Some people sleep through earthquakes. Some of us have early warning systems that bark like little maniacs. And some of us have never slept through an earthquake, EVER. Yup. It’s funny though, because as I’m lying in bed, staring at the USGS map (yeah, that fucker is bookmarked), I’m thinking, “Only a 5.2? Really? That felt more like a…”. Being a Californian, we’ve experienced more earthquakes than most. And living in San Diego, we don’t actually experience a whole lot of them.

I didn’t have Calli last night. I wonder if she barked before the earthquake too? The mockingbird was quiet most of the night…I continue to believe he’s going out on dates, or if that guy was right, his baby birds are now fledglings and he feels safer about his nest. No need to yell at ME about your territory dude…because you’re in MINE.

Like much of this week, last night did not go as planned. No worries. I roll with the flow on a regular basis. Or is that roll with the punches and go with the flow? That’s one of the things that drives my kids nuts, when I mess up idioms. My brain does weird stuff with words…it always has.

But once I got home (and I did figure out how to get today’s lunch out of last night’s endeavors), I was mostly awake (tea helps me believe I am more awake than I am), so I settled down to tracing. I’m on a roll! Don’t you hate it when people misspell those. I’m on a role! NO you’re not. Unless you’re in a play. Web sight was one that amused me. Because you are seeing things. So that almost makes sense. There are more of course. Homonyms kick our uneducated asses on a regular basis.

I’ve been tracing for an hour to two hours every night. I’m at 15 hours and 19 minutes in. See if you look at artmaking as just spending an hour a day (if you’re like me and have a fulltime job…trust me, I’d do more than that if I could), then it’s not so bad. Eventually everything gets done, even if it’s only a little bit each night.

I started in the mid 1400s last night and traced through the mid 1600s, doing almost 200 pieces in an hour and 45 minutes.

Not bad. Last year at this time, I was quilting the first of the bathtub quilts. I end up tracing a lot of leaf parts in these Earth Mother quilts. Leaves are complicated little fuckers. I did a lot of flowers and leaves and arm parts and part of a snake and then more leaves.

Cuz there’s lots of them. When there’s leaves that are all part of the same plant, I try to trace the same part of the leaf in the same section (light side vs dark side) and then cut them all out as one large piece of Wonder Under. It saves trimming time at this stage. I’ll cut them apart later.

The kids are trying to help around the house.

I realize that doesn’t look like help, but the girlchild was known in her past for slamming doors and a particularly violent slam took out part of her door framing, so boychild pulled out the old nails and fixed it. It was on the white board list of chores mom left on the door.

Simba is entirely no help in all of this. Unless there’s an earthquake coming, and then he’s useful. Although if I ran and got into a doorway every time he barked, it would be silly.

His last cone day is today. His stitches are mostly healed. It’s unfortunate, because it allows us to control him a bit.

I have about 300 pieces left to trace. I’d like to say I’ll get some done tonight, but who knows. I’m pretty tired. There are only 5 days of school left and a lot to do. And I haven’t been sleeping well between randy mockingbirds and random earth shaking and just general end-of-year stress. Hopefully that will change soon. What do I look forward to in summer? A normal sleep and pee schedule. Lots of artmaking time. Simple.

There’s been this mockingbird outside my house chattering away almost every night for the last 6 weeks or so. I hear him start up before I ever go to bed, and most mornings, he’s still going until around 5:30 AM. I know this because I’ve woken up at 5 and still heard him, but 5:30 seems to be his stopping point. I’ve read a couple of websites that seem to have a variety of claims…mostly that it is a male with no mate and once he finds his fucking true love, he will shut the hell up. Then there’s this guy, who claims it’s territorial and somewhat desperate. And then there’s a bunch of websites that warn me I can’t do anything to hurt the bird; it’s against the law. And one crazy ass person who says I should carefully listen to the damn bird (which I have done, trust me, for hours) and eventually my body will consider it a lullaby and fall asleep quite happily while listening to it. That guy is on crack.

There were two nights last week when he was silent (finally got a date?), but now he’s back in full force, and I again have the pillow over my head. This isn’t gonna fly when it gets really hot, so hopefully he’ll either move (seriously, same guy comes back every year) or find a female. Now. In fact, I’m willing to find one for him. There must be some older, slightly chubby, female mockingbird out there somewhere who would love to live in that tree.

Sleep. It’s for the weak.

Seriously, I’m up early today for a meeting (ugh) and I’m already tired from staying up too late again tracing stuff. I had a union meeting AND book club, and then came home and dealt with grades again (getting close to the end, hallelujah)…and still managed to trace some stuff. Did I clean the house? Fuck no. I did not.

I’m getting closer to done though…in the mid 1400’s…

Back to watching Outlander after finishing Magicians. Both have their painful moments.

The problem is that I’m happily tracing away and NOT watching the clock, and then when I look at it, I’m shocked by how late it is, and THEN, instead of just stopping right there, I finish whatever logical section I’m working on before I go to bed. Because. Shut up. It was hard to stop last night. I only have 500 pieces to go.

So I traced a tiger, a cat, and a heart. Oh. And another lung. I have most of the torso done at this point…just some flowers on the one breast at this point.

Then I have an arm left. And the head. And then I’m done. I have about 4 yards of Wonder Under traced so far. No doubt that the larger pieces of the head and arm will take it to 6 yards.

Kitten came out…she’s not very friendly with puppy.

But she deigned to sit on the desk and watch for things outside. Should introduce her to the mockingbird. Meanwhile, Simba went bonkers running around last night, barking at Calli, trying to get her to play. Eventually Calli came to me, all worried. Why? Why is he doing that? What does he want? It’s amusing. Exhausting, but amusing.

So tonight, I will hopefully get another batch of pieces traced. If I weren’t so tired, I’d go for broke…I could be done by Friday night, but I know I probably won’t be. Unfortunate. Although once grades are done, I can then just cut stuff out at night without having to fit grades in there as well. That should help my goal of being done by the time I get out of school…we’ll see. I would get BETTER sleep if that damn bird would get his ass out of the tree and force himself to get out and about to meet the womenfolk.