Finish Ironing Ruth…

Short weeks are weird. They’re rare too. Except in February, when they happen 50% of the time. I personally think they should do Back-to-School Night on the short week, but it seems they always pick the week after and fill it with all the things. Today and tomorrow are a bit rough due to early morning shit, which is not my favorite, but there’s no other meetings, nothing but pilates and my parents’ stuff, which might be enough. It’s good that it’s short, because I’m fighting off a cold. No fever, just snot and tired. And no, I didn’t get it from school. The Man is about two days ahead of me in snot, so I should feel fine in a day or two. Today, however, ugh. Not so much. Actually, now that I’m upright and drinking hot tea, I’m doing OK. Last night? Not so much. I was going to go to the gym and my body said no, take a nap instead, so I did. Then cooked dinner. Didn’t do any of the other stuff I was going to do. Finally came in here to iron. The end of the tunnel is right there, within reach, probably tonight. Depending on everything else. Today is a bit messy.

So Monday, I got about 3 hours of ironing in, which was delightful.

In the first round, I got the Supreme Court building ironed…at some point, I wanted a flag fabric, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought…oh yes…

Found it! I don’t have everything in my stash, but I have some things.

Then I finished all of the goddess around all the justices.

Seven bins of fabric at the moment. Crazy. It’s a lot. The goddess is all earth colors…not earth TONES, mind you…some bright greens and blues, with rocks and dirt below with the roots.

That sort of fabric choosing is much easier for me to do…faster than realistic faces.

Then I started on the stuff above the goddess last night…

When I researched the justices, I picked about 5 decisions that were important to me: climate change, reproductive rights, abortion rights, LGBTQIA rights, gun control, and education. I looked at how each justice voted and read their explanations. I also researched any issues with them, mostly ethical. So that’s how I drew what I drew. On top of the goddess’ arms are the rights I decided were important. So I ironed three of those last night, plus Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face and hands and the shredded American flag. Because that’s where I feel like we’re at right now: a shredded version of what we should be, heading backwards into stupidity.

I finished the 1800s and most of the 2000s, and started the 1900s.

This is all I have left to iron…

It’s Ruth’s robe and wings, plus hands reaching for a diploma, an LGBTQIA flag, and a hand with a gun. I’m hoping to finish tonight. It’s been a trip choosing all these fabrics. A long and sometimes torturous trip. Worth it, but not easy. Next up? Cutting them all out, then ironing them together. It’ll take all month, easy.

Man, the next quilt should be smaller and easier. The quilt that is currently at Quilt National (which was not small or easy) was the piece to ease my brain after doing the abortion quilt that’s currently in Virginia. I needed a break from thinking about the politics and the attitudes. As I’ve been making this quilt, the court never stays out of the news, mostly for ethical issues, which should so not be the case.

Anyway. There we are.

This weekend, I’ll be at the California Fibers’ opening in Los Angeles.

I have one small but insanely complicated piece in the show. I’m not looking forward to the drive, but am looking forward to the show. LA on a Saturday afternoon…ugh. Ah well. Lost day.

Finally saw another caterpillar on my milkweed.

We have about 15 plants all together in the front yard. The plants have been doing well, and there have been lots of butterflies…I just haven’t seen many caterpillars. It’s possible the birds are dealing with them. I just planted more seeds this weekend, but native ones. We’ll see how they do and what they look like, because I’m not sure what I bought…as usual. The ones I’m growing are popping seeds all over the place, but they won’t do anything without the deep freeze ahead of time, so I could try to gather some of them and put them in the fridge for the winter, see if that works. Maybe if I remember to go out there and collect them.

OK. Second to last day of labs for 8th grade today, hallelujah. I’m done. It’s like they’re slowing down instead of speeding up, getting more efficient. Meanwhile, I’m trying to prep 7th grade labs for next week because all the stuff is in our prep room and long story short, sometimes it’s easier to just do the things (I’m only doing part of it, just gathering stuff and making the rocks) than to have someone come in there and try to do it themselves. Because they don’t. They send a kid and that means I still have to do it. I’m frustrated. My team upstairs says just let all of them flail and do it themselves, which I’m trying to do. Much as I can. But I need the other teacher to be ahead of the newbies, not behind. Sigh. Today is the 8th-grade meeting and I think it will be tense. I hope not; I hope there’s a good explanation for why nothing is where I asked for it to be, but I can’t think of one. And I’m going to have to really scramble to get shit ready in two days either way.

Anyway. Whatever. Do school. Go to pilates. Hope I feel better. Water the parental plants and gather all their mail and do all their things. Remember the damn green beans for the dog (yes, I said green beans). Maybe take another nap. Finish ironing Ruth. All good. Short week.

A Train on Steroids

Ah a Monday off of work. The sweet sound of children screaming in next-door’s pool. The delightful challenge of installing a dryer vent with at least two trips to Home Depot, plus the scintillating smell of cat pee (gotta wash the litter tray completely out and or throw it out and buy a new one). I finished (almost) all of my work yesterday so I wouldn’t have to do any today. I would’ve done more, but the (um WTF is another word for delightful but when you don’t really mean it) ENCHANTING trait of one of my co-teachers to NOT upload the things I need to plan ahead NOR to answer emails or texts means I can do no more. Lucky that, I guess, although I’ll pay for it later.

