Sat by the River and It Made Me Complete*

So I just realized it’s Friday. And I go back to school in 3 weeks. I’m not ready. I never am. It’s not that I don’t like my job…I actually do like my job. I’d rather do my job than a million other jobs. It’s the time commitment. Every summer, I read a hundred articles about how to be a more efficient teacher, to spend less time grading and more time connecting. Last year sucked for that. I need to do better at that this year. It’s not the kids who are amazing or even not so amazing but will actually respond when you work with them…it’s the ones that refuse to do anything even after you’ve used everything in your teacher toolbox to entice them to actually turn something in. Those are the ones who suck it out of me. I spend so much mental energy on them. There were a lot of those last year. After 15 years of teaching, I still don’t have the magic solution to those kids. Frustrating.

But I have three weeks before I have to start dealing with all that. Three weeks when there is no way in hell I won’t know what day it is. So I should use that time wisely. Making art, really. OK, I have a copyediting job too and a bunch of house and yard stuff I haven’t even touched. As always. I still have one more week of jury duty call-in. I don’t think I’ll get called, but you never know.

On my mind today? The over 700 kids who couldn’t be reunited with their families…due to some mealy-mouthed crap from the government that really didn’t plan this shit out in the first place. So some of these kids have now experienced significant trauma that might continue for the rest of their lives. Thanks Repubs. Appreciated. You know they train teachers in trauma now? How to deal with trauma, shooters, abuse…fun stuff. Is it the government’s place to cause more trauma? I would hope we would be on the side of alleviating it instead of creating it.

So my original goal this week was to iron 6-8 hours a day and hopefully be done today. Ha! OK, so not going to be done today. Maybe tomorrow? But doubtful. I did iron almost 7 hours yesterday…I have almost 13 hours in…so about halfway in the guesstimated time, but no way am I halfway through the pieces. I’m in the 800s, but there are a bunch that aren’t ironed from the last woman.

I totally forget to photograph stuff while I’m ironing to fabrics…it’s just piles of stuff. Oh yeah, I walked the dog when it got cooler too. The other dog went with the boychild to his dad’s house. But this one needed exercise and I keep forgetting to do it.

It’s good for me too. Although my foot is really sore this morning. Damn foot.

Here’s the run for the third woman I ironed last night.

Usually there’s maybe 2 humans in a quilt…this one has 9 I think. Not counting the baby. The mermaid earth mother was purple and green. Then two shadow women were gray. One has a baby, also gray. Then the woman in the water, sort of pinky purple, black hair, green eyes. I looked at the other people and tried to decide how I would do each of them. I didn’t draw them originally with particular races or genetic traits in mind…well, except for one of them. I just want a range of womanity. So the next woman I ironed is the browns on the left of the picture below. I kept them out, because the hill behind her was going to be brown as well, but I have just now, right this second, questioned that. Why brown? Why not green and florals? Seriously? Some of what goes on in my head is contrast…how to make the figures pop. But this is a really busy quilt and maybe it’s less about the figures popping on what’s behind them and more about the overall look? I’m not sure. I color these in my head as I pick stuff…so it’s recoloring right now as I type this. I think it’ll be a while (hours?) before I get to the hill behind her, so maybe I’ll change my mind. Or not.

I’m going to have an issue with one of the women on the top of the hill, to make sure she shows up on the background. We’ll see. That’s 900 pieces away, I think.

This is all the fabrics I’ve used so far…plus the box of all the ironed pieces.

That is not a small number of pieces. This thing is big.

Not thinking about school. I’ll get some official email next week about school stuff. Even then, I planned ahead. I do have to put my classroom back together, but I’m pretty sure it’s not done yet (the floors need 6 coats). So I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do that. August 10th? Maybe. Hopefully.

Today? I’m not going to get 7 hours of ironing in. But maybe 5? That’ll be my goal. Another 5 tomorrow? I still don’t think that will be enough. Hmmm. Well, I’m progressing, so that’s good.

