Category: Art

My Bandwidth Is Low…

Well I’m feeling better about grades right now. I managed to get some serious work done in the last two days, at the expense of making art and reading books, but yeah, that’s how it goes. I’m down to two assignments (both academic and reading) and whatever late work I’ve missed so far. I’m not totally ready for next week; I need a pretty substantial sub plan for Monday afternoon. It’ll probably take me at least an hour to put that together this weekend, plus the grading, plus the pre-eval worksheet, which I can’t even get my head around. My bandwidth is low, much like my computer at the moment, which keeps cycling and cycling. I’ve got two websites up and keep bouncing from one to the other to see if they’ve finished loading yet. I don’t have time to restart the router. Ah well.

So I will be spending a huge chunk of the weekend dealing with school. It sucks. That said, I finally finishing sorting pieces into boxes…

Two hours and 16 minutes total. Not too bad considering the number of pieces.

And last night, after my stitching meeting, I barely started ironing…

But I started! That’s about 30 minutes worth of ironing. These are the big pieces down at the bottom. It just gets tinier and more detailed as we move up. I’m looking forward to ironing for the next two weeks…maybe more. I have some stuff coming up that will take up weekends…the Interpretations opening at Visions will be in two weeks. Plus it’s not like school will go away. I’m just hoping it gets a little easier. It’s unlikely to at the moment, but after this weekend, I’ve got a bit of a break I think. Maybe. Knock on wood. I do need to revise a project and an assessment, which I’ve kind of been ignoring, plus set up at least one lab. Plus start doing this literacy stuff in science, which is fine…I used chatgpt to write a paragraph for my part of the literacy. Use the resources y’all! Use them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading The Humanity Archive and have images of African fighting queens and slave ships and plantations and revolts in my head. Not sure where to go with that, but it’s percolating. I have a deadline in January for another show, but it may just get whatever’s available. I feel like this Supreme Court piece is going to take another 6 weeks before I’m done. I drew a small original of this in Seattle in July. I came home and enlarged it, then taped it together on July 13, then started the full-size drawing on the 14th. I’m 3 1/2 months into this. That’s crazy. I might need a smaller quilt as a palate cleanser before jumping into slavery. I don’t know. We’ll see.

I did make it out of the house for NOT work last night…stitching meeting with the friends. I finished this June Homegrown block (Sue Spargo).

It’s been sitting around for a long time, maybe since Seattle. I haven’t had much time for stitching. I save the free time for the quilt in progress. So I have four more houses to do and then the centerpiece. Should be done in 2026. Or 2027. I’m still sitting on the half-quilted Bird Crazy (not its real name). That was supposed to be over the summer. Didn’t happen. The day job is nuts, has been for too long, so I don’t get enough art quilts done and they all get pulled to shows right away, which is awesome, or sold, which is also awesome, but then I feel like I have nothing to enter anywhere. Which is silly…I know. But as I’m staring at this pre-evaluation for school, I’m just struck that what I really want is more time for art, and what they really want is for me to spend more time on school. MORE time. I don’t have that. Not unless I give up the hour a night for art, and I’m not going to do that. As it is, I’m supposed to be doing this decoding/encoding training online, and I’ve made it through the first 15 minutes of 5 hours, so I need to start doing that while I iron. Which I can do. Plus the shooter training for school is at least an hour…need to do that video too. Maybe. Maybe my brain needs a break from school so it doesn’t make me want to give up on it.

Thinking that through.

Meanwhile, my co-teacher, who I miss every day, is cleaning out her parents’ house (something I dread that will inevitably be in my future) and she’s been driving around with some recycling in her car for two or three days. She challenged me to get my thrift shop bags (which have been in the girlchild’s room since August and the entryway since she came to visit) into the car. Which I did…

There’s more in the garage, but I can’t deal with that right now. So now, whoever gets them to the center first is the winner? It’s certainly more likely to happen if they are in the car. She’ll probably beat me.

OK. Today we are doing a lab. It is a pretty fun lab, so I’m hoping it goes OK. I’m hoping I’m totally efficient today and get more grading and organizing done. Same with the weekend. It would be nice to have grading done a bit early so I could get ahead on the planning, but also maybe read my book and relax a bit. Ha! I’m pretty sure that’s not happening, but I will try. It’s almost October, usually one of my favorite months, despite the lack of days off. The weather mellows out, although it’s been OK this month (knock on wood), the chaos of the beginning of school chills out a bit (two weeks from now looks like hell on wheels; let’s not think about that). Not thinking about doing another two months (or more) without my co-teacher/planning person, but it’s good for her and that’s what counts. I’ve seen progress in one of the newbie teachers, and that is a good thing. Plus today is Friday, and that is always a splendid thing.

