Need More Leg Parts…

Back to school today. No time has passed. The yard and house are still disasters. It’s all good. It happens every year…mostly because I like to travel over break (it makes it a real break from what I’ve been doing). The cleaning and yardwork are constants. They don’t go anywhere. Even when you clean, you will just have to do it again. So it doesn’t matter if you did it over break or on a Monday after school. I did clean almost all the floors over break, so that’s OK. The rest will happen or wait. Whichever works.

Did I finish grading things? Almost. But no. Grades are due in another two weeks, I think. Fun times. Sex ed starts in a week, early this year, thanks to the school board and the state, working against each other, but also against the teachers and the kids. Also fun times. Two-hour staff meeting today about stuff that can’t be done right now. Also fun times. In other news, I’m reading a good book and I’ll be going to ceramics today. Plus my bro is coming to visit. Not me, the parentals, but I’ll probably get to see him.

Artwise, I’m all over the map. It’s OK; I’ve been here for a while now. I’m working on embellishing this dye painting with Scribble’s help.

Nope. She’s really not helpful. At all.

So far, I’ve only done some of the blue-green color.

I’ll do some pink and purple and whatever that combo color is. And add some beads and sequins. Oh yeah, some black.

It’s time-consuming. Then I also started dealing with the bugs I ironed while I was in Virginia.

I’ve stitched two down and picked backings and found batting for all of them. Tonight, I’ll finish the stitchdown and start quilting. Some need more leg parts, but those are hand-embroidered after the quilting. Some of these from the previous make are on Etsy and some are at Visions Museum. Two of these are spoken for and the other three will eventually be on Etsy. Small brainless things right now…good plan. Although I need two more dye paintings done and photographed by June 1. Should be fine.

This is honestly when many afternoons look like…competition for my lap.

Usually this is when I read, but that’s my book on the table, so IDK what I was doing. Doomscrolling. Zoning out. Considering my options. The other option for Simba is to keep one of my feet warm.

Just one. Whether I need it or not. Nights are still chilly, so I’m good.

Bowie takes advantage of my open office window to sample Spring.

He likes it. Also he’s a klutz and knocks my tea over. Tries to be all sneaky to get up there and then is a disaster about it. He is a boy…

Well. There are times that this is totally true. And it’s not ‘drawn to’…it’s ‘appreciative of’. Mostly the men here are OK. They just have their moments. I’m sure I do too. Being a post-menopausal woman. Although young women also get it…

I spent some time yesterday deconstructing two big branches I pulled off a tree (they were dangling; they’d already broken off). The weeds are out of control. But my sinuses are OK (not great; just OK). IDK what it was in Virginia, but I was allergic to something there near where we were staying.

Let’s end on a positive note, because the world is a shitshow.

I am still trying. On all the fronts. Today, I’m teaching…well, I’m introducing a new unit that will be bisected by sex ed because my school board are idiots and the state doesn’t listen…or care, honestly, I think. Certainly, I couldn’t find anyone who had a brain in their head. Did I spell bisected right? It looks wrong. Shouldn’t it be like dissected? No. It shouldn’t. Glad we had that moment together.

Then staff meeting, then ceramics! yay! Where I have to decide what to do next. Minor issue. Don’t have a plan. Nothing new there. Then come back, eat dinner, read book, not in that order, and sew bugs. Repeat. Slight differences each day, but repeat.

Completely Unprepared

Late start to writing; so much to do. Brain explodes and is replaced with AI…which doesn’t know where to start, how to prioritize. Still laughing about Melania’s AI in the classroom. Obviously the woman and her people have never stepped foot into a middle-school classroom. I wouldn’t mind a little robot assistance just for the stupid questions: “What are we doing?” “Do we have to read the whole thing?” “There’s a back?”. They could also do the copying for me and maybe input grades (can I trust it for that?) and answer parent emails…oh wait, no…I had to tell Chatty to be less kiss ass on one response to a parent because she was bending over backwards for one kid in a class of 33 with 7 SPED. Like IDK what drugs she’s on, but it needs to be possible for humans to do the things…I for sure know SHE couldn’t do it. It would take 7 or 8 robots to do all the things she suggested. I only tried Chat for a response to a parent email because I was fairly sure the parent had also used it to write their email and I wanted to see what the response was.

