Bits and Pieces of Time…

Ladies and gentlemen and folx of all designations: we have reached that time of the school year when kids are checked out because this three-week time period is squashed between holidays of sleep, food, and nonstop videogaming. There is the additional pressure of gift-buying, plus meetings about something and nothing, add in the holiday gatherings that all seem to happen on one day. Now figure out how to buy nails that are iron and not coated with something. Because science labs. I spent way too much time in Home Depot yesterday. Then figure out what all the emails from admin and people who don’t live in the classroom mean to you personally. Do some grading and planning, get frustrated with the whole mess, shove your computer in your bag, and tell the day job to fuck off for a while. Like that works. It just comes back and reminds me why I can’t ignore it.

So day job aside, I ironed for some bits and pieces of time this weekend…Friday night…

Pink wings and a red heart.

Saturday night…

Lots of factory buildings and nuclear towers.

Details

Sunday night…

Water. Fire. Oil spills. And that bottom right fabric…that’s a Tula Pink with pink squirrels on it. I won it at the guild party, and someone said they couldn’t imagine me using it in one of my quilts, which makes sense…the fabrics work together to make the image, so an image on the fabric might detract from that. Anyway, I used it in her pubic hair. Fussy cut a squirrel to fit in that. Good times.

I wish I’d had an entire afternoon on Saturday to iron away, but I didn’t. Two meetings and a hike, more like it. The afore-mentioned guild party, there was a sweater block challenge. So on Friday night, under pure exhaustion, I pieced a block.

I generally don’t piece…

But this one wasn’t bad. So everyone was supposed to bring some number of sweater blocks and you got a ticket for each one you brought, and then they divided them all in half and pulled two tickets, and those two got to take home a pile of the blocks. And as I was sitting there in the meeting and seeing the blocks, I was like, um, no, I don’t want to win. Because then I will feel obligated to DO something with them and bring that back to the meeting and I don’t wanna do that. I don’t want to make something coherent out of all that chaos. So of course…I won. And handed it over to someone who brought 7 blocks and obviously WANTED to win. Yup. Not taking that pile of blocks into the universe. I already have all these other blocks that I didn’t do anything with (not pieced, just a friendship square swap). No guilt!

I stitched during the meeting…

I finally finished her arms and am onto the head. Green hair it is. I enjoyed the people I was sitting with. So that was good.

When I got back, we walked the dog…

It gets dark so damn early.

I drew at dinner, but didn’t finish…

Mid-tree.

The cats must be cold…

Sisters, yes, but not friends in the summer. Winter brings it on.

OK, I have to say that this week has brought on some serious overwhelmed feelings and just general frustration with the job. Like that’s new. I have a ton to deal with this week, and I haven’t figured next week out at all. I’m hoping for some actual time to get shit done at school this week, unlike last week, when every time I turned around, someone needed something. Plus I’m back to having stuff to grade. It was nice to have a week off. Now suck it up. And with that, I’m off to get through a bunch of stuff today, probably unsuccessfully, so I can do a lab tomorrow that may or may not work. Fun times. Wish me luck.

Thoughts and Prayers…

Ah Black Friday…when I rarely leave the house. Mostly because this is the day I do MY family Thanksgiving. At least this year. And last year. Anyway. So I’m cooking. And recooking, because I fucked up the first time. Send thoughts and prayers. It’s OK…I was making a half recipe anyway, so I had all the stuff to do over.

I don’t have a second turkey though, so let’s hope I don’t mess that up. I’m missing my two foodie children, who are much better at reading recipes than I am. It’s OK. I kept it simple. The stuffing/dressing just fucked me up a bit. The recipe actually has ‘simple’ in the title, but I was trying to rewrite an incomprehensible (not simple) electromagnet lab at the same time, and that didn’t help. Right now, everything is in waiting mode, although in 15 minutes, the turkey needs to come out of the brine and get rinsed and ready. Remind me next year to do a dry brine instead. So I might not finish writing this before I go womanhandle the bird.

