I’m Gonna Make Your Head Burn*

Hey guys, you remember last year? And the year before? And the year before that? That damn mockingbird is back…and it’s right on my fenceline, so it’s loud as hell. I don’t know how anyone else sleeps through that little fucker’s delightful song (seriously, I saw it the other day and was trying to decide how to catch it and move it to another state. Where no one lives. Except other mockingbirds.). I’ve been wrapping a pillow around my head to deaden the noise, but the beast gets through double pillow layers. I tried earplugs one year, but there’s some weird balance between my ear canals and my nostrils that doesn’t work when one of them is plugged up. God damn, he’s loud. Get a woman, you bastard! Or babies! Or whatever it is that’s making you talk to the whole planet on my doorstep.

School is survival mode at the moment…we’re doing the last few days of the sex ed program, so it’s all about STDs starting today. I’ve had a few questions in the question box about the TV show 13 Reasons Why, so I’ve been watching the 2nd season. Ugh. I know it’s trying to deal with the issues, but some of it is really hard to watch at the end of the school year. Or ever. I can’t decide if it’s just really heavy-handed because it’s adults making assumptions about what kids go through, or if it’s just trying to hit ALL the possible issues, telegraphing ALL the warning signs so we know what they are. It’s obviously targeted at a younger crowd than me…but maybe in teaching middle school, I never escape some of the crap in my head that was so inherently middle and high school. Like never-wanna-go-back middle and high school.

Anyway. It’s progressing…and I made it through grading about 17 websites last night before I quit. I got a bunch done at school, but the 17th one started talking about Reagan, and I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with the plastics industry or the biosphere, so I gave up. Like please stop writing random answers to fill the space because you didn’t actually read the article or watch the video I asked you to read or watch. Grading shouldn’t involve swearing at the computer repeatedly. I have to be done by Monday…I think I’ll be OK. Hopefully.

On the way to work yesterday…I often think I should have business cards for my editing job so I can hand them out to the guys standing out at this allllllley. Or not.

Puppy sleeping on me as I finish up dinner and try to figure out the rest of my evening.

Back to the ironing board! I finished the mountain/land area and then did a jellyfish (purples) and this octopus below…

Then I’m looking at this section and trying to figure out why there’s two sets of hands on that leg. I mean, I drew the damn thing…what was I thinking?

It’s OK…I figured it out. I often put hands on the skin of the main figure…it’s like who has a hand on her, who makes a mark on her, not necessarily always in a bad way. Think of your kids…they leave a mark. Speaking of kids, one started her summer job yesterday and hopefully will (a) find her rain gear and (b) keep enjoying the job. It sounds interesting so far. If you see her tramping through the woods around Waltham, Massachusetts, wave and give her chocolate. The boychild is apparently seeing the US and might be kind enough to check in with locations and/or pictures every few days. Or not…and then I’ll just sit here and worry that I haven’t heard from him. Typical mom brain. But when I travel now, I always tell someone where I am. From the year my parents went off on a trip and left no itinerary and then my dad’s brother died and I couldn’t reach them. Or the other year when they left and their dog was really sick. Anyway. He’s out there. He might like chocolate too.

I started picking out the flesh stuff…I picked fabrics anyway, and started choosing pieces, but it was already midnight at that point. I know how long bodies take to pick out, and this is not a small body, so I saved it for tonight.

After tutoring. Last tutoring of the year! Oh hallelujah. Maybe I should NOT do tutoring next year? Sigh. I know it’s what’s best. I hate it, but it’s what’s best.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…you can see the jellyfish purples at the top of the left box.

There will be so many more colors by the time I get to the end…

I woke up this morning to Kitten sharing the dog bed with Calli.

It makes Calli nervous, so when she notices, she gets up and lies on the floor instead. Kitten is watching birds and bunnies outside. She’s the one that pushes the slats so she has a little window.