So there’s that. Today, so far, I wrote one warmup, I checked the weekly email doc and contacted my team to make sure everyone had written their paragraph by Sunday, I ate breakfast, took my meds, calculated the Man’s grocery costs for the week, went through my to-do list and transferred the things I hadn’t done to today and Saturday (and next week, honestly, because let’s be real), considered an email I got and wondered if it was passively aggressively suggesting I needed to do something and decided I would make them actually ask, read some of my book, drank two cups of tea, marinated the meat for dinner, put all the extra dishes away, started some eggs hardboiling for lunch, tried to write another warmup question but there was a feisty cat in the way, remembered the blog, oh wait, I also went to pilates and considered gas costs. So yeah. And showered and changed clothes and opened windows. Doing well. Not great…just getting little things done. Considered cleaning floors, but I have to eat before I go to yet another dentist to see if I lost a filling? I don’t have a filling there but something happened and IDK what and maybe I hallucinated it. I don’t think I’m finishing this post before I have to go eat and then leave. You won’t know the difference. I will.

I made it to ceramics yesterday. Picked up my new bowl, which I love, wonkiness and all…

Here’s a video of it…

Complicated to hold and film. It’s fun. I meant to make like a soup/pasta bowl, but it’s too big. It’s serving bowl size. Which is fine.

Then I finished the ribcage on the back of this one.

Also pretty cool. Lots of work left on this though.

I started the embroidery on the second dye painting…which is almost invisible in this picture.

But I’ll keep going. I want the texture. I’m adding beads and sequins at some point too.

I had Scribble on my lap for most of it.

She also hung out when I was grading things…

She might have missed me.

I didn’t have much free luggage space in my bag, but I bought a few fabrics (and napkins I will be using as fabrics).

Not a lot. And two t-shirts. And a bag and a cross stitch pattern. Which looks really hard to read. Fun times.

I saw this…related to my most recent quilt that will be at the New England Quilt Museum, opening in a couple of weeks.

There’s been a lot going on, as always. Go Christina Koch!

I’ve been in this space a lot the last three days…

As it should be.

Ready for this. I have a cat ready to go. Maybe four of them.

And I’m now following Amanda Oleander just for this, because I thought I was the only one doing this.

Mostly I swirl them up and make little galaxies (and then throw them in the trash), but sometimes make faces. Maybe I should worry about my hair falling out more, but eh. Seems real.

OK. So I ate, I have 17 minutes until I need to leave to find out about the tooth. I might go to Costco to figure out why my card won’t work and the app won’t verify me. It keeps asking me which street is near mine and none of them are, which is just really weird. So I have to go in person, which sucks, but I also need gas, so maybe I kill both those things. I don’t really want to waste time on either task, but whatever. I’ve got taxes to work on (STILL) and stuff to grade (FOREVER) and cleaning and yardwork (UNENDING), but will end the day with stitching. Need to find the sequins…not something I say often, but it happens. And this is the last official day of Spring Break…I don’t really count the weekend, because it’s the ramp-up to going back (so incredibly not-never ready). I got almost nothing done over break, so there’s that. Going into the last piece of the school year completely unprepared with my hair on fire. Nothing new.

Travels for Quilts

So I’m in Virginia, currently sitting in the kitchen of the Virginia Quilt Museum. We have demonstrations happening this afternoon, and my co-conspirator in fabric is interviewing the director of the museum.

We both arrived Wednesday and were ensconced in an old guesthouse filled with antiques. Definitely a cat theme.

Cats…

Thursday we toured the museum and saw all the exhibits…looking forward to meeting Holly Cole tomorrow. Her animals are amazing.

Such a creative use of materials…

Three-dimensional designs fascinate me; I can’t get my head around them. I’m impressed by those who can.

Here’s Lena Meszaros, the other artist in the Fantastic Stories exhibit here.

Her work is very different than mine, but definitely works with them. She’s more of a collage quilter and works with a wide range of materials.

I’ll get some closeups today. I’m here all day.

Here’s a video of my six pieces in the show.