This weekend has been a lot of gardening and house stuff, trying to get things under control, because the next three weeks are a little out of control already. I see them barreling at me, like a train on steroids. No worries. Really. It’s like this every year. Adding in an opening in Los Angeles next weekend and camping two weekends after that. Because there’s nothing like a little crazy when it’s already nuts.

I did manage ironing. I’m about 4-5 hours away from done, I think. I don’t think I’ll get there today, but I will sometime this week. Which is good. I’m in the mood to cut things out for a while instead.

Friday night, I ironed the rest of Kavanaugh down…

And started Coney-Barrett.

Saturday, I was much more effective…got Coney-Barrett done, plus Brown-Jackson, and started Kagan…

I did some before we headed out for some art openings and dinner…

And some after all that.

It’s getting pretty chaotic in the fabric bins.

There’s a lot of black and flesh tones in this quilt…

I added more after this…but I also took some out of the far left bin. They didn’t work.

Last night, I ironed the rest of Kagan and all of Sotomayor.

Just Roberts left…and Bader Ginsburg. I’m in the middle of the 1500s. So about 500 pieces left, but I’ve done a few of them already, Roberts’ robes I think. What’s left?

The rest of the goddess, which includes the Supreme Court building itself, then all the things planted on top of the goddess’ arms. So like I said, I’m getting there. The next bits should go a little faster. Maybe. When it’s more about what’s in my head and less about trying to realistically match a skin tone or make a decision about eye color…might be faster. I’m 27 1/2 hours into the ironing. Epic.

So Friday after work, I headed down to the water for a friend’s mom’s retirement party.

It was delightfully cool and oceany, unlike my entire week.

And it was good to hang out with the other work team for a while.

Her mom had lots of smiles on, which is a good thing.

Saturday afternoon, the Man and I went to two related art openings, one at City College and one at Art Produce. I loved Bhavna’s piece at City College, I Found a River in My Body.

Some of her smaller pieces are available at Art Produce. There is an auction going on to raise money for more art stuff. You can find the link at the Art Produce site.

We had a drink while waiting for the second show to open, and then went back to the same place for dinner. There are more bars and restaurants opening in the area, which is cool, because Art Produce has been there for a long time, waiting for the rest to show up.

Lots of art in the area, including this Gloria Muriel mural…

Yesterday I planted all the succulents that have been lying around after being trimmed off something else. I think I need to water today too. Plus iron. Plus book club is tonight, rescheduled. I really just want to lie on the couch, drinking tea and reading my book. I’m feeling a bit off, not quite well. Drinking lots of Vitamin C and hoping for the best.

Kitten is overseeing the ironing like a boss.

Sometimes she is more demanding than others…

Ah yes, thanks for Labor Day all…someone posted this wonderful reminder by @ricardolevinsmorales…

Really, that’s all teachers want. Less of the work, more of the rest and what we will. It’s too hard with what has been put on our plates so far. Certainly, I’ve probably done 8 hours so far this weekend. Most weekends it’s 5-6. Plus all the after hours stuff. Ugh.

OK. So for the rest of the day, I am going to read for a bit, then look at the to-do list. I’m going to iron as well, get myself through the last of the living justices. School this week will be short but probably painful (two early morning meetings, not my favorite). There will be a lot of grading coming the end of this week and the start of the next, and I won’t have a good chunk of the weekend. The neighbor kids have hit an unreasonable noise level that probably won’t let up for 5 or 6 hours, unfortunately. Ah well. And tomorrow, back to work. No more days off until November. The long stretch of September and October is here. Not a fan, although October weather can be lovely. Hopefully. Bright blue skies with cotton ball clouds. A bit of a breeze but not so warm. It’s actually like that today, but not for long…warm days are coming.

Honeymoon Over…

Whoa. This week. Exhausting. Doing labs every day is one part. The second part is that we are two weeks in, so the honeymoon period is OOOVVVEEERR. Oh yes. First fight, first referrals, first inability to listen during a lab, then a helicopter and police shutting us down into secure lockdown right before class gets out. Mayhem, y’all, fucking mayhem. And that was just Thursday. We still need to get through Friday. I blame the blue supermoon and also well it’s middle school and this is how we roll until we don’t. During the secure lockdown, parents were calling kids because the school sent out a call and yeah, parents, could you NOT? Your kid is fine. They are locked in a room with a tired teacher and your patience is noted. Also some kids have a sense of entitlement with their phones that can only come from their parents. One told me it was “after hours” so she could have it out (we literally kept them 4 minutes after the bell…FOUR minutes y’all). I hope these kids figure reality out at some point. But since their parents haven’t, it seems unlikely.

Anyway. I also made about 25-30 short videos of everything we’re doing in the labs so the absent kids and the kids who didn’t finish CAN finish…I downloaded and ordered them last night, although iCloud was being a cranky bitch, so I didn’t get all of them, plus realized I’m missing some, so I’ll get those today. Last-year’s self wanted to do it but never found the time. Next-year’s self will be happy with me. This-year’s self is fucking exhausted.

That said, I did iron. I peeled myself off the damn couch, stopped watching cat videos, and walked my ass in here to iron. I think I got 49 minutes last night. I also didn’t cook dinner. We ate all our leftovers instead. Seriously, I do like food, but at some point, it’s just fuel and I could swallow a pill and keep going and I’d be fine.