*Keane, Somewhere Only We Know

Purple Hair, Tea, and a List

Friday the 13th! My favorite day, besides maybe Halloween (as long as it’s Halloween when I’m not at school so I don’t have to deal with the candy and the kids). It’s supposed to be bad luck, but really it’s just a number and a day and a really bad series of movies. My favorite! I only just realized what day it was…I keep having to look at calendars to remind myself that it is a day or another day and WTF am I supposed to be doing today (meeting at my district print shop with my co-teacher to print all the crap we need for the beginning of the year, instead of waiting until the week before school starts, for the first time EVAH.).

So I started writing that a million hours ago and then she texted that she was there and we hung out in the foyer at the print shop for over an hour, because it’s the only place besides school where we can be on the district server and actually send stuff to the print shop. Annoying…but air conditioned. So that’s done…the entire first unit is in for copying and we will start the year out organized! Maybe. Well. There’s the disasters of a classroom we have to come back to, after shoving everything in cupboards at the last minute because of the district use of our rooms. Sigh. I’m not thinking about that…or when I might be able to deal with that.

So we took about 8 hours to plan the first unit and beginning of the year stuff, and that was just the time we were together doing that…not all the time we spent doing shit on our own for that. Unpaid. Oh well. It’s my sanity. It’s not like anyone was going to pay me for that prep time anyway.

Then I came home and realized I needed to go to the store for milk, shampoo, and beer. One for each of us! The milk is mine, by the way. Need tea. Should have bought the other kind of milk too, for drinking, but oh well. Yes. I require two kinds of milk.

Still need to clean floors, mopping and vacuuming…with the boychild’s assistance. But before that, finish this, AND dye my hair purple. Because what else do you do on Friday the 13th? Hopefully it won’t fry all my hair, although then I could just shave it all off and be annoyed by it even more than I already am. Seriously, when you’re hot (because of weather AND hot flashes), hair seems like a useless accessory. Then again, so does a bra…so there’s that. So I’m sitting here cooking my hair off and writing this, trying to make my plan for the day when it’s already 2:30 PM, where the fuck did the day go? I just don’t know.

That’s what happened yesterday also. I dropped my car off to get the damn window motor fixed (oh holy crap, those are expensive, but if I have to crawl out of my car one more time to deal with a ticket booth in a parking structure, I’m gonna scream.). So that. It won’t be done until probably Monday. Slightly problematic if I have jury duty on Monday, but whatever. Then off to pick up a quilt from a show that ended…it’ll get shipped out to Arizona in October, so it’s staying in the box. Then to the fabric store for binding fabrics…still haven’t dealt with trimming those two quilts. That would be good to do this afternoon. OK. Make list:

Trim two quilts
Sew binding on two quilts

So then I went to quilt “class” (aka hangout) and trimmed the fabrics for the two little quilts. The more complicated one is on the left…

And here’s the easier one. Yes, I am using a sandwich tupperware to store those pieces. The other one is a lunch container, I think. They work.

When I made all the bird and cat quilts, they were all in tupperware for a while. Easier to keep parts separated but organized that way.

Then I worked on the coral-colored flowers at quilt hangout…finished all of them. Also finished the second block for June? July? I don’t know. And started the third one, the one with the sun in it.

But that was at my nighttime stitching meeting. Lots of that going on yesterday.

Progress! No worries…it will be 2019 before I finish this one. I only work on it at meetings and gaming. I also worked on sewing wool on this one…but I didn’t have the thread to sew the blue circle on and then the leopard is supposed to have spots, and I have the fabric for it and the hole punch, but it’s this huge piece of fabric and so I start reading the instructions, because there must be something else that’s supposed to be made from that fabric, and yessiree, it’s a monkey. Damn. Which monkey?

