Category: Books

Brain Is Tired…

Oy. Well, it’s a Monday I’m not at work. I do appreciate these longer weekends, an extra day to try to get stuff done. That said, I’ve got two doctors’ appointments today and they’re not in the same place or at logical times, so it’s just drive a long way, do the thing, drive back. Wait 45 minutes, then drive again. Do the other thing. Drive back. Fun times. I think the afternoon is shot. And I’m moving pretty slowly this morning. Brain is tired. Brain is done. Brain can’t be done…I tried to explain, it doesn’t care, it wants me to sit on the couch with the fluffy kitty and read the book. Sigh. I’ll try. Maybe later.

Lots of what I have to do is art related, which is cool. A bunch of shows are coming up, so there are shipments and contracts and deliveries and headshots and all that crap. I’ve done a chunk of it, but just found a decent headshot requested by one, and still need to fill out, scan, and send two forms.

And I still need to be digging up the outside planter area so we can progress on fixing what happened with the water. I have a rough idea of the order of things, but coordinating that with my schedule and contractors gives me hives. Or breathing anxiety. Yeah.

Anyway, let’s start with art progress. I finished cutting things out on Friday night…spent about 2 1/2 hours doing that (it was a rough day).

Nova was very helpful. It wasn’t too late, so I sorted them too…

It’s super fast when there aren’t very many pieces. I think it took about 18 minutes. Boom!

Then Saturday night, I started ironing them together…

I got most of the sky stuff done. Then last night, I got most of the male figure done…

It’s kind of a pain to try to iron bits on the sky like this; I can’t see the parts that are covered by the sky fabrics, so sometimes I iron them elsewhere and then put them on top. I will have to do that with his left hand and his face, so that’s why I paused there. Also it was late and I was tired. It happens. I might finish tonight? We’ll see. Maybe Tuesday night.

I do have an idea for the next big quilt though. I’ve been listening to The Power of the Crone by Clarissa Pinkola Estes; I loved her Women Who Run With the Wolves book in college, and had seen ads for this, which is all audio, so I started listening. She makes me laugh and her language fills my head with images, which is cool. It’s all stories of the crone and the wise woman. I do have a quilt I made with the crone, maiden, and mother–Awakening the Crone; it sold. So I made that in 2014…I think it’s time for a crone/wise woman update. Something with the world how it is now. I don’t seem to be able to separate my art from politics and people suffering. Anyway, it’s percolating. Always good.

Other fiber stuff that’s happening…I finally got my act in gear and started quilting this again…it’s for a friend who doesn’t quilt. I finished all the white squares, which just needed some additional stitches to hold them together, and now I’m doing the sashing and borders.

This stuff takes longer than people think, though. It probably took me a little over 2 hours to do the 9 white blocks, and I’ve put in at least an hour on the borders/sashing. It’ll be more than an hour to finish; I didn’t get quite halfway. Then put the binding on and stitch it down. So if you ask me to do something and I say no thank you, you will know why. I have little time. Just how long it’s taken me to get to this one shows that. I should be done this week, though. That’s my goal. Get it off my plate! I still need to draw the piece for the upcoming FIG show. Didn’t get to that this weekend yet either.

I went fabric shopping for a friend’s baby quilt. She wants cactus and she loves purple, although she said the green, so we’re doing both.

This is definitely a labor of love. I use the same pattern from 2000 for all my baby quilts (haven’t made one in 8 years, y’all…). This one is manifesting good baby health. So this is next on the list. It’s not hard or complicated.

Then a pair of jeans had an issue last week, and I’m not willing to toss jeans that fit and are comfortable otherwise.

No one will ever see this part…

Manifesting some cactus too.

Hiked on Saturday…FINALLY. Although the Man didn’t want to hike in mud, so we did the mostly boring lake walk on pavement.

Geese though. Beautiful and terrifying.

We’ve had no more water come in the house, which is good, so I mopped the concrete (it was really dirty, even after multiple sweepings) and put down these cheap temporary rugs to keep feet warmer until June/July when I can get to carpet.

These were on mega sale. I thought I would dislike them more, but they actually kinda work with the concrete and walls that need painting. Desperately. Yeah. And people want to come visit my ‘studio’. Sigh. It’s my house, y’all…and it’s in disrepair.

I draw at dinner; we hadn’t been out for a few weeks due to things, stuff, band things, whatever. I started this one on January 20, but food came so fast, and then Saturday night, I kept going, but food came really fast.