OK, so steady progress on grading and ironing. Both should be done sometime over the weekend…although two night meetings this week will affect that. Meanwhile, off to school and STDs. Hey there’s the one thing I don’t think I’ve seen on 13 Reasons Why…YET…

*Adele, Rolling in the Deep

Always Clean Up Your Mess Before You Mess It Up Again*

I keep trying new breakfast foods…stuff I can prep on the weekend and then eat every morning. My body is not good at early breakfast…it tends to be nauseous and still asleep, so it’s always a challenge. Stuff that sounds good to me while I’m prepping or shopping is notoriously putrid in the morning. Or I eat it once and then like that’s it. I’m good. It’s not good FOR me, though, to go through until lunch with no food, so then I get to school and all I have to eat are nuts…which aren’t a totally bad plan, but I can do better. So this week, I tried an oatmeal bake with fruit and so far, so good (first day only). I can usually handle oatmeal anyway, and this is just a slightly fancier and healthier version…so we’ll see if that gives me vip and vim this morning.

I’m not really a morning person. You may have noticed. I can quietly write here, as long as I don’t have to talk to anyone. Luckily, most of my cohabitants are also not morning talkers. Even when I get to work, the morning talkers are there and they’ve learned not to expect much from me. I’ll talk when the bell rings to start school…and some days, not a moment before.

So I did some relaxing stuff on the weekend, if by relaxing, you mean walking a 4-mile art and music route. I basically did very little art-related stuff on Saturday. I really needed a break from feeling like I had to do it…so I just went in there for the last hour or so of the night before going to bed and tried to clean up…

I had about 5 more piles in there when I started…so I put all this away from the last quilt…

Always clean up your mess before you mess it up again.

And then I had this broken drawer…Midnight used to sleep in there, and I think eventually the pressure of fabric plus sorta fat cat caused the plastic to fail…

I stupidly threw the broken pieces away…so I needed to figure out how to fix it. At the time, I thought it would be easy to find a replacement, but the sizes are all different and don’t fit into that space any more. I did this long-range plan for shelving in that space, but really the whole room needs a makeover and that’s not in the cards this summer…so finally, on Saturday night (yup, I party like the best of them), I put cardboard in there and then duct-taped it to death so it would hopefully hold long enough for me to be able to afford to do something in that space. Because I was tired of trying to pull the drawer open without breaking it more.

So that was Saturday night: cleaning and improvising.

Sunday was a lot of work stuff…I got up and graded 63 emails’ worth of makeup work and another pile of papers. Then input some grades and did the grocery shopping and sent the parent email and all that crap. It’s all time-consuming crap, honestly. I love the summer because my Sundays are free…FREE!

Then I graded the rest of the student videos and transferred all those to paper and started grading the websites I could find. Puppy was very tired…

Satchemo really wanted to be ON the computer and was rather pissy that I wouldn’t let him be…

Then at around 10:15 PM, I headed into the studio for the fun stuff…the first 100 pieces sorted and ready for ironing. On the far left (hiding in the dark) is the piece I picked for the background of my existing stash…

On really long drawings, I can’t see the bottom without having to lean over to the ground, so I pull the drawing up to the ironing board…

It’s just easier to see that way…

And I ironed almost 100 pieces…at some point, it was after midnight and I was still ironing and thinking I didn’t want to stay up too late because then I’d lose all the sleep I’d made up over the weekend.

So I stopped just short of the snow on the mountains. Not a bad start…

I will have to be grading every night, but this will be a pleasant ending to every day…relaxed…the way it should be.

At Some Point, You Run Out of Hours

I slept. I went to bed well before midnight. I slept. And the dog barked. And I slept some more. And the cat bit me. That pretty much got me up and moving, but obviously I needed like 10 hours of sleep. Like don’t bug me sleep. Like let me just lie here and grow roots into the bed sleep. It was a rough week. I had to be up early every morning and then I wasn’t going to bed early, because my brain doesn’t work that way. Until it hits exhaustion. Hoping to repeat again tonight into tomorrow morning, so I can make it through all of next week. There are nine days of school left. Grades are due in a little more than a week. I can do it.