So I’ve been doing Sue Spargo patterns since I think 2012, with Earth and Twig (maybe earlier?), and she sends the pattern but she also emails a newsletter. And I just realized this year that maybe those were important, that they had information that wasn’t in the patterns. I always saw the corrections and would go hand write them in the instructions, because I knew I would be way behind in making these (this one, which is called Folk Tails, is from 2015.). But you know what? I didn’t save all of them. So I had to go back to my old email address archives and find all of them and load them onto my computer so I would be able to find them when I finally got around to making the quilt…and sure enough, that’s where I found out about the monkey. So that wool is not done. I needed to find the monkey and trace him onto freezer paper and cut that out and iron it onto the brown wool, and then, ONLY THEN, can I use what’s left for the leopard’s damn spots.

Well we are 27 minutes (nope, now it’s 47 minutes…I went down an internet rabbit hole about stitching patterns, because I don’t have enough of those stashed in my house to keep me going into my 3rd or 4th life) into cooking my hair and nothing is stinging or burning. Also good. My allergies have ramped up since being a disastrous 20-something, so you never know. Sure, I could have tested it in my inner elbow like they always tell you, but fuck that shit. I need the purple to wash out before school starts (OK, maybe my principal needs that), and I don’t have 48 hours to fuck around waiting. Plus Sunday is looking quite busy. So not then.

So if I’m at urgent care later or downing Benadryl, just say nothing. I’ll know it was a stupid decision. I don’t need you to tell me.

Then back to the drawing at 11:20 PM or so…woman on the left, a skeleton, although looking at this, I need a bone pile in there somewhere, and then the volcano. I’m down to just a bit of land and sky…maybe tonight? Damn. Wait. The list.

Trim two quilts
Sew binding on two quilts
Iron small quilts together
Stitch small quilts down
Finish drawing

Probably those are out of order and more than I will get done today, but it at least reminds me of what I should be thinking about working on, once the hair and the floors are done.

Speaking of hair, those who are around me may have noticed I had one side shaved when I got most of my hairs chopped off. So I have to decide whether to maintain that or not, and I guess I decided that today.

Tiny little hairs. So tempting to just get rid of all of it in this heat. It’s not even that hot right now. Anyway. I have a list. I can ignore the list. I can get some of the shit on the list done. I can (not) get it all done. But it’s a list. Yeah. Need more tea. Here’s why I bought the milk. Tea. Purple hair. List.

It’s Too Hot…

Ugh. Heat. Smashing my brain cells into headache cells. Yes, I drank water…like 8 gallons of it. And then immediately sweated it back out. I don’t have air conditioning, people. We open windows or close them, then put fans on, then drop a bunch of animals in the pool to cool them off. Including human animals.

So this was the car before I drove east home…at which point, it said 112 degrees. I think the official high in East County was 111 degrees, so I’m sticking with that.

I spent about 4 hours with my co-teacher (a) catching up, (b) complaining about school and shit, (c) sitting in air conditioning, and (d) actually doing school planning.

We managed all of Unit 1 and a good start to Unit 2. We might meet again, depending on the federal court shenanigans that are my summer existence. They called (the Feds) and left a truncated message on my phone that just said “(s;dlkfrag) Federal Court. Thank you.” Um. OK. Apparently if you pick up (who picks up on numbers they don’t recognize?), they remind you to call to check your status. Dudes. Abide. It’s on my fucking calendar.

Anyway, one more day will get us some wiggle room in August and September, which we will probably need.

Here’s the coffee place’s fancy Insta wall…very cute. They had a mild cactus theme. S3…not quite in Mission Valley, but on the eastern edge of it, which is probably close to halfway between our houses.

Plus they had science! This drink changes color when you dump the lemonade in it. I have video.

Sitting on a metrics worksheet, while the computer in the background shows little plastic animals, as we try to decide if they will fit in our graduated cylinders…like you do.

So at home, it was really really hot. The house was cooler than outside because the windows had been closed all day, but even then, the cat who is always hidden was lying in plain sight on the linoleum floor.

Eventually she moved to the bathroom sink, her preferred hot spot locale.