I did finish grading everything, even the redoes, although most of them were absolute crap. I wonder sometimes why I talk in class or make videos, because no one listens to me. I meant to finish lesson planning on Wednesday and then not do any more schoolwork until Sunday afternoon. Yeah, that’s fucked. I didn’t start lesson planning until yesterday and the lab today is not even half written or rewritten. Some things on Teachers Pay Teachers are so convoluted and yet missing the most important crap. Much like my coteacher. Sigh. It is what it is. If I think too hard about it, I’ll lose my mind. But I do need to plan some more this afternoon so I won’t be too buried in the next three weeks. Because those weeks already look so bad.

I have been tracing each night…staying up way too late. As usual.

Annie checking out what I’m doing. I think she’d climb up there if I didn’t shoo her away.

Then last night, I got close to the end, but realized I hadn’t numbered one section, so I guess I have about 80 pieces left to trace. I couldn’t stay up THAT late. But I should be able to finish today and start trimming them.

There’s a dog in that picture too. Then I can go buy background fabric tomorrow. Finish trimming in a couple of nights, start ironing to fabric. In between lesson planning and too many meetings and trying to figure out Christmas. Ugh. Chaos. I did manage some of the chaos in the last few days: I planted all the baby succulents that were hanging out on the kitchen counter, I switched compost bins (it’s been on my list since September…welcome to the day job fucking up my existence), I got a bunch of pine needles and leaves swept up into the recycling bins, I moved the old trellises against the fence to keep the dogs from slamming into it to ‘greet’ the boxers on the other side, and I cleaned out the freezer (stuff in there from 2020 y’all…bad deal). I also cleaned off the table so we can actually eat there.

I still need to sweep and find appropriate dishes and finish the damn lab instructions and a bunch of other stuff. Mostly food related. But the quilt stuff is in there too.

We walked the doggos yesterday…

The weather was supposed to be cooler but there was a definite warmish tinge to all of it.

Then we went to the Man’s family’s house for Thanksgiving 1.

The food was good, and they decorate! They had Xmas up already. Oh my. I can’t deal. Nice people though…

They have more variety of foodstuffs than we will…more people too. More vegetables. I appreciate their gatherings because they are low-stress for me.

We came home and napped off the turkey and the hike.

She’s half in my lap.

The kids and their dad are at the wedding in the UK now…I think…

I mean, I know it’s today. They might still be at the festivities. They clean up well. I do miss the kids, but they’ll be here at Christmas, so that’s not too far off. And my Thanksgiving 2 is about 6 hours off. In fact, it’s turkey time. Wish me luck. Send more thoughts and prayers. I’m gonna need them. And then art time. Maybe more napping. Only three days left of break before I am back in the grind. Not ready. Never am.

Brain Down Time…

Hey. It’s a Monday I can handle. I would’ve liked to sleep in more, but I’d have to live further in the boonies, away from gardeners and their blowing devices, plus no daylight to make animals think it’s feeding time. Not happening. Plus I shouldn’t go to sleep so late, but I was contemplating a drawing in progress, and I needed brain down time, and then the ideas popped into my head, but then it was like midnight and I knew Simba would be boofing early in the morning and the boychild would show up from work and there’s just no point in trying to sleep in. Ah well. My art brain is a child sometimes. I wanna stay up! So I’m a little tired this morning. What’s new.

So in quilt news, I finished the binding and sleeves on the Supremes quilt…

Then I needed to add some writing and embroidery (not a lot), so I did that Saturday. Then emailed the prospective buyer. Yes, y’all…this beauty has sold already. I’m always incredibly appreciative of those who support me in all the ways (two friends mailed me those stick-on thimbles to save my finger from holes while stitching the binding on). As I get closer and closer to retirement from teaching, which pays the bills, I do hope I can continue to make the big and beautiful quilts (as well as smaller ones), and selling them does help. This one took 181 hours to make. I’ve been working on it since July 13. At some point this week, I’ll make a post about all the bits and thoughts, best I can.

