Category: Other

I Could Be Lonely with You*

Sometimes at the end of the day, when I feel too tired to move, but my brain is in overload, trying to get the corporeal self up off the couch, I wonder what exactly it is about my job that makes me feel so exhausted. Sure, I hit 10,000 steps before I left school, but why? What was I doing? It wasn’t even a lab day. I remember sitting through a meeting and sitting for lunch and sitting during prep while trying to figure out how to best support these kids who don’t actually do work. Oh yeah, I did tutoring yesterday. I remember now. An extra hour plus after school of interactions. Tonight it will be the dentist. Also tiring. More sitting. But my dental hygienist talks too much. Shhhh. I’m OK with not having a conversation. I still need to go to my parents and pack up that quilt…probably not tonight though.

Last night, I miraculously figured out how to update the table of contents in a Word doc. I love being 50-some-years old and filling up my brain with utterly useless stuff. It’s OK. I’ll have forgotten the details of that by the end of this month. Plus I know how to Google. I seriously think of Google as an extension of my brain. That’s the one thing I can teach my students. Use your resources!

After eating dinner, while watching Carnival Row (I need a glossary or appendix for this show), I worked on stitching stuff down on this.

I need to do two more samples. It’s a drop-in workshop, so I’ll probably have some pre-cut cotton backgrounds and some prefused fancy stuff, plus some thread and needles. An iron. Not much else. I’ll do one simple one, maybe a smaller landscape and a small flower or something. I’m not sure.

Yesterday morning’s sky…

We’ve had lots of humidity and weird clouds coming up from the south. It’s pretty, but hot and muggy. Even the animals are feeling it…

Kitten is whacking Calli with her tail. Calli doesn’t care. It must be hot.

After dinner, I copyedited a little bit…really, I married Frankensteinian bits of text and fought Word’s need to autoformat. I won! So far. Sheesh. Because sometimes I just open the file and it says shit that’s absolutely untrue. I did NOT fucking delete a bunch of bullet points, you asshole.

I have to admit to sitting around for a while after that. Well, not true. I did go on the stationary bike and finish my book. Maybe that contributed to my tiredness? Ironic that I need exercise after walking all day. But that’s not cardio…just exhausting.

THEN I managed to get up off the couch and draw…

I might be changing that curve. Or not. I don’t know. It’s a better bird than I had in the other version, that’s for sure. Riffing off the Fire and Water piece I finished last year…similar theme, I guess.

This is what it looks like when your cat watches Orange Is the New Black…

She might just be hanging out with me…hard to say.

It does make it harder to draw. Or move the paper. So I tried to move her and she whacked me.

Yeah. Sweet beast. She wants to be with me, which is nice, because she doesn’t come out much, but the other cat was in my office, which is her normal hidey hole, and the dogs were gone, so she looked for her mommy. Pet the cat.

More drawing tonight? Well, I need to make another block or two of recycled things, plus the dentist and hopefully putting the rest of the copyedited stuff back together. It depends on how tired I am. As always. I know what I WANT to do…just don’t know if my body and brain will go along with it.

*lovelytheband, Broken

She’s Not Listening to Me…

Three-day weekends are nice, aren’t they? Unless they are filled with disaster television. I tried to stay away from that. So much out there in the world…guns and climate change and boat fires, for a few. I’m up this morning, feeling tired, not ready for this morning’s parent meeting (first of the year!), wondering how today’s lesson will go, because it requires self-motivated learning (yikes!). I think I’ll be spending a lot of time talking to each table today. Which is a good thing. Exhausting for this introvert, but invigorating as well.

Yesterday was busy…I had to wash a quilt to ship it…

Because cat dander is the issue, I do it at my parents’ house (no cats)…it’s always a little scary to wash one of these, but I toss some Retayne in there. Batiks are notorious for releasing dye. There was some color that came out in the wash, but not a lot. Here it’s rolled up in towels, which I used to squeeze all the excess water out…

Then I laid it out on their entryway floor…

I’ll go over sometime this week and iron it and pack it for shipping. It’s big. And it’s sold. So that’s cool.

Really, Katie thinks I’m there to see her.

Which is, of course, true. We also dumped a bunch of stuff from the pool shed in the parental dumpster. Useful.

I copyedited the Bibliography, which wasn’t long, but was messy. I’m closer to being done with this copyediting job. Like really almost done. Except I can’t figure out the table of contents references. Sigh. It’ll come.