We also visited one of the top 10 quilt stores in the US, Patchwork Plus. Lots of fabric, patterns, notions, and Jamie. No explanation for that.

We went for a random walk in the afternoon, no sidewalks, out in farmland mostly.

This building was fascinating…

I don’t know how it wasn’t falling down. Lots of Virginia smells like cow so far (limited to where we’ve been so far).

I talk to the animals.

I’ve drawn a bit, read a lot, probably not slept enough (when do I ever?).

Ok. So today, I demonstrate fusing bugs, probably start a new book, maybe draw or stitch a little. Tomorrow is an artists’ talk…so we’ll be here all day again, I think. Oh, and I forgot that thing in my room…

Dog? Unknown. Guards over me while I sleep.

Accept the Fuzz…

Hey. It’s Spring Break. I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, buried, and woke up sick this morning. That squirrel is back on the fence, running along…he hasn’t figured out how to get to the bird feeder yet (the Man moved it). I’m waiting for the Mark Rober adjustments to the feeder if he does figure it out (if you’ve never watched Rober design systems to foil squirrels, it’s definitely a squirrel hole to fall down some day.). I leave early Wednesday morning for Virginia, and every time I turn around, something else gets added to the to-do list. The oil light came on in my car yesterday after driving to Long Beach and back for an art meeting (hardly any traffic, luckily). Hoping I don’t get all those people sick. But I felt fine yesterday…just tired. And I’m always tired. Here’s to hoping my middle-school-teacher immune system kicks in (and my flu shot) to make this thing go away quickly. I don’t have time to be sick. I don’t want to be sick on a plane either. Sigh. OK. Need to buy/find masks now.

Did I finish my taxes on Saturday? Nope. Not even. I packed and shipped a quilt that will be at the New England Quilt Museum as part of the Soul Stories exhibit opening there around April 14. It will travel to Birmingham, UK, and then to International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, in November. I can’t go to any of those shows, I think. Ah well. The quilts travel more than I do…always.

I have the closing reception for the Fantastic Stories exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum this coming weekend. We’re doing demos on Friday and then an artist talk on Saturday. If I had a car and more time, I’d then drive up to the Art Quilt Elements opening at the Wayne Art Center; I have a piece in that show as well. The opening is from 3-5 PM. It’s about a 4-hour drive from where I am in Virginia, I don’t have a car, and I’m planning on going to museums in DC on Monday. I’m not making it to the opening. I couldn’t do the 8-hour roundtrip drive plus rent the car. Money is tight. I’m appreciating the museum finding us a place to stay while we’re in Virginia and transporting us around. Saves me a bit of money I don’t actually have.

But this is the artist’s life…I could never afford to be a fulltime artist and feed my kids. The paychecks are not regular (or honestly big) enough. One quilt selling from this show would cover my expenses easily, but my stuff does not sell easily unfortunately. I probably don’t market well either. In my spare time! Anyway, if you are in Dayton, come see the show. If you miss it this week (it comes down Saturday night), I’ll have a piece in the No Boundaries exhibit that opens right afterward, on March 31.

I did finish the smallest of the dye paintings last night. On Friday, I finished all the embroidery so far and was considering threads for the hair.

Then Saturday night, I started working on the hair…

This is the smallest of the pieces I’m working on…

This one is about 20″ square…smaller than I usually do. And last night, I finished up the purple in the hair…

And sewed the sleeves down on the bottom edge (I waited to make sure the embroidery didn’t catch in the sleeves).

I don’t usually make pieces this small…trying to see if this is faster than the other way I make quilts. For something this size, it’s not.

Official photos will have to follow. I have a piece about this size that I did last year, in my normal technique, and it’s about the same number of hours. Interesting. It’s still a worthwhile process though, for a different type of image. I’m not giving up on it. Certainly, I make more work by adding the embroidery, but that was part of what I wanted to do. Moving on to the next one tonight. Might be some bedazzly stuff going on with that one.

I really wish they’d pay TSA. Getting on a plane and going to DC is somewhat nerve-wracking, now helped by long lines and ICE agents.

Such a frustrating system we have at the moment.

