What Next?

So I’ve mentioned before that I have some other shows coming up in the next few months where I will need work, and I finally sat down with the dates and tried to figure it all out. I think I’m going to have to write an entire post on Ventura and my thought process…because I want to kick them in the butt right now…but that’s a personal issue. It is true, as I have been reminded, that I don’t need to enter every show that is presented to me. So I guess I’m all over the map right now.

I had some people express interest in the cancer cell in hand drawings I did, so I thought, “those are small.” Yeah. We know where that goes. Anyway, I traced each of them on Wonder Under the other night…

And then I trimmed the Wonder Under pieces as well, so they’re ready to be ironed onto fabric.

I honestly don’t have a plan for that at the moment. I’m buried in grading, although I got a significant chunk done in the last two days, so maybe tomorrow night is not an unreasonable plan. It’s not like it would take long. The biggest issue is what color to make those damn spiky balls of cancer nasty. Something that contrasts with the flesh tones and looks awful. Or not. I just don’t know. Sometimes things just have to roll around in my head until they make sense.

So then I looked at the next show I know is coming, which will be the end of June. We have to deliver two pieces by the weekend of June 13. Two pieces? Damn. I signed that contract and didn’t even notice TWO. So they need to be smallish. Plus I don’t think the gallery is very large. Plus we have to use recycled materials, most notably a bunch of upholstery fabrics that came down here from Los Angeles. I grabbed the most-lightweight neutrals I could find (everything else looked like fucking upholstery)…

But because they’re in those sample books, all of them have to be divested of the sticky paper. Ugh.

Tried to persuade the girlchild this was a fun project. Tried to persuade the cat to get involved. I got no takers. And they’re long skinny pieces. So there’s that. And here’s my complaint. These aren’t really used fabrics. I consider recycling using fabrics from clothing I got from a friend or my closet or the thrift shop. I actually have a ton of that in my crazy quilt stash, but they are also all fabrics that are a pain in the butt to quilt with, so I’m not really that keen on it. The other option is to use all the batik offcuts from my friend Mariah, but there are some pieces that are too big for her stuff…but I could MAKE fabric from a bunch of smaller pieces…cuz that’s not crazy at all.

Still thinking this through. However, I did tentatively already pick the two drawings for those two quilts…

And I numbered them…

And then I stayed up way too late Sunday night because I was in a mood and I had Monday off, and I traced one onto Wonder Under…

I am not crazy. I was accompanied by furry beasts…

Calli and Midnight…Calli just got more dorky as the night wore on…

Yeah. So at least that process is started. I kind of decided that however much I WANT to do a totally different big piece by Spring Break, the June deadline for those other two means I can’t do that. I need to finish these first. I was wiffle-waffling on that, but then I looked up the Ventura show.

Fuck. So here’s the deal with Ventura. We have a big space in the Ventura County government buildings. GOVERNMENT. So no nudity, no violence, no politic leanings. So I start running through my head. Hmn. I look through my big drawings. I even pick one, and then realize that it has a nipple. See, I don’t even SEE the nudity as nudity. And then I have multiple arguments in my head. Is a man with no shirt on considered a nude? Is it political to make a quilt about pollution? Can babies wearing diapers count as a nude? Is it violent to have babies flying through the air? OK, I know that sounds violent, but I was trying to come up with a new version of a gender equality quilt, the balancing act of parenthood, and I had babies up in the air, but not in a bad way. Someone was definitely gonna catch those suckers. The stuff I normally do my quilts on is chock full of political nudity with violent tendencies, I guess.

Sigh. It’s true I don’t have to be in this show, and since it’s juried and Ventura has the last word, no matter what I do, I may not be in. But I wanted to try (why? I don’t know. It’s a fucking stupid challenge.). So I started trying to draw another Earth Mother. So I drew the outline of a woman’s torso (this thing is definitely going to a second page) in pencil (I never do pencil) and then started drawing in pen over it, with the plan of covering the figure with plants and animals, so there would be no nudity…she would be wearing the clothing of the earth, water, fire, plants, and animals. Air too I guess. I could do that.

This is not easy, but here’s the start…

It may not work. But if it does…I guess I will enter it into the Ventura show, because I don’t have anything else at all that will fit in that show, I think. Nothing without police caution tape or guns or nipples or uteri or naked baby butts or polluted wastewater or coffins or underground skeletons (are they political, violent, or nude?). Hey. I could do a whole quilt of skeletons. Eh. Ventura is pissing me off.

