Author: Kathy

Head in a Magnet

Well. It is finally Friday. 19 days of school left. Testing for 2 of them. Not gonna be there for 2 of them. Teaching sex ed soon, so that’ll be at the same time easier and harder, depending on my voice and the specific class. Gotta let some of rest of it go…I know who will be in my classroom those two days and I just have to let it go. It’ll be fine. Until it’s not.

I’ve got three days and about 2 1/2 hours of reading until my library book automatically disappears. No problem. Well. I gotta teach today…roller coaster physics. Fun stuff. The kids did awesome on this performance task practice. Really proud of them. Look! I taught them something! Sigh. And I am going to the ceramics studio tonight to get more done on that sgraffito piece…finish carving, maybe start underglaze? We’ll see. Not entirely sure how I’m doing that. Things are easy in class when all the materials are provided…harder if you’re doing it on your own. Have a ton of schoolwork today. I got some done in class yesterday but I don’t think I’ll get much done today unfortunately. Next week though…next week is testing, so let’s hope. Planning has to happen this weekend. I got the egg drop stuff planned, but not the alternative assignment for my 8th-grade opt outs for sex ed. Can’t give them the same shit as last year. There’s an easy option, but it’s boring. I’m not good at the easy option. Tend to double down when I’m buried. Silly really.

Most important problem for next week? What stitching will I take for the plane? What books? I know. ALL the books. I will have to grade while I’m gone. That’s fun. Hopefully it’ll be quick and easy. Hopefully the flight will actually have wifi so I can grade. Better than sitting in a house with all the fam and trying to do it. There’s a ‘dedicated workspace’…it’s a table in the middle of everything. Yeah no. However, sitting on a deck and doing it? That might be OK (or it might be raining and freezing…welcome to Maine in May). It’s all good. It’s new and different. I’m looking forward to it as I’m stressing out about it. Like everything. Brain MRI is scheduled…they wanted to do the same day as my surgery, but I suggested that was problematic. Then they picked the day I get the radiotransmitter thing inserted in my boob for presurgery stuff, which is metal, so that’s out. So now I get to spend 20 minutes on a Saturday with my head in a magnet. Sounds lovely. I should get the results while I’m still teaching. Even more lovely.

We watched the movie Yesterday the last two nights…and it was light and cheesy (good after Baby Reindeer‘s dark and turgid), but the best part, the part that almost made me cry…wait, I don’t wanna spoil it if you want to see it and haven’t…damn, there’s someone who shows up in the movie who is dead in real life. I remember when he died. I was in middle school, it was a rainy morning, because dad was driving us to school, and it was on the radio. Clearly remember it. I didn’t really understand the significance, but I do now. And it was sweet. Lovely. Sad. Or I’m just an emotional exhausted mess and pretty much anything will put me over the top. You decide.

I’ve been cutting things out at night, trying to do a yard a night…or an hour…or both. I was doing really well the first three nights, but last night, this was after an hour and 15 minutes and definitely past my bedtime…

Definitely did not finish that yard. To its credit, there were lots of tiny complicated bits on that yard.

The night before, I finished…

I’ve done a total of almost 5 hours so far…and a little less than 4 yards. I think. Yes. Well, except I had that one small piece with a head and two pieces of hair. Whatever. I’m more than halfway done. Insert arty photo of the same pile of Wonder Under pieces…

Yeah. I know. It is actually relaxing to cut these out. That’s the plus. Boring in photographs. Barely any viewer engagement. Insert photos of ceramics to excite people! Hey those take forever too. I need to get the sgraffito piece done so I have enough shelf space to make the top part of the torso though. Need to use up the clay I have and not buy more of that type too. Ha! That’s my limitation on the world figure…I have a limited amount of that clay. Should be interesting.