Unchaos

Oy. It’s Wednesday. That was quick. I’m getting not much done on anything. I mean, I must be doing something…I just don’t see a lot of progress on any of it. Ah well. I do like progress. I like to check things off boxes and cross things off lists. I like lists to get shorter. Probably shouldn’t have become a teacher then…they don’t get shorter until summer. At some point this week, I will get more efficient. Just not sure when. I got one lab set up, another one put away, then another one set up. I have sub plans for the literacy afternoon tomorrow, but not for Monday’s knee doctor. That could be problematic. I think I can do that one as an EdPuzzle, but it’s gonna take me an hour just to set it up. Grades still due. Evaluation paperwork still not done. Can’t even get my head around that one. Sigh. Whatever.

Art stuff has been limited this week too. I did finally finish cutting things out on Monday! A miracle. 21 1/2 hours of miracle.

I finished during book club. Like the Christmas socks? My feet have been cold at night. Nothing else is.

Then I set up the sorting chaos…

I guess it’s really the sorting unchaos. That box on top is all the pieces I cut, and then I sort them by 100s to make it easier to iron them together. Can’t imagine shuffling through a box of over 2000 pieces to find one. I spent almost an hour getting to this point.

Sorting the little tiny pieces takes forever. I put a pile in my hand and just sort one by one. This table is actually missing three more boxes sitting off to the side for the 1800s-2000s.

Last night, I went to the gym, which was good. I also finished my book and cooked dinner, and tried to grade a little, but yeah, was not efficient, so I didn’t start sorting until after 10 PM. Not great. I still have all these to sort.

It’s probably 30-45 minutes worth of sorting. So that’s tonight. I have pilates but I don’t have to cook. I do have to grade first. But I’ll set an alarm to remind me to stop. I swear.

Here’s a video tour of all the boxes except those last three…

This is boring, I must admit. I get tired of standing there and sorting. It does serve a purpose though. Makes the next step a million times easier.

So yeah. Getting there. Not there yet. Don’t see a big chunk of time in the next week to work on this. Will demand my Day Job Brain allow for an hour a night. Day Job Brain is freaking out about workload. Shhh. Nice Brain. Be good. It’ll be fine. We’ll grade like the wind. I just looked at Saturday’s schedule. Ha! Fuck. OK. It’s fine. It’s Wednesday. I could be super efficient between now and then.

Forgot this picture…when I got home yesterday, all the animals were in one room. It was weird. They don’t really socialize much. It’s usually one in this room, one in that room, and one that follows us all over.

I guess my homecoming was exciting.

Anyway, so I’ll be finishing the sorting tonight and then coming in here to the studio to try and straighten up enough that I can iron. I have two boxes of fabric I need to wash because of the cat…maybe I’ll start that tonight as well. Who knows? I could be amazing tonight. Last night? Nope. Was not. Not at all. Finished a book, though. That’s a thing. I’m allowed to do that. Should do more of it.

Lots of Trees…

Hey. Camping and hiking was good. Definitely helped my mindset. I got to draw for fun. I was still worried about some of the family stuff, but that’s better since yesterday. Unfortunately, the work stuff was full on in my face when I got home. Grades are due in a week, and now I have more stuff I have to do in the same time frame. I was hoping I’d have more time. Nah. Why give y’all time, you teachers? You don’t need time. I’ll get my head around it (maybe). I’m just irritated at everything piling up in the same week again. You can take time off from work, but you will pay for it later…and before, to be honest. I worked my butt off last week to make sure I was ready for this coming week without having the weekend. Ah well. I only have 7 things to grade and a pre-evaluation reflection to do. I love being told what to reflect about…like I didn’t spend all summer beating myself up about last year. I made goals for this year, all of them kinda shut down for now as we just get through it. None of MY goals are on the district list of what I should care about. And now you want me to make some other goal…ok, I can do that, but I don’t know how to implement it. I don’t have a fucking clue at the moment. I don’t have the time or the mental space. At all. One of my goals is work/life balance. Ironically, that never shows up on the evaluation list. I don’t know how to do that goal either.

Maybe I should go camping again this weekend. Ha! Sigh.

