Relaxation Attempted

Short post, just to check in. I graded for about 4 hours this morning so I could take time off this afternoon to sit on a pier (not sure where the actual pier is, but there are boats and water) in almost sun to listen to that band I’m always hanging out watching. The weather is pretty good, the food and alcohol are free (yes I crashed another private party, although I think I have permission to be here).

Wait, there’s this view…imagine a wine glass as well…

School is almost over, the next three weeks are crazy as hell, and the girlchild is texting me from Waltham, MA, where she’s driving a van for 8 hours to try to make enough money to pay her rent. (I just loaned my sunscreen to the lead singer of the band.)

I need to find more of these moments…work or not. Sanity is important…as close as I ever get to it.

Finish grades. Clean out room. Plan for next year. Finish documents for solo show. Quilt community quilts for other show. Copyedit a manuscript. Clean house. Clean out garage. Somehow make a summer quilting plan.

Yeah. That’s not a lot.

I worked on this last night at gaming…

It helps with the teeth grinding…

I’m not great at gaming, but my character freakin’ rocks…Silma the master dwarf engineer and marksman one-shotted a crypt ghoul last night…

Most amazing thing I’ve done all week. Maybe all month.

Ok. Back to trying to relax…

Push That, Push That, Push That to the Floor*

Well it seems like my summer break isn’t starting until July. I picked up a copyediting job…with a rush on it. Good news? Money. Pay college. Honestly, try to pay for the summer too. Bad news? Well, now it’s gotta get shoved into the two weeks after school gets out, which already has three quilts that need quilting for the art show I’m helping curate, plus jury duty, plus I’m sure I don’t even remember all the other shit I’m supposed to be doing. Finishing up for the solo show and delivering all that (need to work on one part of that tonight…maybe see if I can get all the paperwork done). Plus I wanted to make a coloring book for that show of my drawings. Hoping to still be able to pull that off.

Unfortunately, my assistants either roll over to have their bellies rubbed or roll their eyes at me.

Where are the post-it notes. I need to write things on them. Somehow that helps. Chipping away at the crazy to-do list a little at a time. FIVE days of school left. All the awards are at the printer. Grades are closer to done (not done though). My classroom is a disaster. My house is a disaster. I took 5 minutes and gathered shit to be tossed off the kitchen counter. And then I tossed it. Well. I recycled it, because I try to be environmentally responsible.

I do try to leave the house for something besides my job sometimes. This is my stitching group…since I was pregnant with the girlchild, who turns 20 in August (really. Holy Moly). My friend Julie has been working on this uterus pattern from Knot by Gran’ma for me…we both bought the pattern, but it turns out there is no way in hell I would be able to make this…I’m just not talented (or experienced) enough. Luckily Julie likes to do weird shit like this for me. (I have a zombie fairy doll and a Frida Kahlo fairy doll from her.) So last night was the finishing touch…here’s a side view as we tried to decide how to photograph her.

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On the ledge behind the chairs at the Starbucks inside the Mira Mesa Barnes & Noble…in case you want to replicate this look. I LOVE IT. Seriously. Love.

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Almost as much as I love the uterus I built. And the girlchild around it. (Yes, I should dust…I didn’t realize until I saw this photo).

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Freakin’ awesome pattern and hard work by Julie (she had to say her personal mantra many times in constructing this). Much appreciated.

Then I did the blue-green cretan stitch on the far left. I still need to fill in some, but wanted to spread out as well.

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I should remember to take a shot of the full piece of fabric so you can see that I will probably run out of room by December.

I worked on this at the meeting. That’s trellis stitch in a psychotic rayon thread…it’s fussy shit man. I love that in two hours, all I really got done where knotted Italian stitches on the tree and the whipped stitch outline on it. Time-consuming shit.

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Speaking of time-consuming shit, I did start tracing Wonder Under on the climate piece. I did all of it until I got to the fussy tree trunk. Then I went to bed.

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Like an hour late. I really need to have more sleep, but I was incredibly stressed by the increasing to-do list and couldn’t fall asleep anyway, so whoo! Yeah! It’s Friday! And I’m currently teaching sexually transmitted diseases! Yah!

