Still Need to Iron Glass…

I thought I would be done with the ironing last night. I just had that relatively smallish pile of Wonder Under pieces. It looked like something I could bang out in an evening. Well, if I didn’t deal with grades first. I went through an entire assignment where fully half of the kids didn’t scroll down to the second page. It’s like not turning the page over and looking at the back. And I know I told them how many questions there were and to scroll down, but as you know, the words of adults somehow bounce around inside the brains of teenagers and fall back out without resonating.

I tried to order materials from Staples so I wouldn’t have to go in…didn’t have time, free shipping, blobbity blah, but it always took like a day to get stuff from them, until this order. It still hasn’t shown up from last Thursday, and when I track it, there seems to be no movement at all. Troublesome since I needed that stuff today…I have some I can use for the kids who are fast, but I may be at Staples tonight after all. So much for being reliable people. And now their website isn’t even coming up. Interesting.

Anyway, I did iron…I ironed hair and a heart and blood vessels and a clock and a uterus, but I forgot the ovaries (they’re there…I just need to pick a color). I used to always make uteri bright pinks with fish swimming through them, but as I age, my uteri age (the fabric ones and the one still inside me), so now they are grayed-out purples. Still pretty but not as alive, not so vibrant. The figures have cracks in them…have for a few years. Wonder where that came from. No I don’t…suspect I will carry the cracks until the end. They will get smaller and more filled in, but they’ll still be there. She’s still crying because I have to say that these perimenopausal hormones are fucking nuts. I cry at such stupid stuff…although the book I finished Monday night, it was a legit cry. The Man Called Ove…good book, by Fredrik Backman. But you will cry at the end.

Here’s the pile of stuff I still need to cut out…

It got bigger. Mostly because I didn’t cut any out recently and I keep ironing stuff.

I still need to do the ovaries, the eyes, the lungs, and that damn wineglass…this pile…

I’m over 10 hours in right now for less than 800 pieces. That’s a lot. Not sure what’s up with that. Slow ironing at the moment, I guess. The problem with the wineglass is that it’s transparent, but it fucks with what you see through it. And then the part with the wine in it, it fucks with it even more. But you can still see through it. The part with the wine is a little easier, because you pick your core wine color and then some shades past it, however many it might take, and you construct the section with the wine that way. The glass part is a little harder, because technically you know you should be able to see flesh colors etc through it, but then it gets harder to see the glass in the actual piece of art, so reality is that you have to fuck with what the eye perceives to make the glass obvious in the quilt. There are some amazing quilt artists out there who make quilts JUST of mostly transparent or reflective things, and they do a great job with it. I just have one glass here though. So it might not be amazing. I am totally leaving it to the end though, because I can’t be super tired when I do it, but basically I will be tired no matter what, because that’s the way this week is.

I did vacuum the kids’ rooms yesterday and finished washing the girlchild’s bedding. I’m ready. Well, except there isn’t enough food in the house. Can’t do much about that right now. Apparently we’re driving through In ‘N Out on the way home from picking up the girlchild. Amusing since she would barely eat it when she was home. I guess the food at Brandeis really does suck…which is sad.

Anyway, with any luck I’ll be done ironing tonight and I’ll move on to the long period of cutting stuff out. I’m hoping to be ironing down by the weekend, but who knows. Maybe Monday…no school and all. Looking forward to that.

The Disk Shouldn’t Be Full

This time of year seems to force retrospection, looking back at previous holiday seasons, nearing the end of the year, where are you at and all that. Is it where you wanted to be? Well, if it isn’t, then here’s where you look forward and try to figure out how to get there. Again. Because life seems to be a constant rewriting of expectations. Some things are better, some are worse, and some just are. Personally I’d be much happier if I could figure out how to get the new Windows to backup disk space in a manner that made sense. Because I’m fairly sure that damn disk shouldn’t be full.

