Art Routine

I seem to have the routine down this week. Work for hours on end, eventually come home, maybe even eat dinner (last night it was 10 PM…my fault…the chicken needed an hour), and then make art for two hours or so, talking to no one, but texting 2 or 3 people at the same time. There’s a dog on the floor behind me, sometimes a cat on a chair and a cat in a plastic shoe box (you know, like they do), but there’s not a lot of difference in the days otherwise. Sometimes what I do right after work is different: book club, counseling, gym, errands, library. Sheesh. I did three of those yesterday after work. Explains the late dinner and the late stitching start.

But that routine is what helps me get work done. Lots of work apparently. It never feels like a lot to me, but I guess it is. In the last week, I’ve worked on art for over 16 hours. Granted, there was a three-day weekend in there, so that helped. So when I tell people it’s my second job, I’m not kidding. On breaks, that goes to more like 40 hours a week or more. The routine gets it done though.

So after I iron all those pieces down, I have to stitch them down so they’ll stay. I know people who don’t, who either use all hand-dyed fabrics, which stick much better, or they stitch it all down in the quilting. I like my images to pop out from the background though, so I don’t want to quilt them down. I use the quilting stitch more as an outline, even a drawing line sometimes. So this stage, before I sandwich it, is to stitch every single piece down with a small zigzag using a clear thread. At the moment, I’m using Sulky 100% poly invisible thread. I use clear. I used to get a smoke version too, but like the clear better. It can withstand ironing heat, which is a good thing. There’s another one I use as well, Superior’s Mono Poly, same deal, but harder for me to find.

I’m just under 4 hours into the stitch down. I have one whole side of arms to do…well, I think I did 1 1/2 of them last night. I finished the entire torso except the very top inch or so, and I need to do all the heads. So actually not much is left.

I wanted to be done last night, but I went to the gym instead. Although this process is very meditative to DO, it’s not very exciting in the photographs. It’s more exciting to know that I can pinbaste it tomorrow. Assuming I have enough batting. Hmmn. I should check that before I leave for school. The place I get batting is closer to school than home. Plus I have to wash the batting, so I could do that tonight. See? I often think ahead. Plus I’m pretty sure I have nothing that is the right color to quilt this. It has a definite green tint to it, instead of the dark indigo and navy I usually go for. So thread and batting are now on my list. No problem.

As far as quilting it…it will probably take…um…the last big one was 20 hours. Yikes. That’s a lot. This is the part that’s gonna kick my butt. So I have a 3-day weekend, but already have like four things happening, plus I really do need to grade stuff. Always. Forever. Aacckkk. This is what drives me crazy. I need a social life, but I don’t have time for it. Anyway. So that’s where I stand. Hopefully I can get a good chunk of that done this weekend. A girl can dream.

Both kids were texting me yesterday about winter and cold. Funny since it’s been almost 90 here the last two days. Boychild is having a high of 1 degree on Saturday. I’m so glad I can’t even imagine how cold 1 is. Girlchild was outside on and off for two hours working some event…they were smart enough to only leave people out for 15 minutes, before letting them come inside and warm up. I don’t think she got frostbite.

I miss the little buggers, but at least they text me about stuff that makes me laugh. And when they need help. This week has been housing and Shakespeare. And direct deposit. I was useless on the last one. Hard to help with online stuff from so far away. And the girlchild has a blog. Let me know if you find it. She won’t tell me the name.

OK, work. The one where I manage headstrong psychotic kittens with bad breath and untrimmed claws. Yeah.

Drawing Should Fit in Somewhere

I should plan better. I should not stay up late the night before I’m doing a lab in class where I have to keep them from sucking chemicals into their mouths. And then go to a long union meeting. And then home for about 40 minutes, where I try to persuade a semi-depressed Golden Retriever to eat. She eats Just Fine at my ex’s house. It’s only here (same food) that she refuses to eat and stares up at me with those doleful eyes, making me feel like a heel for leaving again. To go to book club, where I’m only 23% into the book and I’ll probably finish it, but only because everyone is saying how wonderful it is and I totally should just bully through the first third to get to the good stuff. Um. OK. Another 10.3% is what you’re saying? Of an 800-page book. Whatever.