Saturday night, I started drawing the next quilt. I have a deadline. I’m trying to stay ‘simple’ (this is incredibly difficult for me). I had a drawing in my head, so I started on that, but Nova was insistent.

Really insistent…

Persistent even.

At some point, I just paused and petted her a lot and eventually she had enough attention and left, and I finished drawing. I have no picture of that, of course. And then yesterday, I enlarged the drawing and stared at it for about 30 minutes and then started adding stuff. But then stalled, so then I sat down and scrolled through stupid social media for a while as I watched Madam Secretary (still bingewatching that) and then the idea slammed me upside the head for how to complete it. I taped a bunch of paper on the side and bottom of what I’d drawn (Keep It Simple! um. Maybe not). And then realized it was almost midnight. Aargh. It’s OK. It’s in my head. I can do it. But to really meet the deadline with this one, I need to do more than an hour a night this week. So that’s my goal. Along with everything else. Put in some serious time every day. I can do that. Around cooking and going to family gatherings and dropping people at the airport and walking TWO dogs (the puppy who is no longer really a puppy is coming to stay for 8 days).

I’ve also been stitching down wool bits on something I can’t even show you…but it’s a brain filler. Lets me relax and see progress.

Saturday, we hiked…

My favorite tree fungi (above, not below).

Weird weather flow over the weekend. Today we are back to blue skies.

Girlchild is wandering through Scotland on her way to the wedding that the boychild and ex will be attending as well (hence my puppy visit)…

I’m totally jealous. I made one attempt to go through Scotland (by myself, with very little money), couldn’t understand anyone, got driven nuts by American tourists, and gave up after a week in Edinburgh. I regret that now, but know that I would be much more confident traveling now (it’s also easier with the internet etc.). Maybe someday. Anyway, so the whole family will be in the UK for Thanksgiving except for me, the Man, and the parental units. It’s OK…they’ll all be here for Xmas. I’ll be making a little Tday feast on Friday for us four. Not sure how many dogs will be attending that…at least two.

I also am trying to clean up and sort the other drawer of fabric that Kitten slept in for about 6 months. Serious fur incursions. I’m sorting, dehairing, washing when necessary. Prepping some to be donated. I have donations for SJSA if they need them and The Navajo Quilt Project. My quilt guild also needs donations. So my goal for this week is to get some stuff boxed up and mailed out. There are some reuse stores locally, but they want pictures and then to approve stuff, and that sounds like more than I can deal with at the moment. So here’s the blue drawer sort in progress…

Along with the perpetrator of furry deposits. Sigh. She loves to lie in fabric drawers, that’s for sure. Annoying.

I forgot to show the SAQA auction quilt I bought this year. This is by Jane Haworth…

To add to the collection…this is most of them, although there are 7 in other places around the house…

I usually buy one a year, but two years ago, I bought two because I had sold something and the dinosaur called out to me. They fit really well in the wall space above my windows. And I get to see them all the time. And you can hear the gardeners in the background. Not mine.

Simba in a mood…

OK. So let’s focus on today. I need to finish the drawing, number it, and start tracing. I also need to put some stuff in a safe place because that not-puppy is coming today and she destroys toys and other things. I need to go get my knees X-rayed for future cortisone shots (that I can’t get until February). I need to shower and eat breakfast before all that. I also need to do some grading today, get it over with so it doesn’t loom over me all week. Tomorrow, I’ll do some lesson planning. I think. I do have a vet appointment tomorrow for Simba’s eye again. He’s going to need surgery on a growth that is just getting bigger. And dental stuff for me on Wednesday. Fun times. Plus lots of dog walks and book reading. That’s the plan anyway. Make art, read, sleep, garden…damn, I need to do some of that too. OK. Whatever it is, I do need to get my act in gear and get started.

