Procrastinating

I don’t want to go back to school yet. I guess I have 4 1/2 more days, but this always feels like such a slog from January to Spring Break…even with the three-day weekends. The Five Weeks of March (not the Ides, but the Weeks…all you teachers know that awful stretch of time) are coming. You know the kids’ brains are going to be all damaged by three weeks off, and by the time you get them back, they’ll be affected by whatever weird pollen that causes teenaged brains to go all hormonal in Spring. We see it every year. This is the hardest trimester in terms of content, for science at least, and after grading all their science journals yesterday (that was 5 hours of my life I’ll never see again), their grades will show it. I know I should be planning today, setting up the next unit, writing the next assessment, making sure everything’s ready to be copied, but I just can’t do it. I can’t immerse myself back in the slog yet. My art brain wants to play…it wants to wander about outside and draw things. It wants to be free for just a bit longer.

It’s OK. I go through this every year. I am pulled screaming into the first week of school in the new year. For some reason, Spring Break doesn’t do the same damage…I think because it’s close enough to the end of the year that you can smell it. See it. Feel it. I don’t want to deal with grades or assignments or even kids. I just want to stay up late and make art and hang out and be a human without a job that sucks so much energy. Back to that balance thing. Constantly on my mind.

So what all that really means is that I’m procrastinating. I’ve been grading stuff, but not killing myself (OK, yesterday was a stretch, but I wanted the damn things done). And last night, when my brain was racing, totally wired, I let it iron stuff together that is totally irrelevant, not a deadline, nothing that needs to be done. I just wanna make this little quilt. I got to here before I needed to go to sleep…

Because I knew I had to be up early. And the left eyelid is already twitching with either tiredness or work-related stress, hard to know which. It’s not like there’s a different twitch for each. So maybe both.

This isn’t a big quilt…it only has 160 pieces in it. I thought about doing it for the FFAC cancer donation quilt, but it’s way too complicated, too many hours. It’ll finish up about 20″ square and I already have over 8 hours in it. For those who are always devaluing an artist’s time, consider how much you get paid for a day of your actual real-life job. I know what that amount is for my job…in fact, I know my hourly rate. Now add in the cost of materials and a 40-50% gallery commission. And taxes. Now you know what an 8-hour quilt is really worth, and this will have more than 8 hours in it by the time I’m done. They want the cancer quilts to come out to about $100, so I need to draw simple and keep it small. I’m hoping to do that today too. Later. (Procrastinating…small and simple is HARD for me.)

This morning, what I SHOULD have done, if I were a good little worker bee, is do the next batch of grading. Ugh. Could not do it. Not after yesterday. I have grading PTSD.

So I finished ironing…

Again, I could have stopped there, been responsible. Hell, I am being responsible…just responsible to my own self. Sigh.

Found a background…ironed it down…

Again, I could have stopped there. I could have.

Fuck it. Stitched it down and pinbasted it. Ha!

Then I stopped. Before the quilting. But it was hard. Now I just want it done. And if I didn’t have any other have-to’s today, like getting a new stove to replace the one girlchild killed, or going to her soccer game, or grading freakin’ papers, I would get it done.

But one of my have-to’s is the donation quilt drawing. Plus there’s another drawing lurking in my brain. Maybe an hour or two in front of the telly with my sketchbook tonight? Balanced by some grading (fuck grading). Sigh. Yes, the art brain is STRONG in this one. As I get older, I am less likely to say no to it. But the kids are getting older and are way more self-sufficient than they used to be, so I can ignore a lot of stuff that I didn’t used to be able to ignore.

And I can grade for a bit at the soccer game…until it gets too dark…

Because it gets too dark to take photos too…except I keep tracking the sky for clouds like this…

And this…

So I’m procrastinating, yes. But not in a bad way. There’s certainly something to be said for not getting too far behind in your job responsibilities, but I will always argue that once you’ve put in an hour or so on that crap (because for a teacher, it could be hours every night if you let it), it’s time to let your brain does what it wants. And mine wants to make more pictures.

