school night. Too much talking.

I came home to the boychild’s plant deconstruction. I haven’t had time to get my jungle under control for years, but this seems to be the year. We got some trees trimmed that were out of control (there’s more to come on that front, once I have a little more cash put away for the college costs), then went after the bougainvillea profusion, and now he’s on a roll with crazy-ass bushes…the trees have been dead since they did the septic field. We think we’re going to put a fence in here, just to block delivery-happy UPS guys who can’t figure out where my front door is.

And that hole goes into a part of the backyard that hasn’t been seen by anyone but dogs and bunnies for about 5 years, maybe longer.

Found? A dead tree, a statue of a cherub or something, a mop head…the normal stuff. Impressive work.

Meanwhile, I got home from back-to-school night after 6:30 PM. I spent over an hour on the phone with the cable company fixing modem issues, but unable to fix Tivo issues. We’re going to replace a cable and see if that helps, but if it doesn’t, then I have to go to war with Tivo, which apparently is not a good thing. Then I made the most simple dinner I could…read my book a bit…realized this piece needs to be in Houston by next Friday and I wasn’t likely to be LESS tired Friday night, so I got my butt moving, found the quilt, ironed it, labeled it, dehaired it, rolled it, packed it, and shipped it.

That was done around 10:30 PM. It was really hard to motivate myself to do it, but I’m glad I got it out of the way. It’s ready to go out this morning, so it’s out of my hair…unlike the 7 tons of grading I need to do. It’s only 80 videos, another 90 essays, this week’s warmups, two weeks of homework (the TA can do one of them, maybe both), and I don’t remember what else. Crawling under the desk with my computer now.

There are lots of animals here at the moment. They’re tolerating each other. This is how Kitten looks when Katie is here. It’s very judgy.

Yes, that’s a skelly hand. Why do you ask? I am a science teacher.

Boychild is trying to pet all three dogs at once. I’m trying to get them all in one photo and not blurry. I suck at my job. He does OK.

Satchemo is still not sure about Katie. It’s Day 1. Things will chill out.

Meanwhile, my friend Ann, who moved far away long ago, happened to be near Walla Walla, WA, where The Nature of a Stitch is going on until December, and where my Disrupted is right now! So there they both are!

They both look awesome, and I’m so pleased that she sent photos. It looks like a great show. I wish I could see it…

The next show I’ll be at with my work is Things That Matter opening in Chandler, AZ, in November. Oh wait, that might not be true. I’ll probably be at the opening of Futurecraft at the Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, here in San Marcos, CA. That’s in October…I’ll be at the October 13th opening. I should put that on my calendar before I forget. Yeah.

OK, survival day. Followed by a decent night’s sleep. Next week will be so much easier than this one. Seriously. And tonight, I’ll be ironing again. That will be good.

*Bush, Glycerine

The Day Is in My Sight*

Good morning head. You appear to be achey this morning. I don’t know why. I mean, sure, you’re not getting enough sleep, and obvi, you’re tired, you want a nap and it’s 7 AM, so apparently you slept, so maybe the weather is seesawing around, because that’s usually what causes the head to ache so, but maybe it was the quiet chaos of yesterday (was it quiet? was it?) pounding through whatever you were dreaming last night, but wow. No need to be so bangy. Seriously. I don’t have the brain power today for pounding headache plus middle school plus back-to-school night.

Oh yeah, I did have a union meeting yesterday, which starts a host of complicated things I have to do today on top of my regular job…it’s OK, though, because I’m stuck at school until 6 PM, and I have an hour and a half before I have to deal with parents, so hopefully I can bang some union duties out in that time…in time with the banging of my head. Or pass them on to some other rep who didn’t show up to the meeting last night.

I didn’t go to book club. I haven’t finished the book. I was exhausted when I got home. Didn’t happen. No friendly gathering. Oh well…because we got Katie! Katie is my parents’ dog and her full name is Katie Girl, but no one calls her that but my parents, maybe only my mom, because that’s too many words for a dog, too many syllables. Katie is much skinnier now because she is on a green bean and carrot diet, which luckily she enjoys. Well, she enjoys all foods, so there’s that. She’s also constantly rolling over on her back, either for pets, or because she’s the most submissive animal in the house…or both. Calli steadfastly ignores her until she gets pets, and then Calli gets jealous and wants attention.

ON HER BACK…

That face will be here until November, so get used to it. Her fur will also be here until November. Someone should vacuum now so we have a baseline. (Headache is minorly responding to meds and tea…but not well enough. There might be an invisible vise on my skull…I just can’t tell.)