So tired was I last night that I sat on the couch, and then laid down on the couch, and then took a short nap. Not a long nap, because cat and Golden Retriever, but maybe 10 minutes at about 9 PM, which is earlier than I ever leave book club. I wasn’t in the mood. Usually I come out of there really up and excited and invigorated to be with my people, even though they’re all significantly younger than I am. They’re still geek girls. Just not in the mood.

That said, after the nap, I came in here and stared at the quilt top, which is looking pretty fine, and remembered I was missing a fingernail and a finger wrinkle…I thought. I made a new fingernail and then tried to find the missing finger wrinkle, but apparently I had already fixed that little problem. So I started to stitch it down…

Stitching it down is a very meditative process, because basically my brain is saying, “Stitch there, now don’t forget that piece, go back and stitch it down, and then to get to the next section, go that way, and then stitch there,” so there’s really no room for other crap, except when I was really depressed and the other crap was screaming at the top of its lungs. Now it’s more low level, so I just ignore it and let my brain move my hands move the fabric move the foot until I look up at the clock and go, oh shit, I can’t stay up super late again because I was tired. Wasn’t I tired? Well, I’m still tired, but not like I was on the couch.

I stitched all the legs and the rug and the beautiful twat (thanks Sion) and the lower torso. I somehow lost the bellybutton or maybe there never was one? That doesn’t make sense. There’s always a bellybutton. So it’s here on the floor somewhere, who knows where. I cut a new one. Maybe it’s not as fancy as the other one (one piece instead of two…yes, my bellybuttons are usually two pieces), but it will do. And then I headed down one of the arms and found I was missing another fingernail, but I think that’s another case of something falling off, unfortunately, which occasionally happens. I didn’t do the best damn job of ironing everything down at 1 AM on Tuesday night. Shockingly.

Two hours in…at least another two…maybe three…to go. Tonight hopefully. Still trying to stay on track.

I finished the baby quilt. At some point will get a picture of it. There was a joke going around that the baby couldn’t come until I was done, so Tuesday night, I texted the mom to say I had finished. An hour later, she texted that her water broke. Baby was born Wednesday morning. This is a superpower I don’t need, so don’t tell anyone.

All I really wanted to do last night was draw, though. I felt it on the way to work. While I was at lunch. During the lab, when I was very busy, I could hear art brain complaining. During the union meeting. On the way to book club. It had subsided by the time I got home, or I think I would have drawn instead of sewn. Sewing was easier. Fewer brain cells needed to be employed. But drawing should fit in somewhere. Sometime. Will have to think that through.

Up All Night…

So I stayed up too late. Not all night, but even this morning was just troubled sleep and I couldn’t fall asleep last night, despite the late hour. My brain’s in overtime. Overload. Overwhelmed. Just over. But I wanted to finish the ironing…I started with the eyeball tree growing out of her head…

And then the other two faces got done. That was it, really. A hundred pieces or so in that space.

Then I ironed her legs onto the torso…I’d kept them separate. At this point, I started pulling the arms and heads up off the teflon sheet.

Then I looked at the clock. It was that in-between time…in between when I might go to bed and when I should go to bed, and my brain just wanted to be done. So I grabbed one of the two fabrics I’d picked for this quilt and ironed her down…

That was fast. Well. 12 hours and 45 minutes total. Not uber fast really. I’m hoping to start stitching down tonight, but I have two meetings tonight, so that might be too much hoping. Finish stitch down tomorrow night, sandwich and pinbaste Friday night and start quilting. I think I might actually make this deadline. Which is good, because there’s another one right behind it. Aack. I did have something I wanted to do next, but it won’t work for this next exhibit. Luckily, it only needs to be mostly done by the end of March and there’s a Spring Break in there. I might go into overload schoolwise before I get there though. Speaking of. Need to go there and do stuff.