2014 in Quilts

I finished 21 quilts in 2014. Holy crap. There were 6 major quilts and 15 smaller quilts. Twelve of the smaller ones have sold, all birds…

This collage doesn’t show all 21 because there were duplicates…I think there is one more dove, another eyeball bird, another HeyBird…at least. It was a prolific (and somewhat crazy) year. Cats for next year instead of birds? Maybe. Thinking about it. Or maybe I’ll just try to have a life. You never know. Just looking at it is a bit crazy…I made one major quilt every two months. That is nuts. Even the major quilts are an achievement…two of them were slightly simpler, but two of them were just plain old crazy complicated. Yup. It’s official. I am nuts.

Anyway. I do feel good about what I did, despite the insanity. Moving on to 2015. I’m out of the hole now…let’s see what happens with the art.

Hiking the Lagunas in Snow

This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but I live in Southern California. Hiking in snow is just fucking crazy. So we did it anyway.

Sure, there wasn’t much snow at the beginning, but it was cold…it actually snowed Tuesday/Wednesday, and this was Saturday, so not too bad. No chains needed to drive there even.

It was bloody beautiful though…

Didn’t expect it to be as hard to hike as it was though. We did part of the Sunset and Big Laguna Trails, a big loop around the Laguna lakes and meadows.

Thing is, the easiest bit to hike was on the packed snow, but even that required balance…

And the icy bits were hard to hike, as were the muddy bits, and the icy muddy bits with big pools of water underneath. Yeah those were fun.

So I’m a little sore today…two days later.

Totally worth it though. I’ve done this hike in the fall and it’s gorgeous then too…

Not too much climbing, mostly flat…

But we took 4 hours to do 7.2 miles, so you know it was harder than normal.

I’d do it again though.

One of the lakes, seemingly frozen over. When we came back, a lone duck was sitting in the middle of it, like, where’s my lake?

There were snowmen scattered all over the trail…in fact, I’m not sure how we would have known where the trail was if someone hadn’t come through before us and stomped it all down.

Because a lot of it looked like this…

Yup. Ice.

We came back by this lake later and took the Laguna Meadow trail…

The sun was out and it got up to the high 40s, maybe low 50s at one point.

Definitely shedding layers, fleece off, down to long sleeves and an undershirt…

You can see what the trail looked like there…

Poles would have been smart. I do have them. I just didn’t think I’d need them. You’d think I’d learn. Ha!

Gorgeous day, beautiful trail…

Great views…

Two of ours making snow angels…like you do.

This part of the trail was a little less broken in…

But still doable.

I didn’t get snow in my socks until that part…

You can see the trail here is mud and ice…

And the meadow stretches for miles…

More mud and ice…

We ate lunch with this view…

These guys in the distance…

More beauty.

I guess living in a desert means this never gets old. OK, if I lived in Michigan, this might get old.

But I don’t. I live here, in a drought, in the sun. It’s 80 degrees today…

And this stuff is probably melting like crazy.

Even there, you can see the sun has cleared those pine needles…

It wasn’t an easy hike…I mean, I think it would have been easy without the trail conditions.

More trails and the other lake…

No wildlife, except that duck and some ravens…and all the humans out there…

Definitely a great hike…went for the pretty and that’s what I got…plus a monster workout. This hike is out of Afoot and Afield. You park on Sunrise Highway at the 19-mile marker. There are two porta-potties, but they were full to the rim when we got there. Fun stuff! Plenty of parking, nice trail. I’ll do this again, both in the snow and not.

Sundays? I Got This…

Sundays for teachers are hell. They are the day you get ready for the week. You do all your errands, do all the grocery shopping, get your laundry done, and also lesson plan. You do your best to keep Saturdays free, but Sundays…hell, Sundays belong to the man.

I love Sundays during breaks. I don’t have to do any of that shit. Well, I still have to grocery shop, and I’m sorta trained by now to make them work days. They feel that way anyway. I remember back in the old days, before kids, when I was married but not encumbered, when I didn’t bring my job home with me and have it looming over my head on a regular basis, Sundays were nice then. Late rising, a nice hot cup of tea, reading the paper (who gets that any more?), and watching all those fix-it shows on PBS. Hours and hours of Norm showing you the right tools…if you only had the right tools, your house would be fucking amazing. And Sundays were lazy days. You might make it to Home Depot for all the tools you needed, but you didn’t have to. That could wait until next Saturday, couldn’t it?