ANYWAY. I need to go to school and be productive. I need more tea (I left my teacup in the car the other morning. Almost died.). I need more patience. Seriously, kids, I guess if you WANT to be kicked out, tell me to shut up some more. Love that. Teach roller coasters, let them compete in an escape room…for candy. Go play with clay (very meditative and chill…and Fridays are notoriously quiet at the studio). Then cut things out. Read my book! I can plan school stuff tomorrow…

Mghmghmgh…

MMMMMmmmmm. Imagine an irritable, tired growl with a guttural scratchy losing-my-voice catch to it. Not even sure what letters of the alphabet go with that. Mghmghmghmgh? Something like that. I’m not one of those gratitude people, but I try to think of positive things each day when it’s really hard (code: it’s really hard right now). The kids are…um…challenging. Doing state test review sucks. Trying to come up with stuff for the kids to do after testing but while I’m gone and before sex ed is stressful (although I had a minor breakthrough last night after working from 8 AM to 8 PM…you should try it sometime. Not.). Trying to manage departmental things without my co-chair…fuck me. I might crawl into a hole next year. Certainly this year I say no no no a lot and it doesn’t seem to help. So yeah. Behind on grading still too. And exhausted. Not sleeping. Just my brain…the same brain that is still seeing that swirling cabbage, that gets to call radiology today because it’s been two weeks and they haven’t called me yet to set up a brain MRI. I’ve never put my head in an MRI. I do have some claustrophobic issues. I also meditate well. I think I need blood tests before that test and blood tests before the surgery, but within certain time constraints. Ugh. My head hurts. Ironically. I’m supposed to be keeping a migraine diary but I don’t have migraines…I just have stress headaches and overwork headaches and body needs a massage headaches.

So that’s me this Wednesday. The first two days of the week seem to kick my ass. I wrote more referrals this week in those two days than I’ve written in the last two months. I’ve had two middle-school boy apologies, one stoned-out mumbling complaint and then acknowledgement, and one tantrum on Instagram (he was, not me) that concluded with my telling him to put his head down as I walked away with his computer. Let’s be clear…these kids are going to high school in three months. And they’re acting like 5-year-olds. I get it. Testing is hard. Growing up is hard. But so is dealing with their shit. 21 days. 21 days of my trying to feed my sanity with art and books and apparently yardwork. Yesterday, it was weed whacking, which is surprisingly restorative. So is watering and seeing monarch caterpillars…or protea blooming…or the new bushes I planted thriving. All good.

So. Art. The planter finally got to leather hard a week after the class (note to self for future reference…make it earlier). And I got the tool I needed in the mail, so Monday, I continued carving. I started in class, just did the basic outline of the face and arms. I haven’t finished carving out the background, so there’s still stuff that needs to happen.

But I’m really enjoying this. It’s really just drawing on clay.

You can draw in pencil first, because it will burn off in the kiln, but I didn’t. I just drew with the carving tool.

I see today that there are more details I could add before the next step, which would be adding color in. But realistically, this isn’t something I could sell easily. That’s over three hours so far in making the pot and carving, and I’m nowhere near done.

Carving vertically is a challenge. I did hold it a few times to get a part done, but it’s heavy. Definitely logistics for clay are very different than for fabric.

Definitely enjoying the process though. My brain has to work everything out inside it before I do it, so I’ll be driving to work, mentally working out how to paint this thing. I guess the pro is that I won’t get dementia because I’m overthinking everything under the sun. I don’t think my brain ever stops. Hence lack of sleep, right?

I did finally start cutting out the big quilt. She has a deadline now. Not that it changes how I’ve been working…an hour a night, sometimes more.

Thanks, Simba, for the assist. I set a little goal every week, every night. I want it all cut out and sorted before I leave for Maine next week. I figure an hour to cut out each yard (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) and there were 7 yards, so 7 nights? Plus a couple hours of sorting. Should be cut out by Monday, should be sorted by Wednesday. Easy peasy.

Thanks, Nova, for keeping that hip warm. You know, I worked until 9:30 PM last night…not 8. I even worked while I was cooking dinner…this after teaching a lesson on the negative impacts of multitasking in advisory yesterday. Whatever. Reality sometimes means doing more than one thing at a time. I can record videos while the food is cooking, before the next step. It’s true I forgot to empty the dishes out of the sink, but I did it later, after complaining happened.

Whatever. OK. Today. More tea. Definitely. I saw 12:49 AM last night. I must have fallen asleep eventually, but then I saw 4:45 AM too. So we’re thriving!!! Hmmm. Mghmghmgh. Maybe it’s Grhmgrhmgrhm. I don’t know.