Boychild took the big dog in the pool. I took both of them in. Little one doesn’t like water, but he didn’t struggle. They have too much fur for that.

And in this heat, they dry almost instantly. Hey, it’s only supposed to be 104 degrees today.

So we watched Black Panther last night, and I thought it was way better handled than Wonder Woman. I can’t speak to the POC issue, because I’m white, but the women were appropriately clothed for their jobs, were strong and outspoken and smart (his sister!), and I really liked how that was handled. Although still the patriarchal issue of the king passing his power down to his son and men fighting, with strength being the key to winning. Why couldn’t the queen take over? As I age, shitty representations of women in books and movies become even more obvious and annoying. Oh yeah, and in government. As we watched, I embellished balls…orange balls…but only like three or four of them because this is a WOOL quilt and it was still 90-some degrees after 8 PM.

And then I was looking and thinking, hey self, there’s only two other colors when you’re done with this one. Aren’t there 6 colors? There are not. There are only 5. So I have finished 2/5s of the balls. Good to know. Plus no worries about how I don’t see another color, because there isn’t one. Thank woolly goddess. Going insane here. And here’s the other insanity…I’m close to done on the quilting of that other applique quilt, and then I was going to quilt the wool one that has been pinbasted for two years, and then this one will probably be done this summer and will also need quilting. Like I have time for that, because yesterday I finally looked at the calendar and it’s getting tight. They can’t put me on a trial…I won’t finish the two quilts I need to finish (damn, plus the two little ones that are supposed to be done by the 22nd. Ha! Oh dear. My brain needs to go into overdrive, which it totally can’t, due to the heat).

Anyway. So there’s that.

Sometime around 11 PM, I was finally able to come in here, point two fans at me, and stitch down. And you know what? The fucking tension was fine.

Sometimes that shit just drives me nuts because there’s no rhyme or reason to what works. Sometimes the spool needs to be horizontal, sometimes upright, sometimes through the metal thing, sometimes not. Sometimes tension is at 3, sometimes it’s at almost zero. I just can’t figure it out. Temperature based? Maybe. In which case, the machine likes it hot and uncomfortable.

So today? I have an art-related meeting, I’m going to try to finish the stitch down, I’m going to take a totally pointless shower, because I will be sweating instantaneously afterward. I haven’t had enough sleep, I have a massive headache, and it feels like there’s sand in my eyes…luckily it will just continue to be cooler in the next few days, the fire east of us is mostly under control, and I get to hang with art friends this afternoon. So those are good things. And maybe the federal government will release me next week too. Maybe. Or maybe I will have jury duty and then come home and be totally efficient afterward! It could happen.

Might Be Over Now, but I Feel It Still*

My definition of a break is different from vacation. Vacation is when you get in the car or on a plane and you travel somewhere and hang out there and it involves not sleeping in your bed and possibly eating weird food. Vacations are cool. I went years without vacations because I couldn’t afford them, and as it is now, I don’t do them a lot (still money), but I try to do one a year for a week and then a few smaller ones. This year, I’m going to Boston (excuse me, Waltham) to visit the girlchild in November. It’s really hard (for me) as a teacher to take time off during the school year. It’s such a pain in the ass to create good lesson plans and hope a guest teacher won’t completely fuck it up and teach the kids something completely incorrectly (sigh…it’s way too common) and then I lose days when I come back, trying to correct their misconception AND deal with behavior. So I avoid it.

I rarely get to travel during summer, because of that lost paycheck. It’s hard to plan to spend a chunk of money when you know you won’t have any more coming in. I currently have a list of things I need to buy but will need to wait until September (or whenever the credit card cycle starts that will bill in September…teachers, you all know what I’m talking about). I would love to vacate right now. Really. I would. We tried to set up a weekend camping trip, but we waited too long and all the campsites are booked. And I can’t plan anything in July during the week because of the silly jury duty. August is already a disaster schedule-wise.

