My Bandwidth Is Low…

Well I’m feeling better about grades right now. I managed to get some serious work done in the last two days, at the expense of making art and reading books, but yeah, that’s how it goes. I’m down to two assignments (both academic and reading) and whatever late work I’ve missed so far. I’m not totally ready for next week; I need a pretty substantial sub plan for Monday afternoon. It’ll probably take me at least an hour to put that together this weekend, plus the grading, plus the pre-eval worksheet, which I can’t even get my head around. My bandwidth is low, much like my computer at the moment, which keeps cycling and cycling. I’ve got two websites up and keep bouncing from one to the other to see if they’ve finished loading yet. I don’t have time to restart the router. Ah well.

So I will be spending a huge chunk of the weekend dealing with school. It sucks. That said, I finally finishing sorting pieces into boxes…

Two hours and 16 minutes total. Not too bad considering the number of pieces.

And last night, after my stitching meeting, I barely started ironing…

But I started! That’s about 30 minutes worth of ironing. These are the big pieces down at the bottom. It just gets tinier and more detailed as we move up. I’m looking forward to ironing for the next two weeks…maybe more. I have some stuff coming up that will take up weekends…the Interpretations opening at Visions will be in two weeks. Plus it’s not like school will go away. I’m just hoping it gets a little easier. It’s unlikely to at the moment, but after this weekend, I’ve got a bit of a break I think. Maybe. Knock on wood. I do need to revise a project and an assessment, which I’ve kind of been ignoring, plus set up at least one lab. Plus start doing this literacy stuff in science, which is fine…I used chatgpt to write a paragraph for my part of the literacy. Use the resources y’all! Use them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading The Humanity Archive and have images of African fighting queens and slave ships and plantations and revolts in my head. Not sure where to go with that, but it’s percolating. I have a deadline in January for another show, but it may just get whatever’s available. I feel like this Supreme Court piece is going to take another 6 weeks before I’m done. I drew a small original of this in Seattle in July. I came home and enlarged it, then taped it together on July 13, then started the full-size drawing on the 14th. I’m 3 1/2 months into this. That’s crazy. I might need a smaller quilt as a palate cleanser before jumping into slavery. I don’t know. We’ll see.

I did make it out of the house for NOT work last night…stitching meeting with the friends. I finished this June Homegrown block (Sue Spargo).

It’s been sitting around for a long time, maybe since Seattle. I haven’t had much time for stitching. I save the free time for the quilt in progress. So I have four more houses to do and then the centerpiece. Should be done in 2026. Or 2027. I’m still sitting on the half-quilted Bird Crazy (not its real name). That was supposed to be over the summer. Didn’t happen. The day job is nuts, has been for too long, so I don’t get enough art quilts done and they all get pulled to shows right away, which is awesome, or sold, which is also awesome, but then I feel like I have nothing to enter anywhere. Which is silly…I know. But as I’m staring at this pre-evaluation for school, I’m just struck that what I really want is more time for art, and what they really want is for me to spend more time on school. MORE time. I don’t have that. Not unless I give up the hour a night for art, and I’m not going to do that. As it is, I’m supposed to be doing this decoding/encoding training online, and I’ve made it through the first 15 minutes of 5 hours, so I need to start doing that while I iron. Which I can do. Plus the shooter training for school is at least an hour…need to do that video too. Maybe. Maybe my brain needs a break from school so it doesn’t make me want to give up on it.

Thinking that through.

Meanwhile, my co-teacher, who I miss every day, is cleaning out her parents’ house (something I dread that will inevitably be in my future) and she’s been driving around with some recycling in her car for two or three days. She challenged me to get my thrift shop bags (which have been in the girlchild’s room since August and the entryway since she came to visit) into the car. Which I did…

There’s more in the garage, but I can’t deal with that right now. So now, whoever gets them to the center first is the winner? It’s certainly more likely to happen if they are in the car. She’ll probably beat me.