Wednesday, I ironed Alito down and started Thomas…

Well I laid out all the parts and ironed his shoes and shirt and tie. I gave him red shoes. Each justice has their name on their robe, and I made the names in rainbow colors because I can and then matched the tie. So far, all the baddies are men. Amy will need something. Yes, I am just ironing justices for DAYS. One a day, to be clear. And also yes, that’s two cups of different kinds of tea. Don’t ask. It was necessary.

Close-up of box…

Seriously just adding about 50 tiny pieces each night to the pile.

So last night, I finished Thomas’ face and then laid out Kavanaugh.

Did the shoes, his name, his shirt, his tie. Didn’t get to the beer bottles because I was really tired at that point. And I realized I was gonna have to figure out what fabric I used for the previous beer bottles. Didn’t have the brain energy for that.

I gave him dirty socks. Seemed legit. I have 22 hours into the ironing so far. Slow. I keep saying that. I’m in the 1100s though. And some of the 1200s are done. And once I pick the 5 face/flesh fabrics, it’s easy to iron that down. I’d like to think I’ll get a goodly chunk done tonight, but I’m going to a social thing and that does not bode well for energy this evening. So assume Kavanaugh’s face will get done and Coney-Barrett’s stuff will get laid out. And I’ll do her shoes and her whatever is under her robe (let’s not think too hard about that). Then I have three days off. Yes, I have a shit-ton of work to do. Yes, I am tired. But also, yes, I want to finish the ironing so I can spend a few weeks cutting all these tiny pieces out. I started ironing down on August 13, right near the beginning of school. It’s time to be done. So that’s my weekend goal…about 800 pieces. I can do that. Can’t I? Ugh. Also, I can’t do a bunch of the school work unless my other co-teacher uploads all her shit so I can start making sense of things.

I visited Annie yesterday…

She’s still a spaz.

But I like her.

OK. Lab day. Probably will lose my prep to subbing a teacher who’s been out all week for a totally legit emergency, but they never got a sub for him. Then social thing. Plus dealing with parental stuff. Haven’t heard from them, so presumably they’re fine. Hike on Saturday…required! It’s been getting cooler, so that should be good. We could even do it Sunday with the Monday off. We’ll see. I’d rather do two if I could. Lots of yardwork. Wondering if spiders are smart enough to realize their web in a particular area (the middle of the damn path) gets knocked down a lot so maybe they should move it? Not sure if that level of natural selection and/or Darwinism works with spiders. It’s been real this week. Hoping a lot of kids are absent today for the long weekend so I don’t have to deal with the crazy level we’ve been at. It would be a plus. Some chill please.

Men’s Lips…

So I don’t think I slept a lot last night. I tried everything. I exercised, but not too late. I mediated…really badly, honestly though. I tried ambient night noise. Nope. That made me anxious. I took melatonin, which usually doesn’t work, but nothing else was working either. I hate nights like that. I mean, it was hot and I had to close the windows because the pup was growling and barking at anything in a 5-mile radius that made noise. Today will be slightly cooler, and then it will really cool off, hallelujah. And based on the sleep I didn’t do last night, I should be exhausted by tonight, yeah? I’m hoping.

School yesterday was stressful. I suspect a lot of the to-do list made it to nighttime post-meditation brain and that wasn’t helping. The overwhelm hit hard…but I have a plan that I’m going to try to stick to, assuming there isn’t more shit waiting to fall into my lap. Teachers are already losing prep periods to cover absent teachers. Today, I have an 8th-grade meeting that I really need to happen or I don’t know what I’m doing next week (minor issue), plus I need to go do the mail and watering for my parents…after pilates. Still need to get through three classes of grading last week’s assignment, which I would normally bang through before or just after school, but that time gets eaten up by new/sub science teachers needing me, which is fine, except it’s part of the overwhelm. I know it will get better. It’s just a long way away. At least I’m short on meetings this week, although I realized yesterday that there’s an informal thing I really should do tomorrow. Ugh. For school. Of course.

Anyway, so Monday, I managed an hour of ironing…mostly getting all those robes ironed down and then starting Gorsuch’s other parts. I did his shirt and tie, his shoes, etc. I left his face and hands and a single ankle for Tuesday night.

You can see all his hand/face pieces laid out on the left. Above the box are all the other hand/face piles for each of the justices so far. Last night, I ironed his face, hands, and that single ankle.

He’s a super pale guy. But I also found myself googling “gorsuch eye color” last night, which is beyond weird. It was hazel green. Couldn’t tell from the photos.

Then I laid out Alito’s pieces. He has a fish, so I ironed that.

I made it pink and purple. Because I could. I only got about 32 minutes of ironing last night. I had a contract to fill out for an art thing, plus I needed to get one class of that assignment graded. I tried to get home early to go to the gym, but got side-tracked by humans and then needed to make a video and a post, etc. Not getting a lot of help on that stuff, so yeah. But after being interrupted three times, I finally got the video done! Woohoo! Even though it’s blurry, because whatever the problem is with my doc cam, it’s still a problem after replacing everything in the room. I should bring a tripod today. I need to make some more videos for a kid who will be out of my class. His fault, but I want him to succeed. My fault? Huh. Sigh.

Here’s the box in its current state of not fullness.

I did go to the gym, mostly to read my book. I needed it. So home late, dinner late, everything late. Tonight will be the same. It’ll probably be 7 before I get home from watering. At least I’m not cooking tonight.

That might be my retirement dream job right there. Except I’m not sure I’ll want to be around kids for a while.

