Stitch Dialectic

I braved the rain Sunday for the opening of a local SAQA show, Stitch Dialectic.

Sometimes, when I remember to make a quilt without boobs in it, I have a piece for this exhibit. Not this year, but I did find some pieces I really liked while I wandered around.

Canyon De Chelly, by Patricia Charity, had all this amazing textural complexity. It’s even better in real life (because you can ignore the unfortunate lighting).

Broken, by David Charity, her husband, has a graphic quality, in this case both in image and subject matter, that I truly appreciate.

Rusted, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, is another one that is even more radiant in real life. The surface of her work was truly beautiful.

Whidbey Island 5, by Sherri Foster, was simple but so textural, with lines of close stitching only visible up close.

Siena Portal, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, used that yellow hand-dyed fabric to create a sense of dimension.

Close Reading, by Viviana Lombrozo, is ironically so much better up close. I should have taken a detail, but I was in a hurry. There’s hand-stitching everywhere in what looks like a secret alphabet.

Waiting Expectantly, by Sherry Davis Kleinman, is simple, but so evocative of that last month, waiting for baby to come out. So few lines and limited detail create a beautiful portrait of her daughter.

From the show postcard, Botanica Balboa and Floribunda Balboa, by Karen Cunagin. If you’re local, these quilts speak of Balboa Park.

Kalamina Gorge, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, has more of that complicated surface beauty that is hard to photograph.

Bitmap, by David Charity, shows his sense of humor.

Three-Eighths, by Catherine Baltgalvis, is exactly the kind of subtle yet complex quilt that I could never make, but appreciate for its visual interest.

There were many other quilts to catch your fancy. It’s up until the 24th, so you should stop by.

Tentacles Don’t Have to Be Complicated

You’ll be glad to know I did actual artmaking activities last night. I know y’all were concerned. Certainly I was too. It’s not that I don’t want to…it’s that it’s the last trimester of school and that is just plain hard. Most teachers are in burnout mode right now, even with Spring Break packed in our brains. By the time we get through testing in a month, the jokes about margarita machines in the teacher’s lounge will be very very serious-sounding. If there’s a teacher in your life, make them a care package or something. Send them to a spa or get them a massage. An evening with friends might be what they need to get through the next 5 days. Rinse. Repeat.

I did grade stuff first, which is where I learned that apparently chewing gum causes heart attacks. Yup. Seriously. OK. Moving on to the next assignment, where answers might be more clearly thought out. And all that was after driving downtown to brainstorm on a new exhibit for 2017 with my women’s art group about sexism in the art world. Should be interesting. And I made the boychild’s flight arrangements home. I know he was trying to find a job out there for the summer, but I’m glad he’s coming home, even though it means I can’t rent his room out to Airbnb…to people who don’t mind my sewing at midnight…with music on…loud. Yeah. I’m never gonna be a good roommate.

So I taped together the head of the drawing I’d done…and then I added more paper for the rest of the drawing…

Apparently I think this drawing will be quite large.

It’s kind of a pain to deal with it like this, but I’m doing it anyway. I want to do another Earth Mother, so I am. You Can’t Stop Me! So there.

I don’t like the arm on the right at all, so I’ve redrawn it, although you can’t see that here because I’m still debating what will be ON it…there’s a snake already, but there will be something else. I’m leaning towards cheetah or leopard, but I need to deal with some other stuff on here first…like a better heart than what I had.

It needed to be smaller and better. And now it is. So now I just need to keep reminding myself not to make it too complicated. Because this is full size. And I don’t remember how many pieces the last Earth Mother had, but it was tiny pieces in the bottom section, and that was a bit crazy. I can look that up…it was only 891 pieces…so not a lot more than what was in the little piece I just finished. Interesting. It seemed more complicated than that.

And I just remembered I wanted a sun up top that was more complicated than what’s there, so I’ll need to add a piece of paper up there to extend it as well. Last I checked, it was 50-some inches high. So that’s not too bad. Only minorly crazy.

It’s taking a lot of brain time to draw though…a lot of staring at it and visualizing what could be there. I have pictures of snakes, octopuses, and leopards pulled up on my iPad at the moment. Think the octopus will go on the left shoulder, up in the hair but tentacles curling down onto her arm. Octopuses are weird-looking beasts…their…um…heads? are such strange shapes. I have to remember from previous quilts that drawing all the tiny suckers means crazy when it comes to tracing and ironing them. Tentacles don’t have to be complicated.