So camping started with hellacious traffic…apparently Interstate 8 is down to one lane for a while, so there was about an hour of this…

Except imagine all those cars and trucks merging into one lane and you’ll have it. We were hoping to get up there before dark. Mostly it was dusk and then dark as we were setting up the campground. We were smart enough to have easy dinner plans. The fire was good until it wasn’t. I think the Man restarted it 17 times. I was drawing the whole time, but my brain was still stuck in work and drive mode, so it turned into a lot of weird balloon heads.

Can’t really explain it. It rained a bit in the night, which is the best time for it to rain while camping. The next morning, we moved slowly, which is also OK. It wasn’t supposed to be super hot this weekend, so getting an early hiking start wasn’t required. Good thing, because I don’t think either of us had an early start in us.

We booked late, so we didn’t have a lot of campsite choices…this one was OK…lots of cars going past, needs some bushes or trees along the road (it used to have them…we could see the stumps)…

But we wandered the campground a few times and found some sites that would be better. Honestly, this was away from all the chaos of the center of the campground. That’s a plus.

We set out hiking late…

The Man hiked south of here when he did the PCT, but hadn’t done the northern section because he came off trail to resupply here. So he missed a bit of the trail. We hiked south to where he had camped last year when he was training to hike the second try.

Lots of trees…

Lots of flowers, which was nice…

Lots of bike tracks (not so nice)…no bikes allowed on the PCT, but this is what the assholes do…

If we cross it off, it doesn’t exist? For the number of people in the campground, I was surprised there weren’t more people on the trails. We didn’t see very many people at all. We did about 4.5 miles, came back to camp and rested/ate, then did another 2.5 miles north…

Just to see the desert view…

Always impressive.

It was National Get the Fuck Outside Day (actually National Public Lands Day or something nice like that…we were on public lands though!).

At that point, it was pretty warm, so I decided to wait 45 minutes for a shower.

Stared at the clouds a lot while waiting. Some people are totally inconsiderate in campgrounds. Like a 30-minute shower when 4 people are waiting. Annoying.

We went out to dinner. We really were trying to take care of ourselves this weekend. Make it good. Setting stuff up and taking it down is hard enough. We didn’t need to haul a second dinner with us. Then a successful fire night! I sat there for probably an hour before I could draw.

I was tired, and the pre-evaluation meeting shit had popped up on my calendar while we were hiking and I was irritated by it. But then I got it out of my head (well, I shoved it into a drawer) and I drew.

In case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when I draw in campgrounds…

That’s pretty much it. At some point, I put gloves on, because I was cold, and that made it harder to draw. But I did it anyway.

Up the next morning, no rush, here’s the morning wake-up woodpecker.

We made it home, put everything away, bought groceries, and I got back into the weekly grind. Send weekly email, make sure everything is set up for the week, I need sub plans for Thursday and next Monday (literacy meeting and knee doctor, finally). Full on cried a little while grading, after I made the to-do list and tried to figure out how I’d get it all done this week.

Then back to this…

Finally I can see the bottom of the to-cut box! I might finish tonight. Maybe. I have book club on Zoom. I’m supposed to be meeting some curator to pick a piece of art, but I haven’t heard from him, so who knows if it’s tonight or some other night. I have to grade stuff too. Not sure when that slots in. As usual.

Yeah. This is too real right now.

Sigh. It’s fine. Work is not ideal. I’m almost ready to iron this quilt together. That’s cool. I enjoyed most of the weekend. Also cool. Yes, I could take work notifications off my phone, but then I’d never remember to do any of it. Yeah. That might be a plan. Problematic plan, but a plan nonetheless.

Into the Mountains…

I thought yesterday was Friday. It felt very Friday-like. I was packing stuff up for camping, trying to keep on top of everything, getting a bunch of stuff done for school for next week. But no. I still have to go to school today. I get how kids feel about Friday. But if we had Friday off all the time, we’d feel that way about Thursday instead. I’m still playing catchup from last week’s horde of meetings. So I’m not caught up on grading at all. Next week will be all grading, all the time. Progress report grades are coming up already. Yesterday, there was a lot of yelling (it was me) in the morning about stupid shit (adult shit, not kid shit), but by the afternoon, there was a win (free supplies!), but then the evening brought more shit. That wasn’t school-related though, so I can’t blame the day job.

Tonight, I’ll be sleeping in the mountains. That’s cool. Not taking any grading with me. Also cool. Very cool. Hiking tomorrow. Another sleep in the mountains. Hopefully a bit of a reset. Knock on wood.