So my tree is up. No, I don’t have a picture of it. It’s still crooked and has nothing on it and is much bigger than I remember it. I got home and graded last night, because I’m back to that crazy (I only took two days off). Then I predictably headed in here to iron, but got sidetracked by the kids’ rooms. The boychild’s room is now clean. Needs vacuuming, but the bedding is on the bed and everything else is straightened up. The girlchild’s room is in process…needs a serious vacuuming (she didn’t do that before she went, and no, neither did I) and all her bedding is in the wash, because the cat keeps sleeping on it and depositing hair. Her dog was quite sure I was doing all that for her, so she wanted to climb into her mom’s bed, but I wouldn’t let her.

THEN I ironed. I did well, but I should have started earlier, because once you’ve started picking flesh fabrics, you can’t stop until you are done, and done means they are all ironed down. Yeah. So that was a couple of hours…and I started too late.

It took 15 minutes of rummaging through the flesh drawers to come up with this run…

And in the end, I replaced the last one with something darker. I wasn’t sure there would be enough of fabric 2, but in the end, it was fabric 3 that was the small one. I used about 2/3 of what I had on the pieces ironed on it. Fabric 2 had plenty. You can see them all laid out below…

So that was at about 11:45 PM, and I needed to iron them all down at that point. Eh. Who needs sleep? Especially when you get cranky with not enough sleep and you’re teaching 12-year-olds, and they make you cranky anyway. It’s all good. No one will know the difference.

I didn’t cut anymore out last night, but I’m getting close to the end of the ironing…that’s all that’s left…

Eyeballs and heart and lungs and weepy bits on the face. A uterus. It looks easy, and most of it is, except there’s a wineglass in there with stuff showing through it, and that’s just about 50 pieces of pain in the ass. So I have to think about how to iron that. Maybe tonight. Except I have to grade as well. Maybe I’ll get some grading done today at school. I got none done yesterday because I had to help students make phone calls home about the F assignments they needed to get signed and had forgotten. I got through 25 of them, but there still a few to go. They get all upset about calling, tell me that they’ll bring it tomorrow, beg me. I guess I’m pretty heartless, because I gave them all last week and they forgot all week, and I don’t have faith that all of a sudden they’ll remember, unless they feel the pit of fear in their belly about calling home. Tomorrow I send packets home with all failing kids. I’m pretty cranky about all that too, but not half so cranky as I am about personally counseling all these kids and then having them turn absolutely no late work in.

The art is what I want to spend brainpower on…not all this school and stressful stuff. And the work stuff starts to eat up all the spare time and mental space. There’s a moment of reflection for you. I don’t know how I did it the last two years, but I know I spent less time and energy on school. I think. It feels like I did. Speaking of which, somehow I got roped into a meeting this morning with a student I don’t even have (special ed meetings require a general ed teacher), plus a meeting with crazy tomorrow morning…so I have to leave early two mornings in a row. Ugh. Survival week. Seriously.

Everything Might Be Late This Year…

So I had 17 things on my to-do list for each day this weekend, and I think I got through 3 or 4 each day. That’s realistic, although everything seemed to take longer than it should, which is why the Christmas tree is still leaning up in the entryway instead of installed in the living room. And dinner made it in the oven just before 8 PM. And I decided to blow off grading yesterday because I missed ironing fabrics so much. It’s not that I didn’t work yesterday…I sent the parent email and did my warmups and updated my school website and made a powerpoint for the warmups. That’s not nothing. And checked school email for more crap from the little widgets. Interesting that after Friday and Saturday’s flurry of messages stating “I turned it in! I fixed it!”, on Sunday, there were but two or three kids quietly telling me they cared about their grade…and two of them are already passing. They just don’t like their grade as it is.

I’ll grade today and tonight. I swear. Last night though…last night, I let my art flag fly…for a little while.

I’m in the 400s, finished the bathtub and moved on to the fixtures…faucet, knob…

There’s only one knob…presumably the foot is covering the other one, although that doesn’t really seem possible, but whatever. There are some baths that only have one knob, but usually they sit above the faucet. This is not one of those tubs. This is a made-up-in-Kathy’s-head tub.