Well that explains a lot around here, doesn’t it?

Sigh. So I feel like I wasted many hours this morning on god-knows-what, but eventually, I got my act in gear and started getting work done. I spent an hour and a half on kid budgets…a fun thing you get to do when you’re divorced and all the expenses are split. December is always a clusterfuck for expenses, made even worse by applications to college. I sometimes just want to crawl into a hole and pretend none of that happened (three apps left).

After grocery shopping (holy crap, having the boychild home is fucking expensive) and buying textbooks (not mine; boychild again), I managed time for art…bindings on the two birds…

They’re pinned down now…waiting to be sewn down. These are the first two quilts of 2015…at some point, I’ll get that summary post done for 2014, wherein I made a shitload of bird quilts.

Sometime yesterday I got the good news that Absolutely Nothing, the Women at War quilt, will be in the show at Grossmont College in March. More about that later. But cool. Yay. Happy.

And then there was this drawing. It so wants to be a quilt. It’s too many hours for the cancer quilt, but I don’t fucking care…

It gets to be. I drew this ages ago. The Wonder Under’s been trimmed for a few weeks. I traced it back over Thanksgiving break…not sure when I trimmed the Wonder Under…my task app is not being helpful.

So I really should have started the cancer donation, but this one has been fucking screaming at me. So I listened. It only has 160 pieces.

It’s mostly flesh colors…

Two sets of flesh colors. It took about an hour and a half to iron the whole thing down to fabric.

Twenty three fabrics…

This isn’t going to be very big. It’s not going to take very long. In fact, in a little over an hour, it’s mostly cut out.

Probably another ten minutes would do it.

Why do this one first? Before the one I know has to be done? Before the bindings are done? I told you. It was yelling very very loudly. In my old age, I try to listen to the ones that yell. There’s a few more that are yelling, but I will do the cancer one next, I swear. Although I have to sew those bindings too. I also need to grade papers and do about a thousand things tomorrow.

I have one more week of break until I have to go back to school. Balance is the thing. I have to figure out how to balance all of the pieces of my life so I don’t feel like shit. It’s kind of important. I’ve got my focus on that. Don’t drop any damn balls, but don’t let the balls take over your life either. I figure once I figure the whole life/balance thing out? I’ll be dead and it won’t matter any more. No worries. I got this.

More Birds and a Birthday

Hello Friday night. How are you? My son turned 19 today. That makes me ancient, right? Not really.

We did not set any fire alarms off, but it was a close call…

He did not blow them all out in one go…girlchild’s amazing decorating attempt included car-shaped sprinkles (hey, you go with what you have in the house). I made the cake; she frosted and decorated. She always does the fun stuff.

It’s OK. I was baking it in between doing two more birds, commissions.

But first, the piece for the equality exhibit, which opens the 17th, needed a label. Apparently I need to actually deliver it so they can hang it (what a concept).

So that didn’t take long. The birds were all trimmed up and ready for ironing…

HeyBird is easy.

The owl…it’s a little fussier because of the wing tips, but still not too hard. This is the third color version of the owl…

Onto a background…

I need to remember that these take about the same amount of time the cancer donation quilt should take, and they don’t have a ton of pieces…the owl is the most time-consuming with 32 pieces, I think. So I can’t draw something complicated. It has to be simple. I was going to take a sketchbook to the boychild’s birthday dinner tonight, but I couldn’t find the small one…

Oh well. These are so freakin’ fast…

But relaxing nonetheless…

Easy to quilt…

Fast…two done in a day, basically…

By the time we went to dinner for the boychild’s birthday, I was on the background for the owl…Calli loves Grandma…

Girlchild is crankily doing yet another college app tonight…this may kill me. Look at that face…

Three more apps after that, all due the 15th. It Never Ends.

So I quilted the background after cake was eaten…

And then I picked out bindings and trimmed the quilts and got everything ready for when I have time to sew all that crap on.

Here’s some photos that were stuck on the camera while I was trying to set up the new computer…here’s sewing the binding and sleeves on while watching hours of television last Monday…yes, the backing is covered with skulls…

Calli lying right next to me on the couch…

There you can see the binding and the backing…

The pin marks a piece I missed in the sew-down AND the outlining stage…so I had to go back and fix that at the end…

And here’s a detail of some of the inking I did in the body pile.