Feeding the Artist Brain

The logical thing to do last night, after the first exhausting week back at school, would have been to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I yawned 700 times at the soccer game, fell asleep on the couch after dinner with my computer on my lap (apparently grading), snoring away while the kids stared. I was fucking tired. But no. The artist brain was whining, complaining. It wanted to finish the binding on that little quilt. It wanted it done. AND. AND. (it wanted to draw. it told me. i had ignored it for weeks…)

So the thing with the artist brain is that lots of us have this tendency to create, to make, but it’s harder to get off the couch and go into the studio and make than it is to just go to bed. I really should have gone to bed. But then I wouldn’t have the start of this drawing…

Because that whole thing started at about 11 PM. And I kept feeding it with tea and wine and Walking Dead, and it kept spilling out…and at some point, it stopped…even though there’s a whole left side to fill in. But wow. I always forget how good it feels to just push the pen around on paper, to stare at the paper for 20 minutes sometimes, waiting for the image to spill out, and then it’s magically there. I don’t even remember uncapping the pen and making the lines. It’s just there. It’s not magic. It’s years of feeding the artist brain…of giving it the time and space and honestly respect to create, even though grades are due and I haven’t finished grading projects and at some point I’m just going to have to suck it up and be a teacher and do the work. You know, in ten years, I probably won’t be a teacher. I will still be an artist. So yes, I have to be a responsible teacher too…

But not last night. Friday nights are mine, dammit. Fuck work. There is nothing in my contract to state that I have to give my job my soul, despite what the politicians want teachers to do. Y’all don’t pay me enough to have my soul, you assholes.

I also numbered these two little guys…

which have way more pieces than they should for their size. The smaller one is about 6″ square and the larger one is almost 9″ tall. I’m hoping to get those done in the next week. They’re kind of an experiment. Then I have one piece that’s supposed to be done in April and I need to look at the requirements…and the two in July…and a big one by Spring Break. Wow. I’m not overplanning or anything. Whatever. Artist brain demands. I am in the mood to keep feeding it.

I finished this one last night…

And then I decided to add ink this morning…

Hard to see the difference in the photos, but I know it’s there. I don’t know how old the drawing is, but I numbered it almost a year ago, thinking I would do some smaller quilts last year, and then the birds took over. It’s called Hold Me and it’s about 18″ square. It took 12 1/2 hours to complete. Doesn’t sound like much, until you realize I work a 60+ hour week as a teacher on a good week (bad weeks are 70-80 hours).

Nope. Sleep not a priority. Last night? I was not in the mood for sleeping once I took up pen and paper, needle and thread. Grading? Hell yeah, it was knocking me out. I suspect that tells me something important. How do I make so much art? Because it keeps me awake.

And you know I did all that after a full day at school and a couple hours at a soccer game. I love it when they play this field because of the colors…

Girlchild got hit by three girls at one point and went down…

Bruise on her jaw, her chest, and her head…no concussion. She’s a tough kid. College apps are done. Now we wait. Finals are next week. She’s a little emotional at the moment. Plus the boychild leaves tomorrow night. I think he’s relieved to go back…bored here? No one is ever home, it’s true. I will miss him again though. Cooking will get a bit easier though…no worrying about what we can’t cook, although he is much more likely to eat vegetables than he used to be. I’m glad of that. Too bad we can’t persuade him that pigs are food and steak is like manna from heaven, if heaven were made of cow.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get back to that drawing some time in the next week, and to get the two hands going…because I have to listen to that part of my brain. It keeps me centered…happy. It deserves to be fed.

Twitching Eyelid, Missing Stovetop

No, this is not a single-mom’s version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon…or is it?

So this is where my stovetop used to be…

Yeah. I had a replacement, but it was too small. We can talk later about why it was too small. Let’s just say it was too small. Meanwhile, the nice installation guy had to cut the wires to get the old one out…it was half-functioning, which is still a lot more functional than this hole is. So when we realized it was too small, my day kind of slapped me upside the face.

It’s OK. I got my car back. I’m just going to drive it until whatever caused issues with it up on Sunrise Highway happens again and it dies again. Not much else I can do. He wouldn’t charge me anything for trying to figure it out. I offered him a turkey. The stovetop installation guy also wouldn’t charge me anything for not installing a stovetop. Turkey? No? Getting the car back meant I had time to go to Sears, return the too-small stovetop, and order one that would fit, because the girlchild now had a car to go to her soccer game. The stovetop? For January 19. OK. It’s all right. I have a mostly working oven, a toaster, an electric tea kettle, and a microwave. Oh, and a crock pot. We can eat. We can toast things. We just can’t fry things or make sauces. Or pasta. Although there’s been some contemplation if we boiled water in the tea kettle over and over again and kept pouring it over the pasta, it would cook to some extent. Insert evil eye glare here.