For some reason, maybe because it’s been so muggy, I’m covered in bug bites today…mostly mosquito, but I think one is a spider bite. Always nice to think about. I was just thinking this year wasn’t as bad as last year. Wrong! We have all these clouds coming up from Mexico. They threatened rain yesterday, and certainly the mountains probably got some…there’s a double rainbow out there.

But it never made it here. So we’re just hot and humid instead. And buggy.

So one of the things I was working on yesterday was a recycled fabric block…I actually fused all this down…

It needs some stitching. I need to do a couple more samples, I think. And then embroider them. This takes me back to the crazy quilting days. In fact, that’s where I pulled all the fabrics, because a good chunk of them are recycled from clothing. If you’re on my Patreon, my process will be the first video of the month. If you’re not on my Patreon, join us.

And then I started another smaller drawing for this one show…I finally gave up drawing it smaller in the sketchbook, pulled some butcher paper off the roll, and did it large…

Much easier to see. Now comes all the details. This is where I needed to go. OK, meeting, school day, tutoring, maybe go pack up that quilt. Busy. Tiring. It’s a short week. Best wishes to the Bahamas. Hopefully we’ll see fit to help them, unlike Puerto Rico. Then maybe tonight I’ll get to draw some more. My art brain is frustrated. She needs to do some embroidery too, though. Tell her. Someone. She’s not listening to me.

Relax for a Hot Sec

Dogs woke me up. The pool vacuum system is full of air. I stayed up too late. I don’t even know why…trying to get my brain to shut off. Too much copyediting and trying to draw and late night brain stuff. Plus today being a holiday…it makes me feel like I should be allowed to stay up late, but honestly, more regular sleep would be smarter. I don’t always do the smart thing, though. That’s probably why I make so much art. I’m not thinking about being smart and going to sleep and all that stuff they tell you to do. “The number one thing you can do to increase your health is to sleep 8 hours a day.” Well. OK. I’m not good at sleep, never have been.

So Saturday morning, I sat the SAQA booth at the San Diego Quilt Show. There weren’t a lot of people at the show, honestly. Although I haven’t been for years, so maybe that’s just how it is.

I’ve been a SAQA member for a long time. Not a super long time. Just a long time.

I sat and stitched…finally was able to start some embroidery on this! I had a quilt top freehand cut and ironed down years ago. Found it, quilted it, and then set it aside for some embellishment. It’s not like I have a shortage of threads. I have 7 million threads. So I worked on it a little bit.

And I talked to people…some I knew, some I didn’t.

I walked around after and looked at the vendors…bought a little bit of machine-sewing thread. Bought some fabric, mostly Australian stuff…

Fascinating patterns.

And I wandered past a lot of traditional quilts. But there were a few that caught my eye…nice use of color in the cactus, Doug’s Cacti by Andrea Bacal.

This was a block-a-day pattern…sort of crazy and fascinating…

All Around the Neighborhood by Rita Anaya, pattern is That Town and Country by Susan Claire Mayfield.

It looks like fun…

See, there are traditional bones in my body. OK. It’s a little crazy. But cool.

You had me at Bite My Shiny Fabric Ass. This is Sew Geeky by Deidre McLeod.

I actually recognize most of those.

I’ve always wanted to be a hooker…a rug hooker. Sorry for the blur. I was tired. Up too early on a Saturday.

This is Seaside Town, hooked by Beth Luker and designed by Karla Gerard. Her patterns look like fun.

Quilts on the Wall was there…with the Drips and Splatters exhibit. I liked this one, The Aftermath of a Meager Meal by Ann Turley.

And this one, Making Cookies by Beth Shibley…

So that was what I liked. Your mileage may vary. As always.

What I have been doing the rest of the weekend? Well I washed and ironed this…

Hopefully a pattern will be available soon on Global Artisans…I noticed they’ll be offering downloads on the patterns as well, which is cool. No need to pay shipping or wait for it to show up.

And I finished Part 4 of the book I’m copyediting and sent it to the author for review.

With Kitten’s (not) help. I also started on the Bibliography, which will be a big chunk of today, plus spent some time yesterday stitching the pieces of the book back together, with a lot of swearing at Microsoft Word. As always. Almost done though! Hallelujah. I’m ready to be done with it.

I tried drawing last night. I realized that I did need to make a new piece for an upcoming exhibit, sooner than I had thought, so stop wasting time and get on with it! Right?