Anyway, after a long meeting and dealing with Katie’s arrival with all her shit and the instructions that came along with all that, and dinner and then the Tivo is acting up so there was that and I was grading essays (short ones, thank god) for a while until I couldn’t stand it, well, I didn’t get into my office until well after 10 PM. There’s really not that many pieces in this quilt, but I need to have the mental energy to pick things. And that is currently problematic.

My brain just got stuck on that word. It said it, and then some part of it argued for pragmatic instead, but no, that wasn’t right, but sure enough, some other part said it louder, PRAGMATIC, and then my brain (which isn’t very awake and is struggling with the poundiness of headache) LOST the word problematic and all that was left was pragmatic. So my fingers stopped typing for about 30 seconds until I could find it again and yell it back at that part of the brain that is always trying to interject with inappropriate words. More so as I age, dammit. At some point, there’ll be a damn coup up in there and I won’t get any of the words right. It’s coming. Definitely problematic, you asshole.

Anyway, I ironed for less than an hour, and honestly, I spent most of that time staring at the drawing, trying to color it in using the same brain that just lost a word for 30 seconds. At the end of the day too. So it was slow and mostly painful. But I added some colors of the rainbow for her hair, and that was good.

I didn’t get much done though. I wanted more. I hope for tonight, but I also know I need to put a label on a quilt, and I won’t even get home until after 6, and no one but me is cooking dinner for me. Which might be simpler. Who knows? Maybe I’ll read my book (and fall asleep on the couch because nothing survives back-to-school night). But I’m still hoping to be done ironing by the weekend. It could happen. I just need to be way more awake than I have been.

Katie will be waiting for me when I get home. There’s that.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up

I’m Not Expecting to Grow Flowers in a Desert*

I was more successful at making art last night. Despite the long day, I managed almost 2 1/2 hours on the quilt…mostly dealing with the fleshy bits. But before that, there was dinner and a little bit of this. Remember last week when I said it would probably only take 5 more nights to finish these? Except I wasn’t home for the next 4? Well here’s where I finally worked on it…

Still not done. Working on it.

Then I came in here and dealt with paperwork for one show, prepped it all and sent it off. I still need to do another one, but I need to buy a shipping box, which means I need to get to the place that sells them during their opening hours, which means I need to NOT be at school during their opening hours. This is more difficult than you might think. I’m going to try this morning, I think.

Then I finally started ironing. I pretty much started with the flesh run…6 fabrics from light to dark. Which means crawling around on the ground under the sewing table, because that’s where all the flesh colors are. I mean, something has to go under there…it’s not like there’s colors I don’t use so I can hide them away. I realize when I’m 70 that crawling under the table might be an issue, but at 51, I’m still doing it.

So I ironed all of those down. It takes about an hour to pick them, and this is a smaller, less complicated figure than most…and then an hour to iron them. Here’s one of the colors…

I do try to fit them together in such a way that I’m wasting the least amount of fabric. When people think that I am only right-brained, I show them things like this and explain why, and they raise their eyebrows right into their hairline. It’s the same when I tell them about numbering over 2000 pieces.

It’s a process. It works for me. Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…not a lot of color yet.

It will come. She’s decorated. It’s part of the poem. So there will be color all over her. I just haven’t gotten to that part yet.

Here’s the pile of stuff to be cut out.

The real question is how much do I have left. I don’t know…because when I pulled the flesh pieces, I pulled from the 100s, 200s, 300s, and 400s…and this is what’s left.

This is the hair, the decorations, the tree, the eyeballs, the lungs, the heart…all the non-fleshy bits. They all still need ironing. I guess that’s tonight…after yet another meeting. I’m supposed to have book club, but I don’t think that’s happening. I haven’t given up on it yet…but I’m pretty sure I’m not going. Sigh. It’s OK…I haven’t finished the book anyway. I will…just not this week, not with meetings and crap every night until I collapse on Friday.

Meanwhile, here’s Satchemo, lying on my lunch bag. He likes the kitchen counter. It has the potential for foods.

Here’s the poster/announcement for the Extreme Fiber Art show I’m in right now in Springfield, Missouri, great idea of Pam Rubert. My quilt Untied is in the bottom center, next to Susan Shie’s work.

Pretty cool show…

And then I saw this yesterday…Richard Scarry was my favorite when I was a kid. I blame him for my artistic need to fill the page…OVERFILL the page. Him and Dr. Suess…way too much influence, if you ask me.