Finish planning egg drop stuff. Make a table of contents for this stupid last packet of stuff I don’t even want to grade (and might not…don’t tell the kids). Probably meet and fix a bunch of things that sit on me until I shove them off. Play Blooket with the kids (although I need to edit that before school starts…ha! Maybe not). Call for a brain MRI. Not scary at all. Go to pilates. Good for the body. Good for the brain. Work some more (ugh). Not my night to cook, so do the dishes. We need a palate cleanser after watching Baby Reindeer…train wreck that. Ugh. Something funny but not stupid funny would be good. Or heartwarming. What a concept. Then cut some more pieces out. Read my book somewhere in there. Gotta finish it by Wednesday…maybe sooner. I think the library loan is up sooner. Double ugh. It’s a slow start so far. Someone was murdered 20 years ago. Not sure when she’ll get to the point.

Owls! No babies. But parents. And lots of threat noises last night.

It makes me sad that there are no babies…that’s at least two that have died. But they haven’t given up…

Dirty Windows

My windows are dirty. This is not a euphemism for something. My actual house windows are dirty. I see them every day and it’s on my to-do list to clean them, but then I do 5 things and the day is gone and I still haven’t finished everything, I’m still eating dinner at 8:30 because I didn’t start cooking early enough because I was grading things and making videos (I made 11 videos for school yesterday). I think I read my book yesterday. Maybe. A chapter. I know I didn’t shave the Man’s head…I remembered this morning that I was supposed to help with that. Oh well. He’ll do it himself. If only the windows would do themselves.

Busy weekend, but they all are. I actually slept in on Saturday until 9 AM. I mean, minus the dog barking and the Man opening and closing things. It was delightful. But apparently not enough, because here I am on Monday morning feeling like a truck hit me and maybe I need another three cups of tea before I’ll be functional again.

Let’s start with clay. I have this mug that was too big so it became a planter that I was making, just for fun, not art, and it was finally dry enough to either fire or decide what I wanted to do about glazing. Glaze is hard, but I wanted to try these glazes that are shiny after the bisque fire. So I remembered to bring the glazes to the studio on Friday (not enough room to store them there) and painted it…

Painting glazes is a pain in the ass…you need at least two coats, maybe three. We’ll see how this turns out.

Pro: it’s done. Con: I realized when I was done that it had taken me 2 hours. Another late dinner. Ah well.

I also traced…in fact, I finished tracing the Wonder Under last night…15 nights…

19 hours and 13 minutes…

7 yards and a bit…

I think I stayed up too late for all of those 15 nights trying to get an hour in, or last night, just trying to finish. It’ll be at least 7 hours to cut it all out, probably more. Lots of little pieces in there.

Saturday, I went to Visions with my quilt guild folks to see the new Latine exhibit there. There’s a design thing going on because San Diego and Mexico, so the museum had some new and different artists showing, which was nice.

Mely Barragàn…

Her piece Shallow Water Emerges Til Dawn…

Very much asks you to touch it. The chains were especially nice, dangling off the ends.

Chain fabric even.

Marisa Raygoza…

Emotional Support Rock…I’m feeling this one especially.

Tumble Dry

Some embroideries from her movie The Path of a Tear…

And some soft sculpture, although there’s nothing soft about a gun.

She Used Her Head As a Revolver

There were art dresses, which somehow I didn’t photograph, and weavings as well…

The most intriguing part of this piece, by Olivia Arreguin, Womb in a Dress, was the DNA she knotted into the womb.

Cool exhibit…check it out.

Also walked the dogs…was puppy sitting Annie…

We all needed a walk.

The path was really overgrown with flowers…

The two old guys were a little…um…panty.

Got my 3 miles in though.

Check out the glare on that cat…

Nova seemed very offended by Simba’s presence.