This drawing sucked. But it’s an idea I will work with over this week…hopefully it will make something I like.

We had dinner with the parents…and I did a little more of this…

At that point, I’d spent about 3 hours trying to get the parent email contact list to work and finally sent it out…only 24 bounces, most of which I could fix by going back to look at what the kids had typed in vs what their parent/guardian had actually written. But also, kids, there are no spaces in emails. Or commas. Or hyphens. How do they not know this stuff? Honestly, they don’t use email. Hardly at all. We’ll have to get them to look at that.

Anyway. Here’s a puppy…

He’s not a puppy really. He’ll be 4 on Friday. You can still see his shaved bit. His coyote bites have healed well.

OK, so more copyediting, wash a quilt so I can mail it later this week, take some stuff to the dumpster, make more scones (I made low carb/low fat blueberry scones last night because we have a ton of blueberries…I just froze a ton of them), do a recycled fabric sample, perhaps draw, input grades, maybe relax for a hot sec? Yeah. Probably not. Hot, yes. It will be hot. Relax? Not so much.

The Whole Week on Me

Long weekends are nice…even when they are long weekends that are filled with work of all kinds. Hopefully some of the work will be artistic. That’s the plan anyway.

I picked up my quilts from the photographer after school…and then spent way too long trying to name one of them. I had a really good name at one point, but I didn’t write it down anyway, so it’s lost. This is Each Piece Belongs…

It’s about 51″ square. I finished it relatively fast, considering all the other crap that was going on.

This is Desert Daughter, which I was working on earlier this summer and then the binding sat around unsewn for quite a long time until I realized it was easier to take two quilts to the photographer at once.

She’s 40” w x 34” h. I’ll get both of them posted in official places on here soon.

When I got back to the house, we kamikazed out to walk the beasts. I think in the long run, I need to transition back to walks on Mondays instead of Fridays. Fridays are tiring. Mondays are too, but I don’t have the whole week on me as well.

It was definitely warm out.

Some guy was wandering around with a backpack that had what looked like arrows poking out of it and a device that is not a pickaxe but looks like one to the ignorant, such as me. Boychild gave me a rundown on pickaxe-like equipment (it was not a pickaxe), which makes me wonder what he does in his copious spare time. We so rarely see people on this hike, and this guy was especially strange.

I had a to-do list a mile long last night: entered a show, packed up a quilt to be delivered today, wrote a bio for today (well, edited one), printed it, washed this and ironed it…then thought about the samples for the class in November, pulled some stuff out and then realized…

How deeply buried the stuff I needed was, and gave up. Tomorrow I will try again…or maybe tonight. This class thing is outside my wheelhouse. Not entirely, but it’s not how I normally roll. I’ll get there…it’s all about trying new things and seeing whether they can help support the artist as she ages. I can’t teach forever, but odds are, I will still need more money coming in for at least 10 years after I retire. Which is scary, sure. But at least I have some options. The Man says he’ll be a Walmart greeter. He is much nicer than I am, so that could be true.

I do have a drawing that I need to post on Patreon today. I had started it earlier this week, but last night, I sat down and watched some Orange Is the New Black and finished it up…with puppy assist.

Patreon patrons will be seeing this later today. It’s about the Amazon rainforest burning. Sigh. Stupid politicians who do stupid shit. Or allow stupid shit to happen.

OK, heading off now to the San Diego Quilt Show to sit in the SAQA booth this morning. Stop by and say hi…I’m bringing some embroidery with me, in case I have stitching time. A girl can dream.

I Blame the Page

No blueberries today. I stuck to avocado. Much harder to explode.

I worked many hours yesterday. I came home very very tired after a 2-1/2 hour science meeting after school. I wasn’t particularly useful after that. I finished my book. I exercised. I ate. Oh yeah, and I drew. The last few nights, I’ve been staring at entry forms, trying to decide if I want to make a piece to enter in shows next, or if I just wanna do what I want. There are pros and cons to both. Of course. But I didn’t have any ideas for the themes that are coming up, so I was just kinda staring at stuff and not making decisions…then on the way to work yesterday, I’m tired, I’m not really thinking, but an entire drawing popped into my head. By the time I had made it to my classroom, talking to a couple of people on the way, it was there. Most of it. The general gist of it. All there.