Ruben Bolling is apparently a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, a cartoonist, the author of Tom the Dancing Bug. “His pieces demonstrate concern about the power of large corporations and satirize the way government has been corrupted by money.” According to Wikipedia anyway. Well, I appreciate his comic anyway. You can go check out some of his other comics here. I could spend some significant time over there, but I need to go buy a box. Before school.

*Big Country, In a Big Country

With All These Things That I’ve Done*

I just completely freaked out because I was checking all my art exhibit entries for the last few weeks, looking to see what notification would be next, and I noticed a double entry. That’s incredibly unprofessional. My stomach dropped. I never do that shit (OK I accidentally did it once a million years ago when the kids were small and I was newly divorced, but luckily, I only got into one of the shows I double entered…which is how the odds go anyway, usually even lower odds than that, honestly). But it’s OK. One of them is only in print, so I don’t send the piece anywhere. Deep breaths. Panic over.

I did get into the Power of Women show that will be at IQF Houston, so that’s good, since I made the piece for that show…not that I wouldn’t have been able to show it elsewhere, though. God knows I do that often enough…here’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Lots going on in there. Wish I could go to Houston with her, but I’ll be in Boston the following weekend and Chandler, Arizona, the weekend after. Seems like enough travel. Plus Houston is pretty expensive. So she’ll travel without me, like most of them do.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at some of the people who friended me on Facebook recently. I do actually scroll through their feeds and make a decision, like if there’s nothing there, I assume they’re a bot or a Russian spy, so I don’t accept. And if their politics are out there, well and truly not gonna get along with mine, I don’t accept. I’m not always sure why they’re friending me, except maybe to get me to like their store or their quilting or whatever, but then you’re posting pictures of guns and kneejerk Trumpisms, and I’m like, I don’t want to see that on my feed, plus you’re gonna hate my vulvas, so why are you clicking friend again? Such a complicated world.

Anyway, that’s two shows that have notified in the last week, and both were acceptances. Good odds so far, but it’s guaranteed they won’t all be.

I had a long work day yesterday, and all I wanted to do when I got home was walk the furry beasts, so we grabbed them and ran. Well, only a little running, just to see how tired the little one was after 2 1/2 miles.

It was a lovely temperature. We went down this hill we never go down, but then we had to go up it as well. Funny, the picture does not convey the real upness of this hill at all.

Then I made dinner and did some stuff to get my printer to work again, which involved a cable, because our internet is super bad at the moment, or maybe it’s just mine on the computer, but the (previously wireless but now wired) printer was refusing to work. And I needed it to work. So it was late when I started ironing.

Cherries…I started with cherries…

And then I did the rest of the fruit bowl, plus ironed the dirt from yesterday.

I didn’t get far. I was tired. I didn’t sleep well the night before, plus I walked a lot. So that makes it hard to want to stand and pick out fabrics for a long time late at night. Here’s the rest of the 100s, laid out, ready for me to iron tonight.

I get into the fleshy bits pretty early on in this quilt. She has a lot of decoration on her, so I have to decide if that will be in flesh color or different colors…probably the latter. This is not a political statement quilt…just a reaction to a poem I wrote years ago. It’s a nice break from the last quilt, which was difficult and in my head in a much different way. Last year at this time, I was doing the gun quilt. That was really difficult.

Anyway, art…make it often and in spite of all the other crap.

*The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

Hot Funk, Cool Punk, Even If It’s Old Junk*

It was a busy crazy weekend. Quilts were delivered…always good. Went to a show. Pix below. Made some art, watched a movie, graded stuff, dealt with the death of a phone (well, not totally dealt with yet, but hopefully today)…all that. Didn’t sleep well last night. Hours of tossing and turning and hot flashes and busy brain. Feel pretty braindead this morning. Lack of sleep is not the best way to start a week, unfortunately.

So we drove up to the Boehm Gallery at Palomar College for the show That’s What She Said, here with 3 other FIG members under Helen Redman’s work (the amazing woman in the pink scarf). This is here to remind me to put it on the FIG page as well.

Helen does some amazing work on wood and paper…

Michelle Montjoy also has work in this show…

There was no statement for this one, a bunch of marks covering a pillowcase, counting up what? I wanted to know.

As a mom and a teacher, living today, right now…this was particularly good.

There were many more.

Also in the show was the Sien Collective, the collaborative work of artists Meagan Shein and Siobhan Arnold. I particularly liked the cyanotypes…this is a uterus on legs.

And it was as tall as I am. This one is much smaller and unfortunately photographed crooked (there was an issue with lighting)…but very cool.