Really, what helped yesterday? I found out the deadline for the show I’m trying to get this quilt finished for got moved. To September. Oh holy hallelujah, what a weight is gone. I can do that. In fact, all of a sudden, I can do everything. Well. The grading part is still a load of work, but I was able last night to sit down with all the art deadlines I’m looking at for the next 6 months (well, I forgot one, but that’s OK)…and kind of start to get my head around my summer and fall. Artwise that is. It felt a lot more relaxed and sane. I needed that. For some reason, for about 2 years, I’ve been going like crazy and I needed to chill out a bit.

I need to add the other one here and do measurements for the one I just wrote down, but now I can get my head around what next. What order? How?

So that’s good.

Yesterday was our awards breakfast…here’s our amazing English teacher making pancakes. I was on the other griddle doing the same.

Well I had to move to another plug after we blew that fuse, but whatever. Why the library doesn’t have more robust fuses, I don’t know.

Taught about birth control all day…then a walk with just the one little dog…

This walk is one I really like, but I no longer like doing it alone…

We didn’t do the whole three miles…puppy was tired, but here he is pulling, wanting to keep going.

Here’s why it makes me nervous to walk here…there’s two adult coyotes and then two kits out there. The trail we come out on is right next to the green belt…the kits saw us and ran back to their den, but it still makes me nervous to come by myself with the dogs. I can carry one small dog, but it’s hard to protect both if needed. Especially if there’s an overprotective momma coyote around…

Came back and had dinner…Satchemo likes to sit right underfoot. The pattern of the rug with his fur seemed really interesting…

Here’s the drawing I did on the plane on Monday. Not too exciting. I was pretty tired.

So part of the art I have to do this summer is two tiny pieces to go in these boxes…for a show that will open in September…

The next step on this quilt is to iron the Wonder Under to fabric…before I can do that, I need to clean up in here…I need to put all the pulled fabric from the last quilt away, plus I really should try to fix the one green drawer.

It’s broken and I can’t find a correctly sized replacement. My long-term plan is to replace all this section with shelving, but that’s expensive and not happening this year. So the drawer is a pain in the butt, and I need to put a brace in or something to keep everything from falling out.

A little bit of clean up here, mostly getting stuff neatly back in drawers and off the place where I lay out all the Wonder Under.

The sewing machine table is doing OK…just some paperwork on the right that needs managing…

I’m not buying a new background…I need to use one of these. I often buy more than one background when I’m not sure what will work…

Although as I’m thinking about the size…I may not be able to get away with not buying more. Huh. Thinking. Mathing in my head is a mistake. I’ll do it later, after a shower to clear the cobwebs from my brain. Anyway, I’m going to grade some and then clean up some today…then we’re going to an artwalk for the rest of the day. Seriously need a break, so that will be a good one. Depending on how I feel tonight, I might get some work done on the ironing. We’ll see. I’m OK now if I don’t. I was seriously looking at having to do about 4 1/2 hours a day and I couldn’t see how that was going to work…because that’s on top of maybe 9 or 10 hours of schoolwork as well. At some point, you run out of hours.

Anyway. It’s moot now. Moving on with my much-more-relaxed weekend. Also trying to ignore the sore throat…hoping it’s from overuse yesterday…and not some viral crap that some sneezer kid gave me.

Needlework and Seedlings*

Tired is catching up with me and passing me on the right, cutting me off so I slow down, and then speeding up to beat me to the finish line. It’s hard NOT to stay up late…I haven’t gotten more than 6 hours any night this week. Some of that is just that my brain keeps going at 900 miles an hour no matter what. Some of it is trying to get everything done. Ah stress and lack of sleep…the things my doctor keeps flipping out over…like I can control those. TEN DAYS OF SCHOOL LEFT. Yeah. That. I’m feeling much better about grades getting done, but I still have a ton left to do. Just not as big of a ton. Some of the not sleeping is that little dog barking his mad head off in the middle of the night…I don’t know what animal is out there, but it was big enough to set off the motion-sensor lights this time. Assholes. And the mockingbird is back, but this is a new one. It sounds like mockingbird-on-crack. Pillow over head. Ugh.