OK. Today we are doing a lab. It is a pretty fun lab, so I’m hoping it goes OK. I’m hoping I’m totally efficient today and get more grading and organizing done. Same with the weekend. It would be nice to have grading done a bit early so I could get ahead on the planning, but also maybe read my book and relax a bit. Ha! I’m pretty sure that’s not happening, but I will try. It’s almost October, usually one of my favorite months, despite the lack of days off. The weather mellows out, although it’s been OK this month (knock on wood), the chaos of the beginning of school chills out a bit (two weeks from now looks like hell on wheels; let’s not think about that). Not thinking about doing another two months (or more) without my co-teacher/planning person, but it’s good for her and that’s what counts. I’ve seen progress in one of the newbie teachers, and that is a good thing. Plus today is Friday, and that is always a splendid thing.

Into the Mountains…

I thought yesterday was Friday. It felt very Friday-like. I was packing stuff up for camping, trying to keep on top of everything, getting a bunch of stuff done for school for next week. But no. I still have to go to school today. I get how kids feel about Friday. But if we had Friday off all the time, we’d feel that way about Thursday instead. I’m still playing catchup from last week’s horde of meetings. So I’m not caught up on grading at all. Next week will be all grading, all the time. Progress report grades are coming up already. Yesterday, there was a lot of yelling (it was me) in the morning about stupid shit (adult shit, not kid shit), but by the afternoon, there was a win (free supplies!), but then the evening brought more shit. That wasn’t school-related though, so I can’t blame the day job.

Tonight, I’ll be sleeping in the mountains. That’s cool. Not taking any grading with me. Also cool. Very cool. Hiking tomorrow. Another sleep in the mountains. Hopefully a bit of a reset. Knock on wood.

I wanted to be done cutting things out last night. I worked for an hour on Wednesday night…

Still couldn’t see the bottom. Mostly 200s on top. Last night, I Zoomed with stitchy friends and did almost 2 hours…

STILL can’t see the bottom. But they’re almost all 100s. I think another night or two will do it. I’m not taking it camping either…don’t want to risk losing any pieces somewhere I can’t go back and find them. It’s OK. I’ll be ironing together next week no matter what.

I finally had time to water the yard yesterday. It’s been a shit week for that, apparently. Here’s some cool things I found…these roots…

So pretty. And this plant has never bloomed before.

It’s a succulent I’ve had for a while. I thought it was going to die, so I repotted it and gave it more shade, and it got happy. Makes me happy too. I think when I retire, I will just cultivate tiny succulent gardens all over the yard from cuttings. Wait. My neighbor does that. Hmm.

This sold this week, on Etsy.

All the other birds sold ages ago and I felt really badly for this one. It was unloved and now it is loved. Shipping it off today. I think it’s the last of the birds? I might have one small one left. They were fun to make, but I don’t have time for that stuff at the moment. Who am I kidding? I barely have time for anything. Sigh.

OK. School today. Giving a quiz. A bunch of kids will be on a field trip. Not the bunch I’d LIKE to be on a field trip (that never happens). Giving a quiz on Friday means a bunch of kids will be absent. Oh well. There’s some leeway next week for them to make shit up. Maybe. I don’t really know. I’m planning out but there’s not a lot of interaction to do that. I don’t like it. It’s too much like last year. I probably already said that this week. Yeah. Then duty at the light (ugh), get room ready for next week, post office, pack up the car, say goodbye to the boychild, who will be on animal duty, and head up into the mountains. Geez. Just typing that makes me want to cry. OK then. Let’s do it. Sooner I get to work, the sooner I’ll be in the mountains.

Do the Things…

There’s an old cat behind me, rubbing her head on my back, which is why I will have cat hair on my back and not even know about it all day. It’s OK. She’s old. I don’t know how much time she has left and she’s become pretty antisocial, except with me. And sometimes even with me. I didn’t see her last night until bedtime. She has a new hiding place, which I know about, but if she won’t come out on her own, it’s sufficiently hidden enough that I can’t get her out without dragging her out. And there isn’t usually a need for that. So I’ll be cat-hair lady today.

I got a goodly chunk of trimming done on Monday night, after grading a whole class of unit packets. I even started reading a new book.

I was so efficient. Shorter staff meeting, I guess. I copied stuff after school, but was still done by about 4:30. Yesterday, I went to the gym. So pro…I got a lot more reading done on that book, plus I exercised. Con…I didn’t get as much trimming done. I did grade another class unit, though. Two more of those. Hoping to get a chunk done in class today while walking them through a thing I’ve never done before, so that should go well. Ha! Only 30 minutes of trimming last night…

Lots of bigger pieces down there left to cut. I think I’m close to being in the swamp and the earth on the other side. Lots of 200s and a few 300s still. Getting there. My goal really is to be fully trimmed in the next two nights. I think I can do it. I also need to pack for camping, though. And get school stuff ready for next week.