This was not surprising, unfortunately. Men in power. Strength and love to Dolores Huerta.

But true. I don’t want anyone in the Epstein Files to be in power anywhere. Don’t care who they are. That’s the difference.

Going back to the Dark Ages, y’all.

This is how men control the story. Take the meds away…I don’t see anyone removing Viagra or its equivalents. Of course not. Not making men responsible for their bodies and what they do with them. Birth control is mostly hormones…interestingly, hormones men have as well.

This is what I always feel like at the beginning of Spring Break. Except when I’m sick.

But it does feel like a good morning despite the headache and sore throat. I’ll try to stand outside in the sun for a bit. Just stand. Then go back to prepping for this trip, trying to grade stuff, trying to finish taxes, trying to keep up with all the stupid stuff I’m supposed to be doing in the next two days. I’d like to get to ceramics today too…maybe later. Brain is very fuzzy. Spring Break fuzzy? Sick fuzzy? General old age fuzzy? It probably doesn’t matter…accept the fuzz.

Watching Squirrels Sleep…

Hey I usually do more of a countdown to Spring Break, but I haven’t even had the mental space for that…it starts today! At 3:30 PM…but it’s also Eid today, so I’m guessing I’ll have at least 40 students missing, just based on what got turned in yesterday. We normally miss a bunch the Friday before a break, but with a massive religious holiday…it’ll be a lot more. We all planned for it…easier to plan for it at the end of a unit, right before a break, than for the beginning of a unit, right after a break (that was last year). So I’m not expecting a lot of stupid shit today, luckily…hopefully quiet, watch Bill Nye while I grade, be quiet, turn your stuff in. Meanwhile, I made a grading list and it sucks. My fault of course, but whatever. I only have four days at home before I leave for Virginia, and about a million things to do, so that should be interesting.

Survived field trip…

Had to explain what the metal string things were for and that the seagull was not making a nest there and dropping its eggs into the water.

Meanwhile, embroidery takes forever. Wednesday night…I got the speech bubble etc on…

I may have embroidered more around the heart…and then last night, I did embroidery in the speech bubble and more around the heart.

Better. The heart itself needs more. Then the hair. Probably outline the speech bubble. Doesn’t sound like much but I probably won’t be done until next year. Ha! No…it won’t take THAT long.

My brain fuzzed out last night for a bit so I have a lot of memes expressing my frustration with the world. Well, this is not a meme…just a direction to the drones that are not really over California, looking for places to drop bombs.

I love California most of the time. Not all of it. But in general.

Keeping up with the political theme of Why TF are we at war and everything costs so much.

Plus deportations still happening, people dying in custody, little kids separated from their parents. People trying to be legal about immigration and that doesn’t matter. DACA recipients ffs. They pay taxes, you idiots.

The damn SAFE Act is just fucked up. I did check my passport last night, just for giggles (is it giggles when it’s necessary?). I never changed my name though…I also checked that I had my birth certificate, and I do. Thanks mom for smuggling those out of Alaska. I really do think we’re in an alien dystopian movie at the moment.

There’s also this though. I do this all the time.

That’s an anxiety thing. Fun. And this…

I know I’m going to have to be up early on Sunday to drive to an art meeting in freakin’ Long Beach. Ugh. I wouldn’t be going if it weren’t Spring Break, but even then, I don’t have much time before I leave and I WANT to: finish grading, have my taxes done, get a bunch of yard work done…and I NEED to: pack everything, set up demos to take with me, make sure I have food (we have a kitchen…I just found that out). So I’m doing all of that. OH. And get to ceramics on Tuesday or Monday so I’m not leaving my piece for too long. Plus get the damn toilet fixed. It’s been months.

This amuses me…because it is also true. But today is Hawaiian shirt day (for Spring Break), so I’m wearing a bulky men’s shirt that buttons on the wrong side and isn’t my thing at all.

Just like a middle-school teacher. I brought a shirt and flip flops to change into later for ceramics.