My lord. The plus is that the teeth are no longer grinding (no, I don’t really know why), but both eyes are starting to twitch. I’m going to get a better night of sleep tonight. Really. I am. And then finish EVERYTHING. I’m going to finish it all. Yup. I am. Just don’t fucking bug me while I’m trying to do that, OK?

Oh yeah, I forgot. I was desperate for something cookie-like last night and we had a box mix of gingerbread that said you could do this that or the other and make cookies out of it. It wanted me to roll them out and use cookie cutters (who the fuck do you think I am? Is it fucking Christmas?)…well so I made hockey pucks.

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They taste about as good as they look. Sigh. Left them for the boychild.

*REM, Radio Free Europe

Ready for Me

You know when you’re stressed out and there are things you know will help with like the grinding of the teeth and the flopping around in bed? Obviously exercise is the most healthy of those, but it takes time and often daylight or driving somewhere that you might have a membership for sweating in public. Then there’s the less healthy comfort-food eating (I’ve avoided that so far), the donuts or the cookies or whatever floats your boat. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll follow closely after (well, music anyways, since who knows which will make you happier, and for teachers, alcohol is probably the drug of choice). For me there’s art as well…drawing or sewing or cutting or whatever. Embroidery also…the meditative motion of needle in and out and thread pulling through just as you had planned it. I manage a little bit of that almost every night. Art has been harder for the last two weeks…just too much work and art management (ugh, that horrible thing) going on. It’s getting in the way of my destressing dammit.

I’m getting there though. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel is days away. Meanwhile, in the middle of all that, I’m bidding on copyediting jobs for the summer, trying to make sure the paycheck continues. That’s a whole ‘nother stressball.

Here’s an anti-stressball.

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Of course, she’s lying on the gradebook. Not helpful. It’s OK…I did about 3 hours of grading last night and managed to get a chunk done. Not enough, but some.

I did two spiderwebs in a blue/brown that I swear looks like another thread I already used…on the right side in the middle sort of.

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Then I numbered…I told myself I would do the piece that had the lowest number of pieces…this is the climate one and she’s only got 398 pieces, compared to the 700+ piece drawing of a few nights ago.

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And that’s including this crazy mess. I thought about trying to find the overlaps and continue the pieces, but realized the headache and the problems with stitching through all those layers…so they’re all numbered.

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The next one, Desert Daughter, came in at 542 pieces…which surprised me.

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It seemed simpler than the other two…but apparently 25 pieces just for a scorpion adds up.

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That’s not a flower…it’s a succulent. Lots of green stuff in this one.

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So I guess the climate one wins. Of course, when I look at my schedule for the next…well…week? I don’t know when I’ll have time to work on it. But at least I know it’s ready for me.

I Know You Better Than You Fake It*

Good morning. Here in East County, it is a little cloudy, maybe even foggy in places. My house is quiet, sans boychild and dogs. It’s OK for it to be quiet sometimes honestly. The cats are wandering around, rubbing up against my legs. I’m not very awake. Sleep was troubled…a vomiting cat (I’d already washed the bed cover once…she’s on a roll in the last 24 hours), some wacky stress. I managed to finish one part of the solo show, but two more parts are left. Someone needs to do the dishes. And I need to grade stuff. Yesterday was the last tutorial of the year (oh hallelujah). I finished the academic awards and sent them off to the printer. There’s still a few awards left…I need to check one batch of those today…another will final tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, 27 boxes of science materials that have to be parceled out to all three grades just showed up in our prep room. And it all has to be put away, locked up even, before next Friday. Ah shit.

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I think another 8 boxes came after this. We’re gonna have our homerooms help unpack. We hope. Well. Maybe not MY homeroom. The last two weeks of school are just a little more stress than I need. I think I need another walk.

And yeah. There’s that. I do usually roll on the side of too many fucks given. I have four assignments left to grade, plus some stuff to input that’s literally just check off that they did it or not. The last assignments to be graded come in Friday, so the weekend is kinda shot I think. I’m not totally panicking yet. Maybe I should be?

One thread on here…let’s see if I can remember where. Oh yeah! There was some blank space on the left side where the L of Live is…I filled it with chain stitches in a purple color.

