I am currently completely and totally procrastinating answering all the parent and kid school emails from this weekend. Some don’t need an answer; they were an appropriate acknowledgment to the weekly notifications I send about hey, y’all aren’t turning shit in. Unfortunately, some weren’t. I saw the first one roll in Friday night. I could say I ignored them, but I didn’t. I just didn’t answer them. So they’ve been sitting in my gut all weekend. Maybe that’s why I answer right away…so that doesn’t happen. Sure, I could be like some people and not have my email come to my phone…or my home computer…and I could never open my school computer during the weekend…HA HA HA…oh wait, that’s bullshit, because I can’t even come close to getting all my school work done in the 5 days of the week I’m paid to do it, who the fuck am I kidding? Anyway, it is my constant goal to manage this better, acknowledge my failure to do so, and move on. Those emails will get answered today; no one will like the answers, but oh well. The really annoying one from last weekend, the mom never emailed back and said, oh hey, I’m sorry for bitching you out for something you don’t even do, don’t have any control over, and tried to fix for me. No thanks, no sorry, no acknowledgment at all. Noted. Fully noted.
This job. Is. So. Hard. This. Year.
Luckily, when I went in to school on Friday, my co-teacher was still there and helped me (and my overwhelmed fuzzy brain) gather all the science-y stuff together for this week’s demos. Chemistry for all! It’s hard to make art around the job sometimes…literally, right now, I need the light table, and I have all this school stuff on it, so I’m trying to work around it. Or through it. Hard to say which.
Friday, I dropped my quilt at the photographer (pictures tomorrow!), then went to school, then to enlarge some drawings from December 2019-February 2020. You know, pre-COVID shit hitting the fan.
I only copied three drawings. They’re out of a 9×12″ sketchbook and I enlarged them 200%. I figured that was a good size for right now, when I don’t have much room on the light table or in my brain.
I think this was one of my Patreon drawings…maybe? Can’t remember.
This was one of the December drawings a day from 2019…because I didn’t even come close to doing that in 2020.
And this was from our Joshua Tree trip from February last year…
I sometimes go back and read previous year’s blogs for the same month as now, just to remind myself of the mindset at the time. It helps when I think things are out of control. I saw these drawings and thought they’d make good smaller quilts. I posted all three on Insta/FB, and there were a few votes for this one.
But I’d already picked the Joshua Tree one for the first quilt. I started tracing it last night and forgot to take any photos. I forgot a lot of things yesterday. I also stayed up way too late on Friday night trying to manage some of the stress in my head…stitching things down.
It didn’t really help. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll figure it out.
I wanted to hike Saturday, but with all the rain on Friday (we got over an inch in 24 hours, which is a lot for us), we didn’t want to stomp through a muddy trail and destroy it, so we picked an urban hike, the Seven Bridges Trail. I’ve done it a couple of times, but the Man hadn’t. It starts in Balboa Park, where there were lots of people…
Bridge number 1…
It’s not a difficult hike…fairly flat…bridge number 2…
Interesting views though…bridge number 3…
And some intriguingly bouncy bridges…OK, only one bouncy one…bridge number 4…
Came through Hillcrest, which is constantly evolving, and got off the official trail down a back alley of murals…
Which is probably how we got over the 6-mile mark…
It’s a little weird waiting for signals during a hike…
Bridge number 5…did I miss one??? Maybe.
Yeah, I didn’t photograph one. I don’t know which one. Bridge number 6…no wait, I did it right…
Some people will argue this is not a hike, because it’s not ‘out in nature’. Except there was nature all around. Hence the urban word. Not my preferred type of hike, but we still walked the whole time, didn’t stop and get ice cream (although it would have been OK if we had)…
Bridge number 7…
And I’ve never been able to figure out why it’s the Seven Bridge Walk, if there are eight bridges…
Another side trip adding to our mileage…
Through the cactus garden at Balboa Park…
Bridge number 8…
Like I said, over 6 miles. Tired. But good. Outside. Too peoply. Next weekend, we’ll do a hike on dirt with fewer people around.
Saturday night, I ironed all the fabrics for the tiny owl quilt I’m making…
And then cut them out…
After doing the January Patreon drawing…
And numbering the third of the smaller quilt drawings…
Plenty of art happening. Plenty of work happening. It’s February now. I have 17 emails to answer before school.
I mean, my school district actually has kids in physical school too, but I have kids in school, every freakin’ school day, and yeah. Working my ass off. Stressed out. Overwhelmed. Buried. Don’t tell me I’m not working.
Cats…
They handle everything better than I do.
OK, work, then exercise, then art.
Kathy Nida 