School. Ugh. Kinda lost my mind yesterday. You know how you take on stuff, and then more stuff, and then the stupidest tiniest thing gets added on, and that’s it, that’s the one where your brain is like, NOPE. Can’t do it. Can’t make me. Not gonna. Yeah. Well that was possibly over the weekend and then yesterday. It’s fine. I CAN do it. I’ve been trying to push stuff out to the other teachers so I’m not doing so much. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. So then I’m losing my prep period again to something that wasn’t planned. Plus I don’t really have someone to plan my curriculum with. It’s not working well. It’s just sort of a repeat of last year’s scramble, except with new stuff, but then I see my kids not getting it, or it’s just a boring fill-out-the-worksheet thing…again…and I’m like, nope, can’t do that, revise again with my kids in mind, they need hands-on and repeats, and I think here I am in September and it feels too much like last year and last year sucked.

I turned yesterday’s worksheet into a table competition and it was awesome. Sometimes my planning brain is really good.

So I’m trying to revise all that in my head and having a hard time with it. My team wants me to ask my principal if he can evaluate me another year, that I have too much on my plate. I’m not sure whether it matters. I’m also not sure I won’t cry at our first evaluation meeting because I’m still straight up dealing with the shit from last year in my head. I had hopes for this year, and they’re not gone, just on hold, which is what I keep telling myself. You can do this little bit. It’s not a lot. Just keep forcing the issue of responsibility back on others. My team wants me to let the others flail, but I can’t do that. All those 7th graders will be on our teams next year, and I don’t want to deal with the fallout if I let it all go. Certainly the thought of having to reflect on what I need to ‘progress as a teacher’ and then finding the time to apparently DO THAT? Yeah, that’s gonna make me cry right now. I’m a little too much still in survival mode.

Too much to think about. What I really need to do is go in today, do the things, meet with the people, do what I can, go to pilates, come home and grade, then cut things out. Read a little. Start packing for camping. Take a deep breath. Or ten. Thousand.

Here’s a happy puppy.

That said, he was a total barky asshole last night. So sleep would be nice tonight as well.

Cutting of the Tiny Things…

Hey. This week. Yeah. I am in pajamas today for pajama day, but it’s a bit warm and I have a meeting after school and 17 errands to run, so if I’m smart, I’ll pack a pair of pants that isn’t flannel for later. Am I smart? Sometimes. I feel like this is a practical thing though, and I’m OK with those.

I’m not sure when I will get home tonight, but I do know I will be cutting things out tonight. Late. And tired.

I got the good news this morning that my newest quilt will be going to the SAQA Fierce Planets exhibit. Good news, since I made it for that one. Two for two! I make them and they leave.

OK. So this was Monday night’s cutting of the tiny things.

Top box, to do. Middle box, done. Bottom box, trash.

Then last night’s…

Flipped top and bottom. I still have a few 1300s to cut out, but mostly I see 1200s and 1100s. So maybe 700-800 pieces done? I’m definitely into Amy Coney-Barrett (her pieces, not the person…definitely not into the person), but I still have some of Ketanji Brown Jackson to go. I ironed pieces going from bottom to top; I’m cutting pieces from top to bottom. I’ve been cutting for 7 hours and 44 minutes. So yeah, it’s going to be at least 15 hours. That’s half the ironing time though.

Boychild left, Simba does not understand. He just barks and barks for the first night, every time.

The girlchild is coming this weekend, and he doesn’t understand that either. To his credit, he slept through most of the night, although I think everyone was awake at 3 AM for some inexplicable reason. I could do without that shit.

This is too true.

OK. Teaching, meeting, teaching some more, another longer meeting, then cat meds, watering the parents (they come home tomorrow, hallelujah), Home Depot for slats, trash out, cook dinner. Sounds like a lot. It is a lot. I could do with less. Then more cutting. I graded last night, a lot. I feel like today it’s not happening. I mean, maybe in class, but not at home. Not after all that.