So no vacation right now. Staycation? OK. Go see some music, maybe hike a bit, possibly kayak, go to the zoo? I don’t know. Something I don’t do during the school year very often, because I’m so buried. But maybe that’s my resolution for the 2018-2019 school year? More weekend things that are less about work and more about being a relaxing human. (I suck at relaxation, you may have noticed.) This is a break though…a break from the job and the kids and all the other crap and that in itself is a good thing.

Anyway, my car window got fixed yesterday. I was worried that it would be the wrong window or something else would go wrong, but it worked out and the gardener who accidentally shattered it with a rock ended up paying for almost all of it. So all that turned out well. I was expecting to have to spend more time and energy on the issue, and I didn’t have to. So that sort of freed up my brain all day to do a bunch of different art- and fiber-related activities. I think it was the first day since school got out where I felt like I was on break. Because no school. No doctor. Only two errands and they were done early. Nice. Need more of that please.

So I started out with trying to finish the ironing on this…another cat! Shocking.

And some tiny sewing implements…

Then I started ironing it onto a background, but I needed to go to my fiber-related summer social meeting. So I packed up some bits and pieces and headed out. I cut the Wonder Under for the two small quilts…

These lunch containers work well for keeping pieces separated…the sandwich one doesn’t though because the divider doesn’t go all the way up.

So those are ready for fabric choosing.

Then I finished sewing all the wooly bits down on this, September’s blocks.

I also pinned October’s pieces down to that blank block, but that was when I got home…and I stitched a little on (I don’t know what month I’m actually on? July?) the bigger piece. I’m getting closer to done on this. I didn’t photograph any of that.

Then I ironed the rest of this down. I like her. She’s ready to be stitched down.

I’ve been trying to keep doing yardwork, but mostly in the evenings because it’s too hot otherwise. Last night, I was entertaining the dogs while whacking at trees and bushes that haven’t been trimmed for a million years. I lost the puppy for a while in there, and Calli kept bringing me half-chewed sticks to throw.

I will probably never finish back there.

So I can’t do the stitch down on the skinny quilt until I finish quilting this. I don’t want it to go back in the pile. So I quilted for an hour or two, until I was almost out of thread.

It’s not hard. It just takes time. Thread purchase on the list for today. I didn’t want to buy more unless I knew I needed it. Now I know I need it.

So after all that, running out of thread, I decided to try drawing. It’s always hard to get back to drawing if I haven’t done it for a while. It’s like my hand stutters. I have an enlarged old drawing, I have this original drawing from 2011 or 2012, and then I have this cat on my lap. Huh.

Anyway, so I started drawing the righthand figure again, but now I have an issue because I like parts of the old drawing better than the new and I like parts of the new drawing better than the old. Aargh. So I think I’m going to copy both real size and then put them together? Or maybe I’ll copy both enlarged and put them together?

I just don’t know. Or redraw it again. Sigh. Maybe that. The shape of the old one is better but what’s in the belly of the new one is better. Fuuck. OK. Well no decision there, eh? Nothing new. Indecisive brain for two weeks now.

OK, so today…buy thread, make some copies (decide at some point what I’m copying?), pick up the ceramics I painted last week, go watch some music and grab some dinner. Easy. Not too bad. I can handle it. I might even feel relaxed by the end of it!

*Portugal. The Man, Feel It Still

Eyes Burn with Stinging Sweat*

So the training is done…I’ve spent three days (that’s it!) staring at this in the morning and afternoon…

I don’t do freeways and traffic for my job any more. I did it for many years, until I was lucky enough to get a job just down the street. I don’t really enjoy it. OK, no one enjoys it. I’ll be doing it again this morning to try to get my car window fixed, but that’s it…until I get called to jury duty downtown. Ugh. OK. Not thinking about that.

I spent all day for three days staring at this…two notebooks, a million highlighters and post-it notes, a computer, a phone, a poor desperate apple that was all bruised and beaten and will come home to go in my compost. I might eat part of it, but mostly not. Plus caffeine. Oh god yes, caffeine. And some people.