Anyway, it’s a start. It’s peaceful to draw. It calms my mind, lets all the stress dribble out and wander off, so I can do the next day. I have been meditating more for real, using my app, but honestly, sometimes this is all I need to do. Stare at the paper and draw.

Spring Cleaning

I have art photos from the weekend, but no time this morning to resize them. Forgot about all the stuff I had to get done this morning. Saturday was good but Sunday kicked my butt? I don’t know. I managed to cook enough variety in food to deal with one breakfast, three dinners, and three lunches. Not bad. And I made it to an art opening, plus the grocery store, and finished the taxes and wrote something that needed to be written (only 3 more to go) and did a bunch of school stuff, but it’s never enough. I really flailed sometime around 9 PM. Except now I know both kids are going to be home for the summer, so what did I do? I messed up the boychild’s room.

I had good reason for it. He’ll be home in 6 weeks. That means I’ll have to clean it up by then.

It forces me to deal with the mess. So all that has been piled up in my office in front of one of the bookshelves for years. The pile changes, morphs, revises itself, but it seems like all it’s done in the last five years is grow. So that’s it. I’m done with it. I have no clue as to what’s in that red box or the yellow clothes hamper (which dates back to college I think?), but it’s all getting sorted and either tossed or filed or rehomed. Because I need that two feet in front of the bookshelf to be clear…I washed the floor last night…

I should have taken a before picture, but it was stacked a good two feet out and four feet across. Now I’m sitting here at the computer and looking to the left, and there’s my old computer (had this one a year now) and why the hell is it still in here? You don’t even want to see the crazy piles of paper that have resulted from college apps and financial aid, plus art entries for the last three million years. It’s just nuts. But in my spare time, I file stuff and find homes for it. So that’s mostly what I did last night. I had stuff in my room from when we remodeled the living room two summers ago, so I started emptying boxes and either tossing it or finding a better home for it than my floor.

Whoa. I think I’m spring cleaning. That can’t be right. Hmmm.

Probably I’m just avoiding whatever all the next steps are in my art quilting existence: tape together and draw the rest of a really huge drawing that’s only partially in my head. Start picking fabrics for the new quilt. Give up on being truly creative and trace Wonder Under for the other two small quilts that are lying around. Not sure why this is so hard, but am blaming it on school restarting and already hiking my stress levels through the roof last week. Hopefully this week will be a bit better. At least it’s mostly planned, although there’s an eyeball dissection in the middle that might be a bit challenging…mostly for cleanup though. I’ve been dissecting eyeballs with classfuls of 7th graders for years.

OK, have lots to do this morning. Need to get my butt out of here. I’m hoping art content will be on here tomorrow morning…either I will have resized the damn photos or more hopefully, I will have made art tonight (don’t look at the calendar…it’s booked until 8 PM I think). Certainly I think I will need to do something creative tonight or I’ll be out of sorts tomorrow.

Saturday’s Under Control

Hello Saturday. I am kicking your ass. Bow down. I have completed 17 tasks and errands and you cannot bring me down. I am mostly awake and caffeinated, although my food plan for this week was mostly shit, and it’s supposed to start pouring any second now, but fuck you, I am still conquering the to-do list. Because I finished all the out-and-about stuff (well, except grocery shopping, which I could do, but…eh…not in the mood). And I now can make art or whatever without your judging me.

You don’t need to snort and chuckle with Friday about how I almost lost it during 4th period yesterday due to some mass attack of teenaged fuzz brain, or how I went to bed early with a cup of tea (yes, caffeine helps me fall asleep when it’s part of a cup of tea) and my book. So no, Saturday, I didn’t fucking make any art last night or Thursday night or whatever, but hey! I’m still adjusting to being back at school and I put out 38 fires on Friday and I am so bloody efficient that I scare myself sometimes.

Yeah. I know. I forgot something. Someone will tell me that later. I don’t wanna hear it today.

Anyway, one of the amazingly efficient things I’ve done in the last 24 hours is pick up the photos of my new quilt, And Then There Was One.

This one is only 16″ x 24″, but it still has over 800 pieces in it. Because I’m crazy, that’s why.