It’s not that I want the food to be super slow or anything…I think I used to be able to draw faster? I don’t know. Anyway, it’ll take a third dinner to finish this. And since the Man is having dental surgery this week, it might be a while before I have that opportunity again.

The boob thing though. She has a star on her left breast. I sat through a 3D mammogram, which hurt like a bitch, but the tech was fast (she said she was fast) and then the ultrasound didn’t find something that matched the mammogram, so that makes them nervous. Family history and all. So I get to have a biopsy. No appointment yet. Have to wait for them to call me (what are the odds they’ll call today when I can actually take a call? LOW low low low low), then they’re scheduling about 2 weeks out because it’s not an emergency (except in my head, which the radiologist acknowledged during her very perky speech), then 3-5 days for results. Doc already called to find out my preference for notification (call me ASAP, as long as it’s after school; she already knew that bit). So I guess my birthday present will be news of some sort; odds are it will be fine. Knowing me, it’ll be a watch and wait thing, and I’ll get to scan multiple times. They’ll place a marker during the biopsy so it’ll be easy to find. It’s an architectural distortion. Which is a great name for a new quilt, if you ask me. Anyway. I did have a repeat mammogram once before, not for this, and made a quilt for it…also 2014. Bitchy year, if you ask me. 2024 is starting rough…hopefully it will chill out at some point.

We’re reading The Maze Runner in my advisory class…

I’m with her on this, but there has been action. Maybe not before she wrote this comment. It’s hard to read just one chapter a day.

This is me always. I’m not a morning person.

I do have to get my act together though. Gonna shower and make more tea and eat something and do some work and fill out these two forms and scan and email them and then drive off to the dermatologist and then the knee doctor, and at the end of all of it, go to my rescheduled stitching meeting with friends. My stomach just chimed in about the eating something. I think I’m ready to teach tomorrow; I moved stuff around because kids are stupidly not finishing work, and my being gone Friday afternoon didn’t help with that. Oh well. What am I gonna do? Not go to the doctor? Well no. So there will be at least one more (and hopefully no more) appointment that makes me miss school. They should figure out how to be self motivated. Surely it’s time for that. Ha.

Read a Damn Book…

Where we at, y’all? We are FRIDAY. Before a 3-day weekend. I’m right here, ready for it. Although my extra day has 2 doctors’ appointments. Nothing bad. That’s today. I had to take a half day today to get the boob rescanned and twisted (you ever had one of those mammograms? We gonna take your boob and twist it, and then put it between two pieces of plastic and make it flat as a pancake. You OK? You’re breathing funny.). So sure, it’s nice to skip the last three classes of the day, but not to sit in radiology and do all the things, and then do them again because the radiologist can’t see what they need, and last time, they actually came in and directed the tech…directly…so I was there for about 2 painful hours. Not looking forward to it. The odds are that it’s nothing, that everything is happily benign, but the mental prep is still a challenge at the moment.

So there’s that. But I might actually get to HIKE this weekend (it’s been so long) and make some art and read my books and not think about work (I’m gonna have to think about work…I’m only fully planned for next week…then it turns into a clusterfuck). I’ve been slowly cutting out pieces…

Slowly because I’m not getting much time in because there are too many other things I’m doing. I copyedited all of the slide presentations and student worksheets for the sex-ed curriculum because I couldn’t stand to see all those errors. It took me about 3 hours and I know it will make ME feel better to have done it, but other people are telling me I’m stupid for working for free. Yeah maybe. But it’s for my own sanity. ‘testicals’ was one example. Nope. Uh uh.

I also entered two art shows in the last two days and that takes time, so that’s part of not having enough of it to do things, plus book club.

Nova is a sweetheart. Also it’s cold. I did finish my book for book club literally one minute before the Zoom started. It was good. The book. And the meeting. So yeah. A mystery starring 60-year-old women…Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. Definitely recommend. Fun. But murdery.

So more trimming of the fabrics will happen this weekend, plus I need to start the one for that other show. I have some shows coming up…one at Oceanside Museum of Art that opens March 30, with Allied Craftsmen. And one pop-up show at Art Produce on February 24…one day only!

Come see a non-quilt piece of art from me, dating back to the early 90s. Crazy!

Have you seen Nova upside down? She is still cute.

OK. Today. Will be short for school and kind of painful.

This is from that book…and it’s interesting, because I get this all the time, not that I want to hurl myself off a cliff, but it just pops into my head…mostly when I’m driving over big bridges. It’s terrifying. Now I know there’s a word for it.