Sometimes my brain astounds me. So after dinner last night, watching another episode of Black Mirror (this one made me cry…must have been tired for that)…I drew…

Coupla things. First of all, this isn’t it. It might be the start of it, but really, this thing is huge and I need more space on the page. So the second thing is about the page. I had this art teacher, Mrs. Westcott, in 5th grade. She’s probably dead now. She was actually probably not just the art teacher…she must have taught me other things (I remember spelling and some issues with a Japanese kid that she had me tutor. He was an ass.)…but she was an artist. My parents have a drawing of me that she did. Anyway, if you looked around the 5th-grade classroom at all the art hanging around, mine was the stuff that didn’t fit on the page. The tree would be all trunk and then the crown would be disappearing off the top. I have a distinct image in my mind of all the trees on the wall and mine just exploding upwards, except I didn’t get more paper. Now I just tape more paper on. It’s funny, though, that I still can’t fit on the page. I blame the page. It’s the wrong size.

Anyway, it’s a step in a direction toward maybe a drawing that will be a quilt. We’ll see.

I was being watched while I exercised.

I’m pretty much always being watched in this house. He looks all cute and sweet here, but he had sneezed big globs of snot on me earlier, so don’t be thinking he’s a nice kitty.

I’m back on the phone with my trash pickup. This is call number 5. I just want them to pick up my damn trash. Assholes. I know they won’t pick up. They never do when they pull this shit. It’s so fucking annoying. We have a pile of crap waiting because the boychild cleaned out the pool shed. I guess it will still wait. Fuckers.

Work. Today. I can do it. Picking up quilts from photographer. I’m at the San Diego Quilt Show tomorrow morning. I’m copyediting tonight.

Exploding Blueberries

There’s a blood bath in my breakfast bowl. I forgot what happens to blueberries when you nuke them. Do people still say that? Nuke them? Would my students know what I meant? It seems really old school. Anyway, the berries exploded. I wonder what the inside of the microwave looks like. I’m not looking.

Well I have an extra week on the copyediting. I did finish the last section (minus the hellacious bibliography) last night. I need to do the second and third readthroughs on that, but that won’t be until Friday, I think. Then put the whole mess back together. Do you think I can persuade him to write the next one so it needs copyediting in June instead of August? There are two more, at least. We’ll see.

Hey! I’m going to be sitting the SAQA booth at the San Diego Quilt Show Saturday morning. Exciting stuff. I don’t usually go to this quilt show, because they won’t actually let me show my own work in it. Plus it’s very traditional. At least when I used to go, it was. Who knows.

I was reading the Surface Design Association’s email last night, and clicked on the link to see the website for the Beyond the Surface exhibition. I did get into that show, but was happily surprised to see part of my quilt in the page header.

That’s my baby :-). Serious smile when I saw it.

It’s good, because I’m not making much right now. Not until Sunday probably. I did draw last night, though. I need to do a Patreon drawing, and that’s a good excuse to make myself draw…so after eating, while still watching the very disturbing Black Mirror episode and mourning all the stuff that was on my Tivo extender drive thingie that just died (sigh), I drew with the puppy’s assist…

I think he’s getting a belly rub there. Not from me…so he’s really not assisting at all, except by being cute.

I have a 2-1/2-hour meeting after school today, so hopefully I’ll have the brainpower to finish it. I actually got much further than that.

After dinner, I went in to copyedit though…two hours of that…

Kitten and Pandora assist on that one. It was pretty easy reading, though. The Bibliography is next and it’ll be hard. Formatting. Alphabetizing. I guess it’s easy in that I don’t have to read much for sense…just catch all the commas and semicolons.

I’m ALMOST DONE. Oh hallelujah. I do like to copyedit. I just don’t like to do 17 things at once. Eventually Kitten went to the green fabric drawer (it has green fabrics in it. I’m aware the drawer is not green) and Calli came in to keep me company.

I always have some furry beast with me. Her hair is coming back slowly from her surgery. I just realized both dogs have a rectangle of shaved side. I wonder if they’re cooler this summer because of it? Can’t ask them. Because they’re dogs.

These guys don’t really like each other. But they did not fight this morning. That’s a plus.

Kitten tried to play hide and seek and playful paws around the corner, and Satch was completely clueless. Sigh.