I am SOOOO looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning and Sunday morning. Wake me up and I kick your ass. Unless you’re a dog. Because I don’t hurt dogs. I just get irritated with them. And honestly, probably we need to do a better job of getting the little one tired at night. Next week. Next week when I don’t have to be up early every damn morning. My principal has threatened an additional meeting next week. I’m hoping he forgets. Is there a voodoo spell for principals forgetting shit?

Weirdest question in sex ed this year (I teach 7th graders about reproduction etc every year) was “Do you have to do The Sex every time you want a baby?” Um. Well. OK. Yes. And let’s explain human nature and The Sex a little bit. It must be a girl asking? Or a very scared boy?

So I came home and entered an exhibit and ate some leftovers and installed a new Tivo (yeah well, I guess I made that decision) and then sat and finished cutting out Wonder Under…6 1/2 hours total. Pretty much the same as the last one.

I was hoping to save some time on this one…not. Then I set up to sort them, because it was only 11 PM. The big box at the bottom is all the pieces, and then each of the smaller boxes is only 100 pieces…it makes it easier when I go to iron if I’m dealing with only 100 pieces at a time. My process after a million years of doing it this way…it’s pretty efficient actually.

Forty minutes and one glass of wine to sort all 904 (plus or minus who knows how many) pieces…

In bed by 12:15? Not bad compared to most of this week…definitely feeling it this morning though. Tonight I can start ironing to fabric. Based on the last quilt, that took about 12 hours. Yikes. OK…I need to go faster. I can do 3 or 4 hours tonight. I know we will want to do some fun stuff tomorrow at some point…but if I can get 3 or 4 hours in tomorrow and finish up on Sunday (shee-it, when are you planning on grading shit, Nida? SHHHHHH. Quiet. I’ll figure it out. I have a plan. Maybe.). Need to be focused. Like a fucking laser.

Calli asking for some kind of attention. I think she’s got another UTI…sigh. Poor old lady. Her girl parts are kinda freaky for UTIs.

Hopefully she’ll be going to the vet today.

OK, so I have a plan…I am so SO looking forward to being done with school so I can sit somewhere and relax with my sketchbook without feeling like I’m supposed to be doing 17 other things. I don’t know when that will happen, but hopefully soon.

*Iron & Wine, Faded from the Winter

Catching It in a Different Order

I keep thinking it’s June. It’s not June yet. I just am panicking like it’s June. I should stop that. I’m being pretty efficient with like everything except sleep and exercise. Those aren’t happening right now. We got loaner computers so we can grade while the kids watch the pregnancy video. I really don’t know how to just sit and watch things. It’s hard.

You know what’s hard? And a totally first-world problem? My Tivo died. It’s OK. It was old. Although it took a bunch of stuff with it when it died (sigh). But then I spent 24 hours trying to figure out what to do about it. Get another Tivo? Get a different DVR? Ignore it? Assume everything will eventually show up on Netflix or Amazon? (It doesn’t). Sigh. Decisions. Difficult. But not really.

And even though we’re out of school relatively early this year, I already potentially have 4 teacher days for the last two weeks of June, dammit. Sigh. I took things on. I can’t not apparently. And July apparently belongs to the US District Court, so I’m trying to shove all the appointments into those two weeks of June as well. Eyelid twitching. Yup. There it goes.

I haven’t given up hope on getting this quilt done though. I graded all day in class, got about 20 minutes per period in, finished up two assignments completely, most of a third. I’m still watching videos. Need to rethink that for next year? Or revise? Not sure. Can’t think that hard right now. Which is interesting…because at some point, co-teacher and I need to plan next year…which means throwing it all up into the air again and catching it in a different order. Some day we’ll be easier on ourselves. Teaching this unit is pretty easy…done it enough times.

So yeah, even though I graded all day in class, I came home and graded some more. I just want to be caught up, whatever that means. I wish I had another week on this quilt…I’d be fine if I had another week. Sigh.