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And then because I was hanging out and watching Fear of the Walking Dead (man there’s some plot holes and bad writing in that show), I worked on these guys.

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These are blocks 9 and 10 in Sue Spargo’s Folk Tails. I also have block 25 in with this pile. Looking at the quilt, it seems so overwhelming with all the stitching detail, but it’s not so bad one block at a time. I did the grass in Ohio and then I’ve been couching them since then…at my art meeting on Sunday (I have a really hard time just sitting and listening at meetings…I need something for my hands to do), and then last night I finished the couching and did the bullion knots for the flowers. Thems some cute hippos. I really like working on these. They’re very meditative. I don’t have to think very hard to make. I just read the instructions.

Yeah, kind of the opposite of what I do on my own, which are still meditative in their own right. I didn’t have any time after working on the solo show photos last night to go number another quilt. I made the managerial decision to go to bed 30 minutes earlier than I usually do. Except it didn’t help. Oh well. I’m managing. I’ll survive. There’s tonight (gotta grade tonight…and finish a statement and a resume).

Thinking about the summer though. I want to finish the Bird Crazy quilt, put it together and do the borders. I need to do these three quilts for the FIG show…but that’s just sandwiching, quilting, and putting together. Remind me not to hand sew those bindings. I want to make some big and impressive quilts. I need to deal with some deep cleaning in the house and garage. I need to find a way to make some money over the summer (bidding on another copyediting job this afternoon). That’s not a small to-do list. It never is.

I also need to find time to just sit outside and draw. And time to go outside and hike. And time to just sit and read. Hang with my kids when they’re still around. Let the brain come back.

*The Smashing Pumpkins, 1979

Well Every Day My Confusion Grows*

Yesterday, after working all day, racing around to try to fix stuff (one of my banks shut down all my accounts last week after some unknown problem with security…unfortunately one account is the one my paycheck deposits into) and mail important stuff and pick up quilts and photos, I was on my way home, negotiating stupid end-of-day traffic, and the need to get OUTSIDE and walk hit me upside the head. Hard. One dog still can’t go out and walk, but the other one, the little one, he needs it. Hell, I need it too. So we walked…

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It was good. We went further out than usual and found this weird pipe and bridge…

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They REALLY didn’t want us to go over this.

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Came back and ate and graded stuff and got really frustrated by the kids who didn’t complete the simplest assignments. Aargh.

Sat on the couch and stitched a bit with these guys…

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I did a blue/green lazy daisy above the orange flowers to the right of the hand. I seem to have run out of creativity…keep using the same stitches over and over. Seems like there’s no more stitches.

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Very philosophical that. I was fighting off a panic attack of sorts…too much to do, getting irritated by the cat’s tail on the keyboard, annoyed by people and all their crazy shit, putting together a crazy to-do list that keeps me at this heightened state of teeth grinding for at least another week.

Not a good place to be. Manage the shit…best I can. Grades are priority at the moment, but so is my sanity. I’m describing it as a very “intense” part of the school year. True that.

So I eventually managed to get off the couch and start numbering these. Because that’s gonna be part of the decision-making process…how bad are they? I did the 4-square of women first. It’s one of my favorites and will definitely be a quilt some day.

Although maybe not soon, because that sucker has over 700 pieces. And most of them are small.

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But it would be fun to do…

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Except all the women overlap, so I’d either need a huge run or two separate runs. Definitely doable…

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I feel like I should work on something easier…something quicker…to start.

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I don’t know why I feel that. Maybe it’s the tension I’m still carrying after a 3-mile hike and a crazy stressful day. Eight days. I swear I can do eight days. I’m just not sure I can finish all the other crap people want me to get done in those eight days. Plus I got my rescheduled jury duty crap, which just annoys me. I’m trying to bid on copyediting jobs and I don’t even know if I’ll have time to do them. Frustrating as hell.

OK. Well. Deep breaths. Meditative positive thinking (well survival thinking anyway, which in my eyes is positive. I WILL survive. And get mostly everything done.).