See the Chaos…

Oh my. First full week of school. Started losing my voice yesterday (again)…but I made it one more day this week! Yesterday I talked all day. Nonstop. Ugh. Lecture/notes stuff. It had to happen. Today? Today they make slides. By themselves. The second most common question from a middle-school kid (after “how old are you?”) is “Can we work with partners?”. Not today. All next week? Yes. Not today. I have this one kid who might be on the spectrum and he’s kinda driving me nuts. He is constantly raising his hand, which shouldn’t be annoying, because at least he doesn’t just yell things out, but when his hand is in the air, he’s not listening, so I’ll get the same answer I just got from another kid. He always raises his hand. For everything. I’m working on getting the rest of the class to answer right now. Might have to resort to popsicle sticks for answering questions. It wouldn’t be the first time.

There are some parts of school that are easier this year, but I’m at 7 hours of afterschool meetings after the one this afternoon. In one week. Too many. In September, there’s one week that might kill me. It’s a lot. I’m really looking forward to this weekend, except there’s no dinner plan for tonight and that is always a mistake. And I have to start grading, which kind of sucks. Because once I start, I have to keep going until June. Seriously. No breaks.

So I’m struggling to get ironing done around all this. Wednesday night, I got home after 6, after 2 hours of a sex-ed curriculum meeting. The pro is that the state has our backs. They wrote something (California Healthy Youth Act) that is on our sides, not the kneejerk parents’ side. I just need them to opt out, but one actually said, “I thought this was a meeting to decide what our children were going to learn.” Sigh. And if you think that, please go get your teaching degree and credential and join us. Or homeschool them. Because I’m tired of people negating my 21 years in the classroom and educational/professional experience. You know better? Then you fucking do it. I need to teach ALL the kids, the kids with two moms, the kids going by names that you don’t think match their gender, the kids who are attracted to the same or both genders. I teach ALL of them. I respect and honor ALL of them. Not just your kid. And I don’t hold your idiocy against your kid. I hope they do better.

So I ironed after that, after dinner, after IDK what else.

So this is what it really looks like while I’m ironing. Piles of fabric that I pull out, I go get more from my drawers, I pile those up, there’s piles and piles. And then I put them all in the bins to make it neat each night for the photo. This thing has a lot of fabrics in it and I’m not even halfway.

I ironed a lot of body parts.

Little ones. There are a lot of people in this quilt. Twenty-six? If you count the Swamp Thing (I didn’t), it’s 27. And they each need different shades of fabric. Last night, I did their clothes.

I didn’t quite finish. I have one more to go. Then IDK what.

Usually I would crop photos like this so you only saw the fabrics, but then I was like, no, let them see the chaos. Iron on the edge because all the boxes of the rest of the pieces are taking up so much room, teacup full of tea, unfinished stuff everywhere, fan on because it’s still warm in here at the end of the day. It’s supposed to be 102 degrees next week. Not a fan (ha ha I’ll need a fan though). So this was clean up. Put all the piles in the bins so I can see them. The bin on the top left is all flesh tones, and I’ll need to go darker still for some of the justices. Probably pinker too. Lots of pink. Too much pink. Next up? The umbrella and then, FINALLY, the goddess legs. That will go quickly. Dirt and roots.

I’m about 20 pieces away from 700. That said, I’ve already ironed some of the numbers higher than that. So let’s say 700. Only 1350 to go! Woo! JAYSUS. In the last 7 days, I’ve managed 7 hours of ironing. The previous week? 9. Before school fucking started? 14…well, that was the week I went back for 3 days. The week before? 19 hours. Sigh. Fucking sigh. Last night, we had to deal with the dryer, after a 2-hour sex-ed meeting, after my stitching Zoom (which I appreciated, don’t get me wrong, even though I didn’t do much). So I didn’t start ironing until 9:50 pm. May tonight be better. Please.

Well, on top of all that, Nova has a bladder infection that might be part of a genetic issue, so she’s on meds. Kitten’s gastro stuff got significantly worse, so the Man picked up 5 meds for her last night because I couldn’t get to the vet in time. She doesn’t feel well; she actually hissed at me this morning. That said, she took all her meds and is back to sleeping in the blue fabric drawer of fabrics I will have to wash to get clean at this point.

And Katie is here.

Katie is absolutely chill, but the cats remember times when she wasn’t, and they are freaked out. They walk right past her though, in the dark, so IDK what the issue is. Everyone is adjusting.