Y’all Didn’t Read Instructions…

Grades are done. A miracle in itself. It felt never-ending. I mean, I say they’re done, but that’s just Trimester 1. I have four more iterations of panicking over grades. This school year. I actually already have stuff to be graded for Trimester 2…oh yay! A project is finishing up today and tomorrow, with a packet and roller coaster to be graded. 34 roller coasters, as quickly as possible, before the tape starts to fail and they don’t work. I’d do it today, but I have to ship a quilt. Tomorrow after school is pilates and Wednesday is a union meeting. Thursday? I don’t know. I still need sub plans for Wednesday morning’s literacy meeting. Not sure when I’m doing those, let alone making sure I have everything copied for next week (I don’t. None of it.),

I get frustrated with kids who continually resubmit their work without actually reading instructions or comments. I have two who tried to resubmit over the weekend (gradebook closed 10/27 y’all) but no. Y’all didn’t read instructions. You didn’t follow them. You didn’t read or follow comments. I’m done. I’m out. I cannot grade 24 hours a day.

I did get some other things done this weekend: I fixed the damn showerhead so there’s actual water coming out of it. Plus! That was a kamikaze trip to Home Depot. I also got the boychild and the ex to buy me lattice (it won’t fit in my car; I needed a truck) so I can replace what’s on the deck posts and maybe plant some things that will grow up it. I need dad’s help with that. I planted out a bunch of succulents that had been (unhappily) living on the kitchen counter. I have two more that need to go out there, but I went to my quilt guild meeting, which was nice…got to see everyone’s scrap block challenge pieces, the one I never got to. I know…I never do. Well, except during COVID.

And I quilted…Friday night…in the swamp.

Saturday night, I worked on pedestals…

Last night, I finished the pedestals, did the goddess’ legs up to the pubic area, and got most of the people under the umbrella done.

I have two people left to do. The machine is being a little fussy. Not sure how to make it stop. Probably needs cleaning. Next time I refill the bobbin thread, I’ll do that. See if it helps. Also, when I finish, I probably need to call the machine guy and put it on the list to be serviced. I think it’s been a year. They used to put a sticker on it so I would know. Not finding it. Doesn’t mean a cat didn’t eat it.

Probably not this one…

Nova has been clawing my ass in the work chair out in the living room, or making air biscuits here on the couch. But not in my office/studio.

We went hiking on Saturday…

It’s getting dark so early. Ugh. Even earlier tonight.

The next month is a little lighter on the weekend events. Plus some days off from work, which will be much appreciated. I’ll still need to grade and plan, but not while I’m working in the classroom. After today, I can put all the roller coaster materials away and we can move on to the next stuff. After I find all the magnets. I know they’re somewhere. Probably multiple somewheres.

She is cute.

So I’ll be quilting all week, probably. I tried to buy binding on Saturday on the way back from my guild meeting, but I didn’t find anything obvious that would work. I’m going to have to wait until I’m done (or near done) quilting and take the whole quilt in. Friday or Saturday. The quilt store isn’t open late enough during the week. I do have Friday off, so hallelujah. Today is finish building roller coasters, get packets in order, ready to turn in, babysit some kids who didn’t go on the other team’s field trip, a staff meeting, then drive to the UPS place that is actually open after 2 PM to ship this quilt. I have to cook tonight, plus plan some more or something for school. Then quilt. Blessed quilt.

It’s the Spider’s Fault…

So Saturday night, or maybe it was Sunday morning, I kept waking up and trying to puzzle out what day it was. Did I have to be up early for school? Was I ready? Had I planned? What the hell? It’s true I did absolutely no schoolwork on Friday night or all day Saturday, so I get the panic, but Saturday nights should be clear of most of that, right? It’s 2 AM and my brain is trying to figure out what clues I have for what day it is…no dog, so that’s one of three nights a week. What did I do the night before? Ah, there’s a drawing, so it must have been a Saturday.