I need to grade all of Per 5 and 6’s Unit 5 packets, because I’m bringing home Unit 6 today. Sad but true. I also need to copy all the stuff for the first week back; I have the first day copied and that’s it. So that’s my goal for the school day. Plus be chill (my A/C sort of works?) and not go off on anyone (I already did last night, but it was semi-justified…maybe could have worded it as a suggestion instead of a rant, but I don’t have that in me right now). Do my afterschool duty in 97-degree heat (seriously?) and then go to clay and then go home and eat leftovers and maybe grade some shit because downtime is rare and I’m on a mission to clear the second week of break from school shit (ha!). SLEEP. Maybe. Because hot and the Man yelled out “Text him” the other night in his sleep. Plus a cat hit my head and I was bleeding…luckily under the hair and not on the face. I’m currently watching a squirrel run along the fence between my yard and my neighbors…thinking of getting a squirrel box and putting a camera inside so I can watch them sleep. Seriously. Google it. It’s funny.

Supposed to Do…

Hello all. It’s Wednesday, although my brain is convinced it has survived more than two work days this week. It’s wrong…well, unless you count the weekend, when I also worked. As always. I finally finished all the bindings on the dye paintings…with everyone’s help. Here’s Nova…

Who headbutts things and then drools on you.

I started embroidery (finally!) on this one last night…

Probably take forever. I was going to do more applique on it, but that would have meant getting off the couch and I was well past that. I will still DO the applique, but I need to prep for it earlier in the evening. Probably not tonight. Today is a mess. We’re going on a field trip to the Midway (big military boat; my favorite thing really…ha), then we’re back in our rooms for two periods and I still don’t have air conditioning (it was 97 degrees outside yesterday). Then pilates and cooking dinner. Ugh. I’ll be half dead by the end of it. And I’m grading like crazy to hopefully limit what I have to get done over break.

I went to the ceramics studio last night and took this half-assed photo of the bowl ready for glaze fire.

It took me almost an hour to do the glazing. I’m hoping it turns out well.

The Forbidden Words Project quilt is done…I have three words/phrases in it.

Let’s see if I can find them…

The girlchild might make it to the opening where this will debut up in San Francisco. It’ll travel…hopefully I’ll see it at some point.

Yesterday was crazy hat day AND tattoo a teacher (fundraiser)…

What’s funny is that I went to the ceramics studio after and forgot I had the tattoos and got some weird looks until I remembered.

Good times. Getting them off was a bit more challenging, but I think we’re good.

This is where we’re headed. Again.

I’d like to bring up the guy who said my comments about the Repugs/MAGA need to throw women back to the 1900s were a conspiracy theory. After I bring him up, I’d like him to explain what’s happening now and how I was wrong. (not happening; it’s fine. It’s not like I wanted to be right.)

And this. Sigh.

Keep voting y’all. And caring about all the people. It’s what we’re supposed to do.

Extra Hour…

If you’re a teacher, this is my day: it is Friday the 13th, a week before Spring Break, we have an assembly, and it’s supposed to be 94 degrees. And my air conditioning in the classroom is still not working. It worked for one day and then turned off again. Managed to keep it under 74 degrees yesterday with the use of a fan and opening and closing doors to other people’s A/C. But really not sustainable. So fix that shit! At least there’s no full moon though. Pro: short classes. Con: trying to get a thing done with short classes. All the kids who were absent yesterday when I explained how to do the project are on their own; I made a video of the explanation. I have to check every kid’s paper today before they can go to the next stage (this is the fun part). I’ve have no chance to grade the packets all week. I think I have half of one class done. HALF. Fuck me. I need that done before break.

In other news, I’m still working on four quilts at one time. I got the bindings pinned on Wednesday night…

Except for one, because I forgot to zigzag the edges of the seam. Yes, I do that. Crazy sewing training. Then last night, I started the handsewing of the binding.

Simba did not help. I did not finish even one quilt. I got about 3/4s of the way around. On most of them, maybe all of them, I’ll wait to sew the bindings down until the embroidery is done. I don’t want to embroider through the sleeves…that would make them nonfunctional and be very silly. Some people are probably wondering why I did the binding before the embroidery. Because I don’t have the creative brainpower at the moment to decide what and how to embroider. Hopeful that shows up soon, but currently in exhaustion mode. Wish me luck with that.