So one of the art groups I’m in had plans for a show about current issues of feminism. They wanted us to pick a larger piece that dealt with these issues and then make a 16″ x 24″ piece that went with it. So I had picked One of My Kind…

which has me, both my kids, my mom, and my (dead) grandmother, as well as a bunch of other stuff. It’s from 2011, so it’s actually kind of old, but I’ve never been able to get it into a juried show. It’s more of a storytelling quilt I think, plus it’s kinda in your face and chaotic. But it was important to me and I really like all the detail. So I looked at that image 5 years later, and I’m a single mom with these two adults, both in college, and you know they’re leaving and at some point you’ll only see them once a year unless they move back here, and that’s been hard for me to deal with. I’m proud of them and think they’re cool people, but it’s hard after 26 years to all of a sudden (not really) be totally alone in this house. And yes, girlchild is coming back for the summer…still up in the air on the boychild, and neither of them are children any more, but I drew the smaller piece in response to all of that.

That’s the last two quilts getting into shows pretty much right off, which is kinda cool. Not sure that will happen with the next two (because it didn’t happen with the two before those either!), but it’s nice when it DOES happen.

OK. Still need to deal with cranky tax question and some other to-do list items before I truly relax for the day (night?). But yeah. Saturday’s under control. In case you were worried.

So Many Choices

My brain is a little garbled this morning. I’m hoping that’s not a problem. I was so bloody efficient yesterday, enlarging the drawing last night…I started with 200%, but the head was huge, so I backed it down to 150%. That looked reasonable. I didn’t have time to tape it together, but that’s OK. I’m supposed to be working on 17 other quilts before that one anyway. I made it to my stitching meeting, where mostly I read an article in New Yorker and chatted. I sewed a few stitches. I made it home with dinner…always a plus. I’m tired of eating the same thing this week. Brain freeze on the same food every day. Sometimes I don’t care at all and some days it just drives me crazy. Suppose it depends on what I’m eating…more of the quinoa chicken bowls. They’re good. Takes a ton of time to make those though. That’s the problem. Not sure I have the time this weekend.

And then too many choices. I wanted to start picking fabrics, but I was just too tired to make that happen. I thought about taping the drawing and starting to draw the rest, but that tired thing again. So I came in here and quilted…

All the outlining is done and I’m quilting orange in the background. Or red. Maybe it’s red-orange thread. See the backing fabric? Green robots? Leftovers from a baby quilt from a few years back. I count my years at this school in history teachers, because we can’t keep them more than a year, it seems. My old history teacher’s wife and my new history teacher’s wife were each having a baby, within about 2 weeks of each other. So they each got one. I never met either wife, I think. Weird, huh? Whatever. I pass on the quilty goodness.

I don’t actually make that many baby quilts. I’ve made like 6 of them. And then for a while, I made these little landscapes for wedding and Christmas presents. I’ve probably made about 20 of those. I actually have one of them back from my ex-MIL after her death. And then I’ve made about 90 art quilts. Which is crazy. Seriously crazy. Assuming I have another 30+ good quilting years left in me? I could fill the damn house. Maybe it’s better if I make fewer big quilts rather than lots of smaller quilts. Huh.

And I should probably give up on the Etsy site. It’s not like I’m regularly gonna make more little safe quilts for that…or even unsafe ones. And there’s no sales. So shut that down I guess. Or go look at the timing and calendar when to shut it down.

So I didn’t get much done, but I did get some. It’s all I can do some days. Some. A little. A bit. OK, I think I actually quilted for an hour and a half. It was like meditation at the end of the day, and I actually fell asleep at a reasonable time last night (mostly because I think I’m about to hit a wall of mental and physical exhaustion after this week). I’m feeling good about all of it. Finish these two quilts and start picking fabrics for the next one. Relax a bit with the art. Stop trying to make a deadline where one doesn’t exist. You have enough choices…you can handle fabric or draw or quilt…so many choices.

So many choices. Meditating with art.

Attempting Wake-Up Maneuvers

So the not-sleeping catches up and whacks you in the face. OK. It whacks me anyway. I napped after work yesterday. That’s it…I’m officially an old person. What I love is the cats climb up on the couch with me, flanking me. I set an alarm, because I didn’t want it to be like last time, when I lost 2 hours to nappiness and then couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’m already having issues with that. So 40 minutes later, I was all groggy (hey, I set it for 25 minutes and then it went off, scaring all the creatures on the couch, so I went for another 15…then the girlchild was texting me and I attempted wake-up maneuvers). And I didn’t really feel like doing anything, which is too bad, because I always have stuff to do. And I didn’t feel like figuring dinner out either. I probably had enough leftovers for lunches and dinner last night, but the potatoes were MEH and I had eaten that for lunch and hell, what I really wanted was to be physically transported, no WAIT, I wanted the waiter at Himalayan to be able to walk through some sort of transport thing that put him in my living room to take my order and then to bring it to me. But not to wait around and stare at me, wondering why I can’t get my butt off the couch.