What do I know after all that training? That I am woefully unprepared for the test portion of certification, but that’s fixable. That I’m not starting in 2019. I mean, I might start studying and collecting stuff in 2019, but I won’t start the official process until 2020 at the earliest. I need my district to pay for it and I need to not have to come home some nights and work another job. Yes, I bid on a copyediting job last night. Because I need the money. Let’s hope I don’t have to do it at the same time as jury duty.

It was almost 8 PM when I finished. The moon was out. It was way prettier than this picture can ever show. I miss my old cameras that recorded more than the phone does.

So after I went and got my annual eye exam, came back and did a sample edit and wrote a bid, and ate dinner and only embellished 2 balls instead of 3…then I numbered the two drawings. Mind you, these are only 5×6″. This one had 90 pieces and the other had 39. Still not small or easy. But they jumped the line because they’re due the end of July…

Then I traced the Wonder Under for each…it took about 30 minutes to do this more complicated one…

And about 10 minutes for this one.

Not bad. I need to trim the Wonder Under today, but then I really need to finish the other two things that are in my studio before I do any more on these two. Luckily those shouldn’t take long. As long as no more crazy shit appears in my inbox or hits my car or gets rescheduled. Seriously. The good news is that my eyes are fine. I didn’t even need new glasses yet. That’s a plus. I’m hoping the car window thing is easily solved (I don’t have a lot of faith in it this morning…men who think they know how women are always wrong…that shit) and I can do the errands I need to do and maybe just stitch this afternoon at my friend’s house, which is what’s on the calendar. I might need a nap. I’m so tired this morning. I’m sleeping in tomorrow. It has been mandated. Someone needs to explain it to the animals so there are no interruptions. Who am I kidding? You know there will be interruptions.

Trying not to assume the worst with the Supreme Court…or with the Janus decision. Politics, man. It’s so hard because you can’t put your head in the sand and ignore it all…that’s what they want. So you have to let it into your head and let the possibilities fester. Like what kind of dumbassery will we have to deal with next?

That’s when I turn to making art. It helps. Not with the lack of sleep, but with the feeling of helplessness this administration has made so pervasive. My faith in humanity is being severely tested.

*Alice in Chains, Rooster

‘Cause You Don’t Have to Rush*

A reminder that working all day does suck up brain time and make art difficult. That said, I do it. I used to only really make art on breaks…so Winter, Spring, and Summer. I finished about one big quilt a year and a few smaller ones in between. I didn’t do nothing during the school year…I just didn’t do a lot. It didn’t help that I had little kids and they had homework and soccer and piano lessons and a whole host of other things that I graded through and sometimes embroidered or appliqued through, but that was mostly hobby stuff…not the real artwork. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got anything done. But I did.

Yesterday? Not so much. I mean I did get some stuff done, but it was a lot of tiredness mostly. Because when I got home, I made dinner and then walked the dogs…

No nature last night…because it was late and I didn’t want to deal with coyotes. I did want to get exercise, because sitting all day in a training feels exhausting as well. Although I did find a place that makes and sells (important!) tea. Oh hallelujah. So that got me through yesterday afternoon. One more day today and I’m done. I can honestly say that National Board Certification is a lot of work…but I think I will take it on…just not this year.

On the walk, there was a kid who was walking, but when he realized that the dogs and I might be walking faster than him, he took off at a run. Like he couldn’t get passed up by the old lady. He’s way up there in the picture…you can’t see him, but he’s walking again. Lame. Nice big old field though. Everything is dead and brown already…no rain for a while.

Calli appreciated the walk but was tired and hot afterwards…

Simba also appreciated it, although he appreciated less my picking the sticks and foxtails out of his fur later. And Satchemo didn’t get to go. He does go out on a leash, but I don’t deal with that crazy. Cats on leashes. Yeah no.