There’s more in the finished drawing…it took a long time to get the food. Pro: more time for drawing. There’s little enough of that going on these days.

I had a quilt guild meeting on Saturday and worked a little more on my incredibly slow stitching from 2020? Or was it 2021? Can’t remember.

My brain thought about staying and doing the post-meeting activity, but I really just wanted to get back and iron the Supremes. So I did.

Well, this was Friday night…after a long semi-difficult day that ended with my 56-year-old self trying to figure out how best to break up a fight without getting injured myself. Fun times. I think I came home and slumped on the couch for two hours before I started functioning again.

I did eventually find the missing ‘C’ on Sunday night…

Then Saturday afternoon…

I spent a couple of hours doing the goddess’ legs and toes and all…

Then went for a 3-mile hike by myself…the Man was not feeling well.

Sunset is getting earlier. I was just about OK on time…

It was warm at the start…despite being October, it was in the 90s during the day. But by the end, there was a cool breeze…and this sweet little California Horned Toad/Lizard…

I love these guys. They’re hard to see, so it’s a treat to actually see one.

After dinner, I ironed some more…here’s Gorsuch.

His ‘O’ disappears later. Not sure where. I’m sure it’s here. There was a spider that I think dropped from the ceiling, right on him (ironic?), so there was some scuttling of things to catch it, then forget I had caught it under something and recatching it. I suspect the O succumbed to all that scuttling. I’ll find it. Or recut it. It’s the spider’s fault anyway.

The whole piece so far.

There’s a lot going on in this quilt. I also ironed a bunch of money that’s floating around all those justice’s heads…

Sunday there was less ironing time. Almost 3 hours on Saturday was delightful. Sunday was just over an hour…

The ‘O’ is gone, but there’s Alito. It takes about 70 minutes to iron a Justice. It’s mostly the fingers and the face…all the details. I iron the ears, then the eyes. Then pull the eyes off and do the rest of the face so I can place the eyes well. Stitching will help with the details too.

I’m in the 1000s, about halfway through them, so also halfway through the quilt. I figure a Justice a night…but I’ve got a hellaciously busy week. Three nights with 2-hour meetings. Today’s 1-hour meeting got canceled, and I get to be in charge of the department meeting, so I suggested grade-level was fine, get your stuff done. We don’t need to meet. We already meet Tuesday and Wednesday during prep.

I worked from about 2 PM until 9:15 PM, with an hour’s break to make lunches for the week, and another hour’s break to make dinner and eat it. I didn’t finish. I never do. I did get some major stuff done, though, so I can at least get through this week and the start of next week. I think. Not quite. Gonna use my prep and after school today to make more sense of it…and to make copies. The Man will be gone for 6 days to hike the Trans-Catalina Trail this weekend. AND it’s the Interpretations opening and artist talks and artist dinner at Visions this weekend. Super busy. Two weeks behind on grading homework, but I should be able to get through that this week…we’re doing stations, plus writing a CER (that’s high-maintenance), and then doing a project. So I should have some free time in at least SOME of the classes to get work done. Using time efficiently. Sit next to the kid(s) who need help, but grading at the same time. We all do it.

Hello Kitten. She’s still here. Older by the minute.

I had a drawer of fabric that she (or someone?) peed in so I spent some time this weekend trying to get the pee smell out. Not quite there yet. Frustrating. They’re usually really good about that…which is why I think it was her. Losing control a bit. Giving her lots of love while she’s still here.

OK. Donuts and voting this morning. Teaching. Collisions and momentum. Tried to find a good simple video about conserving momentum that wasn’t too mathy. Wasn’t successful. Could be problematic. Almost done with my book, so suspect I will be doing that tonight. Hoping anyway. And ironing. Thomas is next. He’s complicated…in more ways than one.