That’s when I got up and ordered more tea, because I’m running out. It took me a good two hours and some fakeout of a dinner menu (it’s always OK to have salad and Brussels sprouts), plus staring at my phone and the telly for a good long time before I could function. Part of that is what I taught yesterday, which was kind of a performance art, relay race of neurons and action potentials. I spent a lot of time running around the room yelling “DO IT! DO IT!” and “SEND IT BACK!”. So if you’re thinking teachers just sit at a desk (I don’t really have a desk for such activities), imagine the yelling and the running instead. Today will be a nice quiet video viewing of brain structure and function to counteract the running and screaming of yesterday. The one day you could have the superintendent walk in and you’d be totally OK with him seeing the real live crazy of Nida teaching science? Yeah. He didn’t show.

So when I remember that and the not-falling-asleep of the night before, I guess a nap is warranted.

After that, I finally got my brain to function and finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is temporarily called Fishface, just because I had three drawings out at the same time, and I needed something that would tell them all apart. The other two are Totemwoman and Spiralwoman. I already have a quilt called FishWife, so it could get confusing. She’ll have a different name at the end.

There’s all the pieces…about 2 1/2 hours of trimming Wonder Under.

Then I sorted them. This quilt is gonna go fast, I think.

Compared to the last one anyway. And I still wasn’t tired. Because I’d had a nap. So I sat down with the drawing from the weekend and tried to finish up the torso a bit so I can copy it. And I think I’ll toss it in the car today and go enlarge it and start drawing stuff for real.

Like real size. This is already big. And I’m not sure that heart is gonna stay. There’ll be a heart, but the chest/upper torso is off. So maybe I’ll cut it off a couple of inches up into the drawing and then redo the chest and heart full size. Usually I enlarge 200-300%, though, and this head is already considerably bigger than the last Earth Mother, so maybe I won’t? Or I’ll rethink the rest of the body? I’m not sure.

I got good news last night that two of my quilts will be in the Feminism Now show at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. The opening is May 14 from 6-10 PM. If you haven’t been, it’s part of the Barrio Art Crawl, so there are a few studios in the area of Gallery D, plus other studios, like La Bodega Gallery and the Bread and Salt Gallery, in the area. I’ll post a link closer to the time.

This is the smaller piece that will be in the show (currently out for professional photography)…

And the larger piece it connects to will be there too. The smaller one will travel to Sweden (date/location TBA) with the exhibit, and then hopefully there’ll be another exhibit in Los Angeles or down here in San Diego, once the Swedish exhibit closes.

Yeah. I really need to go to school. I had to meditate to fall asleep again last night, so caffeine will be a necessary part of the day today (it’s what’s for breakfast! and lunch! and dinner!). At least I’m making progress, even if I have to nap in between the job and my real life.

Gird My Loins

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I finally went and found the iPad at about a quarter to 1 and had to re-upload my meditation program, because apparently I deleted it somehow. And then meditated, confusing the dog massively. Even then, I couldn’t sleep. I even considered taking today off from work (wow. two days in, people. well done.). I remember in my old job taking a personal day every once in a while, just a day to clear my head and do what I want and not think about whatever it was that was the issue. But I just had Spring Break, I hear you say. OK. Well, that tells you a little bit about my job then, doesn’t it? It’s not even the kids right now…it’s the other adults and some of the situations. We live in an inherently violent and sexist society, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I can wish that all I like, but when it comes down to reality…it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon. And apparently I’m a shitty teacher for not just accepting the way things are. Wow. I’m so done with this school year. 51 days.

I also worked last night, which didn’t help things. A last-minute project showed up and ate up the evening, which is fine. I need the money. I always need the money. Dear college: Knock it off. Give me a break. The girlchild was shocked that tuition went up. I was not. I’m not happy about it, but it’s always going up. Everything is always going up.

I did a little art stuff…started cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt…

That’s about an hours’ worth. Halfway done. Ish. I’m not engaged with this project yet. Too stressed out. Too tired. Maybe when I start picking fabrics for it?