I’m glad it’s done and out of my head. OK. Hiking tomorrow. Need to take myself to bed and be ready for snow! Seriously. There’s snow. Crazy.

Considering Women in Society

The last few quilts I’ve made…OK, let’s be fucking truthful here…the last 50 quilts I’ve made have been about women in society. OK, maybe two or three of them weren’t, but mostly? Yeah. That’s where I land. I write what I know. I draw what I know. I create what I know. And what I know is that I’m a strong woman and that strong women get by in society, but it isn’t always pretty, especially if you’re the reflective type, the kind who is always analyzing this or that or how or why or wondering what the fuck THAT was all about. Talk about my clothes, mention my boobs, please look at my face, write me off because I’m old and female, oh wait…then there’s the whole medication thing and health thing and assuming you must this or that because you’re a GURL.

Sigh. It rubs me the wrong way; always has. You should go read this article…it’s about nerdy males and entitlement. Now don’t get me wrong…I love me a nerdy guy, even gave birth to one, so you know I don’t have an issue with the nerd, the geek, or even the dork. They are my people. Except, honestly, it doesn’t matter whether you are a buff, white, football player in Texas (can you say stereotype?) or a pale pasty white nerd with glasses in Silicon Valley, you have to admit that you have more privilege than a woman does. And if you can’t? Then you are a problem. I don’t care how fucking smart you are, how many feminist blogs you read, how you’re able to quote Gloria Steinem verbatim (whatever THAT might look like)…you don’t get it. You are part of the problem. If at any time in your life as an adult (I’ll give nerdy teens a break…give them time to read up some more) you have told a woman that her uterus is not under attack by the government, the Republicans, or her health insurance company, while your Viagra prescription is refilled with no hassle, you are part of the problem. If you don’t understand why we walk the streets at night with our keys between our fingers, swinging our eyes side to side, you are part of the problem. If you don’t get that so many comics and video games are just fucking over my daughter and her friends with their giant-ass boobies and killing the hos, you are part of the problem. Don’t whine at me about being friend-zoned, don’t fucking tell me it’s not about the boobs, don’t tell me I’m imagining the shit I’ve heard, seen, felt, and smelled since I was born. You Are Part of the Problem. Listen to me. If I’m saying it, it happens. You’re telling me over and over that I’m imagining it? You are the problem. You are the rapist, you are the harasser, you are a continuation of the problem. Get the fuck out of my world. And my daughter’s world. You don’t belong here. I’m sure there’s an island somewhere that you can live. Just get the fuck away from me.

Yeah. That’s angry. I hate the entitled telling me it’s not a problem when it is.

So when my art group brought up this exhibit idea of Women at War, I didn’t think of women toting guns into war zones, or of women living in war zones trying to protect their children (although that did pop into my head next, because of the population I teach). I went straight to the war I’ve lived my entire life. The one that begrudges me birth control, but won’t support babies that come out once I follow their rules. The one that makes it OK for a boss to talk about my body and my reproductive status (sure, that’s supposed to be illegal, but let’s be real…most women have experienced some level of sexual harassment at work no matter what). The one that makes it OK to attack me if I dress in a certain way, but also gives me shit for NOT dressing that way.

That’s where I drew from…the idea had been in my head for over a year, since I think that’s how long it had been since the show theme first was floated in our group. It had one venue, but that didn’t fly, and then we found another venue and the dates were solidified, and the image burst into my head. It had to be quick…I only had 6 weeks…and that’s how long it took, one day short of six weeks. I started November 18 with the drawing and finished Monday December 29th. As I wrote before, it’s named after the song War by Edwin Starr: “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”.

This is Absolutely Nothing, 35.5″ wide x 50″ high…

I haven’t priced it yet. I don’t even know if it got into the show yet. It doesn’t really matter if it did, because it needed to be made. It was yelling at me…

Yes. That’s a pile of naked men. And she’s standing on them. There’s ink on it too.

And it was good. She said.