Last night was my monthly stitching-in-person meeting and I managed more of the raccoon.

Cute; not hard, but fun.

I had Nova next to me and Scribble decided to be on my lap and then bite Nova’s neck.

I swear, Nova is the most submissive cat sometimes. She just sat there, like “this is my fate”. So weird.

This is true.

And I know what I’m gonna do with it.

OK. Seriously, today is not a trivial day. Plus two meetings and trying to wrangle the sex-ed packets between grade levels. Last night’s parent info meeting was also not trivial. More parents than we’ve had in years, maybe ever. Long. Thanks to the translators. After school, I have to book out of there to get to the dentist to get my stitches out…finally. They’re driving me bonkers. Then hopefully I’ll feel OK enough to go to ceramics. More bindings tonight (handsewing…sitting on the couch, staring at the TV in between stitches), and sleep, beautiful sleep. Although the dog hasn’t been letting us sleep in past 7:20 AM. Ugh. Hopeful. I am ever hopeful for that extra hour.

Don’t Really Know What I’m Doing…

Well. Here we are. It’s Monday again. I’m not sure how I feel about the last weekend. I did some things. I didn’t do all the things (I never do). I don’t feel like I did enough of the things (I rarely do). Sometimes though, it really feels like a dearth of productivity or enjoyment. So I sit here on Monday morning and remember that I did plan my summer trip finally; I actually have stuff booked. I should have done it two months ago, but I didn’t…but it’s good that I didn’t wait any longer. I had the mental space for that because the dog was up at some ungodly hour on Saturday morning and I just started and then I was done. I also started my taxes (see, this is why it doesn’t feel like a good time). My country started a war. You know, standard Saturday morning. What did you do today? Bombed a girls’ school. How about you? I accidentally shot my coworkers out of the sky. No biggie, right?

So let’s start with the art…I didn’t get much done. No ceramics on Friday because the dog needed to be let out. Adjustment in schedules for all of us when the boychild goes back to work. Honestly, we dissected eyeballs on Friday and I was pretty exhausted anyway.

Couldn’t go on Saturday because they were doing a class there. So it’ll be today. I quilted Friday night…

I’m adding a speech bubble. Gotta keep it clean for this venue. Then embroidery and binding.

Saturday night, I quilted the next one…

Definitely something needs to happen with the hair. Not sure what else.

Then last night, I started quilting this one…

It’s more complicated; requires more color changes. One of the colors was not happy about being sewn, so there was that. This one needs a lot of embroidery in the hair, I think. There’s one more after this to quilt, and then I can start the other stuff. I might put bindings and sleeves on first? Can’t decide…depends on if the sleeves will get in the way of embroidery. So maybe wait, since I don’t really know what I’m doing with that yet.

Four at a time? Unlike me. But it’s what I’m doing right now.

I hiked Saturday. By myself still. Which is fine. My brain wanders (not always good). So do my feet.

It was warm…over 90 degrees during midday, down to 80 or so when I hiked at 4:30 PM.

Lots of flowers out. Weird cloud formations.

Flowers were out at home too. I took a break from grading and planning and taxes at some point and watered things and moved a few plants.

Noticed some weird flowers.

Interacted with Simba.

Stressed about war.

And children.

And that’s kind of where I’m at today…not happy with my government…still…again. But I’m still going to work and doing the things. Although one of those stressed me out all weekend. Sigh. Parents using Chatgpt to make excuses for their kids. Fun times.

I’m glad I’m not a history teacher right now. Although we still get asked questions, stupid ones: “what do you think about the Epstein files miss?” WHAT THE FUCK do you think I think? Seriously. And I can’t really answer except to say, the man was in jail for a reason. In my head? More people should be in jail. Lots more. One big dumb one in particular.

So that was the weekend. Taxes are never a good way to spend time off, but it needed to get started. It’s fine. These things have to happen. Today, I give a test on the eyeball and kids turn packets in. Grades are due in a week. I’m behind in grading…still…again. Hopefully I get to go to ceramics after work and work on that piece that will soon need to go on a drying shelf, which means there needs to be ROOM on a drying shelf (there hasn’t been). Then home to read my book for book club (Wednesday, not done yet) and then more quilting. More fabric decisions, thread thoughts. Those are things I can look forward to today. I will have to grade before I get to that, but OK, I can do that. Keep it short, but get it done. Right now? I need to go take my meds and then drive the ex’s dog to doggy daycare so I can go to work. Deep breaths. Holding onto anxiety with this parent…didn’t read the last email. Didn’t want to lose more sleep over the enabling. Not worth it.