I wanted to be done cutting things out last night. I worked for an hour on Wednesday night…

Still couldn’t see the bottom. Mostly 200s on top. Last night, I Zoomed with stitchy friends and did almost 2 hours…

STILL can’t see the bottom. But they’re almost all 100s. I think another night or two will do it. I’m not taking it camping either…don’t want to risk losing any pieces somewhere I can’t go back and find them. It’s OK. I’ll be ironing together next week no matter what.

I finally had time to water the yard yesterday. It’s been a shit week for that, apparently. Here’s some cool things I found…these roots…

So pretty. And this plant has never bloomed before.

It’s a succulent I’ve had for a while. I thought it was going to die, so I repotted it and gave it more shade, and it got happy. Makes me happy too. I think when I retire, I will just cultivate tiny succulent gardens all over the yard from cuttings. Wait. My neighbor does that. Hmm.

This sold this week, on Etsy.

All the other birds sold ages ago and I felt really badly for this one. It was unloved and now it is loved. Shipping it off today. I think it’s the last of the birds? I might have one small one left. They were fun to make, but I don’t have time for that stuff at the moment. Who am I kidding? I barely have time for anything. Sigh.

OK. School today. Giving a quiz. A bunch of kids will be on a field trip. Not the bunch I’d LIKE to be on a field trip (that never happens). Giving a quiz on Friday means a bunch of kids will be absent. Oh well. There’s some leeway next week for them to make shit up. Maybe. I don’t really know. I’m planning out but there’s not a lot of interaction to do that. I don’t like it. It’s too much like last year. I probably already said that this week. Yeah. Then duty at the light (ugh), get room ready for next week, post office, pack up the car, say goodbye to the boychild, who will be on animal duty, and head up into the mountains. Geez. Just typing that makes me want to cry. OK then. Let’s do it. Sooner I get to work, the sooner I’ll be in the mountains.

Do the Things…

There’s an old cat behind me, rubbing her head on my back, which is why I will have cat hair on my back and not even know about it all day. It’s OK. She’s old. I don’t know how much time she has left and she’s become pretty antisocial, except with me. And sometimes even with me. I didn’t see her last night until bedtime. She has a new hiding place, which I know about, but if she won’t come out on her own, it’s sufficiently hidden enough that I can’t get her out without dragging her out. And there isn’t usually a need for that. So I’ll be cat-hair lady today.

I got a goodly chunk of trimming done on Monday night, after grading a whole class of unit packets. I even started reading a new book.

I was so efficient. Shorter staff meeting, I guess. I copied stuff after school, but was still done by about 4:30. Yesterday, I went to the gym. So pro…I got a lot more reading done on that book, plus I exercised. Con…I didn’t get as much trimming done. I did grade another class unit, though. Two more of those. Hoping to get a chunk done in class today while walking them through a thing I’ve never done before, so that should go well. Ha! Only 30 minutes of trimming last night…

Lots of bigger pieces down there left to cut. I think I’m close to being in the swamp and the earth on the other side. Lots of 200s and a few 300s still. Getting there. My goal really is to be fully trimmed in the next two nights. I think I can do it. I also need to pack for camping, though. And get school stuff ready for next week.

School. Ugh. Kinda lost my mind yesterday. You know how you take on stuff, and then more stuff, and then the stupidest tiniest thing gets added on, and that’s it, that’s the one where your brain is like, NOPE. Can’t do it. Can’t make me. Not gonna. Yeah. Well that was possibly over the weekend and then yesterday. It’s fine. I CAN do it. I’ve been trying to push stuff out to the other teachers so I’m not doing so much. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. So then I’m losing my prep period again to something that wasn’t planned. Plus I don’t really have someone to plan my curriculum with. It’s not working well. It’s just sort of a repeat of last year’s scramble, except with new stuff, but then I see my kids not getting it, or it’s just a boring fill-out-the-worksheet thing…again…and I’m like, nope, can’t do that, revise again with my kids in mind, they need hands-on and repeats, and I think here I am in September and it feels too much like last year and last year sucked.

I turned yesterday’s worksheet into a table competition and it was awesome. Sometimes my planning brain is really good.