And maybe the next quilt won’t be so angry. I don’t actually have a problem with some anger showing up in my quilts or extreme sadness or even happiness or annoyance or joy or whatever. This is not just anger though…it’s honest frustration that it’s not any better than it was when I was a kid, except that we talk about it more and then a bunch of entitled white boys whine about how they had it hard in middle school and why do girls want to read comics anyway, and they’re really not good at science. DUDE. We all had it hard at one point or another in middle or high school, or in college, or at some point in time. Write that shit off. Now take a deep breath and walk out into the real world and let me know about the women you know, the ones you really know: your mom, sister, daughter, wife, aunt, cousin, best friend, whomever. Listen to them and let me know if you really get it, if you can have empathy for their existence even if you’ve never given birth, never had a menstrual cycle that kicked your ass, never felt so nauseous during a work event that you wanted to crawl into bed, never had a man touch you when you didn’t ask for it and didn’t want it, never had a man or group of men comment on how you look, how you dress, or what they might do to you. Never felt someone looking at you and felt afraid. Because that’s what it’s like, and it’s not like that every day, and if you’re lucky, it’s rarely like that. But if you’re female, it will be like that. Because you were born with two X chromosomes and that’s it. That’s the shit I want to kick out of the ring.

Anyway. Deep breaths. Time for a meditative moment. Read a book, drink some tea, look at the men around me who aren’t like that (and some of them are, whether they want to be or not). Rejoice in the few.

I had about a three-day period of braindead, holy-fucktitude, can’t possibly make another big quilt EVER AGAIN…and then tonight…this afternoon…I want to make another. Please may I make another? OK. Seriously. I’m fucking nuts. I have so much grading to do. I have so much other stuff to do. I’m down to a little over a week of break left and then THREE LONG MONTHS until the next one (OK, there are three 3-day weekends in there). But…I have two birds to do ASAP, and I’m going to do my damnedest to get them mostly done in the next few days, and then I have the cancer donation quilt, and then I need to look at the upcoming deadlines for April and June and I think next fall and see what needs to happen, but I think I can make another big quilt before Spring Break. Can’t I? Sure I can. Because I am woman. Hear me roar.

It’s the New Year…

Hey. I finished a quilt. Another one. I think my photographer still likes me (I do pay him). I would love to post photos, but my computer is currently backing up files so I can move them onto the new computer. Thank god, because it was about to die. We have a new wifi access point, so I can still watch movies in my office. I have one bird trimmed and ready for ironing, and another ready to trim. I haven’t dealt with the cancer donation yet…maybe tomorrow. And I have another small one I’m shoving in there…because I fucking CAN…that’s why.

I started that yesterday. Computer stuff has been a major issue. I forgot how much time it takes to set up a new computer. I’m still trying to make a backup email file. I haven’t gotten everything installed yet on the new computer. I started this on the iPad and now I’m on a random laptop in the house. It’s seven minutes to the new year and I know I can’t get everything set up in time to post from the new computer. I’m tired. I should go to bed. Naw. Finish the fucking post. The nice Indian guy at Fry’s helped me get everything off the old drive that runs the older Mac in the house onto a new drive. He’s the same guy that helped me with my power supply back in March. He remembered me. And he picked a color-neutral external drive for me, because he was concerned we would have issues with blue or red. WTF? This has not been a cheap tech week in this house. Hopefully upgrading all this crap will last for a while.

I did finish cutting out the other bird. I need to do the cancer piece. I would show you pictures of stuff, but that would mean the other computer was set up. Totally. It’s not. I do have pictures of the new quilt. It’s done! Officially finished on the 29th. Of December. Smart people would have finished it on January 1 of the new year. I’m not smart.

I’m a little burnt out on quilts, to be honest, at the moment. Too much in too short a period of time. I can handle a few small ones, I think. I have a plan for about five small ones in the next few weeks. OK, that’s a little crazy. I also have a ton of grading to do. I haven’t looked at school stuff at all. I can’t even deal with it right now. Maybe tomorrow. I said that this morning, though. I don’t know what happened to today. Do you have lots of days like that? When you’re not sure what the fuck happened? Like why didn’t you get more done? I don’t know where the hours went today, I really don’t.

Anyway. A few small quilts in the next week or so; meanwhile, I’m evaluating what’s coming up in the future…gotta figure out the deadlines. Gotta get my art head straight.

