Control Your Poison, Babe*

Up early. Two meetings before school even starts, then off to the district office for (cough cough useless) professional development, then BACK to school to teach the rest of the day. Meanwhile, boychild flies back to school. Damn. All the feels. Stress AND sad and all the other crap. Stress levels are way too high. Deep breathing before I deal with kids. Or parents. Or admin for that matter. Maybe should go back to bed. I was so busy ironing and trying to get to the next part last night that I forgot to go to bed early. It wouldn’t have worked anyway…I wasn’t physically tired enough to fall asleep. That part sucks.

The good part is at least it’s not raining yet. And I might get some work done at the PD this morning (we’ll see if that’s a thing). And I might finish ironing tonight. Maybe. A girl can dream.

I started on the hands…they’re pretty light in color, so it’s going to take stitching line and ink to make them stand out.

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But there’s one side, with the sperm gauntlet. You know, like you do.

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And then the other side, with its corresponding egg gauntlet. She’s the ultimate mom, I guess. Got all the parts. Or maybe those gauntlets are the ultimate birth control. I also ironed the skeleton in where it belonged on the left side.

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All this will show up much better on a dark background for sure. I will start on the innards tonight, and then there’s the head and the cloud above it and I’m done. Ha. I’m not going to be done tonight. I wanted to be, but I did two hours last night and only really got through the 1000s and a super tiny bit of the 1100s. I’m at 16 1/2 hours…I’m guessing 3-4 more. Then stitch down. I probably won’t get to that until Sunday night, if I’m lucky, and since we’ll be underwater (stormwatch!) by then, there will be no electricity. I do live on a hill though. Maybe there’s a chance I’ll survive.

One year of stitches…second word.

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I’m gonna decorate the shit outta those letters. Once I finish that goofy phrase. Originally (after a very bad day) I was going to add FUCK to the sampler, but then decided against it. Although it’s still in my head.

Calli wondering when she might be fed. She doesn’t tell time very well.

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Head down. Deep breaths. The drawing voice in my head is very loud.

*Lady Gaga, Just Dance

Settle Down, It’ll All Be Clear*

I love how I always feel guilty the first work morning after a 3-day weekend where I’ve completely blown off school…OK, not completely, because I was AT school yesterday trying to get organized. I got sort of organized. But I didn’t take any science units home to grade. I didn’t even finish the warmups from last week, the easiest thing to grade. I wasn’t in the mood.

I was in the mood to iron, though. In fact, I wanted to be done yesterday, but that’s not happening. I have about a thousand pieces ironed down, which leaves about 350 or so pieces to go. That’s about 3-4 hours, plus then ironing it down to a background. So it’s gonna be a couple of days before I finish. If I’m lucky.

Honestly I didn’t start yesterday until after 8:30 PM…again, too many things to do. And it doesn’t look like I got much done…I ironed this to go on the skull…

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And then put it on the skull. I also added another scapula piece underneath the right side of the ribs, because it looked weird before without it.

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Those little figures took a good long while to put together…lots of overlaps.

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And then the rest of the lower torso, minus the zippered part.

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I stopped there because it was after midnight. Tonight, I’ll have to figure out how to attach the skeleton to this…and decide if I’m adding the stove now or later. Probably later…this thing will get pretty unwieldy and heavy if I have the whole ironed-together piece hanging off the ironing board.

I realized the boychild was leaving soon (my yard/house helper). I’d already had him help me with the Christmas stuff, putting it away, but we still had one more rain barrel to install. As he said, unless I wanted it to sit there for six months. There’s too many things around the house that take two people to do. So even though it was getting dark, we went out there with the dogs and installed it (it was easier than the first one)…

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Simba was happy to play in the succulents. No, I don’t know what’s on his face, but it didn’t come off easily.

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At least that is done. It’s the only yard thing I really accomplished over break.

So for 1 year of stitches, I did the one word (there are more to come) in stem stitch but didn’t love it.

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I don’t tear stuff out. I went back and whipped it, whipped it good. It looks much better.

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Remember that for lettering…it’s better as a whipped stem stitch. Just holds together better. Now you can guess what the rest of the words might be. This might be a test of how well you know me.

OK, lots of work and art to be happening in the next week. Lots of time sucks as well. And if you’re in San Diego, maybe you got that breaking news alert: 6 straight days of rain! Oh my. After living in the UK for a year (300 straight days of rain!), I am amused. Although honestly, everything is so saturated, it’s mostly going to be runoff…into my rain barrels! I probably need 10 or 12 more to catch all of it…seriously, it looks like 3-4 inches, which sometimes is our annual rainfall.

Anyway. I have that to look forward to…but today? Sunny and pleasant. Enjoying that while I can. Not really, since I’m in a classroom all day. I love that finding a balance between my personal life and my job is like a protest. Something to keep in mind.