After grading, I cooked dinner…and then I kept cutting things out. It’s actually going really fast, which is nice…I’m about 3 1/2 hours in and I have one full yard and then maybe another third of a yard…unfortunately it’s a third of a yard with a lot of small pieces, which takes longer to cut out. There’s the puppy…

He’s a good couch dog…unlike this goofball…she was kicking me while rolling around in her sleep.

We’ve been watching the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale…it’s so hard to watch. A great show, but painful…and then because my students all binge-watched it, I’ve been watching the second season of Thirteen Reasons Why…ugh. It’s not bad…it makes some relevant points (episode 2), but then goes a little wackadoodle (episode 4). I have to remember I’m not the target audience…I just educate the target audience. Which can be hard…every year we have a student or two who does or says things that set off every alarm bell in my head, and it’s so hard to watch them go through the stuff in their own heads. And to worry about them. They’re our kids too…in a different way, but you still want to encourage them and keep them safe and sometimes beat them over the head with a pillow, just like your own kids.

So I finished cutting out the first yard, cut out all of the second yard, and that’s what’s left of the third yard…with a fourth yard lurking on the sidelines.

I think I should easily be able to finish cutting them out tonight AND sorting them. That puts me into ironing on fabric tomorrow night…hopefully finishing Saturday? Seriously. It’s gonna have to be quick. Much as my brain would like to stop dealing with school and spend some weekend time full-on relaxing, I can’t do that yet. I think I’ve got another 46 hours or so to put into this quilt, based on the last one…although I’m considering a facing of sorts instead of a binding…not sure if that saves time or not, since stuff still needs to be sewn down by hand, unless I do a pillowcase-type finish. Plus if it’s something I’ve never done before, that makes it take longer. You wanna know how many days I have left to work on it? TEN. Yeah. I know. But four of those days are weekend days (sorry mom, dad, but you’re not going to see me I think until later this month). But 4.6 hours a day? I’m really just hoping that I’m faster than on the last one, and also that it will just take less time because it’s smaller and has fewer pieces.

A girl can dream.

So girlchild posted this from Ithaca…I took this picture! Now of course she set up the camera and all I did was point and shoot. And then she looked at the picture and adjusted something (light) and made me take it again. I’m pretty impressed with her ability to take photos, actually. And I wish I’d moved slightly to the right so that guy in the background was gone…need to get her Photoshop so she can erase him with some additional greenery.

Anyway. Another early meeting this morning (this week is kicking my butt for those, but at least people will actually be AT this one, unlike the other two). Then more pregnancy videos and grading. Then home and grades and art. Wash Rinse Repeat.

More Than a Little Crazy…

Oh hellz ya a long day. Got to school early for a parent meeting where the parent didn’t show. Always nice. Then taught about pregnancy all day…certainly made about a million times more difficult by the fact that we don’t teach body systems any more. Then did tutoring for an hour, mostly sitting by one girl and listening to her mangle words…talked to her mom (well, mom didn’t speak much English) about having the girl read in English to her mom and her brothers and sisters. She says she doesn’t like to read. I asked about magazines and the library. Mom’s all for it. Drove out to my photographer’s, avoiding traffic (but not dumbasses) for once. Got my quilt…he called it “tame” compared to most of mine. OK then. House cohabitant asked me if it had a woman spreadeagled with vulva in full view or an obvious penis. Holy hell, this quilt IS tame. Interesting, because it doesn’t feel that way to me.

This is Heart-Shaped Box…

The first drawing was done in 2014 and had the two main figures in it.

The fireplace got added earlier this month? I think? No, in mid-April. That’s right. I remember now. I took the trip during Spring Break, and came back and started drawing this full size.

I added the fireplace and the backpack and the figure on the rug then.

The figure on the rug has been sitting in my head since July 2014, when I first drew this.

Weird how my brain works.

Calli is old, but she still plays…she was running around, throwing this up in the air for herself.