Meanwhile, in Springfield, Missouri, the Extreme Fibers show was opening at IdeaXfactory, with two of my pieces and some very interesting works by other artists. The pieces in the back are Fruits of Nature and Storybook Paper Dress by Hannah Klein. Mine is In Deep.

Then my work Untied, with Big Head by Shen Chen Hsieh, and the dress again in the background by Klein.

It’s always cool to be invited to be in shows, especially when the work is so varied.

Saturday night, we watched Annihilation, and I cut out the whole quilt. There’s the book I’m reading…book club is Wednesday, and I probably won’t be able to go, but I’m trying to read anyway.

Sunday was a chaotic day. Then we went to the parentals for dinner. Simba has to be on a leash, because he takes off into the upper regions of the yard and can’t be retrieved. In the far distance, my dad is explaining all the sprinkler issues to Calli…or maybe to the boychild.

Yes, I was grading. It needed to get done. Then we came home and I did some stuff for school…and then set up for sorting Wonder Under, which I’d really wanted to get done way earlier.

Sorted!

Then back to the office, where I had to clean up from the last quilt. Lots of trying to organize by color. There’s definitely a space issue in here…always has been.

It took about an hour to clean everything up. It was late then…but I did start picking the base fabrics…plus the background, that blue at the bottom.

I didn’t iron all of them though, because it was after midnight and a school night, so that means it’s bed time.

I have lots more to do on this, obviously. All week? Well, all week, I have meeting after meeting after meeting. Plus back-to-school night, which is exhausting. So I’m going to get some of it done, but I suspect it will take me all week to get ironed. Maybe not. Cutting out by the weekend? Sure. That’s doable, I think.

Kitten’s not sure…

Meanwhile, I need to go function. Unlike my printer at the moment. It’s not functioning. Or my brain. Annoying. The music is trying to wake me up, but the boychild says it’s fully apparent that I am not functioning well. Only half a cup of tea in me. Definitely still asleep.

*Billy Joel, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me

Sitting Untouched and Growing Cold*

You know how I like to make art every day? Well it isn’t always possible, but I do try to at least do something with fabric and/or thread every day, although I guess technically Wonder Under isn’t fabric, but it’s fabric-related, and same with drawing, damn, I just talked myself out of my own plan. Fuck. Anyway. I try. Something. But some days, especially Fridays and Saturdays, there isn’t time or energy or whatever to let me do that, and most days during the school year, I don’t touch anything art-related until after 9 PM. So yesterday was one of those days, and that’s fine, because it was gaming night, and while I am gaming (no we aren’t freaking done yet even though we killed the Prince of Ziinch holy crap it’s Tzeentch they never showed me his name and now I know why they were pronouncing it so weird or something I don’t even know who he was, but he had feathers and was way smarter than any of us and wouldn’t freaking die, I shot him 3 times and so did everyone else, and now I have all these crazy wounds and flea buboes and I think I have chaos gases surrounding me), like I said WHILE I am gaming, I stitch. Because my Friday brain would otherwise be snoring away, exhausted by the day…damn, the week.

In the aftermath of the game, where I stopped stitching, just before we started putting away 7800 chips, another 450 dice, and all our other crap, each of us sporting a pile of wounds. But no. We’re not done with this campaign. It’s OK…it’s just kind of amazing.

Slow progress on this. I finally finished the July blocks…at least, I think they’re the July blocks, by finishing the hippo’s ears. The August blocks are the three across with the rhinos, bird, and butterfly. So that’s what I’m working on now…

Then I think the other three that are randomly not done are the September blocks. Maybe. So there’s the rhinos. They still need more work. But I got most of the flowers done. The blue flowers are complicated as hell…

They have french knots in slippery rayon, drizzle stitches, outlining with more of that crazy rayon shit. I’m still outlining…

Petting small furry things…

The boychild is followed around by animals all day and sometimes he gets annoyed and brings me one or two. This morning, they followed me around, well, the cats don’t really follow unless the little one thinks there’s food and the big one wants pets.

So last night, after gaming, I graded stuff. Because that’s what you do at 11 PM on a Friday. I think I’ve actually made my life easier (eventually) with the new warmups. They take longer to make/plan, but less time to grade. And they’re still writing.

Then I got up this morning and finished packing up quilts, wrote 4 statement pages, found some nails…delivering in about an hour.

I did NOT cut any of this out. I don’t know when I WILL cut any of this out. Sometime soon, for sure.