OK. Make videos today. Bring a charger because my phone isn’t holding a charge and someone stole the charger out of my classroom. Labs all day. Walk walk walk help help help. Then exercise, grade stuff, iron Alito’s face, move on to Thomas. The faces aren’t that hard. That’s a plus. I was freaked out about them, but it wasn’t bad. Men’s lips. Men’s lips are complicated colors for sure. Gonna leave you with that.

Everything Is OK with Everything…

It’s supposed to be very warm today. I’m hoping the A/C at school keeps up. I’m already sweating at home. I made dinner last night for Tuesday, which is the last supremely hot day…supposedly. For now. I wanted to be able to go to the gym on Tuesday and come back and just throw something together, and so we’ll see if that works. I have to really scramble sometimes to make sure I can exercise on top of all the other stuff, especially in the first few weeks of school, with my parents gone, trying to get back in a routine. Blah blah blah. I realized around 6 PM last night that I hadn’t actually made posts for this school week. They weren’t exactly like last year’s, so I couldn’t just copy from the old class. I still need to make a demo video of one of them. And finish setting up labs. I was at school on Friday until 6:15 setting up labs, after a remarkably useless meeting. Today is another meeting, but I think just one. Oh yeah, the dryer died again, so I gave up on it, even though it is just under 8 years old, and bought a new one. Good thing I did that extra work this summer. So I got home on Friday to a dead dryer and decisions about that. I also booked camping for the end of September. So stressful to pick the ‘right’ campsite. Luckily there weren’t many choices? Is that lucky? Probably waited too long. Hopefully it won’t be over 100 degrees that weekend. Our Fall looks a lot like Summer. Also dealt with a sprinkler issue at the parents’. Had to call Ireland for that one. Anyway. Hopefully everything is OK with everything now.

This quilt. Man. It’s because there are so many discrete little things on it, and each needs to be considered by itself but again as part of the whole in terms of fabric and color. It just takes forever. I snuck in a little extra time this weekend on the ironing, and still haven’t hit halfway. I think. It’s hard to say. So many tiny pieces.

I ironed Friday night, the umbrella I think…

Oh yeah. And I picked the justice robe fabrics for the three I like. They got black with color.

Then Saturday, I worked on the goddess’ legs and lower torso, finally.

A closeup on the box.

Sunday, I ironed three whole pieces to fabric. I had a late start because I was cooking two meals, had to run to Staples for toner cartridges (the printer’s like, ‘Imma run out of ink’ and then that was it…it was out. No real warning where I could order stuff. Just done.), then getting stuff graded and ready for teaching this week. I don’t have help on a couple of tasks, and I have a new task (well, we used to do it before COVID, so not REALLY new? But it’s been a few years.), so I’m not in the routine yet. I need to do more during the school week, but last week was a doozy. So this one should be better, and then the next one is OK too, but the one after that is a clusterfuck and a half. So there’s that. I didn’t even iron BIG pieces. I ironed an earthworm. It’s pink. See it?

Yeah, but I did lay out all the other justice robes, the bad guys. I used two runs of four black fabrics.

Kitten did not help. I didn’t iron any of these, because it was almost 11 and that’s a goodly chunk of ironing. So that’s tonight.

I pulled from all the boxes from the 800s to the 1500s, and then I left piles of the rest of the justices: what they’re holding, their feet and hands, and their faces. Watch the video for details.

So I still have to go back and iron all those faces. Complicated. Probably gonna need runs of 6-7 fabrics for each. I’ve got some runs of 4-5 in one of the bins from some other part of this quilt…that’s going to be the complicated part.

So I’m in the 800s, but I’ve done some of the 900s through 1500s. This makes it very hard to know where I’m at in terms of the whole thing. I might be halfway? Certainly close. And I’ve been ironing for 18 1/2 hours, just to give you an idea. This might be the most complicated, time-consuming thing I’ve ever ironed. It’s a marathon. So my revised estimate for finishing the ironing to fabric is this weekend, mostly because it’s a 3-day weekend, so I have some extra time. I also have nothing planned (I blew off one of the things I was supposed to do on Saturday). So that helps. This is not a side job. It’s another job. Two jobs y’all. Plus the copyediting…that’s a side job.

Saturday, we went for a hike at 6 PM. It was too hot before that. 6 was just about right.

My parents’ dog Katie is not used to 3 miles, but she did it. She’s getting older, but she was a trooper. Except when she kept trying to turn around. She gets a walk every day with my parents, but I can’t do that when I don’t get home until dinnertime.

Anyway. She slept well Saturday night.

We noticed these new anthills. There’s always been these spread-out hills, but I haven’t seen these tower things before.

And deer tracks.

Or big hare? Possibly. We know there are deer out there, even if we don’t see them. I really am trying to get that hike in every week. Heat and time don’t help.

The cat condo is currently in the bedroom to give the cats some space from Katie…although to tell the truth, I think they’re fine.

I’ve watched both cats walk right past her to get to the food and then back out into the living room. She just stares at them. She used to chase them. No longer.

Yeah. Well. Sometimes. Feel free to explain electrical hookups to me. Or space. But not the English language. Some issues. Some issues from 8th-grade boys! Oh fun.

OK. Energy preview today. Staff meeting. Hopefully efficient use of prep time and meeting time. Grade some stuff (I didn’t get through all the school stuff in the end). Survive the heat. Go to Lowes and return the stuff they said I had to have to install the dryer (even though I already had those things) plus get a refund for the thing they said I had to have and they didn’t bring. Pick up the parental mail, because the store was closed all weekend. I was supposed to go Friday but didn’t leave school until after they were closed. READ MY BOOK. Seriously. Fuck the world if I can’t do that every day for at least a little while. Then iron some justice robes tonight. In here. Where it will probably still be 90 degrees. Woo hoo!