Maybe it’s just a matter of not having that deadline to work toward. Knowing that you only have X number of weeks to finish something gives you a drive you might not otherwise have. Then again, I come home from work and the last thing I want to look at is more grading, lesson design, or whatever. I don’t want to think about kids or what will be taught in homeroom or whether or not I will be able to work with my team next year. I just want to relax. Monday was better because I went out and climbed a big sweaty hill. I guess that’s a lesson in itself. I had a trauma training at school yesterday as well (because I don’t recognize trauma?) and they talked about self care. Gave us a list of self-care tasks. Oh yeah. That. I do that. And that. And that. And I still want to run screaming from my entire life some days. I guess we all do. And no, donuts aren’t the solution.

Making art for me is the solution. Drawing the pictures, trying to make sense of the world with a simple line, getting the morass in my head out onto the paper. Some people call it a gift, but it’s not. I worked my butt off to be able to channel that stuff out. And I can’t even draw fast enough. I can’t draw enough to clear it all out.

So each morning, I write this and I check how I feel. And I label what’s in my head: Thinking or Feeling? Lots of feels this morning. Too many thinks last night. And the feels are particularly hard right now, whether that’s due to lack of sleep, hormonal surges, an empty house, or whatever. They feel (ha!) overwhelming. So part of my mindful practice every day is to spill it here, then contemplate what the day might bring in terms of opportunities to help the feels, to spill them out in an appropriate way, to offer them to the Earth Mother, to Nature (those hikes save my brain!), to dribble them out on the elliptical, to shelve them between the pages of a good book, to cut them into tiny little pieces while I trim the Wonder Under, to block their effect with music or pictures or drawing or tracing or whatever the hell it takes.

With that in mind, I gird my loins, mount my trusty steed, Subaru, and venture into combat, looking past the inevitable strife and conflict towards an attainable goal of peace…tho temporary it might be. An evening with scissors.

Oh yeah, in case you don’t know how to gird your loins (again, where’s the female version…)

Being Mindful

The last two plus years have taught me one thing across the board…being mindful of one’s state of mind, understanding what you need to get through the difficult and enjoy what you can, being able to step back from bad stuff and scary stuff and stare it down…this is absolutely necessary to finding peace and joy in your life. Yesterday’s peace and joy came in a walk at the end of the day, new yellow flowers dotting the landscape, the dog snuffling through some dead thing (not so joyful for me), conquering that bad-ass hill I walk up on a regular basis, powering up it, even though I’d had a long day. I said I wasn’t going to work when I got home, but I had dual emails from child and parent, so I dealt with those at 9 PM because I knew today wouldn’t leave me the time to do so. I packed up care packages for my own kids and entered an art thing that I’d forgotten about and was due this week. Paid the property taxes.

And then I flailed a bit. How to continue to let the mind repair any damage done during the day? I’m honestly amused at some of the crazy that goes on among adults at my school. It’s like being in middle school again…well, maybe high school, because in middle school I hadn’t found myself yet. I was still pretty meek and quiet. By high school, it was ON. (Ask my parents. And my Physics teacher. Who was also my Calculus teacher…and kind of an ass.) I even stood in the living room with my teacup for about 5 minutes, staring around, debating the options. Kitten was following me around, waiting to see where I’d land so she could be in the same space. Calli too, damp dog from her post-walk swim. Where is Mommy gonna be? We wanna be with Mommy! Who needs roommates for adult conversation…I have furry babies.

I could cut out Wonder Under for the next quilt. I could trace another quilt. I could work on that drawing, get it to the next stage. I could work on one of the wool quilts I have going, which is pretty brainless. I could come into the office and clear stuff out, move the excess into the boychild’s room (shhh. don’t tell him.) for sorting and start that process. I could work on the two quilt tops that are in the office and have been in process for way too long. Which suited me best last night? Usually it’s no question…the project that is yelling the loudest (usually a deadline-based thing) wins. But last night, I couldn’t tell who was yelling loudest…because there are no deadlines at the moment. And I’m OK with that.

I ended up in the office with the two quilt tops. It seemed most efficient to try and finish those, at least the quilting part, because they will both need hand embroidery: one a lot and one a little. The orange one was already pinbasted, so I did the other one…

I don’t even know how long this one has been around. A long time. It’s freehand cut. I haven’t done that for ages. This is the one I want to do a lot of embroidery on. We’ll see though. First I’ll quilt it. I don’t usually do a light background either. That’s a challenge.