OK, well, I’m still reviewing science for the state test. The kids are rebelling against it, but whatever. They’d rebel against anything but naps and candy right now. Makes my life fun. Friday was annoying. Thank goodness for clay at the end of the day. Today will be different…I changed it up. Constantly trying to find different ways to get info in their heads…takes a ton of time and energy. I’m running low on both. Then staff meeting. Then clay again…not sure which piece I’m going to work on. Then cutting things out. Probably need to grade things in there too. Ugh. Or planning. That’s definitely a thing. This week is survival. Maybe all of them are. Well, I start teaching sex ed at some point, so that’s at least an attention-getter…but they’re all convinced they don’t need to do anything else for the rest of the year. Fun times.

Panic Friday

Hello panicked Friday. Have you seen my work to-do list? Yeah? Me too. I’m deep breathing right now. Literally couldn’t get through everything on it today if I could clone myself (and I wish I could). I wish my district could figure out how to say no to parents, but they can’t. I suspect none of them can at the moment. But when you do that, it all falls on staff to deal with…and I’m done. Yesterday was a clusterfuck of tiny fires threatening to be big ones. I put most of them out, and then after school, there were more…this morning, more…I either need to up my meds, stop sleeping, or call in sick for three days. Just to deal with stuff for a tiny few kids. Can’t deal with the large majority at all. If I stop taking time for myself, to make art, to read, fuck that, to eat and sleep and poop, well then I might get through it all. Deep breaths. Let’s hope that I’m efficient as hell today and get through a healthy enough chunk that I can do one fun thing this weekend. ONE.

Trace trace trace.

I’m 15 hours into the tracing…and just hit the 1300s. So I have about 350 to go.

Pretty sure my original guess was 20 hours.

Last night, I traced a barn owl, two bombers, and a bunch of bombs. Fun times. Oh, and the moon. I’m getting there.

I also stitched with friends, although I tore out the roof stitching 4 maybe 5 times.

It’s not like the picture, but it will be fine. This is the last house I need to embroider for this block of the month. Then the center piece (which is large) and put it all together. Then borders. Finished by 2035.

I was watering the other day, and saw these…

And this…

And this…

No time to water, plant, clean. Ugh. OK. Gotta go in and start dealing with all the things. Which includes some literacy meeting time. Ugh plus at least I might have some time to work. Maybe. We’ll see if I have the brain power for it. Clay after school (after doctor’s appointment). Then grade things and trace things. I’m really trying to carve out time tomorrow for a museum visit with my guild. We’ll see. Also a hike would be nice. Hanging out with the Man might be nice too.

We have both parents! But still no baby squawks. Me sad. At least they’re both still there. Presumably there’s eggs? More of them? They can lay up to 13 apparently. Get on it, you owls!

Punctuated…

Middle of the week. State testing. Pro: some time when I’m not teaching. Con: state testing. Not a fan of the testing, y’all. Not a fan of the long sitting (or standing for me) and trying to keep kids on task/awake/quiet. Don’t understand the purpose of it all. And although we have short days for the kids, and we get to have a lunch for once (which is nice), I’m then pretty much useless for schoolwork for the afternoon. Which sucks. I did get some grading done, which is good. I have a plan for Friday, when I have to be out in the afternoon for literacy. Also good. I’m completely NOT planned for next week or anything after. Well. I know basically what I’m doing. I just don’t know what it looks like. Stressful. I’ll get my head around it eventually; just probably not today. Today is the second day of English testing, then lunch with friends, then union meeting and a late pilates class. It’s a lot. Tomorrow is a new sex-ed curriculum meeting because ugh.

Monday was yucky. Mostly because of the stuff after school. I’m not a fan of all of us reading and listening and taking tests in the library as a staff. People are noisy, my brain is overwhelmed, and I can’t think straight. They give us stuff and expect us to be able to process it immediately, but this is not how I learn. It’s frustrating. And the ‘homework’ they give us…it’s concerning. I know kids need to learn to read. I’m completely pro. I’m concerned though when they talk about using my (shitty) curriculum to set up supports for all the different levels of literacy. Because I would have to create all that. It doesn’t exist. And I’ve spent four exhausting years creating things and I don’t think I can do a fifth. Not the way it’s being presented right now. The amount of thought and insight that goes into considering that for two whole kids? Now multiple that by 130 kids. Or more. Hurts my head.