I guess I want to survive. Well, I know that. I’d just like it to be less about getting through one day at a time for a while. I could use some of that. There’s 126 days until I get to the end of this school year. Not short.

This one is probably a better plan.

Thanks y’all! But no thanks. I’m done. It’s been a week. The chemistry unit for 7th grade started and it’s a bitch and a half to prep and clean up, but I’m buried in it, fucking BURIED, and I’m not even teaching 7th grade.

Anyway, with any luck, I’ll be home early…maybe I’ll even treat myself with a cookie or something after the big squeezy. Once I deal with Friday traffic from Mira Mesa. Yeah. That’s not fun. I am taking my book with me. For when I’m lying there half naked, waiting for the radiologist’s proclamation, or for the time after the one thing before the next thing (can’t remember if ultrasound is first or mammogram is). I can READ A DAMN BOOK. Yeah. Then tonight, cut some stuff out with that adorable kitty and probably a puppy. Do some drawing this weekend. Go outside. Those are good times, y’all, good times.

Sewn Chaos…

And We’re BAACK. OK. I’m back. Tested negative. Going back to school. Already couldn’t sleep last night because brain was in overdrive. I don’t know how your brain works, but when I haven’t done something before, my brain does it for me, like hundreds of times, with variations, until it thinks it has the right way. It’s really annoying sometimes. Can’t make it stop. Pretty sure I do it in my sleep too. It’s useful, I guess, to figure stuff out, but I wish it would turn off sometimes.

Am I ready? No. I went to school yesterday but the colored paper I needed for tomorrow’s lab was not in my room. It was supposed to be delivered there, but no. Not. Uh uh. Sigh. So I copied what I could; it will either show up today or I will borrow from my team. I texted them yesterday afternoon, so I’d know whether to go to Staples for more paper or not. The three different subs in my room were semi-competent. Not much I can do about that. Reteach today and hope we make it through the week with some knowledge. This was all review from 6th grade anyway (not that any of them remember it…sigh).

Soldier on! So I did work on the quilt each night for a bit. I even made it to an exercise class yesterday, which might be proof of either insanity or wellness (I tested negative before I went).

I sorted pieces Friday afternoon…

I think it took a whopping 18 minutes. Love small quilts for that…much as I love the big ones for taking longer.

I had to clean up and put away from the last quilt…

Kitten assist.

Then started ironing the sky…

All blues and yellows to start.

Saturday, I started on the flesh…

There are two bodies in the quilt, so each was out of a separate run of fabrics.

I finished ironing the male figure Saturday night (bottom run of fabrics)…

And the female Sunday night…

I actually don’t have much left to do…

That’s it. Some eyes, some fingernails, not sure what the rest of it is…lips. I see lips.

So assuming I’m still upright when I get home from school and I don’t have to dig out more ditches to move the water, I’ll be finishing the ironing tonight and starting to cut it out. All good.

Luna and Kitten have been sharing the bed…

This is almost the same position they’re in at night, which pretty much traps me. Getting out to pee is a gymnastic event.

This is from one of the books I just finished reading, Crownchasers (which was good)…but I liked “sewn chaos”, even though I think they meant “sown chaos”?

But from a quilter’s perspective, I should definitely sew some more chaos. Ironically, the way I make my quilts is pretty massively organized chaos, but whatever.

OK. Go to school, find pink and blue paper, copy things, reteach, try to figure out WTF they did for three days, make them finish it, go to two-hour staff meeting about a program I don’t use (not because I don’t want to, but because it’s math and reading, not science). Then come home and rest a bit, iron the last bits. Whatever. Read. I have to finish a book by Wednesday…what are the odds of that happening? Not good, y’all, not good.