Hearts and love to everyone trying to survive in Israel right now. More wars. Do we need them? More death? Sigh. Religion and hate make such a mess of things. Sending good healing and loving thoughts in that direction, hoping it helps. Maybe if we all do it, the warmongers will get hit so hard by the blast of good feelings that they’ll just stop. We can hope. I certainly don’t have any better solutions.

Swamp Thing

Whoa. Hey. Monday. I worked a lot this weekend on the day job. Probably 12 hours? Maybe more. Not ideal. Grades are due. Am I done? Um. No. I will be. Whether I’m ready or not. Seriously, I have a small pile of late work to get through and one class of harder thinky stuff. I got through a lot of the thinky stuff on Saturday and Sunday, but couldn’t quite get it all done. I ran out of time. And energy. And ability to think straight. I have a knee doctor appointment today (FINALLY an actual doctor after 11 months), so I had to write a sub plan for my afternoon classes, and that meant recording a video like I was teaching the assignment, then turning it into a video with questions so the kids couldn’t just copy, they had to think. Probably harder than I would have done in class, but it will hopefully keep them occupied AND teach them the lesson. A teacher can hope. It’s not ideal to have a sub in there after having one for the literacy stuff on Thursday, so I’m bribing them with nachos. Reality…teaching is expensive, for the bribes alone.

So I also managed to get in a hike (by myself…the Man was feeling off)…

I wanted to be sure to do all the knee-challenging things this weekend before the doctor’s appointment, so it would be at its worst. I only had time for 3 1/2 miles, though…

The weather was weird…warm but with a chilly breeze…

There was hardly anyone else out there. Sometimes I get freaked out by that. There was some big guy sitting in his car in the parking lot…the only other car there. He was also still there when I got back after an hour plus. I shared my location with the Man in case I disappeared. Seriously. It was creepy. But I love to be outside and wish it never felt creepy.

This rattlesnake was cool…stretched out along the whole path when I walked up…

Never rattled. Just slowly moved across the path as I watched.

I rarely see them like this…

So it’s fascinating when I do.

Yes, I ironed…for at least an hour a night. Because I do my day job and I’m allowed to do my art. I didn’t get far on Friday night…mostly due to exhaustion.

Saturday night wasn’t a lot better, but a chunk of the swamp got done…

There was a family party, so that kind of put the nix on doing any more schoolwork. Talk about no brain power left…

Then last night, another hour, finishing the top part of the swamp and starting one of the pedestals on which the justices stand. This is Amy Coney Barrett’s pedestal.

She’s not a fan of the rainbow. Someone said there was an owl in here, but it’s actually the Swamp Thing. Some politician who’s gone native. There are a lot of them.

So that was the weekend. Grade things, plan things, hike a bit, eat a bit, socialize a bit, make a little art. This week is a little weird, but not as crazy as next week will be, so yeah. I’m not looking forward to parts of next week. Not looking forward to parts of this week either. I’ve got some serious rewriting or planning to do for the end of this unit. Not sure when I can get my head around that. Gonna have to, whether I like it or not.

Today? Teach independent and dependent variables. Leave early. Buy nacho stuff for tomorrow’s kids. Go to doctor’s appointment. Come home and finish grades…hopefully in time to make art. Another pedestal or two? Oh, there’s two snakes in there. Gotta do those first. I will be thinking of my friend above when I do that, although one’s a King snake…can’t remember what the other one is. Same old same old.

Lots of Trees…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We set out hiking late…

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

Lots of trees…

Lots of flowers, which was nice…

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

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

Just to see the desert view…

Always impressive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then back to this…

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

Yeah. This is too real right now.

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

Everything Is OK with Everything…

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

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

I ironed Friday night, the umbrella I think…

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

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

A closeup on the box.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway. She slept well Saturday night.

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

And deer tracks.