See the Chaos…

Oh my. First full week of school. Started losing my voice yesterday (again)…but I made it one more day this week! Yesterday I talked all day. Nonstop. Ugh. Lecture/notes stuff. It had to happen. Today? Today they make slides. By themselves. The second most common question from a middle-school kid (after “how old are you?”) is “Can we work with partners?”. Not today. All next week? Yes. Not today. I have this one kid who might be on the spectrum and he’s kinda driving me nuts. He is constantly raising his hand, which shouldn’t be annoying, because at least he doesn’t just yell things out, but when his hand is in the air, he’s not listening, so I’ll get the same answer I just got from another kid. He always raises his hand. For everything. I’m working on getting the rest of the class to answer right now. Might have to resort to popsicle sticks for answering questions. It wouldn’t be the first time.

There are some parts of school that are easier this year, but I’m at 7 hours of afterschool meetings after the one this afternoon. In one week. Too many. In September, there’s one week that might kill me. It’s a lot. I’m really looking forward to this weekend, except there’s no dinner plan for tonight and that is always a mistake. And I have to start grading, which kind of sucks. Because once I start, I have to keep going until June. Seriously. No breaks.

So I’m struggling to get ironing done around all this. Wednesday night, I got home after 6, after 2 hours of a sex-ed curriculum meeting. The pro is that the state has our backs. They wrote something (California Healthy Youth Act) that is on our sides, not the kneejerk parents’ side. I just need them to opt out, but one actually said, “I thought this was a meeting to decide what our children were going to learn.” Sigh. And if you think that, please go get your teaching degree and credential and join us. Or homeschool them. Because I’m tired of people negating my 21 years in the classroom and educational/professional experience. You know better? Then you fucking do it. I need to teach ALL the kids, the kids with two moms, the kids going by names that you don’t think match their gender, the kids who are attracted to the same or both genders. I teach ALL of them. I respect and honor ALL of them. Not just your kid. And I don’t hold your idiocy against your kid. I hope they do better.

So I ironed after that, after dinner, after IDK what else.

So this is what it really looks like while I’m ironing. Piles of fabric that I pull out, I go get more from my drawers, I pile those up, there’s piles and piles. And then I put them all in the bins to make it neat each night for the photo. This thing has a lot of fabrics in it and I’m not even halfway.

I ironed a lot of body parts.

Little ones. There are a lot of people in this quilt. Twenty-six? If you count the Swamp Thing (I didn’t), it’s 27. And they each need different shades of fabric. Last night, I did their clothes.

I didn’t quite finish. I have one more to go. Then IDK what.

Usually I would crop photos like this so you only saw the fabrics, but then I was like, no, let them see the chaos. Iron on the edge because all the boxes of the rest of the pieces are taking up so much room, teacup full of tea, unfinished stuff everywhere, fan on because it’s still warm in here at the end of the day. It’s supposed to be 102 degrees next week. Not a fan (ha ha I’ll need a fan though). So this was clean up. Put all the piles in the bins so I can see them. The bin on the top left is all flesh tones, and I’ll need to go darker still for some of the justices. Probably pinker too. Lots of pink. Too much pink. Next up? The umbrella and then, FINALLY, the goddess legs. That will go quickly. Dirt and roots.

I’m about 20 pieces away from 700. That said, I’ve already ironed some of the numbers higher than that. So let’s say 700. Only 1350 to go! Woo! JAYSUS. In the last 7 days, I’ve managed 7 hours of ironing. The previous week? 9. Before school fucking started? 14…well, that was the week I went back for 3 days. The week before? 19 hours. Sigh. Fucking sigh. Last night, we had to deal with the dryer, after a 2-hour sex-ed meeting, after my stitching Zoom (which I appreciated, don’t get me wrong, even though I didn’t do much). So I didn’t start ironing until 9:50 pm. May tonight be better. Please.

Well, on top of all that, Nova has a bladder infection that might be part of a genetic issue, so she’s on meds. Kitten’s gastro stuff got significantly worse, so the Man picked up 5 meds for her last night because I couldn’t get to the vet in time. She doesn’t feel well; she actually hissed at me this morning. That said, she took all her meds and is back to sleeping in the blue fabric drawer of fabrics I will have to wash to get clean at this point.

And Katie is here.

Katie is absolutely chill, but the cats remember times when she wasn’t, and they are freaked out. They walk right past her though, in the dark, so IDK what the issue is. Everyone is adjusting.

SO! Don’t talk at school today if I don’t have to. Get the energy labs set up. Finish cutting out all the energy cards. Roll around and talk to all the kids today (I roll around on a chair…it’s fun) (wait, I said don’t talk…don’t talk LOUDLY). Survive the meeting after school…I didn’t even tell you how someone came in my classroom and stole the bag all my literacy books are in, but I have to take them to multiple meetings and now I don’t have a bag for all that shit. So frustrating. It’s fine. It’s almost done. The week is almost done. Write warmups for next week. Let all the stuff I had to do last year to survive planning 8th grade go and start planning with the new teacher, who may or may not be willing to adjust/adapt. She needs to be. I don’t know how to flat out tell her that, but I suspect I will need to at some point. I need so many things right now. It’s fine. Really. I got this. More tea though.