*New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle

Words Are Very Unnecessary*

It’s Monday. You know how we all feel about Monday. Except there’s some anticipation here…only two more Mondays of school this year. Now that’s stressful because of awards and grades and cleaning the classroom…but in general, it’s a good thing. People keep asking me what I’m doing this summer. I really don’t know. I mean, I need a copyediting job or 17…and I’ll surely make quilts. Plus the boychild claims we’re cleaning the garage. Frightening! I have some quilts I need to do for an art group I’m in…the first of 3 came home with me yesterday, but it’s big enough that it will have to be 2 different pieces for quilting. So it’s not like I have nothing to do. I have too much to do, as always.

I spent some time looking at art and listening to music at Art Around Adams this weekend. We walked the whole 2 miles again, even though we said we wouldn’t after doing it last year. We stopped twice for refreshments this time. I think that helped.

We saw some cool ceramics at Clay Associates…

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Made me remember how much I loved to have my hands in clay.

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Love the spiderwebs on this guy (he’s been hanging up there a while I guess)…

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I always love work by Peter Geise.

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He has such an interesting way of looking at things…

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This one had quite a few wonderful word combinations…couldn’t decide whether they were band names, quilt names, or the names of future children…Chinchilla Forcefield Mishap seemed particularly good for that one.

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I didn’t get the name of this artist, but I know my friend Julie will have it, because she bought one of the smaller pieces.

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Ah those eyes…this is one of the painted city boxes.

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It was nice to get outside and relax a bit (I didn’t…I was grinding my teeth most of the way, still stressed by school etc.). Sigh. Getting there.

I’ve been doing this every night (or doing three nights in one, like I did Saturday, while watching The Handmaid’s Tale)…

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Is it halfway done yet? I’ve noticed a huge dropoff in people posting pictures of their pieces.

Puppy love.

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I’m rambling. My brain.

I’m in this show with three pieces, I think. I’ll be at the opening Sunday from 1-3 PM.

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I graded, of course. Then I made the huge time commitment (not) to tape these together…still trying to decide which one to work on first. This one still has tiny pieces, even though I enlarged it 300%…

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I ran off the paper on this one…

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So I added a little piece at the top to do the meteor and then added some on the right so the nuclear power towers could be completed.

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It looked weird otherwise. It was bugging me. I leave things for a bit sometimes, hoping it will stop bugging me…but then it doesn’t stop. That’s a sign I should do something to it.

Here’s the third, another in the Earth Daughter series, I guess. I didn’t originally consider a series, but here it is.

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People tell me to do all three, but I do actually have stuff I need to do as well…I just can’t deal with those AND with the end of school…so I need a transition piece. That’s all. Time and space to create without all those other pressures. So I’m trying to give myself that…because after the drawing, the rest of the quiltmaking process is pretty easy. It can take time, but the creative input is easier. So there we are. Decisions later…tonight probably.

*Depeche Mode, Enjoy the Silence

Missing Enough to Feel Alright*

I’m fighting tired yet again. I managed to sleep a vast number of hours Thursday night and Friday didn’t seem so much like I was a dead blob of meat. Last night, I held it together through two full sets at the Music Box, and even drove home mostly wired…Puppy then set to barking at each spider that was spinning a web in a 5-mile radius. Ugh. Sleep. Sometimes it’s so far from my existence that it hurts. Right now I think I need a nap. Isn’t that what Saturday afternoons are for? Sweaty naps with your feet tangled in the sheets? A cat curled up next to you, because they’re perfectly happy to sleep whenever and wherever.

Oh if only I had the time and mental space for that right now. I graded last night before I went to the show (and after I spent an hour on the phone with my bank, which closed all my accounts due to some unknown suspicious activity, which no, was not me buying more fabric online. I don’t do that any more). I got up this morning and have been grading on and off. I’m going to grade tomorrow and every day until grades are due on the 13th of June. UGH.

This has meant an extreme lack of art in my life, which is why I am now grinding my teeth as well. Or that’s just the end of the school year. Really anyone who is NOT a teacher should be reaching out, hugging us, and buying us drinks with no questions asked. Do not try to fix anything for us. Just do the laundry, buy and/or make dinner, and don’t ask stupid questions. We don’t have the brain power for it.