So there’s that. And I went into my classroom and found all the crap for Monday’s lab and organized some stuff and copied the stuff I need for Monday. So I don’t have to go back there until Monday. Which is when school starts, so I really should be there. But I can sort of ignore it for two days. My left eyelid, however, is not ignoring it. It’s still twitching like a motherfucker.

While the guy was not installing my stovetop, I started sorting all of Mariah’s hand-me-down fabrics by color…

The kids say they couldn’t possibly make the decisions I do about multi-colored pieces. Or where I draw the line between brown and orange or white and yellow. Or even green and blue. Whatever. It will probably take me months to do this.

The day kicking my ass found me in a bar (oh yeah) with my sketchbook and a glass of wine, trying to make sense of cancer donation quilts once again…first of all, breast cancer cells are alternately terrifying and beautiful in their spikiness.

But I think I need to draw something not related to cancer. I think these spiky cells will end up in something though. How can they not?

And when I came home, I figured out how to cook the previously planned dinner without a stovetop, because someone, whose name will stay unknown, kept texting me that she was hungry but couldn’t possibly handle making dinner, and then I tried to quilt, but I was really really tired…

Yeah, drinking in the early evening after a long stressful day can do that to you. So I didn’t finish her. And today I’m hiking and I don’t know what else, but it isn’t quilting and it isn’t grading papers…it’s whatever it takes to get the damn eyelid under control. Because that’s a sign of stress and it needs to wander off somewhere else.

Drawing Cancer…

Oh holy vacation we call Winter Break, as you slither from my fingers and wither away into workload from hell, I miss you already. I spent time yesterday writing homework for next week. I had to go to school to find the journals I thought I had brought home with me. I have tried to pin my brain down to decisionmaking on the lesson-planning front at least five times, and it wanders off halfway through, complaining that it would like to finish the book it’s reading, or go see a movie, or even clean the kitchen, because that is way more engaging than slogging through a lesson plan revamp. Or is there any point in the revamp? All the science standards change next year…why am I working so hard on adjustments this year, when I won’t even be teaching this content next year?

Who knows. I don’t. It was easier last year to let things like that drop. I should keep remembering that. Let It Go. Oh god, now that fucking song is in my head; make it stop.

All right. So yesterday was a giant clusterfuck of you have to be here or there or everywhere and then sit for an hour in a parking lot, and girlchild’s formal dress disaster (aka the genetics of the female body and how none of us look good in those skimpy dresses), and finally at some point, I found myself realizing that I need to get this cancer quilt done. Or at least started. It’s not going to take long, but I know what the next three weeks look like and I’m flailing.

So instead of taking the endless Christmas stocking that will never be finished (hence the endless part) to my monthly stitching meeting, I took my sketchbook and a couple of pens. I figured I would force myself to draw and even if it was crap (boundless crap), I would have a start and maybe I could come home and draw something that wasn’t crap. The night before, I started with the hand in the middle…

Totally fucked it up. Decided to keep going and drew the mouth, and then the pizza just jumped in there. Crap drawing. But drawing. And I haven’t been doing much of that, so I’m out of practice again. Remember my plan to draw every Friday night? Yeah. So do I. OK. The drawing isn’t crap. The cat is crap. The rest…I could do something with that. The hand sucks. Whatever.

So then I was staring at the paper in this Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, and although I often draw in public, I don’t really draw with people watching me much. So I drew the hands…

Which I think are good…remember this had to be simple. But then the bird. And I hated the bird. This morning? Staring at the picture of it? I don’t hate the bird. But he’s got too many damn pieces for this one. I could do the hands again and put something else there (like an anatomically correct heart…not a uterus…I mean, I COULD put a uterus there, but…that would kind of mess with my decision that this piece should not scare the crap out of some poor donor in some state that can’t handle the existence of a uterus). So reject. For now.

Meanwhile, I’ve got Julie and Kathy talking to me about cells and cancer and infusion and ports (I purposely took the sketchbook to this group because Julie’s a survivor and Kathy’s a science person…I knew they could throw some stuff at me that would poke at the sleeping drawing brain cells and wake them the fuck up). So we were talking about more abstract representations of when the chemo goes into the body and attacks the cells, which Julie has obviously visualized (and experienced), and I’m trying to get my head around it, to make an image out of it that is still a Kathy quilt but goes where I want it to go…and I started with the side view…

Except now I have a breast in there, which breaks my rules for this quilt, and then it deteriorated into a tattoo from a photo I saw online and then there were antennae. If you are in charge of filming my retrospective, you should totally record Julie and Kathy, in a Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, describing my drawing process. Because Kathy knew it was endoplasmic reticulum. And Julie wasn’t sure about the antennae.

Hell, I’m not sure about the antennae. But I’m getting closer. Really. I know it seems like I’m flailing all over the place, but I’m getting closer.

