Fingernails and Eyeballs

Friday is here. It feels like it’s early and yet…not. I have earned this Friday as much as the others. Next week’s Friday will be incredibly well-earned. Sigh. I’m waiting for a call back from my insulin pen manufacturer, because I have a defective one and the pharmacy won’t replace it blah blah comes in a box of 5 blah blah can’t give you just one blah blah looks like a defect blah blah. So I’ve been on hold with one place last night that never answered (24/7 my ass) and one place this morning that gave me another number and I waited and finally left a voice mail, so they will inevitably call during school hours and I will never get this solved. I do have more insulin coming today, luckily. Otherwise this would be a bigger deal. Worst case, I’ll have the doc do a new prescription in time for the next batch that should mail. Such a pain how they regulate meds. I had one batch of meds get lost in the mail and it took 4 hours and 2 pharmacies to sort it out. My mom made some text comment about socialized medicine and I wanted to say, YAH, let’s do that, because what we have is idiotic.

Anyway. I’m OK. My blood sugar wasn’t too high this morning, considering no insulin. I’m pretty active during the day and tonight’s dose will arrive today. We’ll be good.

For school, we finally finished the longest 6 (7?) days of labs I’ve ever done…well, since last year…and things are almost under control for next week. Maybe. I’m staying after school today to try to put away this whole lab. I have most of the next 7th-grade lab gathered for delivery to the other building. My co-teacher pulled through a shopping save last night after I had searched the entire world for the rest of the aquarium rocks. I still need to buy stuff for 8th grade, but I need a point clarified first. Well. I think 4 points clarified. Today the kids take a test (assessment?), so hopefully they’re quiet and on task. Ha. Yeah. I know. This 8th-grade group is more challenging than last year’s, which makes sense, because it includes some of our kids from last year. I did see one kid who apparently wanted to be on our team again, but I think I said I’d quit if I had him for another year. Good times.

I have a cold, which complicates all this. It’s not COVID…I’m up standing (not upstanding) and just full of phlegm and my voice is a mess. I have an opening in LA tomorrow and have to drive up and back…I’ll just be drinking lots of tea and not talking much. Also this is day 5? or maybe 6?

I think I already talked about the opening. Welcome to my brain on the lesser coronavirus.

So Wednesday night, I finished ironing. Finally. Well, there are three little pieces of Wonder Under that I found that don’t match anything and/or I might have already recut.

So I’m just saving them until the end, in case I need them. I know one is the Swamp Thing’s chin hairs and I don’t know if I redrew it (I circled it on the drawing…who the fuck knows what I meant by that in mid-August?) or just ignored it. And I’m not searching through that box for the 100s, which is where it would be. I’ll just keep cutting until I get there.

The ironing took 33 1/2 hours. That is a record for me. It also used 212 fabrics…another record. I think.

It’s not like I keep a spreadsheet of quilt facts. Lots of black, gray, and white. Plus all the fleshtones in that box in the top left.

It doesn’t look like much in the box because so many of the pieces are minute.

Last night, I started cutting…late, because I sorted the fabrics first. It’s really pleasing to me to see the colors sorted like that. It also makes it easier to put them away. Which won’t happen until I start the next one. At the rate I’m going, it might be October or November before that happens. This isn’t even that big a quilt. I’ve made bigger. It’s just detail heavy. So is the one that is showing at Craft in America, starting tomorrow…a small piece at 16×20″, but over 800 pieces in it.

This is And Then There Was One…about the kids leaving for college. Survived that.

Anyway, I did start cutting the Supreme Court piece out last night…

That’s about 40 minutes worth. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a bunch of tiny letters down there and they are a pain in the ass. Don’t ask how many of those there are in this thing. It’s OK, I have 5 more seasons of Madam Secretary to get through. I’m hoping it doesn’t take that long to cut this out though. Cutting is generally faster than ironing. Some of the smallest pieces I don’t cut out until I’m ironing so I don’t lose them. I suspect there will be lots of those in this quilt. Fingernails and eyeballs.

OK. My cold meds aren’t great. I need to clean up a huge mess at school. I need to make sure the sub knows how to use Google Forms (she needs to make a copy…and I know I said that, but I probably also said I’d help her). I need to deliver lab stuff and go talk to a staff member again about something she reacted badly to yesterday (why is this my job?). I need to give a test to 135 kids and hope they do well. I have duty at the light. I might need to go to Home Depot…AGAIN. And tomorrow, I’ll spend 6 or 7 hours driving. Podcasts! Tea! No hike tomorrow…probably I don’t feel up to it anyway. I hate these first few weeks of September. School really drags on you sometimes. But I am glad to not be standing over an iron for a while. I’ll be back there in 3-4 weeks, sure, and that’s the most exciting part, putting it all together, but the thought of just sitting and meditatively cutting for a few weeks sounds nice.