OK, teach all day, then 2 1/2 hours of science training (training. ha. You mean we sit and listen to you tell us why your stuff is so awesome that you can’t give us editable files and then say some shit about copyright which is so unhelpful in a school setting. And we mutter to each other about how annoying you are as a publisher.). Then dinner, which I hope I’m not cooking, but someone just realized they have a dental appointment, so who knows. I’m rolling with it. I can explode some more blueberries for dinner maybe. Finish that drawing! Collapse somewhere soft that is bedlike. Do it again.

Right Through Walls We Made

OK. Well I asked my author for more time. I can finish copyediting on time, but I can’t put it all together well and be confident it’s awesome. Plus I might not be able to sleep any of the nights until it’s due if I don’t get more time. He’s a nice guy, so it shouldn’t be a problem, and I usually do everything early for him, but for some reason, this year and this project have just been difficult. So hopefully that’s OK, because I’m not sure trying to teach 7th graders on no sleep is a good thing. Although I did it one year. Long story. Not a good one.

I did finally finish embroidery number 9 last night…I barreled through a bunch of it around the beginning of school and then barely picked it up for a week. There were reasons for that of course. But she’s done!

She needs a bath and ironing, and then her official photo. All of these are available as patterns and kits at Global Artisans…although it looks like the patterns are sold out right now. I’m also going to be selling some of the finished pieces, but I have to tell you, they take me some time to do, so that means they’re not cheap. This took a little over 13 hours to stitch. Not super fast. Anyway. Moving on. That was the embroidery phase of my art life, I guess. I figure now is the time to try out a bunch of different ways to get my work out there and make money, and although I don’t expect much from this, I still think it was an interesting thing to do. We’ll see how it does in the next year.

While I was stitching, Satchemo had his face squished up against my leg and was kneading me with his claws. As soon as I picked up the phone to take a picture, he moved.

No ma’am. I do not want fame or fortune. I am also amused by the man’s socks. First of all, it’s August and hot. Second of all…that plaid. I’m seriously amused.

OK. I am tired. I did not art last night except for finishing that embroidery. I went to bed early, but it didn’t really work out that way. Oh well. My head is spinning this morning with all the stuff I need to get done. As always. Yesterday I went in early to throw 170 textbooks around. Today is a lot of labeling and sorting, because nothing is easy. And then trying to get my classroom organized. Ha! Such a joke. It’s chaos in here. But they’re coming in to make sure it’s SAFE. So locking all the cabinets up again and hiding the hand sanitizer because my kids might drink it (really?) and now it’s the portable toilet we have in case there’s a lockdown and a gun on campus, well that can’t be accessible to children (the logic is faulty, for sure) and I’m not sure where it’s going, but probably in the prep room with the elephant and the zombies. With that, I’m out. Gotta go talk about Mars. It’ll be good. I was going to read to them, but my co-teacher recorded a video and my voice is starting to go. It’s really better if I let her read. Maybe. I don’t know. Tonight, though, tonight I copyedit. It’s inevitable. And draw. A little. I need to draw a little.

*Beck, Colors

Hauling My Tired Self…

It seems I have forgotten how to sleep. Maybe it was the heat last night. Maybe it was the panting dog who woke me up at 1:48 AM to pee. I’m not sure I had actually slept at that point. I know my brain is in overdrive. I finally got up early because I have to move about 170 textbooks and put them in numerical order and then write them down on a bunch of rosters, all before school starts. Just to clarify, I have to do this for books that are no longer relevant, because my district screwed up and started the textbook process way too late in the NGSS transition, so we have no relevant textbooks. Plus the state of California is in the Dark Ages. We will only use these at the end of the year as a safe place for kids to search up pictures and definitions for ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’, because even if you give them a safe place on the internet to do that, you know some kid is gonna go rogue.

Yesterday was still a lot of talking. I’d like to reduce the talking please. And then a 2-hour staff meeting. Note to bosses: we stop listening mostly after the first hour. It’s just too much. Luckily I have the agenda with the links, so I can go back and wander through it when I realize there’s something I was supposed to be doing and I forgot. Usually that’s an oh shit moment. Luckily my team will support me by telling me I should have been listening, because they were on a sugar high with all the candy he provided, and I didn’t eat any of it, so I was crashing.

After all that, I drove to the photographer’s and dropped off two quilts. No, I don’t know what I’m doing next. Well, that’s not true. I got asked to teach a short workshop in November and I need to make a couple of samples for that. I should do that.

I’m also trying to finish this…I’m so close…

It will be done. There’s only a little bit of stitching left.