I realized I wouldn’t be able to stand to iron for an hour or more…too tired. Feet hurt. Even though I sat all day…the irony! I usually stand all day. And I didn’t feel like stitching on balls. I looked at them and rejected them. So much for three a night, eh?

Oh well, so I have to do these two small art quilts by late July for an exhibit in the fall, so I’ve been carrying around these 5×6″ pieces of paper I cut for that purpose. So I drew. And then as I drew, I realized the boxes are horizontal and I had drawn the first two vertical. Duh. So I redrew one of them (and changed it), but now horizontal…

And then I decided I like the one in the top left, so I scanned it and shrunk it and printed it out again. So it will be that one and the bottom right.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep these little pieces after the show…maybe toss them up on Etsy.

So that’s what I did instead of finishing the ironing on this quilt that needs to be done. I also thought about (but did nothing about) the big drawing…mostly because I think I decided I would need to be standing to do anything about it.

I can’t decide whether to start with a drawing in the big sketchbook and then enlarge and add to it, or whether I know what the parts are already…just cut a big piece of paper (I have a HUGE roll of paper I bought a while back and it lives in my living room and no, you can’t have any…ok that sounds mean, but you know how when people find out you have something or you can do something? And then they want it or they want you to do it and you’re like wait but get your own. Do it yourself. OK, I’m obviously in a mood. Never mind. Something about a comment…”is anyone an artist?” came up when we needed to make a poster.). Cut a big piece of paper and start drawing on that. That decision (and action) was more than I could deal with last night. So I didn’t. I’ll get to everything. I hope. I committed to a piece of art that goes with a poem…picked one of my old poems, the one that sucked the least (damn, some of my old poetry was really awful). So I need to draw that too. Maybe tonight? Ugh. Maybe. I want to draw. I’m just tired.

Too much thinking. Need more art, less thinking. Perhaps more sleep too.

*Kate Nash, Navy Taxi

Need to Be Out of Here

Well. I need caffeine delivery at my training. They are nice. They feed us lunch. They bring us snacks and extension cords that don’t have a third prong hole. There’s plenty of water. We can pee whenever we want (trust me, for teachers, that’s a major issue)…but there’s no coffee or tea and the day was long. I don’t sit for that long normally either…like unless I’m on a plane. They had us stand up a few times, but I need a long walk and more caffeine. I’m even willing to bring my own milk and tea bags, if they’ll just give us hot water.

So if you’ve never heard of National Board Certification for teachers, it’s not an easy process. In fact, it’s a monstrous pain in the ass…but doable. And I think it’s useful…not only as a way to focus on how one teaches and picks resources and handles assessment and feedback and differentiation (which is hard), but also to protect teachers from crazy administrators (they’re out there, along with the crazy teachers and the crazy parents). They talk about creating teacher leaders, which kinda cracks me up as I look around the room…there’s some crazy people like me in there, and then some high achievers (English, we’re looking at you), and some who had no idea what they were in for, but it does take all kinds. The teacher leaders I’ve dealt the best with are those who work hard, think about kids and curriculum all the time, reflect all the time, and are willing to share information. Science doesn’t attract a lot of teachers who like to follow rules, I’ve found…there were only two other science teachers there, and I’m betting one doesn’t show up at all today and the other one is only going to show up because she thinks I might be able to help her. And I might.

Anyway, today will be longer. And harder. And I need to find caffeine. Or another thermos.

What else did I get done yesterday? Not much. I watched the window fall out even more…

Fixing it Thursday.

I sewed Pekinese stitch on three balls. THREE.

And then I ironed. Eventually. It was late.

The face…I ironed the teacup separately, same with the leaves…the snake, I did right on the hair. I don’t worry too much about being exactly in the right place for that. It’s not overlapping anything it needs to cover.

The camera and the eye were separate…easier to see where the pieces need to be when I do it that way…

Then onto the face. Cool. I like it.

She’s really pale…which means she’ll pop on a dark background.