When I got home, I was tired…but wanted to get a start on the quilting of that other small quilt, which now has a name…

I woke up to it this morning…the name, not the quilt…

I do not take my quilts to bed with me.

I finished the outlining. It’s not really dark on that side…I just couldn’t get the camera to behave last night and I was too tired to fuss about it. Now I just need to do the background and bind it and it’s done. Except what I REALLY should be doing is lesson-planning and grading. UGH. I hate responsibilities.

Speaking of, I finished the two commissioned birds and sent them off to their owner yesterday…this is Owl 3…

And this is HeyBird 3…

The first two quilts of 2015.

I’m still watching a lot of this…

And honestly not getting a whole lot done while I watch. A tiny bit of grading, maybe some stitching, but mostly just watching and brain dead. I know it’s OK to have some down time after finishing major work, and I’m trying to let my brain have that, but there’s definitely a push in my head for getting the next thing done…today being the last real day of vacation before going back, I’m definitely kind of buried in that rushed feeling of checking stuff off the to-do list. Which sucks. And I still need to draw the cancer quilt. Damn.

Holidaze…

It seems I spent 24 hours straight cooking and cleaning and doing household mom-type things. I’m exhausted. How weird. Some people like doing this shit? Whatever. They crazy.

So this is how Kathy’s brain works: Yes, these are homemade cinnamon rolls…

No, they are artistic shapes. See how they expand to fill the space and the spiral changes to fit that shape?

And when the dish is a different shape, they do even weirder shit? Yup. Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when you have Kathy’s brain. On the positive side, we did just freeze that last dish of cinnamon rolls, because otherwise there is entirely too much sugar in the house (they are now covered with a river of maple-flavored sugar that might kill the diabetics among us). Plus there’s a drawing (or seven) that I need to do BECAUSE of the cinnamon rolls. Totally.

So Christmas morning started late, due to teenagers who sleep in (oh hell, I slept in)…

So did Grandma. Besides, it’s all about the children…I mean, the dogs. Calli got a tummy rub from everyone.

She loves Christmas. She doesn’t seem to notice that Jake is gone, but she’s never been the smartest dog in the world…Babygirl is getting used to boychild again…

Mostly, though, she sleeps a lot in the sun and on the chair in my office. She is directly behind my butt, even as I type.

I had two hours yesterday after gift-opening and cookie delivery to finish all the cooking and get to my ex’s house (turns out, I really had three hours, because girlchild was behind)…so I made green beans, cookies, and deviled eggs all at the same time while watching an amusing Wild West movie on television.

I actually frosted MOST of the cookies this morning. I took some over last night, but the frosting is supposed to dry, and I didn’t have enough time to do that. These are the POST-Xmas cookies…for the POST-Xmas sugar hangover. Which is why I’m going hiking in about 20 minutes. Probably I should go run 10 miles (not happening).

While waiting for dinner to get done, I drew…

I really like the dog. I might mess with this a bit more, try again maybe. I want to be in the habit of drawing.

Then I remembered I only had 10 minutes left on this bird…so I finished it.

There’s another soccer game tonight where I can start the next color way.

Finally, I left the ex’s house at around 9, after listening to girlchild read out all the comments on his old report cards (nothing was a surprise…to anyone at the table)…I fortified myself with caffeine, because yes, I was tired. I don’t want you to think I never get tired. I do. Freakin’ exhausted sometimes…but I bully through, have a cup of tea, and persuade my brain to keep going. Usually if I can get beyond the 8 PM slump, I can go for a while. And I hadn’t quilted during the day…I flat out ran out of time. So I was determined…

I got 2 1/2 hours in. That was good. The whole body is done and I’m up in the tree.

My goal is to finish the outlining tonight (after the soccer game) and start the background quilting. Of course, I also have to fit in some hiking, some hanging out, some eating, some soccer, some cleaning (again? WTF.), and who knows what else. I did just bribe the kids to do one of my errands though, so that is cool. Checks one thing off my list. Because part of finding the right balance in your life means not taking it all on yourself. Saying yes when people need help, but then also saying no. Or putting your foot down and saying, “I’m taking this time. It’s mine.” I’ve been working on all that shit for so many years…I’m almost getting good at it. Sort of. Going to put my boots on now…

What Is It Good for?

So this was my theme song today:

Although it took me all day to get there. To the ironing of War, that is…which may now have a title related to that song, but I’m not positive, so I’m not committing yet. You know, cuz I’m the not-committing type. Ha! Yeah. I know. Those who know me know that’s bullshit.

So I had a hard week getting to work on this quilt, and there were two soccer games yesterday that ate up many hours, but I got a ton of grading done (yay!) and I managed to pull the birds out and be working on them as well, because there’s nothing like freezing to death on narrow cold metal bleacher benches and doing bullion knots with ice-cold hands.