After dinner, I did a little school stuff and then I copyedited for an hour and a half. I got a good chunk of it done, considering how late it was. I quit at 11, though, and went to meditate. See, I was trying to deal with all that shit in my head, and I did a good job of meditating with the dog on my lap (lapward dog pose)…

And I was looking over some art entries, shutting my brain down, when both dogs started barking like the world was ending (it wasn’t) and my heart rate skyrocketed for I think no reason at all, but maybe a raccoon on the roof? I just don’t know. Nothing worth that level of barking.

Dude. You were asleep.

And you are a tiny idiot…

Seriously, the leaves are not attacking us. Neither is the wind. Or rabbits. The rabbit army has arrived! Nope. Not. He looks cute, but he’s really kinda crazy.

So my adrenaline went through the roof. That might have been part of my issue with the sleep. So much for a quiet calm exit to the bed.

I did not MAKE any art, except for the few stitches I took. I knew this would be a rough week. But I had three things due and now I only have two. This is good.

Here’s where the cat was hiding yesterday. Can you see her?

Cats are weird. But much quieter than those two dogs.

Girlchild posted this yesterday. I was jealous.

Not that I should be eating a quarter of that…

I came home to this weird pack of butterflies…

They were all flying around each other, possibly mating, sure, but then they all settled down on the leaves. They took off as soon as I got closer. Do butterflies hang out in packs? I just don’t know. Something for the Wonder Wall…

OK, work today is all about safety. Yesterday I taught the difference between ‘quiet’ and ‘silence’. Exciting stuff. Tomorrow is Mars though! That is exciting. I will be copyediting some more tonight. And every night this week, I think. I might get to the gym tonight. That would be nice. I might decide what quilt I’m going to do next. Hard to say. I should probably decide what I’m doing with the class samples first. First, this morning, I head out to move books. Hauling my tired self in.

How to Store Cats…

I just found one of my cat’s hiding places. It’s amazing that when I think I have completely filled a bookshelf, a cat slides into a space I didn’t know was available. Her little eyes are barely visible…she’s hiding in there.

Well I was fairly successful this weekend: I finished the binding on two quilts and managed to copyedit one section of the book. There are two sections left, so guess what I’ll be doing the rest of the week. I finished quilting this on Saturday morning, then cleaned the floor (like you do) and trimmed the quilt.

I made a quick trip to the quilt store, where I indulged in more fabric, because apparently I can never have enough…

I think I already own that blue one three up from the right. It happens.

While I was waiting for the binding to be washed, I worked on the binding for the quilt I finished in July. It’s just been sitting around…

I spent a lot of time sitting around this weekend with quilts. That part didn’t feel particularly comfortable, but it was necessary.

Sunday was some copyediting, the grocery shopping, and some other stuff, but then I was back to poking holes in my fingers over and over again.

Nice puppy. At this point, I’m working on the big one, the most recent one. But when I finished that one, I went back to Desert Daughter…

The big one doesn’t have a name yet. It will need one soon. Really soon. It took a little over 4 hours to finish all this up. Well, another hour was spent cleaning up cat and dog hair and ironing them and packing them up for the photographer. I spent about 5 hours quilting and binding on Saturday.

Do I know what I’m working on next? Nope. I have a couple of options. I need to take time to look at those tonight, but I also have a 2-hour staff meeting and I have to deliver the quilts to the photographer, plus do some copyediting tonight, so that will be a challenge. I feel tired already. OK, that might just be Monday.

We have a yard full of spider webs at the moment. Most of them are not in my face. I think the two spiders who were building webs across my path to the dog peeing area have figured out that I carry a broom for a reason.

I haven’t seen a web in that area for a few days. Spiders LEARN.

I store my cats in produce boxes. I don’t know about you, but they act like a vegetable sometimes.

This hawk has been hanging around for a while (he’s on top of the telephone pole). Lots of screeching.

He was staring at me for a while.

Lots of hummingbirds here.

I just listened to ten minutes explaining the difference between quiet and silence. Wow. So that makes me laugh. But it is something we have to explicitly teach. Even to 12-year-olds. Silence is rarely needed. Think lockdowns. Quiet is hard too. But more necessary.

OK, so I need to go to work. I need a plan for what I’m working on next. I need to do a drawing for my Patreon people, so that’s on the list for tonight. So is ruminating over what’s next. It’s weird to be done. But it’ll be OK. I’m good. I know how to work.