So my solution to that crazy was to go do ceramics. I added things in the bottom.

I guess I was feeling whimsical? It happens. I spent about an hour building things. I’m still waiting to get the tools to finish the sgraffito planter. Maybe Saturday?

Then I came home and worked for a bit, then traced for a while. I forgot to take a picture, which is OK, because they all look similar. I traced again last night after going to the gym and reading my book for a really long time and booking a place to stay when I visit the girlchild in July in San Francisco. I’m excited about that. We didn’t get our Spring Break trip due to money issues mostly. Summer is looking equally bleak. Lots of painting and furniture moving and handing money over to contractors to fix the flooding issues from January. Not fun. So having a short trip in there IS fun. Here’s three of the five yards that are now traced after last night…

Twelve and a half hours into the tracing, at about 1075 pieces so far, 600 to go, probably at least another 6 hours. Fun times. It is actually very meditative. Just long. Big complicated piece.

I graded through most of testing. These strata things were fun.

For some, I guess. Some kids were just confused by it, even though I did a sample with them the day before to show them how. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more with it next year. We ran out of time. We always run out of time.

Anyway. Today. Kinda long, but punctuated by good things. Hopefully chill.

OK Everywhere…

I’m up early again. Another eye exam. I failed the field vision test in one eye. I told the doc it was because the spinning cabbage was in the way. So I’m up an hour early on a Monday…a MONDAY…before school to go in and fail again. Fun times.

Busy weekend…but good in general. Still had to do some work, but not as much as usual. I think. Who knows at this stage?

Art opening in Liberty Station on Friday night, in pure exhaustion mode…

Ah. Just realized the show is up for a while.

Moya Devine and I shared words, made pieces, and then made pieces in response to those pieces.

The drawing at the top left and the quilt are mine. Moya couldn’t make it to the opening. She is in San Francisco. Part of the reason we paired up is because she lives far away and I didn’t have time to meet with anyone locally. I love all the people who did, and hopefully I can post some stuff from the show later this week, when I’m not totally rushed.

We had dinner out afterward. And I drew.

I drew Saturday night too, but IDK what happened with that one. Oh yeah. Great food, nice servers, shitty ambience caused by uncontrolled screaming children, and then when we moved outside to escape that noise and kids careening into our chairs, then we had cigar smokers. Multiples. Surrounded. Not going there again.

Anyway. I had quilt guild in the morning, an interesting lecture on Aurifil threads…

My official stitch for guild meetings.

Also took a ceramics workshop this weekend with Sarah Anderson to learn sgraffito.

It was really fun to do. And it came with dogs.

I will always come for the dogs.

I did two tiles…

But I also had a planter…it just wasn’t quite hard enough yet.

I started carving it in class and realized I’d never finish. Plus it wasn’t hard enough. So it’s on my shelf hardening now. It’ll be fine. I’ll get it done. Although I have no carving tools. It’ll be fine!

It’s a fun way to turn my drawings into a physical thing though.

If that’s a goal of mine. Yeah, I made it into the official video (everyone did…it’s OK).

I did a bunch of tracing too.

Almost two hours Saturday night (to make up for none on Friday…too exhausted).

Almost an hour last night. In the mid-800s…finally halfway.

Tetris washing up in science prep room on Friday.

Doing the dishes. Things they never told you about in school.

Anyway. I did relax a bit this weekend. Well, I say that and I’m still grinding my teeth. Ah well.

OK. Eye doc, start of state testing review, long staff meeting, hopefully followed by some clay stuff and tracing. We’ll see. That’s my goal anyway. I won’t be done tracing this week, I think…maybe next week. My clay pieces won’t be done this week either. I have to make some glaze decisions though. Scary stuff. OK. Gotta go. Oh wait! So I haven’t heard the baby owl for a few nights…again. I hate this. I think like two or three have died so far. There was a parent around last night, some squawking. Thought this was dad…maybe mom was in there laying another egg and that’s why baby was quiet? I don’t remember any quiet the last two years though.

Who knows?

Hope everything is OK in there. Hope everything is OK everywhere.