Talking Foxes…

You know, you think you’ve got a handle on everything, including the water that fucked up the hallway, and you even came home yesterday and pulled all the carpet and underlay, and then leaned over and scraped up glue and swept 40 years of dirt up (yeah, the carpet was OLD), and the boychild (who is not a boy) says he’ll pull up all the tack strip today and do some drywall sawing. Because the restoration company wants two grand plus testing which is another 1200 and that’s not even fixing the water issue and the carpet. And you mentally figured out how to fix outside, looked at the weather reports, and figured you had two weekends to do it, cool, almost doable (this weekend is a clusterfuck btw), and then you got up this morning. Couldn’t sleep last night (fan noise is doing me in, y’all, plus my overactive brain). Looked at the weather again and the next storm with more than an inch is Thursday. So digging needs to happen this weekend. Around 3 Zoom calls, pilates, groceries, GRADING, finishing a quilt, and delivering it to the photographer. And the Man has a show. OK. All right. I can figure that out. I have a plan. And then the doc messages you, because last weekend’s routine mammogram showed something distortion-y (love that word…new quilt?) and now you get to have more tests more poking more squishing more shit. Fuck me. I’ve done this before and everything turned out fine, which is what this morning’s brain is trying to tell me, but also I almost lost my mind last night because the Man and I had started planning our Spring Break trip and now we’re canceling because of all the hallway crap. And money. And time.

So I’m not happy at the moment. I’m doing a really high-maintenance lab at school today, which is actually good, because I won’t be thinking about my boob. Damn.

I did finish quilting yesterday. After pulling up all that crap and a Zoom call with friends…I quilted for about an hour and finished. Here’s Wednesday night…

And then I cleaned the floor that we had just tracked 40 years of carpet dust across, because who else is mopping their floors at 10 PM on a school night, and I trimmed it.

And things aren’t all bad, because it’s actually prettier in person, despite all the war and crap going on in the bottom of it, and the SDA online conference is tomorrow and I’m going to get the bindings on. And grade. And dig. And finish all the things. And then somehow try to figure out when the next set of squishings will happen. They’re gonna call me. Yeah well, I’m gonna have to call back, because I can’t answer the phone at school, especially not during a high-maintenance lab. Fun times, y’all. Fun times. But I will be taking this to the photographer on Sunday. I started this when? December 30. Fast finish. I copied like 12 drawings…I might just keep going. Well, I have a couple of things I need to do first.

Probably gonna have to sweep again after the boychild pulls all the tack strips.

Maybe I’ll even kill a mophead on this.

Next book I’m reading…

“Talking foxes are a sign of fever…”. I think this paragraph is why I read so much. Other worlds. Easier to live in. This one is challenging my patience at the moment.

OK. School. Do a DNA extraction lab. Grade things. Plan things. Duty after school. Go buy binding, because you went through the stash and didn’t have enough of the right thing. Dig. Put a binding on. All that. READ. I get to read. It’s allowed. Grade things. I said that already. Fuck.

Shopping and Shipping

Just listening to @underthedesknews about university admissions and the Supreme Court…legacy admissions could be out! I’m good with that. And that is how I am spending my Winter Break? Listening to social media news? Nah. It’s been a little chaotic so far. Let’s start with quilt progress, which has not been as much as I’d like, but whatever. I’ve been ironing…here’s Friday night’s progress…

Then Saturday night…

And Sunday night, when I stayed up way too late…

Because I was ALMOST done and then I felt like I was too tired for the last half hour so I didn’t actually finish. So yeah. I thought I’d be done ironing yesterday, but I forgot how much time having both kids around takes, and you wanna hang out with them, so there isn’t as much time for other stuff. So I suspect I’ll be done tonight. Hopefully. Stitchdown tomorrow. Quilting by Thursday? Maybe. IDK.

I’m still not done with shopping and shipping, and that will be an issue, so I need to get my act together on that front. Ah well. I did do some today…and passed by these weird things…

On the walk to the used bookstore.

Poor Santa in a cage…

So Saturday, we went on a friend’s birthday hike…

It was warm for December…high 70s. Warmer than you would like. But a winery solved that issue afterwards…

Sunday was family stuff…

I finished one book on Saturday…

Light fiction…I finished a harder one, nonfiction, on Sunday. Well on my way to finishing one a day? OK, probably not…

Sleepy cold kitties. We are also babysitting the puppy so that she doesn’t chew her foot off. She’s been pretty chill. Apparently she is depressed because of the cone and the wrap on her foot. She tore part of her claw off. Whoops. Silly girl.

Yeah, that’s been going on for a while. Needs to stop.

OK, I need to do some schoolwork and set up the tree so I can get the cats out of the needles and maybe clean some stuff. And figure out the rest of Christmas. Ugh. At least there’s no school in that. I can appreciate that.