Sweet Dirty Floors

The internet is molasses today. Man, this week sucks for after school. Meeting after meeting after meeting. I hate Friday meetings. And we haven’t even gotten to the parents we need to meet with (on the 6th day of school, we already have two concerns, academic, not behavior). I got 5 new kids yesterday with no warning…those emails warning me came after two kids I didn’t recognize showed up in my class, ready to learn (really?), even though I wasn’t prepared. I actually gave an assessment yesterday, a quiz. And yes, I made 3 of them do it (the other kids came too late). Well, one didn’t have a computer, so not him. Two of them. Some were already at our school in the Newcomer program we have for kids who are new to the country. So we expect them to be unclear on science concepts and sometimes in need of lots of help. The first month is such a juggling act, too much shit; it’s a relief (usually) to get to the end of September and some sort of normal routine. But right now, science is a lot, union is a lot, literacy is a lot, sex ed is a lot. Today is the first of two 2-hour meetings this week with parents and school-board members about creating a sex ed curriculum that is specific to our kids. I think this is idiotic. Programs already exist. Why reinvent the wheel? You can’t NOT teach the stuff this group doesn’t like…it’s required by the state. My boss. Opt your kids out. Please. And yes, I am getting paid for these meetings, but I’m not sure you could pay me enough to make this worth it.

Anyway. So I come home and cook dinner or eat it or whatever, and read my book for a little bit, because I NEED that, and after all that, I iron. I don’t clean or dust or vacuum (oh man, the one thing the hurricane did was mess up the floors I had just cleaned. Fucker). I have my priorities. Monday night…I ironed a lot of money. I tend to iron in numeric order, but I took this picture…

Because I was going in numerical order, and then I’m like, there’s about 75 pieces that are money and I should just iron them all at the same time, so I rummaged through the 500s through 1000s and found them all, and then did all of them. It’s more efficient that way, and it adds to continuity in the piece to have all the money be the same color. I’ll do the same with the justice’s robes. Probably. I’m debating on that. I have some black fabrics with bits of color and I may use those for the justices who are more for ALL the people than some of them. We’ll see.

Anyway, so these pieces are tiny and even if I iron 100 of them, it doesn’t look like I did much of anything.

But I did. Maybe the closeups are more useful…

You can see the money and the fish I ironed. Plus a fishing pole. Yeah.

Then last night, I wanted more than an hour…and yes, I’m still staying up too late at night. Not good. But I did a whole bunch of people parts, little people. So I think it was almost all fleshy bits, except for a slippery hill.

Many versions of flesh and a big green piece. I still have some of the 500s left (the clothes and apparati of the fleshy bits, some signs, a recycling bin, a wheelchair), but you’ll notice some of the flesh was in the 600s. Nowhere near halfway. The goddess’ legs weren’t next. I thought they were. I think they are next after I do these people. There might be an umbrella before that. It’s slow, people, so slow, and coming home the next two nights after 6 PM is not going to help.

Doesn’t look very colorful here. I like color. You may have noticed. There will be lots of black, gray, and fleshtones in this one. I think the goddess will be more dirt and sky. That’s the plan anyway. Something has to be tied to the earth.

My anti-anti-abortionists quilt, My Body. My Choice., is still at the Virginia Quilt Museum. They sent photos of it in situ, which was nice, because I hadn’t seen any.

There’s a fall artists reception on September 23, from 4-6 PM. I won’t be there, but the exhibit looks cool. Check it out. There’s my piece on the left. I don’t know whose the other pieces are.

I’m intrigued by the tools to the right of mine.

Simba was not pleased by my perusal of his fur for knotted bits…

It’s a constant struggle.

I’m sewing things down brainlessly after dinner for a bit. It’s satisfying.

Sue Spargo’s Forest for the Trees block of the month. The trees are cute. This one has crabs and fish. Totally opposite to the crazy shit I’m doing on my own quilt. Perfect!

OK, today I’m having the kids practice writing CERs (claim, evidence, reasoning). Should be interesting. My new 8th-grade teacher, who I have barely worked with, does not know what a CER is. Sigh. That will be fun. We meet today. Hopefully we can work together. I don’t know her well enough to get a good read on it so far. Then two hours of kneejerk stupidity. I will be breathing deeply and taking notes to control my need to yell at them for their ignorance. I’m hoping it’s productive. Got 16 hours total to deal with these people.

Then home. Sweet home. Ugh. Sweet dirty floors and dogs and cats and dirty counters and stuff that needs doing and trash that needs to go out. But ironing after. People accroutrement and all.

It Takes the Time It Takes…

Hey so Hurricane Hilary downgraded to Tropical Storm Hilary and then pretty much just dumped rain on us and didn’t do a lot else where I live in East County. Which is a good thing for us. Looks like the deserts and Mexico were hit much harder. Thankful for the fact that we weren’t. Certainly we still had to prep to teach today…presumably if there’d been more damage, they would have given us an extra day. As it was, I did a bunch of planning Saturday afternoon because of all the threats of power outages etc. that were gonna happen. Education rarely stops for natural disasters.

This was Saturday night, I think.

Strange though. We don’t get hit directly by these things normally. The remnants come off the Gulf of Mexico or up from South America. Our winter storms were worse than this in terms of wind. That said, we had one branch that decided to become heavier until it touched the end of the driveway.