Good Place to Be…

I woke up this morning having an internal argument with a student about an email they sent last night, then realized I am not in the classroom today because after teaching sex ed for over 23 years (maybe more), I need to be trained in how to do that. For the third or fourth time…fourth. It’s the fourth. Don’t blame my school district; blame my school board. It is their fault. Good times. Luckily, we will get time to plan, which we desperately need. Not for sex ed, but for the upheaval in lessons caused by having to teach sex ed in the middle of April, before state testing, instead of after it, like normal. If anyone at the district says to me, “It’s only one year” again, I will punch them. And hopefully get fired, so I can stop doing stupid shit because adults fucked up. Well, probably not. It’s not like our government isn’t equally idiotic.

SO. I still have to go to school, make sure my sub shows up, set up my classroom, blah blah blah. Listen to an hour or so of stuff I already know how to do (I was on the committee that designed the damn curriculum) and then work. For real. Then hopefully ceramics afterward and come home and grade and I have a book club Zoom tonight, plus work on some fabric stuff. I delivered the newest quilt to the photographer on Saturday, and then started working with the dye paintings I did last summer. I have a show coming up that has to be no nudity, and I had four of those dye paintings with no nudity, so good start…

I had bought some border fabrics a few weeks ago. Originally I thought I wasn’t going to use borders, but they needed some space before the edges. On Saturday night, I bordered one of them…

There’s going to be embroidery on this thing…and then last night, I pinbasted it…

And bordered the next one…

Two more to go…

They are very different from what I normally do, so we’ll see how I feel about the embroidery part later. But I’m hopeful that I’ll still like them. Never know. That’s the whole point of branching out, experimenting…to see if different things appeal. I still have a drawing copied that was supposed to be the next quilt after the quilt two quilts ago…when I got sidetracked by deadlines. So it’s ready. It’s not political though…yet. So with politics all up in my face constantly, it’s hard not to make something political.

I saw a lot of art on Saturday…drove around to a few shows. This is the downtown library…Helen Redman has a small exhibit on the 2nd floor.

Cool drawings of babies. Then upstairs, in the 9th-floor gallery (where I had to wait for 20 minutes for someone to come open it up, after opening time)…it was FINE. The M(other) Tongue show is up there…totally cool. Here’s one of the paintings that was up there…

By Leila Khalilzadeh Aghdami. Beautiful painting…this is Invisible Identity 2. Lots of fiber stuff up there too. I also went to the SD Pottery Guild exhibit at the Coronado library…hard to get good photos inside cases, but definitely worth a trip out there.

Then at night, we went up to Oceanside for the Ace Gallery opening of Counting Threads. There’s some great stuff up there, but it’s a tiny space and it was claustrophobic (too many people) and hard to see stuff. Still worth it if you’re in the area though…this is a detail from Elly Dallas’ Story Quilt.

Fun embroidery sketches. We then tried to find somewhere to eat that had what we needed (clean tables, not a lot of screaming children, and beer and wine, plus something we could both eat). We got two out of the four things…and the pizza was really good, but not good enough to go all the way back and survive the noise…

Plus ET looks like a penis in that photo. Maybe he always did.

I hiked on Saturday afternoon…it was warm but not too warm; nice after all the cold and rain we had for the last week.

In a few weeks, those yellow daisies will be everywhere…

Yesterday, I ran all the errands I don’t have time for during the week plus graded for 5 hours, which sucked.

We had a squirrel infiltrate the bird feeder…

Remarkable picture through a screen for that. We moved the solar panel in hopes he would not be able to figure it out (he will; we know).

Some comparisons here…

You know, I lived in the UK for a year, married one of them for 13 years. They’re slow to respond sometimes, but I’m impressed by all this.