It’s 2015 now. I made a lot of quilts in 2014…like 22 of them. Granted, quite a few of them were small, but that wasn’t so bad. When I get my computer up and running, I will make my composite of the year’s quilts. Calli wants to know why we’re all still up and watching TV. None of us are really watching though. I’m writing this post. Girlchild is writing college app essays. I don’t know what boychild is doing. Leverage is on…amusing show. Seen them all before, but they do well with a second watch. 2015 is going to be a good year, I’m thinking. I’m counting on it. First art opening is in 17 days. That can’t be a bad start.

A Strange Place

I’m tired tonight. My head is in a strange place. Kinda floaty. Probably that’s the tired talking. Or I quilted my butt off today. OK. Not my butt. But I quilted a lot. More importantly, I quilted until I was fucking done. Ayep. That’s part of the floaty head thing I think. This quilt is almost done. It didn’t exist before the middle of November in any form whatsoever, except for a vague image in my head that followed me around to school and the gym, but wouldn’t vomit itself out on paper. And now it’s almost real.

Cool. My head’s still trying to figure that out. It’s been a quick quilt.

I spent a lot of time over the last two quilting days trying to keep Babygirl away from this quilt. She really really wanted to lie on it…

In fact, that photo above is after she tried stepping onto it, sneaking really, about three times in a row. To her credit, when I said no, she stopped. And looked away. Pretending she was really doing something else. You know, like cats do.

So I figured maybe she’d be happy with lying in the sun, and that worked for a while…

Because she is an old cat and it’s been cold here lately.

But then I left the room once, and she decided to sit on my quilting chair…which leaves no room for my butt…

So I pushed her back onto the computer chair. She was not pleased. There was some hissing and batting of claws towards humans.

This is not a human house, apparently, but a cat house.

I quilted yesterday for a few hours…

And in the bright sunshine. I also quilted today, for many hours…less sunshine. And at some point, I pulled the quilt off the machine and went and bought binding fabric…

And other fabrics, because they jumped into my arms and wanted to come home with me.

But the binding, interestingly enough, is the same as the background, except obviously a different color. I tried for a darker blue, but that’s a hard race to win with most shades of already-dark-blue. There’s lots of red in this quilt, so it makes sense…

Tomorrow, after dealing with my car, the dentist (x3), and god knows what else, I will trim this down and put a binding on it. Because photography Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. So that means I must get my butt into gear and just get it done.

Really, that’s relevant for so much in my life right now. But at this very moment in time, my brain is very tired and hovering around the strange place. It made me do math earlier. It took 11 hours and 38 minutes to quilt this…well below the 17 hours it took on the last one, thank god…because if I still had 5 1/2 hours to go, I wouldn’t be done in time. So that’s good. Right? Total, I have about 74 hours into this quilt right now. It’ll end up being about 80 hours, I think. Still a lot of hours in say 6 weeks? Thirteen hours a week? Really? Is that right? Wow. I’m a bit crazy. Just in case you were wondering.

The Day After…

The day after Christmas dawned bright and clear, although a bit cold for us Southerners (high of 60?). It was warm enough for hiking, of course, and after dealing with a variety of crap in the household that never seems to loose its hold on me, I donned my hiking boots, found someone willing to traverse the wilds with me (not hard), and took off on a trail that I’ve gotten lost on twice.

You’d think no one would dare come with me with those odds, and sure enough, I took one wrong trail, but quickly found the right one and actually made it around the whole loop (about 6 miles) without any trouble…

Holey crap. Love being outside. Tired afterwards, not a bad thing.

Looks like Spring! Yes, it’s December still. And now I know how to get back without getting lost. Finally. It’s only been a year. Honestly, I shouldn’t be allowed to lead anything.

When I came back, I had to go to a soccer game, where I stitched more on birds (nothing completed) and froze to death, not so quietly. It’s funny…the temperature seems OK when you get there, and then as time goes on, you get colder and colder, yes partly because the night is slowly creeping towards 38 degrees, but also because you’re sat frozen on a metal bleacher bench, not the warmest place in the world.

After that, warming up, and feeding children, who are picky as hell about their Mexican food (food is fuel, people), I came home and tried to pick out some bird fabrics…actually, I think I did this one before the soccer game.