So I’m trying to revise all that in my head and having a hard time with it. My team wants me to ask my principal if he can evaluate me another year, that I have too much on my plate. I’m not sure whether it matters. I’m also not sure I won’t cry at our first evaluation meeting because I’m still straight up dealing with the shit from last year in my head. I had hopes for this year, and they’re not gone, just on hold, which is what I keep telling myself. You can do this little bit. It’s not a lot. Just keep forcing the issue of responsibility back on others. My team wants me to let the others flail, but I can’t do that. All those 7th graders will be on our teams next year, and I don’t want to deal with the fallout if I let it all go. Certainly the thought of having to reflect on what I need to ‘progress as a teacher’ and then finding the time to apparently DO THAT? Yeah, that’s gonna make me cry right now. I’m a little too much still in survival mode.

Too much to think about. What I really need to do is go in today, do the things, meet with the people, do what I can, go to pilates, come home and grade, then cut things out. Read a little. Start packing for camping. Take a deep breath. Or ten. Thousand.

Here’s a happy puppy.

That said, he was a total barky asshole last night. So sleep would be nice tonight as well.

Giant Holes

Up early. For me. Meeting in the morning, and due to all the crazy stuff last Friday, my room’s not ready for teaching today. So I need to do that before the meeting. Then three meetings after school. Seems like enough. This week should be easier than last week, at least in terms of hours spent after school doing school-related stuff. I might even get paid for some of those hours. Not all of them. Did you know we don’t get paid for Back-to-School Night? It’s considered one of our duties, so being at school until 6:20 PM is unpaid. Yup. Exhausting too.

The girlchild was home this weekend. I fixed 6 pairs of her pants and put giant holes in the other pair. Don’t ask. She got a cheaper replacement. Also we hadn’t seen her in months, so it was nice to see her. Even if she brings the dog to the table…

My poor parents are still jet-lagged from their Ireland trip, but this is when she was home, so we got takeout and hung out.

She’ll be back in December. Miss her already, although I should just teach her to sew her own hems, at least the fixit ones. Just didn’t have time to deal with it this weekend. Or energy.

I also packed up a quilt and delivered it to Visions…the opening is October 14.

There are also supposed to be artist talks on the 15th…I just don’t have details of that yet.

And of course, I did cut little things out all weekend…Friday night, while watching a movie with the kids…can’t remember the name. Animated. Elemental?

Got through all the robes…then Saturday night after dinner with the fam…

I watched some strange Irish movie, not on purpose because that’s where the parentals had been, but because Hulu had movies that are/were Oscar nominees. Does that make sense? And this was one of them? Maybe. I don’t even know. I thought it was labeled as a comedy, but it wasn’t funny. The Banshees of Inisherin…and yes, it’s labeled a comedy/drama. More drama I’d say. Maybe not the best choice for a Saturday night. Ah well.

And then Sunday night, after driving the girlchild to the airport and an interesting dinner…

I got about 4 1/2 hours done this weekend, and I’m down into just a few of the 600s, mostly 500s, so that many left. I’m hoping to be done trimming this week, maybe even sorted, although we’re going camping, and no way am I taking this box of 2000 little pieces with us. Can’t sort it in a campground anyway. But hopefully I’ll be ironing this together next week. That will take a good long while, that’s for sure. Back to standing up every day after work. It’s been nice to sit for a while.

Speaking of camping, the Man has upgraded the camping bed yet again. Says the getting down and up off the mattress on the ground is getting to him.

We tried it out. It’s still bouncy. Because it’s still an air mattress. We’ll also be taking his new hiking tent so he can set it up. It’ll be the camping man cave. When he’s tired of the big tent, he can go to the little tent.

Seriously, sometimes you have to take just as much stuff for a 2-night trip as you do for a 10-night trip.

This was last night’s dinner. It sounded good and then I started thinking about all the ingredients and faltered. Told the girlchild all the ingredients and she wished me luck. But it was good! It has beer and salsa verde and Frank’s hot sauce and cream cheese and a bunch of other stuff.

Somehow it all melded together into tasty. Not sure how.

The old lady…15 now. Sort of eating. Sometimes.

I bribe her with treats and smears of the other cats’ food.

One of our students drew this. I love that we are standing on them…

Both me and Bailey need to smile more? I feel like I’m OK in class…it’s the extras that are dragging me down. The planning-alone stuff is back and I could do without it.

Ah well. It is what it is. When my principal asks what I want to work on for my evaluation year, I’ll let him know ‘work-life balance’, although it’s definitely not one of the standards they give us. Yay! More work!