See? She’s smart. She does the sleep thing.

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And the cleaning of the toes while leaning on the keyboard, which makes mom mad for some reason. (I’m grading shit, cat…you just gave a kid 3333 points out of 10.)

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Boychild entertains animals…there’s a cat and a puppy, and a dog in a giant cone still…

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This is stuck to the front door. I started it two years ago? Or maybe last year…so the kids would realize there was shit that needed doing. I swear, I think the boychild is the only one who looks at it. I crossed off some stuff. He tried to cross off something.

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It needs redoing. And a reality check probably. It used to all be color-coordinated. All the stuff in black was added right before Spring Break. Anyway. The Summer To-Do List is coming. Along with my brain. I hope.

OK, back to grading. I’m hoping to draw later. I did draw a little at the show last night, while I was waiting for the band I care about to go on…it’s hard to do that in public with people you know. I have no problems drawing in public with people I don’t know though. Explain that.

*Talking Heads, And She Was

I Ran So Far Away*

It’s hard to go through each day with the news the way it is…it’s hard to pick one or two things to focus on in your art, the things you think are the most important, when you’re being bombarded by absolute ignorant stupidity…well, I’m a middle-school teacher, so some days it feels like that too…but some days, the kids’ insights are amazing. I’m not getting that out of the federal government right now…although I’m consistently amazed by local and state governments and rogue entities that show me what America is made of. It’s disheartening though, to see such ignorance tossed up as representative of the country. It’s boggling. I’m teaching my students to question and search for evidence, and their role model can’t even spell or speak coherently.

So last night, after being frustrated by non-scientists trying to explain science, after listening to what other countries were saying about the Paris agreement, after reading the mayor of Pittsburgh’s tweet and hearing all the other mayors standing strong for renewable energy…I couldn’t draw. I swear, I am tired and overwhelmed and I thought about the gun drawing a lot and it will come to me, what I want to say with it. The two I had are not what I want to say. They were what I was thinking when I drew them. I can’t force myself to draw on topic sometimes. I am still so tired, to the point of considering I’m sick and trying to figure out what’s causing it (no other symptoms though). So I went to the copy place (which is now half the size? When did that happen?) and enlarged three of my smaller drawings.

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One is about climate change, sort of. One is about women. One is about the desert. I don’t know which I feel like doing right now. I was going to tape them all together last night, but even that was too much for my tired brain, so I went to bed (see, this is why I think I’m sick). I just know that I need to be doing something, so if I start on one of these, start tracing, maybe the rest will come. I mean seriously…there are 10 days of school left and I’m buried in grades and I can’t even think straight about all the shit I’m supposed to be getting done in the next two weeks. Why do I expect Art Brain to save me from that?

I don’t really. I just wish she would. It’s OK. I can spend time with one of these and then look back at the deadlines and figure out what I can do. Only one of them is coming up in the next six weeks…and then the next one is September. That’s doable. Until then, off to school, try to get caught up on grading, get that shit under control, so I can force time for art…remembering that in two weeks, there will be All Day for art (well and cleaning house and garage and doing all the shit I don’t do all year long because I’m a teacher. Fuck.).

*Flock of Seagulls, I Ran (So Far Away)

I Never Did Anything Out of the Blue*

Fuzz brain. Ten-hour days at school don’t help. I’m just trying to give my body a little more sleep than normal. I know a lot of people are getting sick, so I’m trying to keep myself healthy. Making art helps with that, but art brain seems to have wandered off…or she’s still asleep. I pulled out all the art entry information last night, made a list of what was coming up in the next 9 months that I had an interest in, started looking at requirements, sizes, due dates, whether I already had a drawing that would work…one that I actually wanted to make into a quilt. I even considered just picking a smaller drawing and starting to make a quilt, even if it wasn’t going to fit a specific place in the to-do list…just to get me working and jump-started.

I’m still considering that. I have three drawings marked. I need to get them enlarged though. I might do that tonight. Maybe.