I got to the water next…

Luckily, there isn’t much water in this one, because the fabrics I picked for 1 and 2 in the range had very little left of them. They’re fabrics I really like, so they get used in a lot of quilts…and there isn’t much left of either one. I love using those fabrics in all the quilts though, because then I get to see them all the time. I couldn’t get into two of the blue fabric drawers though because Midnight was sleeping in them. So I had to make do with what I could see in the other blue bins.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…

I stopped there, because flesh is next, and that’s a long time commitment to do that next. It’s easier to do it all in one go, pick all the flesh pieces at once, so I’ll try to do that tonight. I’ve gotten through most of the 400s…the body is all that’s left.

Because it wasn’t midnight yet and I wasn’t tired, plus I was in the middle of a rather interesting episode of Defiance, I cut stuff out for a little while…

Cut-out stuff is on the left. To-be cut-out stuff is on the right. I’m way behind where I wanted to be. Oh well. It will get done. All of what needs to really get done will get done eventually. Same with the next three weeks of break. The plus is the boychild’s room is almost cleared out. I never got through the rest of the crap in my studio, but maybe after he goes back to school, I’ll pile that up in his room. He’ll love that. As long as I clean it up before he gets back in May, that is. And it’s motivating to know someone needs to live in that space. Then again, he’s been threatening to get an internship and not come back at all, so there we are. Then I’ll never have to clean up.

Good attitude.

Saturday, I did make it to four openings. The other one had too many parking challenges, so I gave up. I have lots of photos that I have to resize, so maybe I’ll just post a few every day. It was dark when I finally got out of here, which isn’t saying much because it’s dark by 5 PM…I parked right by this…

And then I went to La Bodega Gallery’s Star Wars exhibit…this is by Waster One…

Probably not his real name. And yeah, I’m assuming that’s a guy…not sure why. Lots of small art about Star Wars, some of it disturbingly good. More pictures from that exhibit later. And yesterday I went to a craft fair in a brewpub, which helped with a few presents. I’m still flailing on a couple. This is a crazy time of year. Meanwhile, dad was installing my shelves…finally.

It required some level of engineering that I’m incapable of imagining. You have to understand that I repainted this room two summers ago, and since then, the shelves have been gone. So the stuff that lived on the ugly pink 80s Southwestern shelves before has been living in boxes in my bedroom mostly. So over the summer, I had the boychild stain and varnish wood for the shelves and we bought brackets that I thought would work, and then the boychild left one in the cart at Home Depot, so I had to go back to Ikea for one more, and then I asked his dad and my dad for assistance in installation, and that never happened. I might actually have shelves done this week. I’m excited by the prospect, even though it makes the room look smaller strangely by installing them. And eventually I’ll put art up on the wall next to it, but the big piece I want to install is going to be in the Grossmont show, so I’m holding off.

There’s a whole ‘nother giant ass thing I have to plan for. Anyway. I’m doing a little at a time, a little each day. The house is still the same disaster it was when the kids left…slightly changed, maybe for the worse. Hard to say. Bringing a tree in for Christmas made me put a couple of things in the garage to get them out of the way. That was good. Having shelves to put the stuff in boxes away would help too. So would being home occasionally, but this weekend, that didn’t happen. On the other hand, I can’t always be a hermit and stay home. I need the socializing and the art openings (oh yeah, and I crashed a mortgage company’s party to watch a band play…you know, like you do when you’re in your 40s) or I go crazy.

And if you’re waiting on a Christmas card from me, they’re here. I’ve written my part of the letter, and for what it’s worth (it might require you to use a dictionary), the boychild has written his part too…we’re waiting on the female stress monkey, who is telling me Friday. You know, the day she flies home. Uh huh. They might be late this year. Everything might be late this year.

It’s Time to Get Out of Here…

I made no art in the last 36 hours. I did nothing except some social stuff and grade crap. I went through three weeks of emails from students and Google Classroom, searching out all the last-minute work kids have been throwing at me. On Friday, I got through most of the F counseling, but there is very little change in grades so far. I will have to clarify that handing me stuff on Wednesday, when I have already printed out the list of special students who need additional work to prove they know what I have been teaching since August, well it will be too late.

It makes my neck and shoulders tight. It makes me grind my teeth. I’m going out to about 5 art openings tonight to make up for it. Of course, it’s dark and bloody freezing out there, and I don’t have my regular gallery companion with me tonight, so it will be a little weird. But I need to get my head out of my job for a bit. Because tomorrow I am going back to the endless grading and checking Google Classroom for their late assignments. (Dear Google…)

And hopefully I will be ironing tomorrow as well. Although my day is already looking semi-crazy. As always. The week before break just kicks my ass on a regular basis.