OK, set up classroom, meeting #1, teach vocab, meetings #2-4, home. Possible collapse. Start New Book (I’m allowed). Do all the things I didn’t get done over the weekend because girlchild was here. Cut things out. All good.

It’s a Simple Life…

Body hurts. Head…doesn’t hurt. Good. Parents are home from Ireland. Girlchild is on a plane down here. Boychild is presumably driving home from fire duty right now. I just need to survive a Friday and a 2-hour sex-ed curriculum meeting. Yesterday the only conflict was between the words ‘birth control’ and ‘contraception’. Fun talk. More today. Then takeout with the fam (I hope) and probably some school stuff, plus I have to pack a quilt up to be delivered tomorrow. And deal with school at some point. I have reached the point of ‘buried in grading’. It did not take long. I was doing OK. Now I’m not. Sigh.

Anyway, Back-to-School Night was last night and I talked until 6:20 PM. My throat hurts this morning and my body feels like a Mack truck hit it. Fun stuff. Today is a slightly longer lunch so parents can come eat with their kids (IDK if they will). So we also get a slightly longer lunch. One of my favorite teachers offered to order lunch out for us…not sure if it’s being delivered or what, but I’m in. Something different. Something that makes it easier.

I have managed to cut stuff out each night, despite arriving home feeling exhausted. I have almost made it through what looked like the week from hell on the calendar. All good. I think I’m at the halfway mark. Certainly last night, I was cutting out a lot of things in the 1000s, although some of the higher-numbered pieces are still showing up. Cutting out the robes is coming up. I did those all at once. Anyway, I can see progress, although slow.

And then last night, after all the things.

One box fills as the other empties. Maybe another week? Or just under? Although we are camping next weekend, so there’s that. But hopefully I’ll be ironing this together starting around the 25th? We’ll see. That’s my goal.

Here’s a couple of pictures from Saturday’s opening…

I love this one, where only Polly is smiling at the camera with her eyes open.

IDK what I’m looking at. The outdoors. Escape :-). Not really. I love these people. I just get weirded out at openings.

In other news, here’s my barely colored cover page for the next science unit.

I have too much to grade to color. Maybe I should have my TA do it? It’s a possibility. She’s a coloring force.

This is a local high-school district.

There’s a definite anti-LGTBQIA force wandering through our school boards and community members at the moment. School board voted in. By idiots. Parents of those students. I think my whole team is buying rainbow shirts at the moment.

Realized the other day that my stove drip pan was semi-nonfunctional.

Yeah. That’s impressive, Nida. Obviously paying attention. Yes, I replaced them.

This is EXACTLY how I felt last night.

and this…

Me today. Not just right after I wake up. For about an hour after.

OK. Get to work, set up demo/lab stuff, get some stuff done for next week, prep labs for the long-term sub, enjoy a longer lunch (10 whole minutes), stand at the light on the corner for 15 minutes after school (making sure kids don’t do stupid stuff like last week), go to 2-hour sex-ed meeting, come home and enjoy the kids, hopefully. Work. Cut things out. It’s a simple life. Ha!

Cutting of the Tiny Things…

Hey. This week. Yeah. I am in pajamas today for pajama day, but it’s a bit warm and I have a meeting after school and 17 errands to run, so if I’m smart, I’ll pack a pair of pants that isn’t flannel for later. Am I smart? Sometimes. I feel like this is a practical thing though, and I’m OK with those.

I’m not sure when I will get home tonight, but I do know I will be cutting things out tonight. Late. And tired.

I got the good news this morning that my newest quilt will be going to the SAQA Fierce Planets exhibit. Good news, since I made it for that one. Two for two! I make them and they leave.

OK. So this was Monday night’s cutting of the tiny things.

Top box, to do. Middle box, done. Bottom box, trash.

Then last night’s…

Flipped top and bottom. I still have a few 1300s to cut out, but mostly I see 1200s and 1100s. So maybe 700-800 pieces done? I’m definitely into Amy Coney-Barrett (her pieces, not the person…definitely not into the person), but I still have some of Ketanji Brown Jackson to go. I ironed pieces going from bottom to top; I’m cutting pieces from top to bottom. I’ve been cutting for 7 hours and 44 minutes. So yeah, it’s going to be at least 15 hours. That’s half the ironing time though.

Boychild left, Simba does not understand. He just barks and barks for the first night, every time.

The girlchild is coming this weekend, and he doesn’t understand that either. To his credit, he slept through most of the night, although I think everyone was awake at 3 AM for some inexplicable reason. I could do without that shit.