Weird dog. Then she slept for a good long while.

So after dinner, I graded for a bit…I can’t really ignore that. And then I finished tracing the new quilt…It took a total of 11 hours to trace the Wonder Under, and I think I did it all in the last week. Minus graduation weekend.

It’s a little less than 4 yards of Wonder Under. I found another double-numbered section. Brain fart.

And then I started cutting them out. If I base it on the last one, it’ll be about 6-7 hours of cutting…so 30 minutes last night…

Two or three tonight and tomorrow night, and hopefully I’ll be done by Friday night…sort them, and start ironing down over the weekend. Sheesh. I really don’t know if I can pull this off.

Simba just wants me to pet him.

Which I did.

I didn’t get far in 30 minutes last night…

More tonight. More of the CRAZY tonight, because this is more than a little crazy. Meanwhile, here I am, up early again, for another meeting (parent will show for this one)…just no repeat on the tutoring and quilt pick up today. I have two other errands instead, plus it’s my turn to cook. Twelve days of school left…

Hope

Blargh. Yup. Made it home. Functioning on very little sleep, due to small puppy thing asshole who doesn’t know how to let things move around at night without barking his head off. Kitten finally came down off Batting Mountain because her mommy was home. She whacked the crap out of her substitute parent while I was gone. Ahhh, calicoes. They are the devil incarnate sometimes.

The boychild has officially graduated. He is no longer a student. Now he is an unemployed wayward adult child (he really isn’t the wayward one) who hopefully will solve all his transportation problems today (the state of New York is truly anal about its car registration process), pack up all his shit, clean his apartment because all his roomies have left, and eventually head out to see his sister and maybe even come home. I don’t expect him soon, which is good, because I need to clean up all the quilts on his bed. I’m really proud of him for getting through 4 years at Cornell and hope he eventually figures out what to do with his life, although I have never been the best role model for that, for sure. Save the world! Cure cancer! You promised when you were 10 to build me a robot that would clean the house…WHY HAVEN’T YOU DONE THAT YET???

Girlchild is back in WALTHAM…she doesn’t live IN Boston, just near it…she has a few summer jobs, the major one starting on Monday. She’ll be busy, for sure. She’ll be home for a week in August…long time away, but we saw her this weekend. She was the main cook, which was nice.

I have early stuff at school every day this week. I have a quilt that’s at the photographer for a show I’m entering later this week. I have another quilt that probably can’t get done in time…but I’m going to try. I also tried grading all those kid videos, but had absolutely shit WiFi in Syracuse Airport and on the plane this time, so I was unable to get any work done all that time…which is frustrating, because really right now, it’s either work on school stuff or the quilt, and I obviously couldn’t trace Wonder Under on the plane. So there we are. I’ll get through whatever I get through…as always.

So here was our dinner and post-dinner gathering every night, which explains each one of the 40 or so mosquito bites I have…although most of them seem to be ankle biters…

Here in San Diego, our mosquitoes bite all over…so I find that intriguing.

Yet another of the awesome waterfalls we saw around Ithaca…this is Taugannock Falls.

We didn’t have time to hike down, unfortunately. We had to be out of our rental place and people were slow-moving, so we went back and saw this tree fungus for the first time (it had obviously been there all weekend)…

And then we separated. My ex went home to the Boston area with the girlchild (some worry about the car, we suspect, although he claims one-on-one time with her…also a plus), boychild went back to his apartment to figure all the packing and cleaning out, and I drove the parentals back to Syracuse, where we sat in an airport for a while…

Wishing I could get work done. It was an efficient trip back…just enough time in Philly to grab food and get on another plane, where I couldn’t work even more, so I read a lot. Which is fine…

As we started to land in San Diego…

I did one drawing on the plane, but it’s way over THERE and I don’t feel like getting up and photographing it right now.