I Like Your Butt…

Hey. I’ve thought every morning this week was Saturday, and I was wrong about all of them. Including this one. Today is so not a Saturday; it’s like the antithesis of a Saturday. Give a quiz, then take your kids to an assembly, then do duty, then go to an art opening. Collapse somewhere appropriate (bed or couch), rouse self, grade things, trace Wonder Under, sleep. Hopefully. The dog is here without the boychild and sometimes he’s a rabble rouser (the dog, not the boychild…well, I mean, IDK about the rabble he might be rousing). Did I just use some conjugate of ‘rouse’ three times in the last paragraph? My brain must be trying to tell me something (DRINK YOUR TEA WOMAN).

Things that were awesome about this week: My teacher’s aide covered all my sciencey boards for state testing this week so I didn’t have to. She’s amazing. Really. I will miss her efficiency.

My piece from class that I made in February or March finally came out of the glaze kiln, completely fucking awesome.

I love this…even the brown splotches. I am not a perfectionist with glaze. At all. This is great. Imagine a tiny quilt in the center bit. This is awesome. I need my sewing machine. And time. Lots of time.

I love my current book, The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft. And it’s a series! Even better. Although maybe the next one doesn’t exist yet. Nope. Get writing, man.

“Strobing fistula”…that’s a quilt name. Or a band name. Or a medical diagnosis.

Progress report grades are done so I don’t have to panic for a while about grades. Also, state testing starts next week, so there’s two days I can grade while they test, plus two days I just have to manage kids and not present a lesson on something I’m unclear on. Like space. Ugh. I love space; don’t get me wrong. I just don’t know enough about it.

So I have a ceramics class tomorrow on sgraffito. Which is fun to spell. It’s less (for me) a class about the technique and more the experience with the instructor. So we’ll see how that goes. I had to go in yesterday and build something to practice on (I made a planter). It needs to be leather hard by tomorrow afternoon. I wish I knew how to predict that, but whatever. I’m excited to be learning something new.

I am also still building the world woman or whatever I need to call her. I’ve got ideas for the body cavity and ideas for adding to the world she’s standing on, and eventually I’ll start working on her upper torso, which will have to be separate until I am ready to dry her, because she doesn’t fit in my shelf. Ah well.

There’s a couple people I see in the studio all the time, so you talk. This one guy walked past and said, “your stuff is always so cute” and I’m like, WHAAA, that’s a BUTT…

And he’s like, “I was gonna say I liked your butt, but…”. Funny. Like that. The butt is a little saggy. Might be pretty real. The back needs some work. Added a whale tail.

And a wildfire…it needs smoke. I’m stuck in this place of not knowing how to glaze these types of sculptures. I’m going to have to think about it with the other female figure. She’s getting close to dry I think. Maybe. I’m doing it slowly. Anyway, this is fun. I enjoy it.

I’m also enjoying the tracing, although my thumb is sore…not sure if it’s drawing or clay or something else.

I’m up to the 600s. More than a third, less than a half.

I had to start a 4th yard. Lots of big pieces in the figures. Long leg parts.

Probably someone wants to know about the weird eye thing and the doctor. Well, it’s not my eyes. My retinas and optic nerves are fine. They are happy campers. All 10 layers of the retinas are attached firmly. So that’s good. But that means it’s my brain. In fact, we were finally able to figure out that I see it with both eyes…so that rules out the eyes anyway, because I see it in the same place and the same thing. So. I’m getting a brain MRI. Occipital lobe? Also the doc thought maybe it was a migraine aura…for two months? Apparently a possibility. She asked about stress. After I fell out of my chair laughing…well. So I’m keeping a headache diary, even though I’m not really getting headaches. I mean, I am, but they’re the normal kind that come at the end of the school year. Some of them have names and presences attached to them. All very weird. Trying not to think too hard about it. Because that’s more stress. Thanks, brain. Appreciate the message.

Yeah. I mean, not really, because I do still care; I’m just so tired of caring. And managing.

I needed to pick emojis for the next unit.

Seemed fair. The sex ed unit was harder…I’ll let you guess (and no, I did not use an eggplant, although I thought about it for a good long while).

Simba is a good boy.