Because that’s how I roll. Seriously, you should try it. And yes, it absolutely is taking me more than two years to finish these fucking birds, but I’m OK with that, because it’s nice to sew on them at soccer games. I do enjoy it. It’s so easy sewing through wool. I have a bunch done already…

OK, they all need eyeballs, but otherwise they’re done…

But there’s probably another 15 that aren’t done. Maybe this season they’ll get there? Who knows. I’m not that bothered. Wait. So I’m only halfway done? Shit. Whatever. There are four soccer games this week. Surely I can get something done in four games, right?

But more importantly, I finally tackled the pile of men again. HOLY CRAP. What was I thinking when I numbered these? I totally should have numbered from the bottom-most piece to the top, but I did the exact opposite…

Which meant I ironed from the top, then pulled up, and tried to fit shit underneath.

The whole fucking time. Which is just fucking crazy. Nuts. At some point, I had the whole pile done, although I need a couple of dark pieces in this one…

I can do that tomorrow…

Seriously though. Wow. That’s a pile of naked men lying on flames. No socio-political commentary there, eh? Anger issues? Naw. It will look much better with outlining…once I get to the quilting.

I am so far off schedule right now though. I was going to be done with the ironing tonight, wasn’t I? And I’m only 3 1/2 hours in, and only 280 pieces are ironed of 700+. Granted, I think I just did the hardest bit, but hell. I’ve got soccer games and holiday parties and sheesh. Monday night and Wednesday night I think are my only freebies this week. Maybe Friday? Hard to say? Oh shit, the boychild comes home Friday night. Wow. He’s been gone for almost four months. I miss his cranky ass. I wonder what he will think of this one.

Anyway. So this is very much a survival week, a Fuck Me week. A week where teachers pray for videos and certain kids to be absent (you know who you are) and lots of holiday parties and eating and not enough hours at the gym. But I think I can survive it. And I think I can get this sucker ironed down and then stitched down relatively quickly. Hopefully. Because I’m running out of time. Sleep? Fuck sleep. I suck at it anyway. Why spend more time at something at which you suck, right?

Sigh.

I drew tonight. I was at the gym this morning and texting a friend and the main image just popped into my head and would not fucking leave. So I sat down tonight and spent about two hours working with it…

It is nowhere near done. But it’s growing…

Girlchild had a bunch of friends show up here tonight and one came early and accidentally one of my drawings was on the light table and caught her eye (and probably slammed it to the ground and kicked it to bits), and you could see her stammer in her head for a minute and then recover, because yeah, I guess I’m the weird mom. Whatever. Can you imagine being 17 and trying to parse me? I would have been fascinated, but I think most of them just wonder. Plus I use swear words around them. I figure they have enough good influences. I should be the one that throws them out of the norm and makes them think there might be something else, that there might be creativity and art and crazy shit. There’s a lot of things I’m not good at, but creativity is something I embrace wholeheartedly, even at 2 in the morning when I should be asleep.

I’m excited about the drawing and the quilt. They’re good. I love when what comes out of my head is good. It makes the teeth-grinding better. It makes the late nights better. It makes the inability to sleep better. This is the being of an artist. It’s just all there in my head and I pluck it out and make it and it is good.

What is it good for? You wouldn’t ask if you had it. It’s so fucking obvious.

The 100: Should I Draw or Should I Not?

So I’ve been thinking about this donation piece I’m going to do for FFAC The 100 Fundraiser, and I have some drawings that are already done (OK, I have hundreds of drawings that are already done)…and this time of year is apparently going to kick my butt in terms of getting any work done (almost nothing last night…again), so I pulled out one of the medium-sized sketchbooks to see what was there, because why remake the wheel? If I already have something that will work…

Yeah. That’s got way too many pieces in it. One of the things we’re supposed to try to do is keep it in the $100 range, at least 8×10″, which means looking at a sketchbook that’s 10×12″ is probably a mistake. But this would make a cool smaller quilt.

Then I had some drawings that I had already exploded (OK, that’s not the right word, but I haven’t had enough caffeine yet to come up with the right one…dammit…ENLARGED), but same issue.

They’re going to be too big or too complicated. Recognize that bird? Yup. It’s the original drawing from whence the purple bird came.

This drawing is really old…never got done. I even numbered all the pieces. It’s been a bit beat up.

I might have to ship the piece overseas, so I want it to fit flat in a padded envelope, ideally. Shipping can be really expensive. Maybe just the bird and the hand in that one? That might work?

And then I saw Kathy York’s piece, and I wanted to be one of the 100 donors. We’ll see what money looks like in February. Odds are it’s gonna be ugly (college apps). So you should do it because you might get that canoe and that canoe is awesome.