SO! Don’t talk at school today if I don’t have to. Get the energy labs set up. Finish cutting out all the energy cards. Roll around and talk to all the kids today (I roll around on a chair…it’s fun) (wait, I said don’t talk…don’t talk LOUDLY). Survive the meeting after school…I didn’t even tell you how someone came in my classroom and stole the bag all my literacy books are in, but I have to take them to multiple meetings and now I don’t have a bag for all that shit. So frustrating. It’s fine. It’s almost done. The week is almost done. Write warmups for next week. Let all the stuff I had to do last year to survive planning 8th grade go and start planning with the new teacher, who may or may not be willing to adjust/adapt. She needs to be. I don’t know how to flat out tell her that, but I suspect I will need to at some point. I need so many things right now. It’s fine. Really. I got this. More tea though.

Sweet Dirty Floors

The internet is molasses today. Man, this week sucks for after school. Meeting after meeting after meeting. I hate Friday meetings. And we haven’t even gotten to the parents we need to meet with (on the 6th day of school, we already have two concerns, academic, not behavior). I got 5 new kids yesterday with no warning…those emails warning me came after two kids I didn’t recognize showed up in my class, ready to learn (really?), even though I wasn’t prepared. I actually gave an assessment yesterday, a quiz. And yes, I made 3 of them do it (the other kids came too late). Well, one didn’t have a computer, so not him. Two of them. Some were already at our school in the Newcomer program we have for kids who are new to the country. So we expect them to be unclear on science concepts and sometimes in need of lots of help. The first month is such a juggling act, too much shit; it’s a relief (usually) to get to the end of September and some sort of normal routine. But right now, science is a lot, union is a lot, literacy is a lot, sex ed is a lot. Today is the first of two 2-hour meetings this week with parents and school-board members about creating a sex ed curriculum that is specific to our kids. I think this is idiotic. Programs already exist. Why reinvent the wheel? You can’t NOT teach the stuff this group doesn’t like…it’s required by the state. My boss. Opt your kids out. Please. And yes, I am getting paid for these meetings, but I’m not sure you could pay me enough to make this worth it.

Anyway. So I come home and cook dinner or eat it or whatever, and read my book for a little bit, because I NEED that, and after all that, I iron. I don’t clean or dust or vacuum (oh man, the one thing the hurricane did was mess up the floors I had just cleaned. Fucker). I have my priorities. Monday night…I ironed a lot of money. I tend to iron in numeric order, but I took this picture…

Because I was going in numerical order, and then I’m like, there’s about 75 pieces that are money and I should just iron them all at the same time, so I rummaged through the 500s through 1000s and found them all, and then did all of them. It’s more efficient that way, and it adds to continuity in the piece to have all the money be the same color. I’ll do the same with the justice’s robes. Probably. I’m debating on that. I have some black fabrics with bits of color and I may use those for the justices who are more for ALL the people than some of them. We’ll see.

Anyway, so these pieces are tiny and even if I iron 100 of them, it doesn’t look like I did much of anything.

But I did. Maybe the closeups are more useful…

You can see the money and the fish I ironed. Plus a fishing pole. Yeah.

Then last night, I wanted more than an hour…and yes, I’m still staying up too late at night. Not good. But I did a whole bunch of people parts, little people. So I think it was almost all fleshy bits, except for a slippery hill.

Many versions of flesh and a big green piece. I still have some of the 500s left (the clothes and apparati of the fleshy bits, some signs, a recycling bin, a wheelchair), but you’ll notice some of the flesh was in the 600s. Nowhere near halfway. The goddess’ legs weren’t next. I thought they were. I think they are next after I do these people. There might be an umbrella before that. It’s slow, people, so slow, and coming home the next two nights after 6 PM is not going to help.

Doesn’t look very colorful here. I like color. You may have noticed. There will be lots of black, gray, and fleshtones in this one. I think the goddess will be more dirt and sky. That’s the plan anyway. Something has to be tied to the earth.

My anti-anti-abortionists quilt, My Body. My Choice., is still at the Virginia Quilt Museum. They sent photos of it in situ, which was nice, because I hadn’t seen any.

There’s a fall artists reception on September 23, from 4-6 PM. I won’t be there, but the exhibit looks cool. Check it out. There’s my piece on the left. I don’t know whose the other pieces are.