I have 5 quilts that need better photography for the solo show, so last night, the boychild and I went through the crazy pile of quilts on the girlchild’s bed (yes…she’s coming home in July. I will have a solution by then.) and found all of them. Well, one was on the wall above my bed, where it’s been for years. But otherwise, all in the pile. I ironed all of them and cleaned them up, ready for the photographer tomorrow…

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I think they’ve all been in shows somewhere before…but it was interesting to look at this older quilt and see how I was using color and fewer fabrics back then…and BEADS. Yeah. I love me some beads.

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I don’t use them much any more though.

I did some blue/brown variegated cross and herringbone variations on the right side between the light fly stitches, near the red flowers. I wanted to fill in some space.

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And then I sat there and looked through the sketchbooks. I knew I had some gun-related stuff in there that never became anything. Looking at the feet and the hands in here, I can see why I didn’t go anywhere with it.

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Plus, honestly, just drawing a gun is scary for me. I wasn’t raised around people who shot guns. I don’t like them. I don’t even like fake ones. They just scream out danger and death and pain to me.

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So I’m going to have to figure that out if I want to pursue that imagery. Mostly I sat and stared at a blank piece of paper while art brain curled up in a ball.

So I suspect I’ll have to jump start it with something else, something easy and light? Well. I don’t necessarily roll that way either. I have a couple of ideas. We’ll see. Or maybe I’ll come home tonight and the drawing will roll right out of me, right? It could happen.

*David Bowie, Ashes to Ashes

Don’t You Shiver*

I’m apparently still in recovery mode. Yesterday was long and exhausting, and my body responded with a few dizzy spells. I think it’s because of the diabetes…not knowing when I should be eating (my body…not me…I know when to eat…I’m back on California time…I just think my body is somewhere in Texas or something). I taught all day yesterday and did tutorial, and then went to the vet to pick up the dog. I wish they’d say what time she was ready, so we didn’t have to sit around there for an hour (ugh) waiting for her to be released. She had a fox tail that was causing abscesses in her foot, and finally we had to go surgical to clean everything out. The fox tails are nasty here this year because of all the rain…so she’s wearing a sock at the moment (not sure how long that will last…) and looking somewhat miserable.

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The cone isn’t helping. She has a new one now…hopefully she’ll be less capable of folding it out of the way to nibble on her wounds.

When I took the dogs out to pee (when I finally got home), there was a weird plopping noise in the pool. So I finished up with them and went back outside and there was this guy clinging to the side of the tile…

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I helped him out and he did that weird running lizard dance to the nearest bush. I’ve never seen one that color before. I was debating whether it was normal for his species or not. Looking at the California herps list…I’m not sure. I didn’t get a great picture of him, but he was really pale gray and white and spiky around the head…anyway, he’s in the yard now, doing his lizard dance.

I spent a bunch of time last night putting together stuff for the solo show. I need to take about 5 quilts to the photographer this weekend…then I’m done. I think.

So I came out to stitch for a while…too stressed to manage anything else. Both these guys were all over me, so I petted them and scratched them and combed them.

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I did three nights’ worth on the stitch a day (how did I get behind?)…some blues and browny greens and another green purple…honestly, I was just filling in spaces with straight stitches and French knots and fly stitches…all around the lower part of the hand and above the tree. Bullion knots as well, I think.

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I forgot to post this last week…this is what’s done on Sue Spargo’s Folk Tails, my hobby stitching. There are 6 blocks done…the block attached to the funny-shaped tree is not done yet. I think it’s part of the next month. I’m not exactly doing stuff in order apparently.

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I did do some of the next month while I was traveling, but not much, honestly. I was too tired last night to do anything else. I brought the sketchbook to the couch with me, but gave up to exhaustion. Today won’t be better…we have a World Cultures Fair at school until 6 PM. I’m hoping I’m still functional by then, but I don’t have much hope for getting a lot done tonight.

I think I need a week to sleep off the jetlag. Ask me when grades are due. Plus I have all the photos from Quilt National and from the other show…need to deal with all that stuff too. This is teacher survival mode even without all that! I’m laughing. Seriously. It’s all you can do at some point.

I am starting the pregnancy video today. What I really want to do is sit in my chair and stitch while the kids watch and take notes. I will not be doing that. My grading will be screaming at me instead. No rest for the public-school teacher (until June 16).

*Coldplay, Shiver