I Did Not Sew Through My Finger.

First partial week of school in the books. Certainly there are some challenges we can see, and I sort of already feel incredibly buried in all the minutiae and the demands of life around it, although some of those are things I take on, of course. My brain right now is trying to hold on to 17 different to-do threads, mostly involving finding one thing and emailing someone about it. It’s disconcerting.

I posted a picture yesterday afternoon on Instagram of a new thing we’re doing this year called a Wonder Wall. I didn’t make it up…it came from here…but I really wanted to tap into the natural wonder that kids have about science that sometimes the standards kick in the ass. Like here’s what we HAVE to teach, and here’s what you really WANT to learn about.

Like skin walkers. And why humans can’t lay eggs. So we started yesterday with a brain dump (although my co-teacher called it a brain drop) on paper, which almost killed some of the kids, OMG, 8 minutes of writing questions, do you hate us? Hey no. You can do this.

WHEN CAN I GO TO BED. I ask that all the time. I actually model it and sometimes kids copy the questions I’m writing because writing and thinking are hard and I’m really much better at it than some of them. And then they had to cull it down to 1-3 questions to write on the post-its. At the end of the day, I stood and stared at it…

Why ARE there too many questions in your head, child? I’ve always had too many questions. I started in every class with talking about easy questions like what’s for lunch (I should know; I made it) or when is class over (that’s on the wall), and then talked about questions that I might know the answer to, like why am I so short, followed by the more difficult stuff, and for this, I always pick one of the more mouthy boys (and if they’re mouthy and I know their names on the third day of school, you know I need to connect with them), and I say I’ve always wondered what would happen if we took MY brain and put it in THEIR head, who would they be? Would they be me? Would they be a combination? And they kinda freak out. I’m OK with freak out in here.

This thread though…

All the ones about death. I teach in a Title I school. I teach many immigrants and refugees. I teach traumatized kids. I know all these things. And yeah, the “Why am I still alive” kid is on my radar. I actually know which kid that is. Most of them I don’t. But he made a point of telling me it was his. And then running away. OK then. We’ve got some work to do.

The next step? They pick a question and research it and produce something for me. We’ll work on that. First I’m going to have my homeroom try to organize them in threads/piles (a lot of kids copied my Why am I short? question)…because right now, it’s a little overwhelming. And we’ll have to train them to think about this shit. But it’ll be good. The core of teaching science is helping them think critically. How do we answer all these crazy questions in our heads? How do we find stuff we care about? The one kid who wants to know about what it’s like in jail. Huh. Well. You can find that out. I’d rather you know that in your head before experiencing it for real. It might persuade you not to do certain things. Probably they’re asking for a reason…parent in jail is pretty common around here. Big project.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get everything done at home too…on my list for next weekend (this weekend is buried) is to get these plants organized and transplanted as needed. The one that escaped and is heading across the steps…

It needs to be planted out. A lot of the succulents have escaped pots or outgrown them. Need to work on that.

We walked both dogs when I got home…

We did a shorter walk, but even with that, Calli was limping by the end. She seems OK today though, so she may just be out of shape after almost two months of very few walks. I don’t think the back leg will ever be fully back. But she wanted to walk and she liked it and she didn’t whine so I think we’re good. Maybe not 3-mile good, but good.

Boychild saw that. My head was down, watching for lizards. We came back and I read for a bit, researching the Amazon rainforest and wondering (I need my own Wonder Wall) why so many dumbass politicians are in charge right now, and what will be left of the planet in 30 years’ time and holy crap the boychild was cooking dinner, so the dogs sat with me.

Doggy time is the bestest time.

The Man’s band played at Petco Park during Beerfest last night…they were very excited.

I did not go for once, mostly because it was sold out, but also the first Friday of school is exhausting and they started so freakin’ early, I don’t think I could have made it there anyway. Today I am also blowing them off, because I have to finish this quilt and this book. I quilted for three hours last night…finished the outlining…

Face before outlining…face after outlining…

Much better. And I did most of the background, but around 11:30 PM, I realized my eyes were drooping and I didn’t want to sew through my finger (I’ve done that) because I was too tired, so I quit, even though there’s only about 30 minutes left on there. It’s 30 minutes I’ll be doing this morning, then going to get binding, washing it, and putting it on. Done early! Woo! A miracle. Now I just have to get everything else done. No worries.