This is too true.

OK. Teaching, meeting, teaching some more, another longer meeting, then cat meds, watering the parents (they come home tomorrow, hallelujah), Home Depot for slats, trash out, cook dinner. Sounds like a lot. It is a lot. I could do with less. Then more cutting. I graded last night, a lot. I feel like today it’s not happening. I mean, maybe in class, but not at home. Not after all that.

Must Be September.

Apparently I woke up to the alarm this morning, exclaiming OH MY GOD. It didn’t feel like long enough. Also I didn’t sleep well, which often happens on a Sunday night. Pre-school Oh-Shits. Although I’m still adjusting to just one thing that I’m teaching, I need to often prep for two things. Like all last week. And this week. This week is meeting hellacious. Two hours today…thought it might run shorter, but no…literacy in the second half. It’ll go until the end of the 2-hour mark. Then union meeting on Wednesday (2 hours), sex-ed curriculum on Thursday AND Friday, plus Back-to-School Night on Thursday (many hours total). Not sure why this week has to be hell. And the girlchild is coming to visit this weekend, which is awesome, but her room is a disaster and it’s all my fault. And the parentals are coming home. It’s just chaos. Today after the two hours of meetings, I have three places I have to go to pick up mail, buy slats, etc. Art to deliver over the weekend, need to get it ready. And it feels like nothing got done this weekend.

Must be September. My brain knows that by the end of this month, routines will be better, all the extras that school likes to throw at you will have adjusted, and the weather will probably have calmed the fuck down. It was hot yesterday. However, the end of this month is quite a ways away and I’m not sure I will get there unscathed.

Did I mention I drove to LA on Saturday? Yeah, it was our California Fibers’ Influences/Influencers exhibit at Craft in America. I had one piece in the show and all everybody could say was, “That’s the smallest piece I’ve ever seen of yours.” Well, yeah, it’s 16×20″. But it has over 800 pieces in it.

Obligatory selfie…

Wall of pieces: Doshi on the left, Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, then Charlotte Bird, then me.

So you can see it really is small. I gave her two or three other choices that were bigger. It’s OK…it’s a cool piece.

It was a busy opening eventually. It’s a pain driving to LA though. I left at 10:30 AM, sat in a cafe and graded for a bit, then after the opening, got home at 8 PM. Lost day, really. Felt exhausted by the end of it. I know the LA members of our group love shows up there and I can see why: all their friends and family can come. Ah well. It’ll be up for a while…through December 2. You should check it out!

Around all that, I cut stuff out. Not a ton, but an hour and a bit a night.

Friday night…doesn’t look like much.

Saturday night looks like more…

Two episodes of something instead of one. I’m rewatching the Sherlock series Elementary, because I don’t think I saw them all. I was watching Madam Secretary, but the real politics are too close and I needed a break after the first season. In the middle box are all the pieces I’ve cut out. The bottom is what still needs cutting. Because I put them in there in the order I ironed them down, they are pretty much in backwards numerical order. So I can kind of keep track of how far I’ve gotten. That’s the Supreme Court building I see there.

I got all of that cut out last night, along with most of Roberts. Not his robes…all the robes are further down. But that’s Sotomayor’s hair right there. So I’m somewhere in the 1400-1500s, but the robes aren’t done yet. So maybe 500 pieces cut out. Cutting out is usually faster than ironing. I don’t have to think deeply about cutting out…I just do it. Ironing requires thought. Well ironing to fabrics does…ironing it together, you just follow the pattern and the numbers.

I spent about 6 hours working for school yesterday. So yeah, things aren’t settled or pretty yet. Not sure when they will be. It’s my fault, because I could just copy shit the way it’s handed to me, but I know how my kids learn, and so I’m editing from that perspective. Which sometimes means retyping stuff. I did (not) have help…

Thanks Nova. I think she knocked down my very important post-it too.

Sigh. Feed me dinner, lady.

OK. I will. Get up off the couch and do the things (this was Friday night. I napped when I got home.).

Today. Long. Cutting things out sits at the end.