Ironing Arms…

I so wanted to be done with the ironing yesterday. I ironed pieces quite happily for 4 hours until I realized I needed to go to bed, although honestly, with the amount of sleep I got, it would have made more sense to stay up another hour or so. I’m 10 hours in, but I’m not done. I did have a 3-day weekend, but it doesn’t feel like I got a day’s more of work in. I’m not sure where it all went, but it did. Errands. Stupid little stuff. I only crossed two things off the post-it note weekend list. That doesn’t feel good.

So keep making art. That feels good. And another tight deadline just popped up after this one, so I need to get moving.

On Saturday, after finishing a bunch of errands and other crap, I started on the torso.

That was easy, so I started torturing myself with hands and arms.

The arms all were drawn basically the same, so I got into a rhythm of ironing them down, knowing what piece came next. They were tiny pieces though.

Each arm/hand has something about it…sometimes two things. One thing near or in the hand, like the needle and thread, and one thing on the arm…although some don’t have both.

I think that’s where I stopped on Saturday. Not sure…wait, I only had two arms on Saturday.

Then Sunday, I kept doing arms, but I didn’t start until almost 10 PM. Dealt with grades and school stuff. Not sure where most of the day went. I think I even took a nap. Crazy, huh? Things I would never do on Sunday during the school year without Monday as a holiday for catching up.

By the end of Sunday, I had 7 arms of 10.

The pieces on this quilt are tiny. That’s what happens when you draw most of it to size. Well. That’s what happens when I draw most of it to size. You might be smarter than I am.

See that iPhone? Yeah. Too small. Tiny pieces.

Hearts with wings. One thing that’s interesting about looking at them on the white teflon sheet is that they will end up on a dark background, so it will all look very different.

When I drew the flying hearts, I squished them in too tightly, so when I traced them, I made sure the one that was originally UNDER a hand had all its parts so I can move them around and make them fit better.

So Monday I started on the upper torso, which had a lot of little pieces.

And the last set of arms finally. As I was picking fabrics, I was trying to make sure I (1) used the same fabrics on each side for each set of arms (not an easy task) and (2) each set of arms was layered so the darkest fabrics were used on the arms that were furthest back. For flesh fabrics, I usually do a run of 7 fabrics…this quilt had 11 I think. Or 13. Something like that.

Oh yeah. And a rocket ship. Plus the inevitable dog I picked up on Monday.

Calli is my daughter’s dog. She travels between the two houses while her mom’s gone because I’m home more and Calli’s lonely, but she really likes her grandpa more than me. He lets her do stuff I don’t do. So she escapes my yard. During the week, I drive her to his house every day, and on the weekend, she gets to stay with him. Crazy really.

I started on the head…well one of the heads…last night. I usually iron the eyes as a separate unit so I can place them on the head and make sure they’re not crooked.

There she is! Except there’s stuff growing out of that head and there are two more heads on the side.

So that was at 11:55 PM last night and I knew I had to leave for school early (in fact, in about 5 minutes), and there were at least another 100 pieces to iron. So an hour, maybe more. I guess that’s tonight. Sigh. I wanted to be stitching down last night. It’s OK. I probably won’t get to that tonight though and tomorrow night is busy. So maybe Thursday night stitching down, Friday night pinbasting and starting to quilt. Time’s a runnin’ through my fingers here. That said, technically I still have three weeks. Barely. And it needs to be photographed. Minor issue.

OK, need to go to school. Tired, not enough sleep, still cranky. Aargh. I did fight the crank last night. Was absolutely fine for the four hours I was ironing. Keep that in mind. Grading papers makes me cranky. Making art does not. Making art does, however, make my brain wired and unable to fall asleep for hours. Whoops.

Head in a Hole

I didn’t get any art done yesterday. It happens. I’m pretty good about doing something most days, but I didn’t have the energy to stand and iron at 10 last night. Strangely. And this morning…this morning, I’ve written out the weekend post-it note and it’s a bit ugly. Why oh why. And it’s supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow. A stark contrast to the girlchild’s photos from Friday morning…

Meanwhile, I’m considering putting my pale winter legs in shorts. I haven’t been outside yet. I’m in hermit mode. My post-it note sent my brain into an overwhelmed frenzy. And I have a 3-day weekend to deal with all of it. What does it mean that the only thing I really want to do is iron the damn quilt together? Oh yeah. It means I’m an artist and an overworked teacher. Fucking A.