The bear vs man thing is hysterical…and then so not.

It would be lovely to live in a society that listened to women. And believed them.

Ending with this…Faith Ringgold’s quilt on the cover.

Such amazing stuff. Wish I’d met her.

OK. Really. I can do today. I can. It’s easier than yesterday. I might need a lot of tea. A LOT of tea.

Write Fast

Up early, another doctor’s appointment, this one to figure out what this weird thing I’ve been seeing in my eye since March is…probably not an optical migraine for this long. So that’s been worrisome. I’ve had one batch of scans/dilations/bright flashlights and look at my ear things, and they found nothing, but it didn’t go away (they never do, y’all), so I got leveled up! And it’s a 3-hour appointment plus some other thing, and I can’t take a whole day off at this point, so I’m going in to school for the second half. Hopefully the eye dilation will be toned down by the time I get in. Anyway, it means I have to leave in 24 minutes, so write fast!

It’s OK, all I do is work work work (8:30 PM last night, 6:20 AM this morning) and make art (hallelujah). I did work on the clay thing on Monday, but as often happens, I forgot to take photos…I’ll do it tomorrow. The quilt is just being traced…it’s big and complicated, so I guessed about 20 hours…

It all pretty much looks the same, day after day.

I’m still on the second yard of Wonder Under…that will change.

I found a numbering fuckup…I managed to skip backwards 20 pieces and had to add ‘a’ to all 20 because I’d already used those numbers.

Good times. Rolling toward 1700 pieces.

I’m just about 400 pieces in, so less than a quarter of the way through…and just over 4 hours, so that’s impressive. I do usually estimate 100 pieces an hour, but it’s rare that I make that. I figured 20 hours for this…we’ll see.

In house progress, here’s one old fix from the previous owners…

That wood has all been replaced…

Then we realized there’s about three different colors of brown paint. Ugh. Picked one. Suspect no one (but you) will ever notice. Certainly I haven’t for years and I live here. They are slowly moving around the house and getting this bit done. Putting gutters in will hopefully permanently solve the problem of the water damaging the wood down there…that and digging out a trench around the edges. Fun summer project there.

From The Hexologists, the book I’m reading for book club.

Not that my anxiety needs any support in that. It’s well-versed in arming itself.

OK. Doc. Uncomfortable eye things. For a long time. School…teaching lunar phases again…yesterday’s lab had me walking them through each step…the instructions say, for the lower grades, you may need to walk them through this. 8th grade, y’all…not so lower. It’s OK. It was fine. My voice is shot though. Then pilates, then sleep. Oh wait. I might have to do some other stuff first. Like work, eat, trace. All good. Not the work part. That can fuck off. I had my final observation/evaluation review yesterday. I did fine. Wasn’t really worried about it. I don’t have to have another one (unless I get a psycho principal…had those before) until the year I’m hoping to retire. That’ll be a fun one.

Art. Meditating on Wonder Under later.

Did I Say Ugh?

Chaos weekend. Grades are done though. Last progress report of the school year. Hallelujah. Today is the day all the kids panic because they realize what their grades are and that they didn’t do anything in time to bring them up. Ah well. Learning experience. I can say it every day and it falls on mostly deaf ears. Moving on.

Today and tomorrow are lab days; not preferred to have them run right next to each other, and there’s a fire drill or something today I think that wasn’t on my list of things to avoid, so we’re gonna figure that out, but with a doc appointment Wednesday and some portrait thing for all of 8th grade on Thursday, there was really no way around it. Ah well. We survive.

I did do some art stuff this weekend. Friday afternoon, I did some clay stuff, getting the figure up on the world and making it look more worldlike, although the continents are a little wiggy.

I draw them wiggy too, so I’m OK with it.

The butt sticks out too much. Hopefully I can fix that. It looks good from the back, but the side view is a bit much. I also glazed this…

I was overthinking it. It’s not precious. I can always make another one with the 17 million ideas rambling around my head. I could make hundreds of them if I wanted. Or not.

I started tracing the big crones quilt. Nova was watching…perturbed by the big paper coming over the couch.

She’s scared by the weirdest things.