I don’t even have a picture for you. Hang on…

I was cleaning out the last of the stuff that was in the boychild’s room. I found some screenprinting drawings and mockups from probably the early 1990s…I think at some point I was considering making them into quilts…this one used to hang in the house somewhere…

dated 1994. Can’t remember the name…

And this one…this one started out as a Sharpie drawing on a 4×8′ piece of plywood that was partially painted in enamels (cuz that’s not crazy enough) and then I got rid of that, because it got termites. That painting was started in college. And then I drew it smaller and screenprinted it. This is the color mockup for the print…

You can see all the colors I was going to use on the left. This did get printed and hangs in my laundry room. It would make an interesting quilt. But you can see that I’ve always been a bit weird and the Christmas lights were in even then. The original was probably done in 1988 or 1989. It might even have been 1986. Actually, I just looked in the laundry room and it’s not hanging there. Not sure when that happened.

Well, and that explains the last ten years of my brain right there. Art openings it is. Now. It’s time to get out of here.

Today Is Under Control…

Oh man I’m tired this morning. Probably the staying up until after midnight thing is part of that, and the other bit is where I’m working my butt off. And the dog just threw up. Dammit. That’s one thing I just can’t deal with in the morning: dog vomit. Aargh. I’m not even awake, let alone competent. So yeah. Throw a paper towel over it and hope I feel better about it later.

I did get some fabric stuff done last night though, mostly because I almost completely blew off work. I say almost because I did spent 45 minutes posting an assignment on Google Classroom, watching the videos, looking up viruses, and making a document to attach. I’m not looking forward to the next three years as we implement entirely new standards that take everything I teach and throw it to 6th and 8th grades so I can come up with completely new curriculum with no assistance from the state or the district. Yeah. I won’t have a lot of spare time for those three years. Labs, materials, units, assignments. All new. Fuck.

Anyway, so I finished all the stuff around the outside of the bathtub and then cut out the fabric for the tub as well…there’s some tub stuff…

A lot of whites just added to the mix…

Plus I think I did a sketchbook and a cat and some rug bits. Now I have the faucet and handles, and then I go into the water, which is laid out here…

The water’s kind of a pain in the butt, but there isn’t actually that much water this time, compared to the last bathtub. Because I see flesh down there too…the toes are in the 80s pile.

I did go to quilt class yesterday and started cutting pieces out…

So things are progressing…more slowly than I would have liked, but whatever. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. And I got socks for going to class…knitted by Susan…

Very cool…or warm, depending on how you look at it.

I am feeling totally exhausted this morning. I am counseling every failing student in my class, personally…sitting down with them and going over their progress report and what they haven’t turned in…they seem legitimately shocked by that. “I didn’t know!” Um. So I guess I have to go through how to check if you’ve turned stuff in? I started talking to all of them yesterday, and didn’t come close to finishing. It means I can’t get anything else done (cleaning up my room for Winter Break, which has to happen at some point; grades). Some kids are just blowing it off and making excuses to me. Some are honestly asking questions and taking it to heart, which would be nice if they follow through. Some honestly…I feel bad because they really don’t understand and they probably can’t ever do well in my class…we are so overwhelmed at the moment that we can’t process some of the kids who probably need testing, and even that, we know that half of them (or more) won’t qualify because they’ve only been in school for three years, if that, and there is not a large enough gap between what they are doing and what they should be able to do for them to get services. So they will continue to flail. And there’s not much I can do about it. I can’t teach a child to read in 7th-grade science with 34 kids in the classroom who need to learn science.

The damn dog wants back in. I want a long sleep with no interruptions. I need more time. I’m not ready for the holidays or even next week. But I can get through today. Today I have all under control, as much as I ever do. Well, except for that pile of dog vomit. I can’t handle that right now.