Read…

Big deep sigh. You know what I WANT to do today? Stay home and iron this quilt together…in between reading my book while curled up on the couch with a dog or cat or two. I am mentally exhausted. And today is LOOONG. Hate those days. Things before and after school. Ugh. 8 AM to 6 PM without stopping…the plus is that we are in literacy group this afternoon, so not full-on teaching, but also I know my kids in the last class of the day won’t do their work and may destroy the classroom. So that sucks. I warned them yesterday, but you know how that goes. Well, if you’re a teacher, you know how it goes. If you’re not, you probably think if you’ve built a relationship with them and gotten down at their level and shared some respect, that they will be perfect angels. Well, try a title I middle school three days before Winter Break and tell me how that goes. Yeah. I thought so. Stupid time for these meetings. They really didn’t think it through. I think one meeting is the day before Spring Break. A Friday. There will definitely be an assembly. Are they on crack? Possibly.

That said, I’m pretty proud of myself for getting mostly caught up on grading. I finished last week’s academic assignment last night. I have one batch of homework I’m hoping to do today and tomorrow. There’s a few easy things that need to go into the gradebook. Then on Friday, they hand in their packets, which I will need to take home, and one homework assignment. Plus warmups. I’m still debating an easy question on Friday. I should do it, but IDK if I’ll have time. Playing it all by ear. I hate that. I want to know exactly what I’m teaching when, at least 3 weeks in advance. But no. Not for the last four years. Not without a significant amount of replanning and juggling and rewriting and shit. This is why I set a retirement date. I’m just tired of that part of it. The actual teaching? I can handle that. The rest? Ugh.

So the current quilt…I finished cutting things out on Monday night.

It took a little over 7 hours to do that. Longer than usual, I think. Not sure why.

Then I sorted them last night…

Such an easy sort…

Just under 500 pieces. I do think I need to wash all my bins over break though. The pencil lead is transferring onto them. I never noticed that with older bins, but these seem to show it, and it’s probably transferring to fabric. Weird things on my to-do list.

Then I started ironing…

I didn’t get very far. These are tiny people. I should have put something in there for scale, but just trust me, they’re little. I had to set up the room a little, move stuff around, then sort out the first 100 pieces by 10s. I’ll get more done tonight. I’m hoping to be done ironing Sunday night, then stitchdown, quilt, bind next week. We’ll see. I have some other shit to do. That whole Xmas thing. And the next quilt is waiting…it’s been enlarged and numbered for a few years, so it’s my last quilt of the year, assuming I can finish it in time. Not huge, not complicated. Then I can get my head around the next one. I have a deadline where I need to work with a collaborator and I’m not sure what that will look like, since we don’t use the same media and we don’t live in the same city. Minor issue. We’ll figure it out in January. I’ll probably start something else at the same time.

I spent some time cleaning up the girlchild’s bedroom last night; she arrives late Thursday night. I still need to put some quilts away and figure out where to store all the ones I know need to ship out in the next few weeks. Then maybe persuade her brother to store his packs elsewhere. He has a lot of them. Then make her bed with everything I washed last night, which is probably where I got the weird ring of spider bites around my elbow/arm.

I finished a book yesterday that made me cry. And then went to school, still crying (not good), but since I often drive to school with the urge to sob and/or scream, it was nothing new. Just discombobulating. And it had an essentially sort of happy ending; it was just all the shit before it that threw me. Then I started right away to read another book, and that one is also seriously speaking to me about quitting and becoming a full-time reader (is that a thing? Please let it be a thing.)…

But no, I have a parent meeting this morning and a union meeting after school, so no books until 6 PM. WHICH SUCKS. Oh wait, I can read at lunch, but I’m also supposed to be reading this book for school and I haven’t gotten very far. Ugh. Yeah. It’s a pain. My responsible teacher self is NOT going to let me bring the other book I’d rather read. Although it’s on my phone. So there’s that.

OK. Do the 10-hour day. Come home and READ. Then do some work and hopefully the Man will let us finish the movie we’ve been trying to watch for days. I wanna know what happens! Dammit. And then ironing, which is fun and relaxing and I love seeing the image come to life in color. So that’s cool. Three more days of school and then more reading! Woo hoo! Don’t look at the to-do list. READ!