So I went back to considering my options (and being irritated because I haven’t even started yet and the other Kathy is done…not irritated at HER of course…she’s awesome…and I’m just too busy and that sucks at the moment).

So this one is still hanging around (as is Calli)…although very cool and possibly small enough, it’s probably way too complicated.

The two smallest of the birds came out at about $100 calculated hours. Keep that in mind. That’s like less than 20 pieces (very hard for me to go that simple) and they were 8×10″.

So I’m still thinking about it. Keep it simple, right?

This one is simpler…

but too big. And those leaves are pretty fancy schmancy. I could go back to its original size? Or I could just pull out the smaller sketchbook and draw with size and pieces in mind…starting over…

Calli’s no help with this. Sigh. Will keep mulling this over until I have time to deal with it!

Vacation…More Time to Work

So. I’m officially on vacation. I traced Wonder Under Friday night for a little while, but I was exhausted and went to bed early, because I had a long hike early Saturday morning. I get up earlier for hikes than I do for school. It’s a little crazy. But it was a good hike (post later) and we went out to eat afterwards, which I almost never do, because you lose the whole day. But I could afford to lose the whole day because I have a whole week of them off. Anyway. It was good. And I came home and tried to function, but the body and brain were old and tired. Eventually, after the second or third cup of tea and some reading of the book club selection that I had to be done with by today (there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute), I got up and started tracing Wonder Under again…

The fun part (wait, put “fun” in quotes) about tracing this section is that it’s a pile of bodies that are all overlapping, and although I might have tried to be logical about numbering them in the first place, that logic has now left the building, and I am often staring at the pile, trying to find the next piece in number order. Piece 225 took like 10 minutes to find. I don’t know what I was thinking. So the almost-200 pieces in the pile took forever to trace. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it done, so that when I came back to tracing today, it would be straightforward and relatively easy.

The thing is, that pile is gonna kick my ass when I have to pick fabrics out, because overlapping and random behind spaces and I don’t even know what parts go with what body in half of it. Yeah. Way to fuck with yourself, Kathryn. I guess I like a good challenge.

So I’m 4 hours into the tracing and only at piece 287 or so. Like I said, it was a bitch. I have about 5 hours left, I’m guessing, and I’d like to be done today. No really. I would. That might not be realistic though because I still have to go grocery shopping and to book club and to dinner at my parents’ house. Hmn. Are there 5 hours LEFT after all that? So much for vacations, right? That’s why you’re supposed to GO somewhere, so you can relax and stop doing all that other stuff. Then again, I don’t really do anything else right…why start with doing vacations right? It’s a stay-at-home vacation because I can’t afford anything else. I would have loved to have taken the girlchild to NYC, met the boychild there, hung out, got an AirBnB apartment, checked out the city. It would have been cool. It would have been $1500 I don’t have right now. Especially with college apps coming up again.

So we’re here in lovely San Diego, soccer tournament, practices, a couple of hikes, dinner with the close family on Tday. And lots of artmaking. So my plan is to have all the Wonder Under ironed to fabric in a week. Because then school starts back up again and that 3-week stretch notoriously kicks my butt. And then I have vacation again, but only about a week and a half before this next quilt has to be done. So yeah. I need to work hard. Like usual. Like what the fuck is new about that? This is my life. It’s a continuous hard-work endeavor. I’m not always entirely sure what I get out of that. People tell me the art is cool, amazing, etc., but then I just make more of it. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, except that I’m incredibly unhappy when I don’t make it. And there’s enough of that feeling in my life…I don’t need to make more of it. There must be a better balance though.

I did take time out to finish the book for book club. It must have been cold last night because (1) I was wearing polar fleece in the house (lots of windows behind the light table) and (2) the bitchy old-lady cat was in the living room, curled up tight next to me.

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Which was fine. Notice the pile of dirty clothes on the floor? Girlchild has some cleaning to do. I’m tired of the slob factor. That’s one goal for this vacation…get the mess under control, at least enough to get me through December.

I wanted to show you where I normally write…

Yup. The computer. The computer desk is a mess. The chair has been scratched all to hell by bitchy cat, who often is sitting on the chair (you can see the top of her head in the picture). Right now, she’s not, but that’s because morning winter sun is over THERE on the table, so she’s curled up over there. Thank god. I can actually sit properly. I’m over 42,000 words on the novel, and I will easily hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and get to the end, whatever that is, by the end of the year or earlier. I’ve already decided no sequel. So I’m writing it that way. I guess I always knew I would. I do have another book started in my head though. Different story, different characters, different location. Still sci-fi though. Not sure what’s up with that.

Here’s Luana Rubin’s review of the two SAQA exhibits at Houston this year…she mentions my piece.