We did decide that it’s my fault my co-teacher hasn’t given birth yet. I haven’t finished the binding. I got side-tracked and never finished. So that’s what I did when I got home late last night…worked on that.

But did I finish? No I did not. So she still can’t give birth. Bad Kathy.

And then I walk in the studio this morning and there’s the next batch of 100 pieces laid out with the bins on top that keep the cats from lying on the pieces and messing them up and walking off with piece number 117 stuck to their tail. This has happened. Most of the weird shit I do is because of experience.

So I really just want to ignore the post-it. But I can’t. Too responsible. Maybe. Certainly some of the things on the post-it make me want to put my head in a hole. None of it is easy. It’s all a pain in the butt. I didn’t even put the standard stuff on there, like laundry or groceries. Or sleep. I did put grade stuff on there. Ugh. So tired of that. Taking a break this week from tutorial and detention at school. I’m burnt out. Funny because school admin was just talking about how my team goes above and beyond to deal with parents and support our kids, and I’m going to totally blow it off this week. Maybe the next as well. I’m going to blow it off until I can stand to do it again. Just to clarify, I don’t get paid to stay after school. And it’s not in my contract. So I’m just going to work to contract (sort of…because you know I’ll come home and work) until I can be a better teacher again.

I can’t even think straight this morning…can’t pick one of the things on the post-it and do it. Too much fluff in my head. Alphabetical order maybe. Or just crumple that bastard up and start ironing.

The Day After

Well I guess it’s the day AFTER the day after the opening. The opening was great. I loved seeing so many friends and talking to people about how crazy I am…because I think that’s what it all comes down to sometimes. You are crazy for making work like this, so much of it, never stopping, so many details, so many pieces.

But here’s the core thing to understand. I’m only a LITTLE crazy when I make art all the time. When I don’t make art, I’m a LOT crazy. Unhappy, stressed, irritated (OK, that happens now, but it’s a deadly mix of teaching 12-year-olds and perimenopausal hormones), sometimes even angry. When I’m making every night…it’s hella better. And yes, I think that’s gotten worse over the years, in that in the old days, when the kids were little, I’d go weeks not touching a sketchbook or fabric or whatever, until I could carve out some time. And now they’re grown, so that helps. And yeah, I’m a hermit with very little social life, which isn’t exactly healthy, but honestly, I would rather be here cutting out 3000 tiny pieces of fabric than out somewhere. I do go out…this week is a bitch, actually, with something every night. I’m an introvert. That’s way too much human contact.

Although that’s not true either. Because I came home last night after my feminist art group meeting, with huge probably impossible ideas for one of the shows, and panic about the other one (it’s too soon! I sometimes wish I were a painter and could spend just a few hours to make something nice and full of impact, but it takes longer than that in fabric)…so that’s not a bad thing. And as I walked up the stairs to a house that’s not empty, to a Golden Retriever who really just wanted to lie on the couch with her head in my lap and two cats who wanted scratching and attention…it’s not EMPTY…but it feels empty because honestly, straight up, I don’t want to be living alone. I don’t have a choice at the moment…and girlchild at least will be home in about 3 months (oh god, that sounds like forever this week), but I don’t have to like it.

Whatever. These last two weeks have been an emotional mess. Can’t live with a functioning endocrine system…can’t live without it.

I did take little pieces with me to the meeting last night, because I knew I only had about an hour left of cutting and I wanted to be able to come home and sort them, because that’s a heinous job with so many tiny pieces. It took 10 hours total to cut them all out…not bad. I’m past the halfway mark but about a week late on my original schedule. I do have two 3-day weekends though. I might be able to pull this off.

I sorted them last night, tired and headachy and sad and annoyed by the tinyness of their existence…the box on top is all the ones that still need sorting. I do the big easy ones first and then all that’s left is Bin ‘o Tiny.

So it took an hour to sort them all. There really aren’t a lot of big pieces in this quilt.