Whatevering…

Five days. I can do that. Right? Sure. The fact that I was rewriting (only in my head, not in real life yet) the entire week’s lesson plans while trying to fall asleep last night is not a problem, right? Why do that? Because the lesson progression doesn’t make sense. I sort of saw that last week, but thought I could get away with it, because I wanted something that would keep them engaged through Friday, but the reality is that they can’t do that thing WELL without doing the other thing first, so I’m just going to have to figure out how to make it work. I haven’t entirely figured TODAY’s lesson out either. I need another brain. I start planning and then I lose sight of the big picture, and then my brain worries out all the details, but I need to go back to the big picture and not let the short-sightedness of some people stop me. Man, this year is just…it’s just like last year…but worse. I can’t get my head around this stuff. It’s better than last year (the planning/organization), but it’s not great yet. I remember it took my co-teacher and I a good 6 years to make the lessons good. I don’t have 6 years. I go back to 7th grade not next year but the year after. And while I appreciate all the lessons the new teacher has provided, I need the logical backstory. And I don’t quite have it yet. I keep asking and not getting a story. So then I have to try to make one by myself, and myself is not doing great. I’m not even halfway through the year and I feel done. Like dried-out Thanksgiving turkey done. So much as I am looking forward to Winter Break (and getting a break), I know I will need to hash out the next unit. By myself. And it doesn’t make sense to me yet.

All that aside, I survived the weekend. I even thought I was getting sick, but overdosing on Vitamin C and getting two decent nights of sleep helped. Still overdosing though.

I met with some of the SAQA So Cal/NV members at Visions on Saturday.

I’m looking thrilled. Really. We did get a tour through the exhibit, which was nice. I talked a little bit about my quilt…

Which is still there, if you haven’t seen it. They had some pop-up artists’ shops, which was cool. A friend I hadn’t seen for years was running one of them, so it was nice to catch up. We had lunch after…

It’s almost normal! Like going to see art and hanging out afterward. I was going to go to another fiber art thing afterward, but I had too much schoolwork to do…so I came home and worked for about 3 hours. Then the Man and I went to see the Dresden Dolls with Amanda Palmer…

I’d never seen the band before…

I enjoy me some Amanda though…

It was a good show. That said, we are old and standing for 3+ hours on concrete is not ideal. And yet, we keep doing it. We must like it, even if our feet and backs don’t.

We got home too late to make art! I was hoping to get some done before we went, but the assignments were more insistent.

Sunday, I graded a lot more. And that’s when the lesson plan issue came up. I’m hoping to have a prep period today and time after school to figure it out. I had 1 prep period last week that wasn’t meetings or subbing my prep, so it would be nice to have another this week. We’ll see.

Last night, I did stop grading/planning at about 9:15 and cut stuff out for a little over an hour…

It’s hard not to just stay up and finish, but that would have been at least another hour, I think. We’ll see, because I’ll be finishing tonight hopefully. That’s the plan anyway. Then sorting and ironing by midweek.

Meanwhile, I’m nursing a nasty scrape on my arm that wants to be infected, but I’m trying to persuade it not to be with lots of neosporin and care. I don’t have time for a trip to urgent care to get meds. It just needs to behave. It’s better today than it was Saturday, when it was swollen and hot and yuck. Swelling has gone down. It’s still itchy, but I think that’s healing itchies. It’s not hot anymore. Good times. Can’t have a holiday season without some bizarre reason why you SHOULD go to urgent care. Even if you don’t.

In other news…

Gonna add reading books to this list, but that probably wasn’t as much of a thing in the dark ages.

Here’s Kitten about to whack me for being in her space. You know, the space in front of the computer where I’m trying to type.

And Simba trying to cuddle…

It’s been cold at night.

I love random measurements.

OK. Today. Teaching some stuff, but I’m not exactly sure how, and I didn’t put all the materials out on Friday like I normally do, because I had to be at the sex-ed curriculum meeting right after school and duty at the light. So I really should get my ass to school to figure all that out. I’ll figure part of it out on the 12-minute drive over there. Then redo the lesson plan for the whole week, copy some stuff, rewrite the lesson plan for Wednesday’s half-day sub so I can do literacy planning with my team on the book I was supposed to start reading this weekend and DID NOT. Whoops. I have read it before. But I remember very little. Teach all day, whatever that looks like (wish I knew). Finish planning/copying/whatevering after school, come home, do things, very specific things I haven’t figured out yet (probably involving reading a book I’ve already read). I’m cooking dinner. I’m also going to finish cutting stuff out. Hopefully. It’s a very mentally chaotic day I think. Ugh. Hate those. May tomorrow be less so.