*Phillip Phillips, Home

‘Cause She’s Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone, Gone…*

I didn’t start ironing until late…after 8 PM. But I still did almost 4 hours last night…they were almost 4 very slow hours, though…lots of small fussy pieces. I started with this crazy peach/hand tree…

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It’s hard to see the hands because the teflon sheet I’m ironing on is white…the background will be a darker blue, though, so it will be clear.

Puppies who will miss all the kids around…

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And then I started on the skeleton…more tiny fussy pieces. Again, this will be on a darker background…

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The skeleton took a good long time to put together. It also has about 150 pieces in it.

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I accidentally touched the side of the iron…more than once, actually. This is the worst of the burns.

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Whoops. You should see my scissors callous.

Now looking at this picture, I think the right side needs a scapula…just a little bit of it under her armpit. Damn. OK. I’ll figure that out later today. I have to go to school and feed a cat and do a bunch of other shit.

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Then I can add a scapula.

I didn’t do yesterday’s one stitch until this morning while I was waiting for the cheese to melt. It’s the stars at the bottom. I had to move the hoop again. I’m going to need to find my spring hoops. They’re in the house somewhere.

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Worst part about yesterday was taking girlchild to the airport. That is her luggage at the top of the stairs. I thought she was following me, but she went back inside to hug the dogs again.

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These guys. Who miss her too.

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Can’t think too much about the part where I’m living alone again. At least I’ll know where the scissors are. And who got that dish dirty. The rest of it just sucks.

*John Mayer, Dreaming with a Broken Heart

You Scream You Learn*

Oh holy heck this is a morning. Rained hard most of the night, disturbing my sleep. I know some people find that noise helps them sleep, that drip drip drip pounding away of water above my head. I wasn’t put on this Earth to sleep apparently. And we need the rain. Even though it seems our annual rainfall is all happening in one week. We haven’t hit our average annual rainfall yet, nowhere close. Not even as much as last year. But day after day of drippy wet feet and spotted glasses and damp clothes starts to wear on a Southern Californian. Or as every teacher recognizes, the squeaky tennis shoes on the linoleum floor…oh, well, only the science teachers at my school, because the other classes have carpet. So yeah. I will write a referral if you are purposely doing that screech with your shoe on my floor…you don’t deserve to stay here if you are that guy (it is always a guy. Seriously.).

Yeah, I’m tired. First week always kicks ass. And my co-teacher is still on her honeymoon, so that makes it harder…although I’ve apparently survived it. Hopefully she’ll come back. And then both kids are leaving in the next week. Which makes me sad, but some things will be good…fewer dishes. Holy crap, the dishes are kicking my butt…and yes, they help, well, mostly…but it’s still more work. And there’s some drama I could do without. Because I don’t get enough of that at school. Really. I had to have a real-life discussion with a relatively high-level student about why it’s not OK to copy other people’s words. Why it’s important to engage your own brain with the material. “Why do they put it on the internet if they don’t want people to copy it?” Not a bad question, but you have to wonder how she got to age 12 and doesn’t have a better idea of copyright. Because yes, I teach science…but I also teach behavior and grammar and spelling and copyright and politics and history and compromise and how to get along with other people without being dickheads all the time. This week has been a lot of the latter.

There’s a 3-day weekend ahead though. It’s not an ideal 3-day weekend for a variety of reasons. Emotional. Sure. And a little too busy. But doable.

And most importantly, I’m finally on to the next stage of the quilt…I finished cutting pretty damn quickly, only another 30 minutes. So that’s what 19 hours of cutting pieces out looks like…

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Not much, honestly.

I hold on to the trash until I know I have all the pieces, because if I’m going to lose a piece, it’s usually a tiny one, and sometimes I can cut it out of the trash pieces.

Then I sorted…it was not an easy thing to do after standing all day. I sort by 100s. It’s easier to deal with 100 pieces at a time rather than 1300.

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An hour and 38 minutes later (ugh)…there they all are…

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Ready to be ironed together into a quilt…probably will take about 20 hours for that. Although it took a lot longer to cut them out than I thought it would. So we’ll see. There’s a lot of little pieces, apparently.

I had both cats with me…

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Kitten is trying to simultaneously sleep and watch me. It didn’t work. She slept. When the dogs are gone, I do get both cats. With the dogs, Kitten is less likely to venture out, unfortunately. I try to give her safe spaces on the couch and the desk, so sometimes that works…

I did my year of stitches thing while on the phone with my SIL…outlining with stem stitch (which is a pain around curves) around that blob of flowery things.

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I haven’t been able to keep up the daily meditation…I often remember just as I’m about to fall asleep. Last night, I did remember, and I turned it on and fell asleep until the very end. That should tell me something, I guess. Hopefully my unconscious brain was doing a good job.