Best-Laid Plans

Are often completely sidetracked by exhaustion. I have a lot of sick students at the moment, so when my body is reacting and is exhausted, sometimes I just listen and go to bed…with a really good book…which I then want to finish (I didn’t. But I wanted to…). I’m reading The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness…

Which is apparently for young adults (see, I’m still young!). It’s a different type of dystopian book, where the characters can hear the noise in your head and sometimes everyone’s noise spills all over the place…like here.

It’s the first book in a series, and so far I’m hooked.

I originally went to bed with some warm tea and the book because I had been grading stuff and fighting Google Classroom on the iPad (I’m afraid they’re going to come back and say my iPad is too old…which is an issue, I’m sure, but it still fucking works and I’d really like to still use it to grade stuff). I did a lab at school yesterday, which was cool but exhausting…where else do I get to make kids smell a succulent…and what I really love is when I say “Smell this”…they do. No hesitation. LOVE THAT. Then on to a union meeting, not as long as usual, but still tiring at the end of the day. I debated blowing off book club, but I had read the book and I don’t talk to normal(ish) people enough. OK, these are all geek girls. Everybody at the table had see ALL of the Star Wars movies. I guess normal(ish) compared to me.

So I went. And it was nice to check in and see everyone and talk feminist smack and literary criticism. So I’m glad I went.

But then I came home and I’m still trying to grade one assignment a day until I catch up, but this is warmups and the damn Google Classroom app was crashing like a bitch on the iPad, so then I was on the computer wasting time in the forum, trying to find a solution, and updating the OS like that would help (it didn’t) and restarting the iPad and reinstalling the fucking app. I swear. Sometimes technology just kicks my butt. And I finally finish all that crap and Period 8’s stuff and it’s 10:45 and I’m exhausted. Fucking A. I can’t pick fabrics. I’m too tired to stand.

So I went to bed an hour early and got no art made (ugh) because I socialized instead of hermitted. I’m sure there’s some moral story there…artists can’t be social because then they’ll be too tired to get art made. And there’s some argument for that sometimes, but then my sanity depends on some socialization with people older than 13 years. Who think soap might be alive because it makes bubbles.

As far as the reward for kids turning in work, I’m not doing that. I have a few days in the next week where kids are working independently (for some definition of independent) and I’m sitting down with every failing kid. I’m going to set up a mini office for them. Or go table to table, I haven’t decided. I’m going to go over every missing and incomplete assignment with them. I may have to call home on some of them. In my spare time. That’s what I can handle and then I’m putting it back in their court. If they choose to blow me off at that point, OK then.

And tonight I’m making art. It’s already in the schedule.

Next I Will Need the Blues…

The reality of the kids coming home in just over a week…means I have to clean that room in there. It’s amazing how long it can take to go through years of stored art materials and projects. I spent some time last night and found more stuff I’d forgotten about…like this little quilt. I can’t even tell you how old. I wanna say around 2007-2008, because I was doing these small drawings with body parts and birds, and Birdhead was before this and it’s 2007…

I guess I never felt compelled to quilt it. Silly really. It would probably only take a couple of hours…and then a binding and it would be done. It’s funny, because what I really look at is I don’t want to waste the fabric in it by never finishing it. There’s some awesome fabric in that. It needs to become a quilt.

Then I found this…barely started. I have a smaller one I used to embroider on when I traveled. I don’t actually remember starting this…

In the old days, about half the time I made quilts, I just Wonder-Undered a bunch of fabric and hand cut shapes out and placed them on the backing and ironed them down. This is one of those. Old school Kathy.

I went to IQA in Long Beach once and took some classes. I really LOVED this class. Couldn’t tell you the teacher’s name. Or when I did it. 2008? or 2010? Hard to say…but it was basically mark-making on fabric and paper. It was very cathartic…

I have a bunch of pieces from this…

Then I took a class from Yvonne Porcella, who is an amazing artist. But the teaching? Yeah, not so much. I got this much done…

And again, there’s some awesome fabric in that and I don’t want to waste it…here’s the drawing…

And I realized I totally don’t work this way and I want to go back to the way I DO work and finish this, which means tracing it all onto Wonder Under instead of tracing paper. Because this is nuts.

I found this piece of silk velvet I had hand-dyed…

And then I gave up cleaning and started ironing the current quilt again.