Do Your Thing…

Hello December. I am not ready for you. I mean, that’s not entirely true. Some part of me is “THANK GOD IT’S ALMOST WINTER BREAK” while the rest is, “You dingbat, you realize that means you need to get the holiday season under control.” It’s already a mess, both this week with all the meetings, oh wait, more next week. I said no to one thing yesterday, and all my childhood training as a girl was straining against it. YOU SAY YES unless you have a damn good excuse. And then you worry about the excuse being good enough. The excuse was my sanity. No, I do not want 8 more adults tramping through my class with behaviors and distraction issues on a Monday morning. I have enough going on.

I need to deal with shopping for the holidays, plus all the party things and meeting things. Plus school and grading and kids cheating off each other and parent meetings because kid behavior is still stuck in 5th grade. Too much.

Anyway. I have been ironing every night, although that has turned into staying up too late. There’s a fine balance with my sanity at the moment. More sleep MIGHT help? But not making art will NOT help. So I lean. Wednesday night, after 2 hours of sex-ed curriculum meetings that I found fairly frustrating.

I ironed a climate-devastated island down. And some other stuff.

Last night…

In the middle of the night on Thursday, after not being able to fall asleep for HOURS (not joking), my brain decided to make the main figure purple. I tried a variety of color combinations out in my head (when I gave up on sleeping and figured I might as well try to get something done) and purple won out. I’m actually not sure if I have enough of that last lightest fabric to iron those pieces, but I’ll try. Honestly there isn’t much left of the color before it…I didn’t think I’d have enough, and I did, but I have devastated that stash. I went to bed 45 minutes late last night, so I’ll have to do the lighter color tonight. I stopped because I knew if there wasn’t enough, Art Brain would want to figure that out NOW dammit and then I wouldn’t have gone to sleep ever. As it was, I slept well, unlike the previous night.

More ironing tonight and tomorrow night. Although there’s some stuff I have to do tonight for tomorrow’s quilt guild party. Plus a trip to Home Depot for science materials. Fun times.

A brief Nova moment.

The cats are appreciating Annie’s departure apparently…except Luna has no one to mad dog except her sister now.

My reward after the first 2-hour sex-ed committee meeting was this bag of melted circus animal cookies.

A cookie orgy. Still only 140 calories! One giant blob of cookieness.

Every time I see a list of banned books or books DeSantis doesn’t like, I’m like “Add to list”. You should do the same.

OK, parent meeting this morning…not looking forward to parent denial on this one. Then a lab all day (WTF was I thinking?). Then duty after school and that trip to Home Depot. Read my book, prepare dinner (I was smart and made and froze lasagne during Thanksgiving break), probably grade some stuff or prep some stuff, then iron. Probably gonna fall asleep hard. Oh wait, do the things for the meeting tomorrow. Can’t forget that. Should put it on the calendar. Then I MIGHT remember to do it. Ha! OK December, do your thing.

Feels Different

Hey. It’s later than usual. It’s Friday and I’m not at work! And I’m not sick! And a veteran is coming over later to help me do some work around the house! That’s how you celebrate THIS veteran. Make him help you do work. Plus he has way better tools than I do. What other exciting things am I doing today? I’m getting three vaccines (like a nutball) and two MRIs. Yeah! Do not try this at home, y’all. I’m fully expecting them to tell me I can only have two of the vaccines. Three might be too many. Kitten has already drawn blood on my right hand (IDK what I did, but she didn’t like it). I braved nasty traffic last night to hang out with my stitching friends…got very little done on this…

I think some window sashing and 1 1/2 shutters, plus some running stitch. I’m impressed by the people who can stitch one of these in a year. I guess I have a lot of other stuff going on.

The literacy meeting on Wednesday allowed me to get some small things done, so that was good. It also netted me stickers.

I finished a good book last night, Shoot the Moon…it did not go the way I thought it would, which was delightful.

I finished that last night…came home after stitching group and just sat there for an hour and devoured the last half. I need more of that.

Then I quilted for an hour…because I knew I could sleep in this morning. So Wednesday’s quilting…I refused to work that night, so I did over an hour…

Got the torso done, and then started on the justices to the left (when upside down…when right side up, they are to the right, which makes more sense…not sure I planned that? But maybe I did).

In the longer time frame, I got through three justices that night…

Then did the other two last night…

My camera recognizes the faces as faces, which is weird. So now all I have left is the arms and head of the goddess and everything above her, PLUS all the background quilting. I’m at about 10 hours in…and I was figuring 15 or so? I think. And I still think that’s valid. There’s a lot of little fussy spaces to be filled. I’ve done some of it as I was outlining, but not all of it. So hopefully this weekend? I’m going to have to go buy binding tomorrow anyway, or I won’t get to until next weekend, which would suck. And it looks like I might be starting a new quilt over Thanksgiving, which is good, because I have two deadlines coming up, and one is coming very quickly. Yikes.