We went out to deal with it, which of course was harder than we’d hoped, and that’s when the rain got really heavy, so we all ended up soaked. Nothing else was an issue though. Knock on wood. Tree trimming is one of the biggest expenses on my property…and one I often can’t afford unfortunately. It’s on my list.

The skies were beautiful on Saturday night. We don’t face west, but we get the reflections on clouds…

The calm before the storm…

Which ended up being pretty calm here.

Thankfully.

I ironed Friday night…

And Saturday night…

I swear, they don’t look very different. They are. I know that. This is taking a long time.

I feel like I would have been more efficient if I wasn’t running around worrying about a hurricane. I guess that’s normal.

And Sunday night…

Doesn’t look like much. I have three pedestals done. Granted, they are complicated, but I’m not being fast about this at all. Any plan to be done by next weekend seems like a giant joke right now. I guess I just go with it. It takes the time it takes. It’s taking that much time because there are lots of color decisions to be made, minute ones. Not big overreaching ones. Accept it and keep going. I think I’m still in the 300s. Am I? No! I made it to the 400s last night. So I’ll be surprised if I’m done by this weekend. I have so many 2-hour meetings after school, no joke, ugh. This week sucks.

One thing that didn’t suck was a mini-art retreat a friend put on Saturday morning. I missed coloring with markers. We had three prompts for this one.

Then three for this one…

Which we folded into a book…

Intriguing…

Would have been cool to do with my art classes.

So glad I’m not teaching art this year. Then we did another all-over one and turned it into a book.

Less abstract.

So ironing all week. I’m already exhausted, so that’s fun. Egg/eyeball demo today…decided against doing it as a lab. I haven’t grocery-shopped yet due to hurricane prep/worries, so that’s happening after a 2-hour staff meeting and 40-minute paid interview today. Ugh. Need to prep some stuff for later in the week and next week. Two evenings of sex-ed committee meetings with ‘concerned parents and school-board members’ who think we are grooming students. Idiots. If I’m grooming them, they would be kind, turn all their work in, charge their chromebooks, and wear deodorant. I did review all their ‘All About Me’ papers yesterday, so I know all the nicknames, but no, I’m not calling that one kid Heisenberg. Not happening. First full week of the school year with kids! It’ll be long and painful. Wish us luck.

Yeah that too.

Hazardous Mattress

Well I love short weeks at school. Must say it. Three-day week…just about what I can handle. It’s OK. Then we have two 5-day weeks and then a 3-day weekend. I don’t love coming home exhausted and rewriting my to-do list every day with nothing crossed off. I took a 20-minute nap yesterday (yes, I set an alarm). I stayed later at school to clean up the lab (which went really well) and set up for today, so blood sugar was crashing on the way out the door (hello yogurt!), then got home and opened every window (no A/C here), peed the poor dog, grabbed the mail and trashcans, ate more stuff because blood sugar still not happy with me. Then napped. Then Zoomed while editing 20 videos of kids doing the lab into 1. The best group yesterday all worked together, awesome, 2/3 special ed kids. Super impressed with those kids. All the kids seem OK so far, but it’s really at 2 weeks that we see for real what it might be like. We have some high flyers from last year, one who is already driving me a little bonkers, but not too bad. Last year, I had COVID for the first 10 days of school, so we didn’t do any of the fun stuff at the beginning. I’m a little behind in planning and making assignments because I wasn’t here those days, so I have to create new stuff, but I think it’s all working out OK. We’ll see.

The lab was about teamwork (always), so they had to dump one cup of M&Ms (toxic waste) into another empty cup (neutralizer) without touching the cups with their hands, and without putting their hands in or above the red haz-waste zone.

I had the kids tell me what they thought ‘haz-mat’ meant, and most of them figured it out, but my favorite, laugh-out-loud moment was the kid who yelled out ‘hazardous mattress!’. Oh yeah. That’s sticking.

I got the awesome news Wednesday that Woman Version 3.0 got into Stitchpunk and will be traveling with that show, which opens at the New England Quilt Museum in April 2024. Maybe it’ll even be during my Spring Break and I can go (but probably not!).

I really loved making this quilt. It’s a lot of weird biopunk, genetic engineering, and mutational wonder. You can thank my reading Margaret Atwood for the last 30 years, plus all the other dystopian sci fi I’ve read over the years. Plus my overactive imagination. I’m glad it will travel.

Meanwhile, I’m carving out that hour (plus when I can) of ironing every night. It’s hot, so that doesn’t help my motivation. My current school shoes suck, so my feet hurt by the end of the day, and this is standing at an ironing board, so that doesn’t help either. Plus I can have a fan under the ironing board, but not on my face, because the Wonder Under pieces would fly away, so that is also hard. That said, I do it anyway. Wednesday night, I started ironing the swamp under the questionable justices…

Last night, I finished the swamp by ironing the alligators and the Swamp Thing. It didn’t seem like much, but it took most of an hour. I also laid out all the 200s. Yeah, I have officially ironed 200 whole pieces in a lot of hours. I’m hoping it gets faster. It usually does. I don’t have anything to grade yet, so I really have no excuse for not coming home and hopping in here, except for the heat and the exhaustion. Yeah. Well. Tomorrow would be a great day for ironing, but I have a retreat thing to do. These are the times I turn into an ultra-introvert. I don’t have any weekends truly free until that glorious 3-day weekend.