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

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

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

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

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

New Babies…

OK. Mondays. They are just hard. I’m awake. The alarm took care of that. And the shower. And the first half of a cup of tea. Plus it is daylight. Some neighbor is already making gardening noises, so if I weren’t back to work, I’d be irritated by how early it was. But it’s supposed to be hot today and right now it is overcast and cool, so I get it. I’m an evening gardener as opposed to a morning gardener. It’s just my thing. I’ve been planting cuttings from a few succulents that have gotten too large and fallen over in the last week. One yielded about 15 large cuttings; the other, only 4. Plus I think there are two more floating around somewhere. I love succulents for their ability to regrow, to just lie around for a while and then find the dirt. Some I had just lying on the ground, ready for transplanting, but I waited too long and they rooted there. Whoops. Makes it easy for those like me who are not GREAT gardeners. I water. Sometimes I fertilize. Sometimes I forget to water, although I find it meditative to wander around the yard, checking on plant status, looking for caterpillars or new growth.

Like this one…broken off the main cactus, which was grown after I carried a piece back during COVID, filled my hand with stickers because it LOOKED smooth. I put this little piece in a pot months ago and it curled over and broke and I’m like, well that’s it, it’s going to rot away now, but NO. The joy of new babies.

Check them out. That’s exciting. One of my weird old lady habits now.

So. I know, I just posted, but I wrote that Friday morning. Then somehow walked away from the computer (probably panicking about time) and didn’t post it. It was missing a title and a photo and that was it. So here’s Friday and the weekend.

A 3-hour staff meeting…but I forgot my sketchbook. I meant to drop it in my bag, but no. And they logically made us put our computer lids down. So we could answer questions and talk to each other. OK. Well I don’t function well under those circumstances, so I drew all over the question paper.

With the only color I could find in my bag.

These would make cool little quilts. I don’t have time for that right now, but someone remind me later, eh? Because I don’t have a million little drawings lying around. Ha! Here’s the one from Saturday night, which I started last week somewhere…

It’s still not done. I don’t draw fast enough or they bring the food too fast. No, I don’t know if they’re being shot out of cannons or planted in toilet paper tubes. Hard to say. Is that grass or fire on the right? Unknown.

Friday night, I finished cutting all the Wonder Under.

It took 11 hours and 38 minutes. I stayed up too late to do it, because I had an opening to go to before. Then Saturday night, I sorted all the pieces…

That was 2 hours and 11 minutes. And 21 boxes. Significant.

Then last night, I picked my background (luckily I had enough of something that worked, because I forgot to go to the quilt store) and cleaned the studio, putting all the fabric away from the last quilt. I laid out the first 100 pieces and started with the volcano.

I hang the drawing up so I can see it. Yes there’s some chaos going on below the drawing. I don’t know what to say about that except I need more storage or to clean up what I have, but time for that takes away from time for this.

And I have limited patience for that. Barely a start there, but a start. Looking forward to the next probably 25 hours of ironing these…hopefully more than an hour a night, or it will take me until September. Ugh.

Friday night’s opening was at the San Diego Downtown Library, in their 9th-floor exhibition space, which is very nice. My crooked photo of the blurb.

And there’s my piece, Doctor’s Orders…

Plus me! After a very frustrating day at work managing a lot of other people’s stuff instead of my own. I came home, showered, changed, and left again. With more tea in me. This show was mostly Allied Craftsmen, but a few other people added in.

I made an Instagram reel of this video of me rolling around my very undone room. It might be better with the music.

Many people were like, it looks great! Good enough! The only thing I had done was open/unlock cupboards and move the tables and chairs. Literally nothing in the eyes of what needed to be done. All those boxes needed to get OUT of the prep room so we can use it.

It’s OK. This was after three hours on Saturday…

I also went in Sunday and mopped the prep room floor because it was disgusting. Plus made a bunch of copies because they needed to be made. Today, I have two meetings and hopefully I’ll get a big chunk done. Hoping. Saturday, I was feeling very stressed about all of it. I’m still having issues. Also, the A/C isn’t working. So it’s warm. Not great. Supposed to be in the 90s this week.