I’m so proud that I have finally been able to color in a unit packet cover page…so many of last year’s didn’t get done because two grade levels, and I never finished Unit 2 this year either.

My students say he looks lit. AKA stoned. I said it’s daylight savings week…he’s tired. Also asked them if they’d looked in mirrors lately. So yeah. Great.

Nova in the air biscuit competition. Still winning.

Will I have to work this weekend on school stuff? Of course I will. I’m also quilting and trying to install these lattice things to replace the old broken ones so I can plant a viney thing to grow up it and also clean some stuff and quilt…did I say quilt? Yeah. That. But today is kind of busy. My fault of course. It’s nice to have a day off though. Really nice. Feels so different than a regular weekend. Fully appreciating that.

Just Let Me…

It was a busy weekend. I managed tiny bits of artmaking, through stubbornness and refusal to sleep, really. I did a few things I wanted to do, not as many as I would have preferred, but I also worked a heinous number of hours for the day job. And that will continue all this week, because the next unit is not planned and it starts in a week and a half. Plus grades are due. So yeah. I’m hating it right now, really overwhelmed and not happy with any of it. If you see me, I probably need a hug and a donut…well, no one ever really NEEDS a donut…I probably need a hike more, but a donut takes less time. And time is something I don’t have enough of at the moment, nowhere close.

So…art first! Always. Even if that’s not what happens in real life. Friday night, after a book signing and dinner out, I managed an hour before bed…it was late, but I did it anyway.

Up in the heads and robes.

Saturday night, it was really late, after the Man’s show. Stayed up too late again…but got another 50 minutes in.

More heads. And last night, after working a million hours and cooking dinner and watering all the plants, I managed another 50 minutes.

Heads are done…I’m doing the goddess’ arms and the things above her.

This is the only time you get to see the back…

It’s kinda creepy.

Anyway, there’s not much left. I’m at 7 hours and 24 minutes. I think I might have more than 36 minutes to go? But I’m not positive. Maybe tonight? I’d like to be pinbasted and quilting this week. That’s my goal. Harder to find the time to get pinbasted though. Need to wash the batting, piece a backing, lay it all out, and then finally pin. Sounds like a lot for a work night when I’m buried.

Friday was a field trip with school to Old Town.

It’s not my favorite field trip…that would be the zoo…but it’s nice to be outside. My group was OK…some infighting occurred, which I knew would happen, because I had the kid who causes those things. Could’ve done without that. That said, we came back and mostly the kids either slept, gamed, watched the movie, or built their roller coasters while I graded. Useful. I’ll be doing lots of that this week…and planning.

Old Town was decorated for Day of the Dead, which was cool.

We do a scavenger hunt, which is nice, because we have a purpose, unlike most of the time.

That night, we ventured out to a book signing (not sure I’ve ever done one of those)…Stephan Pastis, author of Pearls Before Swine (and other things) was here in San Diego and I went to high school with him.

Here’s the actual moment when I told him we went to high school together…

It’s OK, Steph…I don’t recognize the kid you were in high school in your adult face either, except sometimes when you talk. We were on cross country together, with my brother and others, but he was the grade between us. So yeah. Fun stuff though. We ate dinner in a total dive bar, but the food is always good, isn’t it? Not sure why.

Saturday was a clusterfuck of work work work, in between an art meeting at the Lakeside Library, which had art by Bhavna Mehta…her paper work translated into metal.

Pretty cool stuff.

And then at night, the Man’s band had a show at a tiny place that blew out my eardrums and gave me a sore throat from the smoke machine (ugh). It was a good thing to dance and be sweaty for a few hours’ break though. I needed that.

Up late.

So all in all a busy weekend. I’m looking forward to a nice quiet weekend at some point. Not sure when that can be slotted in. Probably never.

So the kids are building roller coasters all week. I need to plan one thing for this week, hopefully today so I have time to copy it. But otherwise, after I demo one thing a day to build, maybe two, I’m hoping I can just finish grading and then start planning the next unit. If it works. Don’t take my prep period, don’t add any more shit to the pile of things to do (insert snotty comments about people who don’t understand email accounts), just let me get the things done. That’s what I need. And then maybe I can get this quilt pinbasted and back under the machine. Hoping.