I’m intrigued by the tools to the right of mine.

Simba was not pleased by my perusal of his fur for knotted bits…

It’s a constant struggle.

I’m sewing things down brainlessly after dinner for a bit. It’s satisfying.

Sue Spargo’s Forest for the Trees block of the month. The trees are cute. This one has crabs and fish. Totally opposite to the crazy shit I’m doing on my own quilt. Perfect!

OK, today I’m having the kids practice writing CERs (claim, evidence, reasoning). Should be interesting. My new 8th-grade teacher, who I have barely worked with, does not know what a CER is. Sigh. That will be fun. We meet today. Hopefully we can work together. I don’t know her well enough to get a good read on it so far. Then two hours of kneejerk stupidity. I will be breathing deeply and taking notes to control my need to yell at them for their ignorance. I’m hoping it’s productive. Got 16 hours total to deal with these people.

Then home. Sweet home. Ugh. Sweet dirty floors and dogs and cats and dirty counters and stuff that needs doing and trash that needs to go out. But ironing after. People accroutrement and all.

It Takes the Time It Takes…

Hey so Hurricane Hilary downgraded to Tropical Storm Hilary and then pretty much just dumped rain on us and didn’t do a lot else where I live in East County. Which is a good thing for us. Looks like the deserts and Mexico were hit much harder. Thankful for the fact that we weren’t. Certainly we still had to prep to teach today…presumably if there’d been more damage, they would have given us an extra day. As it was, I did a bunch of planning Saturday afternoon because of all the threats of power outages etc. that were gonna happen. Education rarely stops for natural disasters.

This was Saturday night, I think.

Strange though. We don’t get hit directly by these things normally. The remnants come off the Gulf of Mexico or up from South America. Our winter storms were worse than this in terms of wind. That said, we had one branch that decided to become heavier until it touched the end of the driveway.

We went out to deal with it, which of course was harder than we’d hoped, and that’s when the rain got really heavy, so we all ended up soaked. Nothing else was an issue though. Knock on wood. Tree trimming is one of the biggest expenses on my property…and one I often can’t afford unfortunately. It’s on my list.

The skies were beautiful on Saturday night. We don’t face west, but we get the reflections on clouds…

The calm before the storm…

Which ended up being pretty calm here.

Thankfully.

I ironed Friday night…

And Saturday night…

I swear, they don’t look very different. They are. I know that. This is taking a long time.

I feel like I would have been more efficient if I wasn’t running around worrying about a hurricane. I guess that’s normal.

And Sunday night…

Doesn’t look like much. I have three pedestals done. Granted, they are complicated, but I’m not being fast about this at all. Any plan to be done by next weekend seems like a giant joke right now. I guess I just go with it. It takes the time it takes. It’s taking that much time because there are lots of color decisions to be made, minute ones. Not big overreaching ones. Accept it and keep going. I think I’m still in the 300s. Am I? No! I made it to the 400s last night. So I’ll be surprised if I’m done by this weekend. I have so many 2-hour meetings after school, no joke, ugh. This week sucks.

One thing that didn’t suck was a mini-art retreat a friend put on Saturday morning. I missed coloring with markers. We had three prompts for this one.

Then three for this one…

Which we folded into a book…

Intriguing…

Would have been cool to do with my art classes.

So glad I’m not teaching art this year. Then we did another all-over one and turned it into a book.

Less abstract.

So ironing all week. I’m already exhausted, so that’s fun. Egg/eyeball demo today…decided against doing it as a lab. I haven’t grocery-shopped yet due to hurricane prep/worries, so that’s happening after a 2-hour staff meeting and 40-minute paid interview today. Ugh. Need to prep some stuff for later in the week and next week. Two evenings of sex-ed committee meetings with ‘concerned parents and school-board members’ who think we are grooming students. Idiots. If I’m grooming them, they would be kind, turn all their work in, charge their chromebooks, and wear deodorant. I did review all their ‘All About Me’ papers yesterday, so I know all the nicknames, but no, I’m not calling that one kid Heisenberg. Not happening. First full week of the school year with kids! It’ll be long and painful. Wish us luck.

Yeah that too.