It’s all kinds of crazy. But I can hopefully start ironing tonight. After my meeting. I actually went to bed early last night because I haven’t been sleeping well and my eyes were so tired after sorting all those tiny pieces that I couldn’t focus. Not good. Bed called. Good choice. I must be getting old…it was before midnight.

Anyway, I’m guessing it’ll be over 10 hours to iron this together…maybe 12? So by the end of the weekend definitely, I’m hoping to be stitching it down. It’s going to be tight getting it done, that’s for sure, but I do have a chance. Try not to think about everything else that needs doing. Prioritize. Balance. All that same shit.

“The Only Thing Soft about Your Work Is the Fabric…”

Best quote of the night, I think. The opening of my 2-person show at Grossmont College was last night. I was being introduced around as the artist who did the stuff on the walls and James Watts as the sculptor, and I pointed to him and said “hard” and to me and said “soft” and the college president, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh, said something along those lines…found it amusing, but probably true. One of the art history teachers mentioned that she’d brought her students in and they were talking about the bright colors and how nice everything looked, and then she made them read the titles. Oh. Wait. That’s about a tsunami.

Anyway. The opening happened. I really truly appreciate all the friends and family who showed up to support me (like a bra, one friend said)…making art is such a solitary thing most of the time. And even though I send a lot of my work out there, I’m not at most of the openings, so I often miss the kudos and commentary, so that was appreciated as well. It’s open through March 3, Mon-Thurs, 10-6PM, so stop by if you didn’t make it last night. I’m probably going to need to go back and photograph again…maybe.

Here’s me and James Watts, surrounded by his very cool sculptures, my quilts behind.

And part of my stitching group…we’ve been meeting once a month since I was pregnant with the girlchild, who is now 18.

I do have some installation shots…

Our work blends well together…lots of color and tiny pieces…

That’s going in my living room finally once it gets out of here.

My number 1 fans. They fight for that position…who’s more number 1? But they have always been there for me…and Susan, on the right, is the woman who taught me to quilt, so you can blame her for everything.

Another installation shot.

And again…

Anyway. Awesome opening, great show. It feels good to have a chunk of work out there from a pretty wide range of years and have it all hold together. It’s not my life’s work, because I’ve got a good 40 years to go, hopefully, but it is representative of 25 years of working in fabric. Not a small achievement.

With that, I’ll have to go back to the current quilt…it’s almost cut out. Maybe tonight? Hope so. Ready to be ironing.

Not Going to Stop…

I don’t know how to explain to my students that even though I took all their tests home last night and was planning on grading them, the staff meeting that took up an hour an a half of my life and was mostly full of whiny adults sent me home with a school headache and forced me to go to the gym, and then when I got back and made dinner and my daughter called me and then I ate (really late, by the way), I didn’t have the mental energy to grade anything. Nor did I care about the grading at all, because the meeting was that irritating. And it wasn’t irritating because the thing we were discussing was so onerous…it was just because people are whiners and think if they whine loud enough and hard enough and demand shit that they will in fact get their way. Although it was the commentary on All I Have to Do Is Expect Work from my students and it will magically happen that kind of set me off as well. Because duh. I do that. And I chunk it. And I say, if you have done this, then I need you to do this. And still, there is a brainfart that happens between start-the-work and turn-it-in that I don’t understand. True that I’m not 12, but apparently parents allow the brainfart, because they think tutorial will help. Tutorial doesn’t help kids turn work in…most of them. And even with 10 kids in there, I can’t possibly help all 10 at the level they need, which sometimes means standing over them and saying “Keep working. Stop talking. Stop distracting yourself. Finish the work. Turn it in.” I usually leave tutorial with a monstrously bad mood, and that’s every Tuesday, which fucking sucks. Last year, at some point, we quit doing tutorial. Just plain quit. Because it was driving us nuts.

Let me be clear. I do not get paid to do tutorial. I do it out of a sense of duty to my students. So if I choose NOT to do it, I still don’t get paid. I’m a little irritated though that counselors and admin kind of expect us to do tutorial without pay. And detention. I don’t get paid for that time either. And it kinda punishes me too.