I need to go to school. I’d like some sun tomorrow. Or at least sometime this weekend. I’d like some peace and quiet. I’d like some conversation with my kids before they leave. I’d like to get some clean up dealt with. I’d like to get this quilt ironed together. I think that’s enough for one 3-day weekend.

*Alanis Morissette, You Learn

Leave Me Be*

First week back, brain is mush, too much work, feeling overwhelmed, exhausted on top of it. I don’t sleep through the night most of the time. Last night, I suspect I would have if there hadn’t been puppy barks and late-night teen entry…I was exhausted enough. I went to bed early…well “early” because many of you are not night owls and manage to be in bed by 9 PM, which is when my art brain perks up and starts yelling. Falling asleep is not my superpower; neither is staying there. I have to be at work early today for a meeting, so I have to LEAVE early, which means leaving even earlier to account for the crazy elementary school parents I have to avoid on the way to school, plus the high-school traffic. It’s actually more efficient to leave later.

I just realized tonight is the full moon, which could partially explain everything at school.

So my brain is so fizzled at the moment that I thought I had a union meeting yesterday after school (to my credit, it’s always the second Wednesday of the month, so it wasn’t impossible that we might have one, but apparently they gave us this month off and I didn’t fix my calendar)…and was quite relieved NOT to have one, but came home to stress and cranky (none of it mine). I didn’t cook, but the cleanup on dinner was significant. Which I did do. Dishes dishes everywhere.

Although it seems someone will miss someone when someone leaves (you fill in the names as needed, because it is obviously going to affect both of them)…

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I kept on keeping on…with a different animal companion…

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I’m almost 19 hours into the cutting, and dammit, if I could have stayed up another hour, I would have been done. All I have left is big stove pieces. I wanted to finish, but had to be a responsible adult, dammit.

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Another hour? Maybe? I have a scissors callous on my right index finger and my hand is stiff this morning. But hopefully tonight I will finish cutting and sort these assholes so I can start ironing. Because it’s about time.

This is not a small quilt. It is not a simple quilt. It could be worse.

My one stitch for today…the spiderweb rose or I can’t remember what the book called it, woven something? And some french knots and seed stitches to use up the last bit of the bright pink thread.

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Ugh. Tired. We knew I would be tired by the end of this week, so we designed instruction to get kids to a more independent place by today. We’ve taught you a bunch of stuff, showed you some stuff, told you some stuff, had you read some stuff…now you need to go figure some stuff out on your own and explain it to us.

Let my teacher brain rest a bit (as much as it ever does).

*Sara Bareilles, Gravity

And We’ll All Float on OK*

You know, sometimes progress doesn’t look like anything. I have almost 16 hours into the cutting out of tiny little pieces, and there’s more to go, and I told you I couldn’t predict how many more, because as I go through the pile of pieces in there, I’m never really sure if the piece of fabric below the one I’m currently picking up will have three huge pieces on it (easy to cut, nice and quick) or be the one with all the finger bones (not easy, pain in the ass, gonna take me an entire episode of Supernatural, if I’m lucky).

I cut for over 3 hours again last night. I’m not bringing school work home at the moment. I will eventually. But not until I get these cut out. So if you look at yesterday’s pile of stuff left to cut out and today’s pile of stuff left to cut out, you might feel as discouraged as I did, because I was sure I was getting closer…

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Except at least two of those pieces of fabric on top are full of tiny fucking finger bones. Or rib bones. Or whatever that’s tiny and curvy and time-fucking-consuming. My hand hurt last night. It’s stiff this morning. Am I closer? Sure. Do I think I’ll finish tonight?

I don’t think I’ll EVER FINISH. OK. That’s silly. Of course I’ll finish. Some day. Probably not today. And it amuses me that this is what one of my quilts looks like at this stage…a pile of never-ending strangely shaped pieces.

Another day in 1 Year of Stitches…I finally Googled it and wrote it on a post-it note and attached it to the computer so I can remember the correct wording. Until the cat takes off with it.

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Yesterday was a curvy line of Palestrina knots, which used to scare the crap out of me, but are really very easy to do. Don’t get me wrong…I still stare at an instruction book while doing them.

You saw my cover page yesterday for the new unit. I do apparently occasionally inspire kids to do their own thing…here’s one of my student’s covers for the last unit (which I’m currently grading, because it’s the one assignment I blew off grading during break).

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That’s a lot of bubbles. Must be a chemical change.

If you’re on Instagram or Facebook with me, you’ve already seen this part of my Christmas gifts…a little late, but blame the post office. I do wear boots to school quite often, so I really can wear them to school…

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(I’m wearing a pair now…they’re kinda inspirational.)

Last night was chilly and the dogs were at the other house, so Kitten ventured out and sat right next to me on the couch. This is a strange thing. She does not do it often.

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So it’s sweet when she does.

*Modest Mouse, Float On