I did get into another show yesterday, Futurecraft at the Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, with Allied Craftsmen, one of the local groups to which I belong. The openings are Thursday, October 11, from 1-3 PM, and Saturday, October 13, from 2-4 PM (that’s the one I’ll be at). The show runs through November 7. There’s also an artists’ talk on Thursday, October 11 from 2-3 PM. I won’t be at that either. I have two pieces in the show…Part-Time Oasis…

And Mammogram…

So that’s one acceptance out of eight entries so far…not bad. Then again, this was the one where I was guaranteed to get one piece in, so not so impressive.

OK, on with quilt delivery, then an art exhibit, then some drinks, then IDK what. Food probably. That would be a good plan. Art will come in eventually (besides the management and delivery of said art).

*Cowboy Junkies, Cold Tea Blues

Try to Catch the Deluge in a Paper Cup*

This Friday arrived just in time, although I’m pretty sure I was supposed to get some more shit done yesterday and just blew it off. There’s always tonight…maybe. I did finally get the tracing done last night…whatever exhaustion I felt Tuesday night has strangely gotten better. I could look at my daily step count and maybe account it to that. Seriously, Nida, sit down once in a while. The graph of steps related to evening exhaustion is very telling. Wait until next week…I have a school-related meeting/activity after school every day next week. At least two days, I won’t be home until after 6. It looks exhausting. I better rest up this weekend. And occasionally sit down next week.

That’s amusing really…I have quilts to deliver, an art show, grading, gaming tonight, who knows what else. And I have to get to school early today to discuss moving a kid out of one period into another, because otherwise WWIII is gonna start in there. Not something I’m a fan of…trying to explain to a 12-year-old boy why “pussy” is offensive. No, he didn’t get it. I ramped down the feminist rant. Although I did call a kid on the whole “girls are bossy” shit. No sweetie. We’re just confident and you’re not doing anything, so she’s getting your ass on task. High five the girl off to the side and then explain that yelling at him probably isn’t the most effective way to get him to work. She’ll be someone’s boss some day…a GOOD boss. Me? I check my speech so much more than I used to do when I was younger. Which is good.

So I had my stitching meeting last night…and it took me an hour and a half (about) just to chain stitch around those damn rhinos. One and a half rhinos. With rayon thread. Pissy rayon thread. Such annoying thread…

I’ll be doing more of that at gaming tonight. I left the stitch book at home by accident, so I had to read through the instructions until I could find something I could do from memory. Chain stitch it is. Not Palestrina…haven’t done a million of them yet. I can do bullions from memory. I can’t do woven picot from memory…couldn’t remember what side to start on…top or bottom. Plus I didn’t know how many spokes, because it was the instructions from March again. DAMN. I don’t carry the whole notebook of instructions around with me, so that’s annoying.

Then I came home and I was still awake (miraculous), so I started tracing. I didn’t have a ton left, maybe 150 pieces. The dogs were gone with the boychild, so Kitten came out to clean her nether regions on my light table…

She spends a lot of time whacking her tail at me for disturbing her while this happens. I traced the head and the crazy hair and the tree with all its leaves and the cat and the bird…it didn’t take long…maybe a couple of hours?

There’s less than 3 yards of Wonder Under…and it took about 5 hours and 40 minutes to trace all 578 or so pieces (there’s more because I doubled up on about 5 pieces…but not a lot more).

So now I’m ready to cut them out. I might be able to handle that tonight. Well, the start of it. So I’m a little behind my plan. It’ll be fine. I’m not really expecting to get much done on it this weekend, but cutting it out shouldn’t take more than about 4 hours…so maybe I’ll be ironing by Monday or Tuesday night? I’ll have to think about what I want for the background…I don’t want to buy more fabric, if I can help it. Let me rephrase that. I’d love to buy more fabric…always…but I shouldn’t need to for this part. And I really shouldn’t. The house may be taken over by fabric some day if I don’t watch it.

This is a special portrait of Kitten and her frustrating gecko friend…frustrating in that Kitten is inside and gecko is outside, so much batting and banging of the window occurred.

There’s a gecko (is it the same one?) on this window most nights. It’s like cat TV. Now I really wanna know if its the same one or not. Need to catch it and mark it so I can tell. Yeah. That’s happening.

OK, off to work, more walking around in circles to manage kid work and behavior, plus all the other good teacher stuff that we do. And then a weekend. Looking forward to that, even though it will include grading 140 warmups and another 140 essays. Trying not to think about that part…

*Crowded House, Don’t Dream It’s Over