Fingernails and Eyeballs

Friday is here. It feels like it’s early and yet…not. I have earned this Friday as much as the others. Next week’s Friday will be incredibly well-earned. Sigh. I’m waiting for a call back from my insulin pen manufacturer, because I have a defective one and the pharmacy won’t replace it blah blah comes in a box of 5 blah blah can’t give you just one blah blah looks like a defect blah blah. So I’ve been on hold with one place last night that never answered (24/7 my ass) and one place this morning that gave me another number and I waited and finally left a voice mail, so they will inevitably call during school hours and I will never get this solved. I do have more insulin coming today, luckily. Otherwise this would be a bigger deal. Worst case, I’ll have the doc do a new prescription in time for the next batch that should mail. Such a pain how they regulate meds. I had one batch of meds get lost in the mail and it took 4 hours and 2 pharmacies to sort it out. My mom made some text comment about socialized medicine and I wanted to say, YAH, let’s do that, because what we have is idiotic.

Anyway. I’m OK. My blood sugar wasn’t too high this morning, considering no insulin. I’m pretty active during the day and tonight’s dose will arrive today. We’ll be good.

For school, we finally finished the longest 6 (7?) days of labs I’ve ever done…well, since last year…and things are almost under control for next week. Maybe. I’m staying after school today to try to put away this whole lab. I have most of the next 7th-grade lab gathered for delivery to the other building. My co-teacher pulled through a shopping save last night after I had searched the entire world for the rest of the aquarium rocks. I still need to buy stuff for 8th grade, but I need a point clarified first. Well. I think 4 points clarified. Today the kids take a test (assessment?), so hopefully they’re quiet and on task. Ha. Yeah. I know. This 8th-grade group is more challenging than last year’s, which makes sense, because it includes some of our kids from last year. I did see one kid who apparently wanted to be on our team again, but I think I said I’d quit if I had him for another year. Good times.

I have a cold, which complicates all this. It’s not COVID…I’m up standing (not upstanding) and just full of phlegm and my voice is a mess. I have an opening in LA tomorrow and have to drive up and back…I’ll just be drinking lots of tea and not talking much. Also this is day 5? or maybe 6?

I think I already talked about the opening. Welcome to my brain on the lesser coronavirus.

So Wednesday night, I finished ironing. Finally. Well, there are three little pieces of Wonder Under that I found that don’t match anything and/or I might have already recut.

So I’m just saving them until the end, in case I need them. I know one is the Swamp Thing’s chin hairs and I don’t know if I redrew it (I circled it on the drawing…who the fuck knows what I meant by that in mid-August?) or just ignored it. And I’m not searching through that box for the 100s, which is where it would be. I’ll just keep cutting until I get there.

The ironing took 33 1/2 hours. That is a record for me. It also used 212 fabrics…another record. I think.

It’s not like I keep a spreadsheet of quilt facts. Lots of black, gray, and white. Plus all the fleshtones in that box in the top left.

It doesn’t look like much in the box because so many of the pieces are minute.

Last night, I started cutting…late, because I sorted the fabrics first. It’s really pleasing to me to see the colors sorted like that. It also makes it easier to put them away. Which won’t happen until I start the next one. At the rate I’m going, it might be October or November before that happens. This isn’t even that big a quilt. I’ve made bigger. It’s just detail heavy. So is the one that is showing at Craft in America, starting tomorrow…a small piece at 16×20″, but over 800 pieces in it.

This is And Then There Was One…about the kids leaving for college. Survived that.

Anyway, I did start cutting the Supreme Court piece out last night…

That’s about 40 minutes worth. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a bunch of tiny letters down there and they are a pain in the ass. Don’t ask how many of those there are in this thing. It’s OK, I have 5 more seasons of Madam Secretary to get through. I’m hoping it doesn’t take that long to cut this out though. Cutting is generally faster than ironing. Some of the smallest pieces I don’t cut out until I’m ironing so I don’t lose them. I suspect there will be lots of those in this quilt. Fingernails and eyeballs.

OK. My cold meds aren’t great. I need to clean up a huge mess at school. I need to make sure the sub knows how to use Google Forms (she needs to make a copy…and I know I said that, but I probably also said I’d help her). I need to deliver lab stuff and go talk to a staff member again about something she reacted badly to yesterday (why is this my job?). I need to give a test to 135 kids and hope they do well. I have duty at the light. I might need to go to Home Depot…AGAIN. And tomorrow, I’ll spend 6 or 7 hours driving. Podcasts! Tea! No hike tomorrow…probably I don’t feel up to it anyway. I hate these first few weeks of September. School really drags on you sometimes. But I am glad to not be standing over an iron for a while. I’ll be back there in 3-4 weeks, sure, and that’s the most exciting part, putting it all together, but the thought of just sitting and meditatively cutting for a few weeks sounds nice.