I’m still working my way around the outside of the bathtub, but I’m almost done…this is a pile of underwear and socks.

I laid out the stuff for the next hundred…you can see how much is done on the right…

I’m in the 300s and about 4 1/2 hours into the ironing. I’m trying to do 100 pieces a night. I’d do more, but I’ve been grading an assignment a night before I’m allowed to iron. I’ve gotten through three assignments in three nights, so I’m doing well. Catching up. Feeling less pressure…except so many kids still aren’t turning stuff in.

Here’s everything I’ve used so far…heavy on purples apparently. We’ll be going into flesh and bathtub colors next.

And I closed the one blue drawer, forcing Midnight to sleep in the lower drawer so I could get to the grays without squishing her.

She seemed to accept the change easily enough. But next I will need the blues…I’m wondering if I can just open another drawer and entice her into a different color. Who knows…

Ironing Owls…

Yesterday was chaos. Today is Tuesday.

I’m powering through grading as fast as I can. My kids won’t do work unless you tell them it’s graded. Does that mean sometimes I tell them that and then quietly don’t grade it? Yup. Absolutely. So I’m just getting through.

But I set a boundary last night, because now that I’m ironing fabric, I feel like I’m getting into this piece, so I WANT to do more each night. I just have to balance between the two so I don’t end up buried in schoolwork over break. Which I might anyway.

Around 10:30, I started ironing. I’m not going particularly fast at the moment. I did about 100 pieces in an hour and a half. Granted, part of that was a rather large owl, the one that’s here…

Came from this drawing, except he has DNA on him. And I changed the colors. He’s more brown this time. In fact, I didn’t even look at him while I was picking fabrics. Because he could have been the same color, except I couldn’t get to a lot of the gray fabrics because Midnight is still sleeping in the blue drawer. Really I should shut that drawer and then maybe she’d sleep in the one below it and I could get to the gray fabrics. Although I might get to the blues of the water soon, and then we’ll have an issue.

I don’t know what my deal is with owls. Or birds in general. They’re just cool to draw. And they’re supposed to be all mystical and wizardical and wise and shit. There should be more wise going on right now. Not just personally, but worldwide. Certainly here in the US. More wisdom (and I don’t mean age…I mean logical thought about actions and consequences and people’s lives) would not be a bad thing.

So I picked the owl fabrics and a wine bottle and I think that’s it. Kind of pitiful really, although I’m feeling good that I graded an assignment AND ironed fabric. AND cooked dinner.

Here’s the pile of fabrics used so far…

DSCN2648 small

Lots of purples popping in there…even in the owl.

It doesn’t look like much on the right…because it’s not.

It’s only 200 pieces and a bit. Maybe 250. I’m still ironing the stuff outside the bathtub…haven’t even gotten into the bathtub or the main figure. I have stuff every night this week, but think I can come home and iron most nights. I’m scared to make a goal, but let’s hope I’m fully ironed by say Saturday? I don’t even know if that’s possible…then I can cut out in the early part of next week, and then who knows? The kids come home and then it’s Christmas and Winter Break and holy shit, I am so not ready.

The girlchild has planned out her entire break already, so…hopefully we will see her at some point. Boychild will probably be here a good chunk of the time. The animals will have to adjust, which probably means me as well. Food too…no more prepping meals for the week on Sunday, because there’s only me and I don’t want to eat the same thing every night, but I don’t want to cook every night. Adjustments. I sent them both chocolate for finals. They’ve both been sending me videos of cats and other stuff as they distract themselves from writing giant-ass essays. It’s a good thing we didn’t have those distractions back in the day.

OK, another meeting this morning, hopefully less volatile than yesterday’s. Then teaching. Apparently. Yeah.