Someday I’ll meet her in person and tell her how to pronounce my name. Or maybe you could do that for me.

Some Kind of Crazy

Some kind of crazy happened yesterday. I mean, there’s the regular crazy of my job, but then I came home right after work and sat down with a cup of tea and finished the drawing (it took 13 minutes to finish it, by the way, but probably 6 hours to decide how to finish it in 13 minutes). My car tire was having inflation issues again, so I knew I needed to get it some air, but I went to the copy place first and enlarged the drawing, then filled the car with air and gas, then went home and started taping the drawing together. I realized it needed more space below as well as above (I knew about above…there were some leaf-fitting issues…nothing major), so I taped more paper above and below. Girlchild came home and left with the dog. I seriously only see her (girlchild) for like 10-minute sessions, and then she’s gone again. Or I’m gone. Or we’re both gone. And I sort of realized that if I was going to get to quilt class on time, I wasn’t going to be able to finish drawing at the house. So I packed up all the stuff to trace Wonder Under, and I even dropped off my library book on the way there, and I got there and drew the bottom, which I didn’t even know was going to happen until it happened. This is how life is when you let the creative brain have free rein (or is that reign? I could argue both at the moment)…it just does stuff and doesn’t tell you about it. Wow. Just like my relationships. Ha!

Anyway. On track, Kathryn. So then I started numbering, and because of the bizarre penis pileup I have going on in the bottom, it took for-freakin-ever to number that section…

(OK, it’s just a pile of men, not penises) I was trying to be logical about it, but it turns out, you can’t be particularly logical about chaos. I had about 280 pieces numbered when I finished the pile, so I asked the other quilters at my meeting to hazard a guess as to my total pieces. Susan came in at 1500, Jean at 957, Mary at 1267, and Barbara at 850 (mostly because I kept saying it better NOT be over a thousand, but by then, she could see I was up to 400 and something and she was estimating beyond that. So maybe she had insider information by sitting next to me).

So I ended up getting to 749 (oh thank god…I might actually be able to finish it in time)…

But then when I got home (because it took me two hours to finish drawing and then number the piece, speaking of not being particularly efficient), I realized I hadn’t numbered the bullet thingie on her chest, which surely has a real name. Let me ask The Google. Holy crap! It IS a bandolier. I thought it was, and then I thought NOOO. That’s like something fancier than that, like something you wear when you dance or something. Yeah. Anyway. I numbered that and got to 768. Totally doable (crazy ass bitch. Are you NUTS?).

Meanwhile, I did write once I got back. I really wanted to start tracing Wonder Under, but I’m being really good about writing every day, so I did that first. I’m over 38,000 words. I will finish Thanksgiving Day (with the 50,000…probably not with the book) at this rate, which is kinda cool. It’s nice to know I can do it if I have to. I got stymied by some DNA testing terminology, so I just flagged it for future research. Googling stuff like “What’s that thing called when the DNA gets spread out and makes pretty pictures” is not particularly useful when you’re already tired. And it’s not worth spending hours trying to figure out right now.

Then finally…finally I was allowed to go back to the drawing…

Which turned out being bigger than I had planned…as usual. But I think it’ll be OK. It’s longer, but not wider, and wide is the issue in a small gallery. It’s 27″ wide by 45″ high, which is smaller than anything I’ve done for a while. Which is good. Because I only have 6 weeks. I think. Don’t think about it.

Those flying hearts showed up again…

I like them. At the moment. Don’t know why. A metaphor for where I’m at? Who knows. And DNA hand is back.

I didn’t trace a lot or for super long, because it was getting late, but I’m starting! So I think I’m ahead of where I planned to be. Or maybe I’m right where I planned to be. Hard to say.

Planning To Be Not Sick…

So the girlchild is sick. It’s two days until a week-long vacation, and I am surrounded by coughy, sneezy, leaves-her-used-tissues all over the house, which the dog then tries to eat, so I have to touch all of them to either throw them away or get them out of the dog’s mouth. And THEN. Then she drinks out of the milk jug, straight out of it, right in front of me, like she doesn’t even care that she’s bombarding ME with all those germs on levels that I don’t even need to consider. Her response? “Um. Sorry? We live together anyway.” She’s like the worst roommate ever. I come home and she’s already left for soccer, and all the clothes she’s worn are all over the floor, and when I come back from the gym, I find her smelly soccer socks, shoes, and shinguards sitting on the couch where I would like to sit and draw, and it reeks.

Bad roommate. Except she’s my blood. I did give her some grief yesterday when she finally came home, but she’s SIIICKKK. Sigh. I guess my plan for break is to be sick as well (pounding vitamins, washing hands as I speak). I don’t have time to be sick. I have two hikes to go on, 13,000 words to write, a quilt to get significantly started. I can’t be sick.