When she was little, she’d do everything she could to go under. I’d have to wait for them both to be sleeping to be able to trace anything.

I graded a good chunk of Saturday. It wasn’t fun. I don’t recommend it. I’m not really planned for this week yet either. Saturday’s dinner drawing.

It was also trivia night, but we sucked at that. Mostly. We weren’t planning on trivia night. It just happened while we were there.

Ah, grading middle-school boy work.

Nice udders.

Need more milkweed…

Tried to get some a week ago but it was hella expensive.

My haul from the neighbor kids throwing fruit into my yard.

There was another tangerine, but it was deep in a bush, so I left it.

I had an art meeting yesterday and they had this cool flower…

Fascinating things, plants. Finished stitching this during the meeting.

One more house to go.

OK. I need to get out of here. Construction people are here to tear up the outside of the house where it leaked. Fun times. Teaching gravitational pull today, plus apparently another lockdown drill? Ugh. I’m really done with school. I finished making all my test review docs yesterday. Just need to check them and then get them printed, do sub plans, post all the crap for this week, decide what the sub can actually do, then write an academic question. Plus clay and book club. I think. Ugh. Did I say ugh? I did.

Could Be Not…

Hey Friday. This week has been confusing. Doc appointment yesterday meant I only taught half the day, got up first and worked, then went to doc, then to school. It was tiring, but being at school all day would have been as well. Just a different tired. Worked a lot of hours despite the half day. Grades are due Tuesday and I’m trying to get caught up. Always. Always trying to get caught up. This weekend is crazy busy, though, and that’s without putting grading time in. Ugh. Last progress report of the year though. That’s finally happening! Woo hoo. Getting to the end will be sweet. I hope. Gotta survive the chaos before that.

Speaking of chaos, I finished numbering the big drawing. Took two nights…

and almost two hours…

Numbers in a circle are because I couldn’t fit the number in that particular part, so there’s a line going to it…

OR the piece continues…there’s usually an arrow to tell me that too, to look for the rest of the piece.

There’s 1644 pieces. Actually, there’s 1647 pieces…I have two ‘a’s’ and one ‘b’ because I missed something as I was numbering and I wanted those pieces to have numbers close to their neighbors.

In the past, I have double numbered pieces…somehow started counting 40 or 50 pieces below where I was and had 40 or 50 ‘a’s’. I’ve also skipped pieces before, up to 200 of them. So you never know what my brain will have done at 10 PM on a Thursday night. Could be logical. Could be not.

I do know that now it’s time to trace…and I’ll be here for a while. Maybe 20 hours? There’s some big pieces in there. They take longer to trace. But there’s also a ton of little pieces. Because I’m me and that’s how I roll.

There are 34 days of school left. Four of those are testing, one is graduation, there’s one field trip to Belmont Park, and I’ll be out for two days. It feels doable and yet the longest stretch of time possible to endure. And my surgery will almost definitely be the first week after school gets out. Sounds easy, quick recovery (knock on wood), good odds there will be no nasty surprises. The house is finally getting fixed from January’s flooding…the drywall looks great. So painting the hallway and doing carpet is on the summer to-do list, maybe painting the bedroom as well, but that might be a bit much for me. I’d like to relax, read books, and make art too. Plus visit the girlchild. That would be nice. Hoping to do that in late July. We’ll see.

Nova loves geckos more than they love her.

Actually, they seem to ignore her completely.

OK. Teaching planets and gravity today. Debating how to go about it. Thinking more independently than not. I think that’s the way to go for my mental health. I’ll do the notes with them, and then they can go do the slides on their own. Easier on all of us. I can get some grading done and they can go at their own pace. We did that yesterday and it was pretty chill. I’m up for more chill, especially with two labs next week. Which ended up two days in a row because of my eye doc appointment and some crazy photography shit we had to shove into the week at the last minute, plus there’s an assembly. Crazy week. It’ll be fine.

After school, I get some clay time (I earned it), plus tracing at home. Apparently cooking dinner. Then get through the weekend, getting as much done as efficiently as possible. Which is mostly how I roll. When I roll (read, hike, sleep should be part of this). Come back next week and do it again.