Whereas my people are fucktards. So there’s that. Speaking of fucktards.

Sigh. Idiot. People who don’t have to pay for stuff or who have so much money, they don’t know how much a loaf of bread costs, shouldn’t be making financial decisions for the rest of us.

And then there’s this. I’m not sick, knock on wood, but I have a fractured, possibly cracked tooth that needs surgery…

And may explain all the sinus crap I’ve had since last summer. Last Summer, y’all. Yes, I went to the dentist. More than once. And now that they’ve told me what’s going on, NOW I have pain up in that tooth. Now I know what that is. Damn. Can’t do the surgery for another week and a half. It’ll be fine. Motrin comes in big bottles.

OK. School to set up. To the district office to be edumacated on things I already know. Then planning. A professional adult lunch (not rushed into 15 minutes of shoving food in my mouth and running to pee before I teach again). Then ceramics. Joy! Then other stuff. I think I read the book for book club. Not sure I remember it. Will read a summary before the meeting starts. Then pinbaste the next quilt and border the third one. Good place to be with that.

What Is Normal?

Oof. It’s Friday, yes, short week, yes, but holy crap, these short weeks have packed a punch. It’s almost a relief to go back to a normal week (except next week is so not normal). What is normal anyway? Not sure. It’s rained on and off all week and been cold (hey it’s Southern California, but it was 40 degrees here when I woke up…yes that’s warm for a lot of the country, but I don’t have the clothing for that…well, I do, but not to leave the house). I busted out my Ugg boots last night. I got home in the rain, pulled the trashcans in, in the rain, got really wet, in the rain, peed the dog, still raining, and totally damp, I wanted to just put my pjs on and curl up on the couch. But no! A friend I haven’t seen in person for 22 years was in town, so I gladly drove through (guess what, the rain) not-so-bad traffic actually (considering the rain) to hang out with her, another friend, and another on Zoom for a few hours. I got some raccoon done…

These are super relaxing to work on.

So is binding. It’s just the same stitch around and around.

I got the binding done on Wednesday night and then both sleeves on last night…

Not really helpful cat.

Great image, yeah? Well it goes to the photographer tomorrow…

Also a great photo. With my hand in it and a pile of trimmed ends of the threads from the stitching. But it’s done! The first quilt of 2026. With the next ones ready to go…a departure from what I normally do, but I’m excited about that. We’ll see how it goes, how long the excitement lasts before I want to do something different. Or the same. It’s hard when I’m teaching to find the brainpower to branch out into different techniques and processes. I spend so much of my creative energy at school trying to plan and solve problems, that sometimes I come home and there isn’t much left. There are things I can do without a lot of conscious thought, like trace, cut things out, even pick fabrics…but the original creation, the drawing, that requires more thought. And these next ones, however many I do (I have four ready to go) will be completely different…well, not the first stages. Those will be rote…stuff I know how to do…but the later stages will be very different from what I’ve been doing. Excitement? And anxiety. Woo! I don’t know that I need more anxiety at the moment, but it’s creation anxiety, and that’s not always a bad thing. I guess watch this space?

Here’s Nova giving me a judgy look because I yelled at her for eating the kitten’s food.

I did call her chonky. Rightly so.

Well no ceramics tonight unfortunately; this is my normal day though. I have a meeting during my prep (silly parents) and then I have a long meeting after school that will require brain power (make more tea) and will probably go for a couple of hours or longer (hopefully not longer). Then clean up that quilt tonight, iron it flat, get all the damn cat hair off of it. If there’s time, I’ll start the next thing, although I may just fix my pants. I’m hoping to go to a bunch of art shows tomorrow…I have three on my list; two while I’m delivering to the photographer (already almost there…might as well keep going) and one in the evening that I will drag the Man to…it’s fine. We’ll do dinner after. Plus I need to grade a million things again. We’re almost at the end of the trimester, which is stressful. And next week is a shitshow ending with eyeball dissections. Woo! But hopefully sleeping in tomorrow a little and doing some fun things to make up for all the work? That would be nice. And I’ll have some grading time on Wednesday and planning time on Monday to make up for the LACK of it at all other times. Yeah. It’s Friday. Let’s do this.