Damn, my right eyelid is twitching like crazy today. I basically got home and had a glass of wine to shut my brain up and tried to go to sleep…about 17 times. Ugh. I’m tired. But happy for the kid. I’m sure NOW WHAT is looming large in his brain…hell, it looms large in my brain on a regular basis. I hope he has a cool and mostly trouble-free drive home, and gets to see lots of interesting stuff. I hope I survive the last three weeks of school and grades and finish that quilt. I hope the girlchild finally gets to move into the house where she’s living for the next year and she likes her new job and being able to eat something besides rice. I guess that’s the theme of today then…hope.

The End of History…

Well that’s the wettest graduation I’ve ever sat through…but before we get to that, here’s the cottage the girlchild and I are sleeping in…I’m downstairs and she’s upstairs. The dead possum is off to the right…

It was dead when we got here, just to be clear.

When I made the 3 AM hike to pee (there’s no bathroom in our cottage), the box of cookies we bought had been dragged out of the house and strewn all over the path…

Our current bet is a raccoon, although the house cat is very fat and we’ve seen a skunk…they don’t usually climb furniture though, I think.

Here’s the more rustic bathroom, where we’ve been showering. It’s not bad…a little cobbled together.

The shed near our cottage is apparently where history goes to die…not just possums.

Back to wet grad. This is before the rain started really coming down…the school gave out rain ponchos…helluva expense.

Later it was pouring…kind of miserably so. Basically, as soon as your kid’s college was called, you left for shelter. Luckily, they didn’t call all 3500 or so student names in the stadium…

This guy had a garbage bag for raingear and a cardboard box for a hat…

The students…boychild walking to his seat, no umbrella.

What, you can’t see him in that photo? I thought we did well to pick him out…

Truly a miserable day for graduation…

From there, we headed to the tent for his degree in Government…a much smaller event, and mostly the rain had stopped by now.

Walking back from graduation to the car, yet another waterfall…

That fat cat again…

No, that’s not another cat…that’s the porch skunk…not listed on the AirBnb site…

Graduation photos…well, the boychild doesn’t want me to put them on here…so I’ll respect that.

I’m currently sitting outside, getting eaten alive again by mosquitoes, typing this while the two men discuss whether this could actually be train cottages (where we’re staying, she claims they were built in the 1830s), while the two women are reviewing homes for the girlchild’s graduation next year. The old man went up to bed, I think. Tomorrow we leave for home…driving back to Syracuse, flying home in two jumps. The boychild will hopefully pick up his car on Tuesday and head back home when he’s got the apartment clean…it probably won’t be a straightforward trip. I’m not sure how long he’ll take, but hopefully he’ll give me a heads up, because his bed is covered in quilts. I need some warning.

Hopefully I’ll get a bunch more videos graded on the way back too. This has not been an efficient trip…not enough sleep, too many things that had to be done…but it was worth seeing him graduate. An achievement to be sure. I’ve got no brain for any more words…

This Is Ithaca…

Y’all may have noticed I’m not where I usually am…Friday morning at OMG I’m not even usually up by now, I was on a plane with my parental units and my ex-husband (no really)…

I graded student videos all the way across the United States (it was easier than you might think…although the internet signal was iffy over the Rocky Mountains)…

Like right about here (good reason to look out the window rather than watch the spinning wheels of no video yet)…

That’s snow y’all. Three airports, two planes, one medium delay, and a not-particularly-short car ride later…we arrived at our AirBnb near Ithaca, New York…a property with 3 very funky and rustic cottages. The only table we all fit at is outside…

There’s lots of interesting in this place. INTERESTING…

That’s the nice bathroom…I actually didn’t mind the other one. In fact, I took a shower in it just fine.

This is not the shed I’m sleeping in (although it’s right next to what I’m sleeping in)…

The front porch, where I wrote most of this, ate my lunch, and graded a bunch of kid videos…apparently there’s a skunk living under this porch.

Well. Not apparently. We saw it multiple times.

Here’s the main cottage on the left, with living room, kitchen, and one of the bedrooms. To the right, is the nicer bathroom and another sitting area plus another bedroom…

I’ll have to get a better picture of where the girlchild and I slept. It’s behind me in this picture.