Then I started on this one…

This is from 2013 I think…the drawing is older than that. It’s strange.

But simple enough. It needs a little embroidery. I’m still debating the quilting in the background.

This piece has alternatively been called Fire Mountain and Fire Forest in my head for years. And that background…yes, I was experimenting with different-colored backgrounds for a while. I get into that dark-blue rut because it’s easy. For me at least. Followed by dark purple and turquoise. So quilting on these for a few days will be good. I’ll probably cut some Wonder Under too. And ease myself back into regulating schoolwork with school stress. As much as I can. It’s good that I have a few projects I can work on right now. They ease the tension, give my mind a place to restfully wander late at night, when I can’t sleep (because that’s been common the last week or so). Stay up late so you’re tired enough to fall directly to sleep. Unfortunately, my brain is still wandering after 1 AM these days. Must dial it back an hour or so, or I will start to look like my students. Or get cranky. Or both. Here’s hoping the mindfulness and the art will help with all of that.

A Sketchbook on the Deck

Oh my lord. Morning. Not my superpower. I’m pretty sure I have to go to school today, but it’s so quiet here, I have to check the calendar and the clock to make sure that’s true. Is it really Sunday? (it’s not) I keep expecting the trash trucks, but in truth, they don’ t show up until it’s time for me to leave for school. My phone still has the golden hue of nighttime…which is funny, because it’s not THAT early. It just feels early. I really should have a job that allows me to be a night owl and an introvert, instead of what I have. Oh well.

So I managed to get some stuff done yesterday: quilt made it to the photographer, bookshelf that had broken and been fixed made it back into my office, all the crap that belonged in it made it out of the bathroom (yes, that’s where I put it), a pile of school stuff made it to school (after I took a turn too fast and threw it all over the back of my car). Yeah. I rocked it. Funny. It didn’t feel like I rocked it. I remember getting to a certain point in the to-do list and looking at a clock and thinking SHIT. The day is almost gone.

I worked on the drawing some more on Saturday…I like the feeling of sitting out on the deck in the semi-shade, even though the dog keeps chewing up the pinecones she brings me, and then I have to step on all the pieces, which is kinda like walking through a field of Legos. I swept the deck yesterday too. I had some eye starts on the drawings…it’s interesting that all I have to draw are the two eyes to know something is wrong…

Nope. Way too far apart.

These were better. Good distance. Similar size. I’m onto something here.

I think this was another fail. The face. The eyes. Aargh.

Insert picture of cute baby. I made the quilt under her. I love that her feet are blurry.

Maybe I should just stick to baby quilts…

No. I can do this! There we go…

That’s what I needed. This is working. Except the fish in the net are smiling and they shouldn’t be. That’s as far as I got. I’ll finish up the head mostly and then go enlarge it and do the rest to size. I think. Like I’m going to have any brainpower for drawing this week. I’m already exhausted. I honestly don’t feel like I slept at all last night. That’s really common for teachers, by the way…to not sleep well on a Sunday before school starts, especially after a break. You’re convinced you’ve forgotten something major and you won’t remember it until the kids are sitting in front of you.

So yeah. Sleep.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tracing the Wonder Under for this other quilt…

And it has so few pieces (399…except I realized at the end when I was tracing the cactus spines that I totally misnumbered all of them and there’s really probably 415 pieces in this)…that I finished it last night. It took 3 hours and 40 minutes and one yard (approximately) of Wonder Under. At 11:43 PM, I was going to quit, and then I realized I had hardly anything left, so I just finished it.

That’s it. And no teensy weensy pieces like on the last one. It’s almost sane to make this quilt. There must be something wrong with me. It’s like I’m attempting to do something that won’t completely challenge me while I try to finish out the school year (which will challenge me). Actually, I would hope this would be done well before the school year is out and I’m working on another one. But I’m not that bothered at the moment. I will be later. Just not now. Now I’m trying to figure out how to survive the next 11 weeks. What do I fill my weekends and my evenings with to make the Kathy World a better place? People and art and hiking and books. Obviously not a clean house, because I didn’t achieve that or an amazing yard over break.