Hazardous Mattress

Well I love short weeks at school. Must say it. Three-day week…just about what I can handle. It’s OK. Then we have two 5-day weeks and then a 3-day weekend. I don’t love coming home exhausted and rewriting my to-do list every day with nothing crossed off. I took a 20-minute nap yesterday (yes, I set an alarm). I stayed later at school to clean up the lab (which went really well) and set up for today, so blood sugar was crashing on the way out the door (hello yogurt!), then got home and opened every window (no A/C here), peed the poor dog, grabbed the mail and trashcans, ate more stuff because blood sugar still not happy with me. Then napped. Then Zoomed while editing 20 videos of kids doing the lab into 1. The best group yesterday all worked together, awesome, 2/3 special ed kids. Super impressed with those kids. All the kids seem OK so far, but it’s really at 2 weeks that we see for real what it might be like. We have some high flyers from last year, one who is already driving me a little bonkers, but not too bad. Last year, I had COVID for the first 10 days of school, so we didn’t do any of the fun stuff at the beginning. I’m a little behind in planning and making assignments because I wasn’t here those days, so I have to create new stuff, but I think it’s all working out OK. We’ll see.

The lab was about teamwork (always), so they had to dump one cup of M&Ms (toxic waste) into another empty cup (neutralizer) without touching the cups with their hands, and without putting their hands in or above the red haz-waste zone.

I had the kids tell me what they thought ‘haz-mat’ meant, and most of them figured it out, but my favorite, laugh-out-loud moment was the kid who yelled out ‘hazardous mattress!’. Oh yeah. That’s sticking.

I got the awesome news Wednesday that Woman Version 3.0 got into Stitchpunk and will be traveling with that show, which opens at the New England Quilt Museum in April 2024. Maybe it’ll even be during my Spring Break and I can go (but probably not!).

I really loved making this quilt. It’s a lot of weird biopunk, genetic engineering, and mutational wonder. You can thank my reading Margaret Atwood for the last 30 years, plus all the other dystopian sci fi I’ve read over the years. Plus my overactive imagination. I’m glad it will travel.

Meanwhile, I’m carving out that hour (plus when I can) of ironing every night. It’s hot, so that doesn’t help my motivation. My current school shoes suck, so my feet hurt by the end of the day, and this is standing at an ironing board, so that doesn’t help either. Plus I can have a fan under the ironing board, but not on my face, because the Wonder Under pieces would fly away, so that is also hard. That said, I do it anyway. Wednesday night, I started ironing the swamp under the questionable justices…

Last night, I finished the swamp by ironing the alligators and the Swamp Thing. It didn’t seem like much, but it took most of an hour. I also laid out all the 200s. Yeah, I have officially ironed 200 whole pieces in a lot of hours. I’m hoping it gets faster. It usually does. I don’t have anything to grade yet, so I really have no excuse for not coming home and hopping in here, except for the heat and the exhaustion. Yeah. Well. Tomorrow would be a great day for ironing, but I have a retreat thing to do. These are the times I turn into an ultra-introvert. I don’t have any weekends truly free until that glorious 3-day weekend.

That’s two weeks away, so hopefully I’m done ironing by then. But maybe not. At this rate. Sigh. It’s slow because there’s a lot of choices to be made. I can do huge numbers of pieces when lots of them will be similar or the same…but this quilt doesn’t have a lot of that. Even with the justices and their robes, I will need multiple black fabrics, and each justice overlaps another, so I will need to be able to see the differences between them. Ah well. Again, it is always the designer’s fault. And that’s me.

Trying something new on Simba’s crusty nose.

Seems to be working, although he’s not truly a fan of the process. It’s all natural, so when he licks it off, it’ll probably just help his coat be smoother. That’s what I tell him anyway. He gives me side-eye.

Still avoiding spiderwebs everywhere I walk in the yard.

I told the spiders this morning about the hurricane/cyclone headed our way. People are freaking out. I’m not a fan of high winds myself, and we have a fire southeast of here that doesn’t need wind at all (think Lahaina)…so the boychild is on hold for a few hours. Not sure if he’ll be home in the next few days or not. Someone asked me if they’d cancel school on Monday. I doubt it. They don’t cancel school for much…power outage once (countywide), smoke from two major fires (countywide). Yes, there’s supposed to be a lot of rain Monday, but…I doubt it will mean a day off. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be home and watching my trees (not falling, hopefully) than at school, but if there’s no power, I can’t iron. I’m up on a hill, so flooding isn’t much of an issue for us. I know it will be for some though. Until they finalize landfall, though, we don’t know much.