This is another Hey Bird, number 3 I think…requested. Oooh. A commission. He was easy to do, because I can still find the original fabrics, although I don’t know what I have for the background…I’ll find something.

But this is Owl #3, a whole ‘nother colorway. I actually went for realism…the iPad is there because it had a picture of an owl on it, a barred owl of some sort…

The background will be harder to choose for this, I think, but it’s not like there’s a shortage of fabric here.

I’m glad I got those two to the next step…moving on. I’d like to get them done next week.

Then I quilted for a while…finished all the outlining and started the background quilting…

I didn’t get super far, because I got tired…but I’m about 6 hours in. More today. I already emailed the photographer, so now I have to be done by Tuesday morning. Can you say crazy? I can. I have somewhere I need to be this afternoon, but it won’t take long, then my evening is booked, happily. So there’s this morning, all day Sunday mostly, and all day Monday. If I can get it all quilted by Sunday afternoon, I can go get binding fabric.

Probably not this…

Although I can’t wait to use this somewhere…I love that Julie looks out for crazy fabric for me. Apparently there’s more coming at the next meeting.

Holidaze…

It seems I spent 24 hours straight cooking and cleaning and doing household mom-type things. I’m exhausted. How weird. Some people like doing this shit? Whatever. They crazy.

So this is how Kathy’s brain works: Yes, these are homemade cinnamon rolls…

No, they are artistic shapes. See how they expand to fill the space and the spiral changes to fit that shape?

And when the dish is a different shape, they do even weirder shit? Yup. Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when you have Kathy’s brain. On the positive side, we did just freeze that last dish of cinnamon rolls, because otherwise there is entirely too much sugar in the house (they are now covered with a river of maple-flavored sugar that might kill the diabetics among us). Plus there’s a drawing (or seven) that I need to do BECAUSE of the cinnamon rolls. Totally.

So Christmas morning started late, due to teenagers who sleep in (oh hell, I slept in)…

So did Grandma. Besides, it’s all about the children…I mean, the dogs. Calli got a tummy rub from everyone.

She loves Christmas. She doesn’t seem to notice that Jake is gone, but she’s never been the smartest dog in the world…Babygirl is getting used to boychild again…

Mostly, though, she sleeps a lot in the sun and on the chair in my office. She is directly behind my butt, even as I type.

I had two hours yesterday after gift-opening and cookie delivery to finish all the cooking and get to my ex’s house (turns out, I really had three hours, because girlchild was behind)…so I made green beans, cookies, and deviled eggs all at the same time while watching an amusing Wild West movie on television.

I actually frosted MOST of the cookies this morning. I took some over last night, but the frosting is supposed to dry, and I didn’t have enough time to do that. These are the POST-Xmas cookies…for the POST-Xmas sugar hangover. Which is why I’m going hiking in about 20 minutes. Probably I should go run 10 miles (not happening).

While waiting for dinner to get done, I drew…

I really like the dog. I might mess with this a bit more, try again maybe. I want to be in the habit of drawing.

Then I remembered I only had 10 minutes left on this bird…so I finished it.

There’s another soccer game tonight where I can start the next color way.

Finally, I left the ex’s house at around 9, after listening to girlchild read out all the comments on his old report cards (nothing was a surprise…to anyone at the table)…I fortified myself with caffeine, because yes, I was tired. I don’t want you to think I never get tired. I do. Freakin’ exhausted sometimes…but I bully through, have a cup of tea, and persuade my brain to keep going. Usually if I can get beyond the 8 PM slump, I can go for a while. And I hadn’t quilted during the day…I flat out ran out of time. So I was determined…

I got 2 1/2 hours in. That was good. The whole body is done and I’m up in the tree.

My goal is to finish the outlining tonight (after the soccer game) and start the background quilting. Of course, I also have to fit in some hiking, some hanging out, some eating, some soccer, some cleaning (again? WTF.), and who knows what else. I did just bribe the kids to do one of my errands though, so that is cool. Checks one thing off my list. Because part of finding the right balance in your life means not taking it all on yourself. Saying yes when people need help, but then also saying no. Or putting your foot down and saying, “I’m taking this time. It’s mine.” I’ve been working on all that shit for so many years…I’m almost getting good at it. Sort of. Going to put my boots on now…