That’s two weeks away, so hopefully I’m done ironing by then. But maybe not. At this rate. Sigh. It’s slow because there’s a lot of choices to be made. I can do huge numbers of pieces when lots of them will be similar or the same…but this quilt doesn’t have a lot of that. Even with the justices and their robes, I will need multiple black fabrics, and each justice overlaps another, so I will need to be able to see the differences between them. Ah well. Again, it is always the designer’s fault. And that’s me.

Trying something new on Simba’s crusty nose.

Seems to be working, although he’s not truly a fan of the process. It’s all natural, so when he licks it off, it’ll probably just help his coat be smoother. That’s what I tell him anyway. He gives me side-eye.

Still avoiding spiderwebs everywhere I walk in the yard.

I told the spiders this morning about the hurricane/cyclone headed our way. People are freaking out. I’m not a fan of high winds myself, and we have a fire southeast of here that doesn’t need wind at all (think Lahaina)…so the boychild is on hold for a few hours. Not sure if he’ll be home in the next few days or not. Someone asked me if they’d cancel school on Monday. I doubt it. They don’t cancel school for much…power outage once (countywide), smoke from two major fires (countywide). Yes, there’s supposed to be a lot of rain Monday, but…I doubt it will mean a day off. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be home and watching my trees (not falling, hopefully) than at school, but if there’s no power, I can’t iron. I’m up on a hill, so flooding isn’t much of an issue for us. I know it will be for some though. Until they finalize landfall, though, we don’t know much.

OK, so SpongeBob safety assignment today. Gotta love that little yellow square guy. Then hopefully ironing tonight. I had forgotten how much easier it was to teach just one subject, which I haven’t done since the year we went out on COVID. So much easier. I do miss my co-teacher though. She’d be horrified by the prep room at the moment. So many things I don’t know what to do with. Actually, she’d probably just come in and figure out where to put things, which might be part of why I miss her. It’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. Maybe today I can have the teachers’ aide I’ve never met sort washers into piles by size. Yeah! One thing at a time.

There We Are…

And it’s here. The first day of school. My room is mostly ready, miraculously. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it, and I came in yesterday with a 28-point to-do list, mostly tech-related actually…set this up, copy that (so then the copier went down). My A/C has been out, but they fixed it (hopefully) yesterday…although the tech was such a geekboy that he had to come show me that the system thought my room was 163 degrees (it did feel that way), but it would cool it down to 156. Nice. The HELL system, I’m thinking. It did get down to 71 (aka 156) by the end of yesterday, so that’s doable. Today the kids show up and we pretend we know what we’re doing. I didn’t stay up all night worrying about it, so that’s a good thing. Mostly I’ve been exhausted enough to fall directly asleep, so that’s also good. Although last night, I was asleep and then got woken up. I could do without that. I also made it to the gym yesterday (wanted to read my book), so I am all the things today (tired, sore, not ready).

I did wake up to an awesome email; Woman Version 3.0 got into the SAQA Stitchpunk exhibit, so she’ll be at the New England Quilt Museum next year and then will travel places, I know not where.

She was fun to make, a real challenge to get all those ideas from every dystopian, world-ending book I’d ever read. OK, maybe not ALL the ideas, but we can start with Margaret Atwood, for sure. So happy she got in. With all her buggy friends.

I’m going to be ironing this one down to fabric for a LOOOONG time based on how long it’s taken me to do the first 100 pieces. Seriously. Here’s Monday night…

Got part of the Earth ironed down…then last night…

Finished the little Earth and the sky above it. I think tonight I start the swamp on the other side. More limited colors may go faster. Almost 3 hours for 100 pieces? That’s crazy. Wish me luck.

TV watching time after eating dinner has me working on this tiny applique…

Complete with dog and cat hair. Don’t get excited…it’s someone else’s pattern that I modified. I need something to do with my hands while watching. Last night, I didn’t work on this one. I wanted something less fussy…but I’ll be back to this one soon. I think there’s 10 smaller blocks and one big one? I don’t know. It took me a year to finally pick fabrics for this one, which is block 2. I’m not in a rush, apparently.

Boychild tried to throw the little blinking plane we found in the yard ages ago to the neighbor we thought it belonged to. One neighbor said it wasn’t theirs and the other never answered (I am surrounded by children)…I’m not impressed by his aim. See it?

Here. Now do you see it?

I think it’s still there…until the next Santa Ana wind event, and then it will probably end up in my yard again.

It’s “walk into a web” season.

So many spiders. We used to have these giant orange orbweavers…now these are about half the side and nowhere near as bright. Strange. But they bracket the pathway in a very disturbing way.

And as I go into the new year, which involves a sex ed committee with parents and school board members to decide what we will be teaching our sweetums, there’s this.

Also you don’t want me to groom them to be LGBTQIA and/or to understand gender pronouns. So ignorant and pregnant! Woo!

OK. I packed my lunch. I have a banana. I don’t know where my school shoes are. It’s warm already. My start-the-year T-shirt is clean and mostly clear of cat hair. My room is ready. I’m not, but I’ll survive. I’m doing two demos today. Why not? Then Pilates, cooking dinner, collapsing into a sweaty heap, and my book is at 90%, so what I REALLY want to do is finish it. Yes, I’m putting it in my bag. These early days, I don’t need to do a lot during prep. No grading yet. I do need to set up posts and my gradebook, but not immediately. Yeah. I think this is my 20th school year? Nope…my 21st. Wow. There we are.