So that’s where my brain was when I got home and even after going to the gym, where there are still too many wannabes on the treadmills walking slower than I do going uphill on a hot day. Get off my machines people. I adjusted my workout. I listened to music and read my book. I came home and made dinner and talked to the girl. Miss her. Miss the boy. Miss all the things.

And then I sat down and did this instead of grading all those tests.

You know, those tests didn’t deserve the time of day. At least, they don’t deserve my free time at home after 10 PM. I’ll work on them today. I have my prep. I don’t have a lot of hands-on teaching today. And I still have a ton of grading to do. It doesn’t seem to go away.

I cut stuff out for about 2 hours. I’m 8 hours in. I figured out as I was cutting things that there are 5 sets of arms, so 10 arms total, so 10 hands, and each hand has 4 fingers and a thumb, so 40 fingers that have these tiny little stripes on them where the wrinkles are, and each finger has two of those wrinkles, so that’s 80 wrinkles I cut out yesterday. And then the 10 hands have 5 fingernails (including the thumb) each, plus two feet each with 5 toenails, so I cut out most of 60 nails yesterday as well. Some were really small so I left them ironed and uncut until I actually need them so I don’t lose them.

I’m down to I think the last two or three of the flesh fabrics, so mostly larger pieces of arms and breast and knee. So nearing the end. I had thought 9 hours…will be closer to 10 I think. I might finish tonight, but it is my opening and I’m hoping that’s successful. We’ll see. That’s a nerve-wracking thing in itself. But whatever. My art’s been out there long enough that I don’t need people’s approval to DO it, but it is nice to be in a 2-person show and hope that it gets positive press. I’m not going to stop making work if it doesn’t though.

Weekends are…

Well. Yeah. Weekends…are made…not for Michelob. But for relaxing. I hear. I apparently don’t practice relaxation well. And I wanted to draw, but that didn’t happen. Long story on that one, but just so you know, if you’re out in a bar or restaurant with me, I don’t usually draw unless I know you pretty well…because you’re gonna want to watch, and then I can’t draw because you’re watching. So yeah. I didn’t draw. I wanted to. In fact, last night, I wanted to dump all the hours of work that needed doing and draw then too. But I didn’t. I feel really buried by work at the moment, and the only way to deal with that is to get some of it done in some sort of power rush of grading and organization. And then I can relax a bit again until I have to do it all over again.

So Saturday was full of work, freelance and school. I guess I am now a semi-expert at converting doc to epub…semi-expert because there are always new problems that will pop up. It’s the one thing I learned from working in publishing…no matter what you think you know how to do, the next project will bring you something you don’t know how to do. Anyway, so there was that. And then grading papers and assignments…lots of that. But sometime in the late afternoon, I finally got the binding on the baby quilt…which I’ll post below (baby hasn’t been born as of yesterday afternoon, so I’m still good…although I’m still hand-sewing the binding on).

I didn’t do any art stuff until Sunday though, when I finally pulled this out…

I’m in the endless stage of cutting stuff out. I have a lot done, but everything I pull out is a huge piece of flesh with a million pieces on it, so it feels endless. I did get a lot done last night, but there’s at least two more hours in there. I’m days behind now. Gotta catch up. Fours weeks left. Iron it together this week, stitch it down, sandwich? I do have a 3-day weekend coming up. But a shitload of grading this week and a meeting or event every night but tonight. Crazy week after last week, where I felt all this empty alone stuff weighing me down. And snot weighing me down as well. I didn’t get really sick, but I definitely have snot going on. Gotta watch it, because I ended up with pneumonia this time last year.

Here’s the baby quilt…hidden below the fold so she won’t see it…Facebook just posts the first picture on the blog.

It was a good choice to go get another binding. This one finishes the edge nicely. Ties it all together. The others didn’t. I’m fussy about my bindings.

My opening is tomorrow night…

Looking forward to seeing the whole show…it wasn’t fully installed when I left (my stuff was)…hoping people show up. There’s some new work, some old work, some never-been-shown work (well in person…everything’s on the web…well, most everything).