This is Blue, the cat who comes with the place.

He’s sweet and adorable…and more than a little pudgy.

Ithaca Falls…coming from a drought state, this stuff is freakin’ amazing.

Girlchild and I taking photos of each other…

My parents, helping each other on the path to one of the rivers in the area…

The clock tower at Cornell…which is where we are…and where graduation is…

I’ve stitched nothing. I’ve drawn nothing. I’ve graded about 110 student videos, with probably another 150 to go. Wow. OK. That’s depressing…well, I’m not going to think too hard about that. It’s OK. We drove a million miles away and found the boychild a car, so he can drive his stuff home. Graduation present…CHECK. Then we came back and obviously toured the school a bit, bought food, ate…and now we’re sitting outside, getting eaten by who knows what, drinking some wine, and debating the plan for graduation viewing tomorrow…with potential thunderstorms on the horizon for all day…minor issue.

My brain is pretty blank right now. I’m looking forward to seeing the boychild graduate. I’m eating some blackberry ice cream and hazelnut cookies. I’m listening to the girlchild plan her future, which is interesting. INTERESTING. More tomorrow? Who knows…I can’t even tell you all the stressful shit we’ve discussed tonight…if you think raising adults is easier than teenagers, I can’t agree. At least not this weekend…

Put Your Money Somewhere It Will Do Good

So this is really early and only vaguely coherent…either that or it’s really late, but still vaguely coherent. I was trying to get myself to bed early last night to get up for this crazy-ass flight this morning, and honestly, I suck at the relax and go-to-bed part of my life, so we’d watched the end of one of the Marvel movies (don’t have to watch TOO hard) and I was tracing Wonder Under (only got to about 720 or so, more on that later) and then stopped drinking tea (don’t attribute my sleeplessness to that…it doesn’t matter…I’ve tried without drinking it and I still am wired until after midnight) and drank a glass of wine and stopped trying to trace and was trying to actually physically walk down the hallway to the bedroom, but I had this Facebook post I wanted to do for one of the groups I’m in, but I was missing one piece of information. So I went to the website to see if I could find it on my own, and I found out (about a month after the fact) that my gun control quilt, Rooted in America, won 2nd place in Fantastic Fibers. Wow. OK. Wasn’t expecting that (isn’t that the best kind of award? Yes. Yes it is.).

But (and I woke up at about 1 AM on this one) I’ve had this tab open on my computer for a GoFundMe that I really wanted to send some money to, but it’s the time of year when I have to make sure I have enough to get through the whole summer with no paycheck, and I’m not sure of that yet, so I was waiting on the donation until I got through the end of school and all the kid expenses etc. before I donated, because maybe it was going to be a significant donation because I think this group is doing really good work and maybe it was not going to be as significant because two months with no paycheck is kinda painful. So now I can gladly send the larger amount…which makes me happy.

So the awesome cause is one I’ve talked about before, Social Justice Sewing Academy. They’re doing a summer program for kids and will be matched dollar for dollar up to $10K. You should check it out here…and give them some money, if you feel up to it. Not only are their quilts amazing, but the kids they work with are our future and we need to get them involved in politics and change for all our sakes. So as soon as that check gets here, I’m pushing most of it back out into the world to do good.

Meanwhile, like I said, I traced some stuff, but not enough…I shall survive.

I started the fourth yard of Wonder Under…

I’m in the 700s…

I misnumbered…again! Pieces 670 to 699, and then I restarted at 670 again. AGAIN. So that’s 29 pieces with a’s on them (all on the back at the moment…hopefully I’ll be able to figure it out in real time when I iron)…plus one that wasn’t even numbered, so it got a b.

I’m leaving 5 animals in the capable hands of this guy…I’m sure he’s up to it, although he’s rethinking it right about now, when all three will start barking at the arrival of the car to take me to the airport…

This one was not sure at all last night as to why there was luggage and Katie (my parents’ dog) and all this hustle and bustle…

They will all be fine. With that, I gotta go get moving.