OK, so SpongeBob safety assignment today. Gotta love that little yellow square guy. Then hopefully ironing tonight. I had forgotten how much easier it was to teach just one subject, which I haven’t done since the year we went out on COVID. So much easier. I do miss my co-teacher though. She’d be horrified by the prep room at the moment. So many things I don’t know what to do with. Actually, she’d probably just come in and figure out where to put things, which might be part of why I miss her. It’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. Maybe today I can have the teachers’ aide I’ve never met sort washers into piles by size. Yeah! One thing at a time.

There We Are…

And it’s here. The first day of school. My room is mostly ready, miraculously. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it, and I came in yesterday with a 28-point to-do list, mostly tech-related actually…set this up, copy that (so then the copier went down). My A/C has been out, but they fixed it (hopefully) yesterday…although the tech was such a geekboy that he had to come show me that the system thought my room was 163 degrees (it did feel that way), but it would cool it down to 156. Nice. The HELL system, I’m thinking. It did get down to 71 (aka 156) by the end of yesterday, so that’s doable. Today the kids show up and we pretend we know what we’re doing. I didn’t stay up all night worrying about it, so that’s a good thing. Mostly I’ve been exhausted enough to fall directly asleep, so that’s also good. Although last night, I was asleep and then got woken up. I could do without that. I also made it to the gym yesterday (wanted to read my book), so I am all the things today (tired, sore, not ready).

I did wake up to an awesome email; Woman Version 3.0 got into the SAQA Stitchpunk exhibit, so she’ll be at the New England Quilt Museum next year and then will travel places, I know not where.

She was fun to make, a real challenge to get all those ideas from every dystopian, world-ending book I’d ever read. OK, maybe not ALL the ideas, but we can start with Margaret Atwood, for sure. So happy she got in. With all her buggy friends.

I’m going to be ironing this one down to fabric for a LOOOONG time based on how long it’s taken me to do the first 100 pieces. Seriously. Here’s Monday night…

Got part of the Earth ironed down…then last night…

Finished the little Earth and the sky above it. I think tonight I start the swamp on the other side. More limited colors may go faster. Almost 3 hours for 100 pieces? That’s crazy. Wish me luck.

TV watching time after eating dinner has me working on this tiny applique…

Complete with dog and cat hair. Don’t get excited…it’s someone else’s pattern that I modified. I need something to do with my hands while watching. Last night, I didn’t work on this one. I wanted something less fussy…but I’ll be back to this one soon. I think there’s 10 smaller blocks and one big one? I don’t know. It took me a year to finally pick fabrics for this one, which is block 2. I’m not in a rush, apparently.

Boychild tried to throw the little blinking plane we found in the yard ages ago to the neighbor we thought it belonged to. One neighbor said it wasn’t theirs and the other never answered (I am surrounded by children)…I’m not impressed by his aim. See it?

Here. Now do you see it?

I think it’s still there…until the next Santa Ana wind event, and then it will probably end up in my yard again.

It’s “walk into a web” season.

So many spiders. We used to have these giant orange orbweavers…now these are about half the side and nowhere near as bright. Strange. But they bracket the pathway in a very disturbing way.

And as I go into the new year, which involves a sex ed committee with parents and school board members to decide what we will be teaching our sweetums, there’s this.

Also you don’t want me to groom them to be LGBTQIA and/or to understand gender pronouns. So ignorant and pregnant! Woo!

OK. I packed my lunch. I have a banana. I don’t know where my school shoes are. It’s warm already. My start-the-year T-shirt is clean and mostly clear of cat hair. My room is ready. I’m not, but I’ll survive. I’m doing two demos today. Why not? Then Pilates, cooking dinner, collapsing into a sweaty heap, and my book is at 90%, so what I REALLY want to do is finish it. Yes, I’m putting it in my bag. These early days, I don’t need to do a lot during prep. No grading yet. I do need to set up posts and my gradebook, but not immediately. Yeah. I think this is my 20th school year? Nope…my 21st. Wow. There we are.

New Babies…

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

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

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

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

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

With the only color I could find in my bag.

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

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

Friday night, I finished cutting all the Wonder Under.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We did a short hike.

The Man’s back is bothering him.

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

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

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

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