And I also did a reel of this, so you could see what 2 hours of sorting pieces looks like. The plus of the reel is not listening to whatever I was watching I guess.

For each one, I’m looking at the number and finding the box with that number. Sometimes with the little pieces, I put them in my hand and pile them up by number, which is a little faster.

Sunday, I also cut out pieces for a revision of a tattoo quilt I’m doing.

We did a short hike.

The Man’s back is bothering him.

Plus it’s hot. But check out that thundercloud! It did not make its way to us, unfortunately.

And Kitten this morning. 15 years old. Definitely slowed down. Poor old lady.

Yes, she has taken over that drawer of blue fabric.

Anyway, that’s it. And I have to be at school in 30 minutes. Need meds, brush teeth, etc. More tea! Totally more tea. One meeting this morning, then one this afternoon. Hopefully my room will be presentable by 1 PM for that one. Or not! Then home after a couple of errands, to maybe go to the gym with my book, definitely ironing to fabric tonight. Definitely.

Untitled #1

OK, I have a good reason (or 10) for being late today. Just trust me. I could’ve gotten up earlier and written this, but you know what? I have just two days left before school stuff starts for real, and I didn’t wanna. So there.

So where’s the art at? Now that school will suck up a major portion of my life and I won’t get more than an hour or two a night? Well, the good news is that I finished tracing on Saturday night…almost 6 yards of Wonder Under in 23 1/2 hours…

And then last night, I started cutting all that out.

Guess what? It’s not fast. And chicken butt.

It’s fine. I’ll finish it this week hopefully and get it sorted, and then I can spend the next two weeks ironing it to fabric.

My quilt guild met on Saturday, so I did a little more on this…

Which will probably never be finished.

We also walked the dog…

It was after 6 PM before it was cool enough. Speaking of cool, we saw this tarantula and tarantula hawk wasp that had apparently been in a struggle…there were drag marks across the path…

So when you watch our video below, you’ll hear us guessing what is gonna happen next…

Oh no. Well here is what actually happens: The female tarantula hawk wasp stings a tarantula between the legs, paralyzes it, then drags the prey to a specially prepared burrow, where a single egg is laid on the spider’s abdomen, and the burrow entrance is covered. But oh yes, that spider is dinner for the progeny. Yummy. Mmhmm. Yup. Pretty cool to see it, although the creepy crawly things were going up and down my spine the whole time.

This morning, my co-teacher and I went to the Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art. It’s not that I don’t like Moore’s stuff…it’s just that I think I need to see it full size and I need to touch it. The security people are very much NOT about the touching. I understand…but also the airspace around things is sacred. Yeah. OK.

Anyway, it was a cool exhibit…quite a few O’Keeffe goodies in the show. You only have until 8/26 though. At the end is an interactive thing where you can sit down and color. I wonder sometimes why teacher professional development doesn’t have more sitting down and coloring, because it calms adults AND kids. The days we do cover pages of units at school are the calmest chillest ever.

And then we hung them up with everybody else’s and left them there.

Which is always a weird thing to do as an artist who sells their work, but this isn’t worth anything except in tribute to O’Keeffe. So there we are.

OK, so for the rest of the day, I need to organize all my clothes, cut the cord with cable TV, finish uploading 12 thousand photos to my art group’s Google Drive, try to organize WTF I’m doing the first week or so of school, finish the gardening list, and I don’t know, read a book or something. I’m reading Margaret Atwood’s book of essays, Burning Questions, but probably need some actual fiction as well. But seriously, these two old ladies of word and image…

When you read about O’Keeffe arguing that her flowers were just flowers, and not female genitalia, not what the masculine gaze demands, and you think back to your art/reading education and realize it was always from the male gaze…man, it just makes making art as a woman such a better thing to be doing in this world. As I get older, I get more and more feminist. I am also less concerned about wearing a bra…although that’s not such a shocker if you know me. OK. Do the things.