So there’s the drawing. I came home after delivering my quilt to the photographer and I was exhausted. So I tried to read, but fell asleep on the couch (probably I’m getting sick) and woke up to a cat lying on me. It’s a risk in this house. Happens all the time. I only had like 30 pages of my book left, so I finished it (It was good by the way…the last in Lev Grossman’s Magicians series). Then I started trying to draw, and here’s why I don’t keep track of time on the drawings. When it’s not going well, when I’m having a hard time getting it out of my head or solidifying it in there, I just stare at things…mostly at the paper, but also at the TV (Blacklist, James Spader is truly evil in this show, and yet not), or a cat. Or the white wall, annoyed by the fact that I haven’t finished doing things in here, like hanging art. So I did a lot of that. I have “four hours” into the drawing, but I’d bet that only half of that was actual pen or pencil moving on paper. And if you’re going to count the staring-at-the-paper minutes, you should also count the minutes when I’m thinking about the drawing when I don’t have a sketchbook in my lap, and that’s quite a few more hours. So yeah. Pointless measurement there. No real start and stop. Fluid.

But after I made dinner and girlchild finally showed up to eat (and sneeze and cough and moan and leave used Kleenex everywhere), I went and wrote some more story (she’s kidnapped! It happened early! I said 5 PM and then I kidnapped her early! Don’t ask. My brain does what it pleases.), and when I came back to the couch, the snotty thing had gone to bed (without even saying good night) and I was able to do a significant piece of the drawing. Because before that? I was just staring at the paper for a long time.

It is unfortunately not done. That said, I think it COULD be done with about 20 more minutes. I don’t HAVE 20 minutes before school though. And I was going to go copy it after school. SO. I could take it to school and instead of doing grades during prep, I could finish it. And then copy it after school. But I don’t like taking my sketchbook (the big one) to school. It’s just…it’s got stuff in it that the students would be shocked by, and it’s big and hard to hide, unlike the one in my bag. SO. I could just ditch out of school as soon as the bell rings, come home and finish it, and then go copy it. Probably means I’ll be putting it together at class, but I think I can do that. OR. I could stop writing this and go finish it, except mornings are not good drawing times for me. I don’t know why. My brain is primed for late night. Right now, I’m still trying to wake up. Apparently I can write half asleep but I can’t draw. Two different parts of the brain. The rambling wordy bit can vomit shit up all the time. The drawing part needs more caffeine. And wake time.

But this is where I’m at…

Like I said, not much left. Trying to keep it simple so I can actually finish it in time. Yes, the DNA hand showed up again. So did the tree. I really like the pile of people, of MEN. Yup. Standing on Da Boyz. And there’s pencil between her legs because I’m not sure about that part, but it’s there to remind me to think about it. So I guess I really need to wait until the end of the day. Yup. Plus I’m going to have to add to the top and sides a bit so I can put more leaves in. But not much.

Another thing I’m doing, which I had heard about back in September or October, is Coursera. If you haven’t heard of it, they are college classes you can take for free (no credit) or for credit (pay!) that are offered on a wide variety of subjects and from a huge number of participants. A friend (Linda!) emailed me about one she thought I would like about how plants use their “senses.” It sounded interesting, so I signed up for this class taught by a professor at Tel Aviv University, and I’m about three weeks behind starting, but since I’m not taking it for credit (unlike some of the kids in there), I don’t care. I also don’t care that I’m not acing the quizzes, because I’m listening to his lectures while I’m writing the book. And when he says something really interesting or confusing, I flip to the tab running the video and I rewatch that section, and sometimes I take notes (right now, my post-it says “auxin” and “Barbara McClintock”), but mostly I’m just listening for stuff that I could use in the book or that might make some things make more sense. I’m still boggled by this article about plants that can “hear” caterpillars eating them and respond chemically. They recorded the sounds and played them near another plant and it responded in kind. This is awesome science, and helped me write the section where the plant talks to the main character. Yeah, my science is a little out there, but I don’t think it’s as out there as I originally thought.

Anyway. It’s interesting enough and I’ve done two weeks of work in two nights (well, I didn’t do it WELL. I got a D on the quiz, but whatevs. I’m not taking it for reals.).

So. Progress on all levels. And two more days of school to survive. If you’ve never been in a middle school the week before an upcoming vacation, even if it’s only a week off that’s coming up, it’s like there’s a full moon. They wig out all over the place and do amazingly stupid things, because they think it’s not going to follow them after break. Which is only a week long. I’m with them, though. I want to be on vacation too. I just don’t want to be SICK on vacation. Grr. More vitamins. More handwashing.