It’s currently Thursday night. I don’t usually write now. I was hoping to be doing the stitchdown on the current quilt, but no. My machine is still not working right. I’m frustrated. I’ll call the store again tomorrow, and then I’ll hope it doesn’t take another 5 weeks to fix it, plus I’ll see what I can do on my mom’s machine. I don’t know that I have the patience to try that tonight, but maybe I will. It will be good to have a comparison to what mine is doing at the moment. Tension is off, needle keeps wandering left…two out of the three problems I took it in for in August. Frustration is not a good feeling at the moment. School is challenging and exhausting (hopefully some of that will get better), there is so little time for anything that isn’t work, and then the thing I really love? Can’t do it. At least I can’t do the part I want to be doing right now. Maybe now is when I truly admit this piece won’t be done for the deadline I was aiming for…and start a new one…the FUCK YOU TEXAS POLITICIANS quilt. The UP YOURS SUPREME COURT quilt. The GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY UTERUS quilt. That’s a cheery mood I’ve got going there.
Mayhaps I should just take my book and my tears of frustration to bed, meditate, get up tomorrow, be fucking efficient as hell at work, pretend the last fucking hour didn’t happen, and try again tomorrow night. With a different machine. In a parallel universe where sewing machines are my friends.
More tomorrow morning…
Sigh. It’s morning. I dreamed about my school laptop battery. It’s dying. But I can’t afford to give up my computer for any period of time for them to replace it, unless they can do it in ONE TWO THREE and we’re done. I’m OK with that. Anything else and IDK what I’m going to do. The computer itself has been randomly turning itself off or freezing down to almost stopping, and then the battery goes from 53% to almost zero in a heartbeat. See above about frustration.
I’m going in to school with deep breaths. I do cry when I get frustrated though. I remember growing up, my dad would get so mad if I cried. He said girls do that to get what they want. I don’t. When I cry, I am genuinely upset and/or frustrated. It’s a normal reaction. I have no control over it. I’m frustrated right now and I’m tired and my blood sugar was high this morning for no apparent reason. Seriously going to meditate in the car. With my eyes open of course. I have a mindset in my head for the day…it will be difficult for the kids, thus difficult for me. When we ask them to do hard things, they don’t respond well. We have to grow that behavior. I’m not always there myself. I have to remind myself that it is hard for them and I can’t react to it. Hard for someone who reacts super fast. I’d be good in a zombie apocalypse…not always good in a middle-school classroom. At least I’m aware of it so I can keep talking myself through it.
So here’s the whole quilt ironed down…
It’s large, about 46″ w by 62″ high…maybe more than that at the moment. There’s a lot of hours that need to go into it to get it done. I’m going to try stitchdown on my mom’s machine that I borrowed in July…but quilting will need to be on a bigger machine. I’m going to call the shop today and try to be calm and say they can’t have it for 5 weeks this time. They didn’t fix it last time. I’m pissed, it’s true. I know they’re busy, but this isn’t OK.
This doesn’t show the other side, where the tension is all over the place. That break on the right is about 5 inches in, because that was the first major issue I had. I can’t afford a new machine right now. I need this one to work. I especially need it to work because my day job is really hard and time-consuming and frustrating and I need something at home NOT to be those things. Well, I’m OK with art being time-consuming…the other two, not right now please. Give me something that feels good.
The man hiked a bit and camped last night.
He sent all those clouds with thunder and lightning to us. I stitched with friends last night…still something I can’t show you. It’ll be almost done by the time it’s published and I’m allowed to share, I think.
Deep breaths for the day. Patience for the munchkins and for myself. Hopefully take the machine in after work and then get COVID tested again. Ugh. Then home and try to make mom’s machine do what I need it to. Read my book. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow I finally get to exercise (like I said, this week has been rough). I still might make this quilt deadline, and if I don’t, there will be somewhere else it can show. It’s not the end of the world.
Kathy Nida 