Go Make Art…

Note to self. When work starts to weigh you down, go make some art. I worked a lot this weekend. I’ve been working a whole lot this year. The last two weeks were mostly work work work. I got a little ahead (well, not ahead, but less behind) on Sunday, so I made art last night when I finished dinner. I came in the studio and deliberately put away all the fabrics I had ironed and ignored the fact that there are still a bunch in the laundry basket outside in the hallway. I hung up the drawing for the new quilt…

This room still isn’t clean. It’s better. It’s not done. Same with the boychild’s room. I sent him a new picture, and he claims he will be sleeping on the couch. Nah. I’m almost done in there. I could legitimately walk in there and pile it all up and drop it in here in about 5 minutes. It just wouldn’t be organized. I’m pretty slow on the organization part. There’s not enough storage space and I don’t want things to disappear for 10 years like before. I didn’t even show you the two quilts that are all blocks that are ready to sash or sew together. The sashing fabric is even in there and washed and sometimes cut into strips. Yeah. That organized.

Then I laid out the first 100 pieces of Wonder Under…

Very exciting. Realized there was a rug under each side of the bathtub that was a fairly large piece of fabric, so there might need to be some coordination on that. So I found all the rug parts in 4 different boxes and did those first.

I was accompanied by this helper…

Who blocked access to two drawers of blue and one drawer of gray fabrics, and pitched a tiny fit every time I opened the top gray drawer. Then when I was on the other side of the room, opening other drawers, she would come over and try to get into them. Very helpful.

This one just sat on the chair.

It’s nice to have them both in here though. Babygirl wouldn’t have allowed it. These two don’t love each other…there’s some tension…

But I think they’re working on it. Like siblings who are tired of sitting in the back seat together.

Here’s everything I used last night…

You can see the cat on the right and my gun-toting Defiance-watching on the left.

And here’s everything I managed to iron last night…

Only 100 pieces. Well, more than that, because I did all the rug pieces. It took me longer than usual, two hours, for maybe 150 pieces. But some of that was just getting my head around the colors. I have two possible backgrounds I’m looking at…they’re both dark dark blue, so it probably doesn’t matter which one I use. I’m just glad that I’m back on track, that there’s progress. I have a couple of things I have to get done over Winter Break besides this one, plus I have to get a significant start on another smaller one by the end of break. There’s only two weeks until break. So I’m hoping to get this ironed onto fabric, trimmed, and ironed down in the next two weeks. That might be a bit much, looking at the calendar, but it’s a good goal.

Saturday night was dinner with this view…

Not a bad view…good company. And I wasn’t grading anything.

Channeling My Art…

One of the biggest issues with being a teacher is that I often care more about my students’ grades than they do. I care more about their work ethic than most of them do, and sometimes way more than their parents do. I want them all to do well, and when they don’t, I go in my head and try to figure out why. Is it too hard? Do I expect too much? The thing is the only thing I’m really doing differently this year is that a lot of the instruction has gone online. That said, the huge assignment I just graded was all paper, all classwork, all things they should have been able to complete during class time. And no. They didn’t.

I could start making phone calls, but I can’t even imagine trying to find the time to make all the calls I need to, because there are that many. I’ve tried putting stuff in the weekly parent email, but it seems parents ignore that…or they care just as much as their student. I’ve never had this many kids not turn work in. I’m frustrated. My AP suggested an incentive (yes, a bribe)…those who got x% turned in got food. Nachos. So there’s two issues with that…money being the first one. So Smart and Final it is…but also, that means I also have to find the time to make sure I know what’s turned in. Whether it’s electronic or paper, someone has to log all that. So I’m trying to figure out a smaller subset I can check for the incentive. But honestly, I’m so tired and overwhelmed with the workload right now that I can’t even imagine finding the energy to try. Sad but true. I’m working way harder than they are.

So yeah. It’s with that weighing on me that I made the decision to stop trying to clean up before moving on to the next stage in this quilt. I’ve ironed a bunch, but the rest will have to wait. And I need to do another drawing for the next one. So even though I still have like 7 assignments to grade (and I might be able to kick those out this week), I’m not doing any more today. She says at 3:30 PM. Yeah. I know. I did cook a turkey this morning. Brined her last night. Pulled all the meat off, divided it in half, and got it into the fridge and freezer. That was helpful. And I’ve dealt with some holiday stuff and some bills that needed paying. So it hasn’t been a useless day…just a semi-depressing one. This job. Seriously.

Moving on. Making art.

This one. She’s stressed. She’s sad too, but she can manage it all. Presumably if I channel her a bit this week, then I will be able to as well.