OK, taking my sick self to work to infect the minions who infected me. Not really. I was probably most contagious on Friday…and that kinda crept up on me during the day, so I obviously didn’t infect them on purpose. Might wanna watch who I sneeze on today though. Could be retribution of sorts…

Sleep Is Not My Superpower

I have a sleep app on my phone that tells me how long I slept (notionally…because I can be pretty still when I’m not sleeping) and how well…more movement meaning I wasn’t sleeping deeply. It also has an alarm on it, which is useful. I started using it years ago to try to figure out why I was so tired in the morning…and here’s where all the people who know me personally start cracking up, because they think I don’t sleep. I DO sleep. For about 6 hours a night…I don’t go to sleep early because I can’t fall asleep early, and there is no damn point in lying in bed, flopping around, praying for sleep. In fact, the insomnia specialists advise against it. Go to bed when you’re tired. So I do. Well, sometimes I go to bed earlier than tired because I know it will get ugly the next day. I think I had a whole year there of 4-hour nights, but that’s depression for you. But now I’m back to 6-hour nights, which works OK for me. And yes, I do exactly what I’m NOT supposed to do on the weekends…I sleep in. I like that lie in. I look forward to it, especially after 13+ years of soccer games early on Saturday or Sunday mornings, or sometimes both days. I like waking up slowly that morning, hearing the world around me but not getting up yet, reading a bit, or rolling around with a kitten cleaning herself by my head. Well, as long as it’s not at 6 AM. Sometimes she starts then, and that is not a good thing.

My sleep app last night, on a night where I went to bed early (for me…before midnight) and had a chance for a lie-in…says I slept at 50% efficiency. Now I’m normally a pretty efficient sleeper. I spend the right amount of time in light and REM sleeps. But last night was a flopping clusterfuck. And I’m glad the app backs me up on that. I am sick. That doesn’t help. But I’m not THAT sick. I wasn’t coughing or moaning or anything. So what the hell? Weirdness. I don’t usually have that bad a night ever. Oh well. Moving on. I’m used to functioning somewhat like the walking dead. No change there.

But really, even when I was a kid, I wasn’t a great sleeper. I read under my blanket with a flashlight until well after midnight when I was in elementary school. My boy is the same way. But we both know as adults that we have to sleep at some point. So we do.

I worked last night. I’m incredibly behind on grading. I finished two assignments. I figured that was enough for one night. Then I cut out little pieces of fabric…

I’ve got about 5 hours in. I’m probably not going to finish today. I have too much else to do. Because there’s probably another 4 hours in there. And I need to do other stuff.

I folded fabric and reunited the binding fabric (now clean, no chemical sizings) with the quilt. That’s on my plate for today…put the binding on.

I also have a pile of work to get through…school and other job. I got an email yesterday from a company I applied with back in early November. They apologized for the amount of time that had passed, but had me upload info on their database. I honestly don’t know if that means they’ll use me or what, but I did it. It’s science education materials…so I’m highly qualified. But I think a million other people probably are too. I don’t need a lot of extra work…there are only so many hours in the days…but I do need some. I’m short a good chunk of money for the kids’ college in the next three months. More than a month’s salary short. It is what it is. I will figure it out. Somehow.

Someone said yesterday that I’d be done with my tasks (ironing or cutting or whatever) if I didn’t write this blog. Except this blog is what keeps me doing everything at the pace I’ve adopted. It’s motivating knowing that every day I’ll be telling myself (and apparently you, but know that I rarely think about you when I write) what I got done and reviewing how that made me feel. I felt pretty good last night. I was bloody efficient and I was able to check a bunch of things off the list. I needed to be able to do that this week. The writing also clears my brain…I can dump all the shit I don’t want to think about here and then walk away from it. Also, you have to understand that I write really fast. And I don’t think very hard about it. It was painful to watch a former boyfriend edit his Facebook status over and over again, torturing himself with whether that one sentence was the best possible combination of words, editing it over and over…I don’t roll that way. There’s no time for that constipated verbal shit. It’s here in my head and I vomit it out on the screen. There. Done. Now I can move on.

I will do some art thing today. I know I’m at a show tonight for quite a long time, and my sketchbook will be my trusty companion. So expect drawings posted in the next few days. I LOVE to draw. I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping I feel better by then too, but if not, there’s cold meds for that.