Although last night, girlchild and I made a plan to spend ALL the money we both had in savings to just hop onto planes and meet in Jamaica. We figured we could afford a round-trip flight and maybe a cheap hotel. Food would be a stretch, but we didn’t care. Probably doesn’t help that it snowed in Boston over the weekend. I have less of an excuse with 80-degree temperatures here, but it was a nice fantasy.

For today, though, I’m gonna be doing pretty good if I make it through school and a walk with the dog. Then I’ll reevaluate. But really, right now, I’d rather be sitting on the deck with my sketchbook…see, I don’t even need to go to Jamaica.

Drawing in the Sun…

OK. Work poking its head in. It’s been doing it all week. How do I know? Work dream (nightmare) last night). Stress teeth grinding. Better today, because I only have one period left of the project to grade, although I have two assignments I haven’t even touched. It’s OK. One is extra credit and only about 15 kids did it. The other one…sheesh…I’ll get to it eventually. Just not today. Today I will finish the one period and hopefully it will be easy. Less than 3 hours. And then planning for next week. The other science teacher and I did plan the week…it’s just that some of it was kinda vague. And I don’t remember what we did. Plus I have to write warmups and send the parent email and update my website. Teachers of the computer age. Except when we lose teams next year, I won’t be able to send a team email to parents any more. Sigh. That’s gonna suck. Because I’ll still do it, but if I can persuade the other teachers to do it too, parents will then get four emails instead of one. And they barely read the one. Oh well. This is not a problem I made and it’s also not one I can solve. I’ve spent the last month telling myself not to worry about next year until it happens. Maybe fairies will descend upon us and make everything sparkly and nice and I won’t need to deal with the shit I think will happen.

It’s not really denial. It’s just hope…I think. It’s certainly protective.

So yesterday I was having a crisis of mental attitude. I made lunch and I went and sat on my deck in the sun and I threw the ball and pinecones (because she lost two balls) for the dog. I used to have a view of the mountains, but I think I would have to climb into my neighbor’s yard and prune his trees to get that back. Might do that someday.

Calli knows that if she wants me to throw it, she has to put it in my lap. This is her pretending she doesn’t know that. Eventually she follows the rules.

So I wanted to try drawing a revision of last year’s Earth Mother, but without the no-nudity clause. So I started with the face, and this one was too angry. Or petulant. Or irritated. Hard to say. Too much chin.

A plane flew by. Apparently yesterday was the Assyrian New Year. Kind of interesting. I wouldn’t have known that without the plane.

I made another false start with a shitty pair of eyes before I got to this one…which WAS going somewhere, but…

I didn’t want both arms down and that damn jellyfish is way too huge. So I stopped on that one and made two more lame starts, before I gave up and went and graded things. I’m not done trying…I will try again. Maybe today. But it wasn’t working for me yesterday. That happens…especially if I’m aiming for something in my head that’s still a little unfocused and vague.

But drawing in the sun is probably something I should try to do more regularly. Because that was nice…birdsong and blue skies. Except for the tree shredding that was happening in the neighborhood somewhere (woke me up this morning too).

After grading, I did some straightening up on the light table, which has a plywood cover on it when I’m not using it, so I pile stuff up there that needs to be put away to trace stuff. And then I started tracing the next quilt, which isn’t huge…

She’s about 17 x 21″, so a little different than the one I just finished…plus only half the pieces. That should be a plus. I drew this while flying back from Boston after dropping my daughter off for college. Rough flight. But another version of the Earth Mother. I guess it’s on my mind. Constantly apparently.

OK, so I am going to finish grading this morning. Well…probably early afternoon, based on previous attempts. And then maybe draw. We’ll see. I do have to move a bookshelf back in here that dad fixed so I can refill it with all the books etc., which are currently living in the kids’ bathroom. And rumor has it at least one kid is coming home, although not for 7 weeks. Not sure about the other kid. I’m sure he’ll let me know if he needs a flight, right? Sigh.

My positive attitude for the rest of the school year depends entirely on what I can fill the afterhours with to make up for the crazy. And my ability to just write off certain kids, because they haven’t changed their behavior and contacting parents has no effect. So yeah. Whatever. Let the politicians go wild with that shit. I am not a magician. And then try not to react to whatever crazy admin throws at me. I’m done, people. I’m still teaching, I’m still helping the kids who are there and present and asking, but I can’t parent 155 kids. Someone else has to help. Such a frustrating year. For all of us.

Remember. Drawing in the sun. Panacea.