I’m almost done with the ironing of the bits. I wanted to be done last night, but I got home and was tired and tried to deal with some stuff, entering a show, finding an old poem for a show…now I need to make the art to go with it, because I committed to that show. Whoops! Nah, it’s OK. I have to do two small pieces by the end of July too. I cut out some small pieces of paper to take to my training, in case I feel like drawing, but that’s hard to do with total strangers sitting next to you and watching everything you do. Plus I don’t know what to do on such small pieces. The big drawing is still sitting on the light table, waiting for me to start something…anything.

But I was in bed around midnight, because I knew I had to get up even earlier this morning…gotta fight traffic. If I get called on jury duty, it’s downtown. Talk about fighting traffic. Ugh. Not looking forward to that. I need lots of sleep over summer break…to make up for how little I sleep during the school year.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll finish ironing tonight, maybe even get it ironed to the background? I only have about 60 pieces to go, if that. And they’re big and easy…no fussy little face parts. Then I’ll have to finish quilting the other one so I can do stitch down on this. That won’t take long…but it will take SOME time. This week is so packed.

There was a video made of the Things That Matter Preview Exhibit…my quilt and I are in it…this exhibit is up at Visions Art Museum through July 8…and then the full exhibit will be in Chandler, Arizona, in November.

I don’t think I’ll be able to make that opening…pretty sure I’ll be hanging with the girlchild in Boston…but I hope I’ll see the full exhibit at some point.

OK, need to be out of here…in so many ways…

Whole Days Turn into Holes in My Mind*

Sigh. Well the universe said hi yesterday. With a rock. It’s interesting (I was gonna say funny, but it’s funny strange, not funny ha ha, so maybe it’s not funny at all)…it doesn’t matter how much I plan money out for summer break, there’s always something that throws a wrench into that plan. I guess in the scheme of things, this is not a biggie…it just had shitty timing. We were driving home from the grocery store yesterday and drove past a guy weedwacking a slope, and his machine shot a rock right through the side window of the car. Shattered it. Now thinking back, with about 12 hours of processing, I guess we should be really really glad we were almost past when that rock shot through, because it would probably have damaged a person if they’d been in the way. I still haven’t found the rock in the car. A chunk of the shattered glass below has now fallen out…on the driveway and into the car…

Just from opening and closing the door and the hood…the hood because the next thing we had to do was jumpstart the Honda, because its battery was having issues (we don’t drive it enough with the kids gone). And then I drove that down to the gas station and filled the tires, put gas in it, cleaned all the windows, because I have teacher professional development today…so I can’t get the other window fixed until probably Thursday, the guy wasn’t insured but said he’d pay for it (if he gave me a real phone number and actually has $400), and my insurance won’t cover it because I carry a high deductible to make insurance cheaper. I hope he’ll pay some of it though, because I don’t get paid in the summer….so it makes bill payment a little challenging sometimes. Especially by the end of August. I can’t order stuff for school until after the credit card cycle is done for July so I won’t see it on a bill until September, when I have a paycheck.

Anyway. I’m trying to find somewhere cheaper than the first two I looked at, but they want a 4-hour window of time to come fix it, and I can’t just leave a car with a hole in the window in a parking lot…so I guess it’ll be driving the Honda for a few days. I just tried the Honda again this morning to make sure it would start and it did. I guess that’s the universe too…

So that kind of blew my afternoon up a bit, trying to get information from insurance and glass places on a Sunday afternoon, with both neighbors throwing parties…we had kid noise on one side and bad cigars on the other. Fun stuff.

I did eventually iron…I was going to draw, but the afternoon kind of clusterfucked my head. So ironing was easier…bird and heart. I’m not sure how the bird will play on the background…I might need to add something behind it…we’ll see. I can’t remember if I was holding fabrics up to the background or not. I think it’ll be OK. The background is pretty dark.

Then a phone and the pills in the stomach…plus all the rib details…

With dinner, there was some more stitching on balls…

Three of them. My average no matter what? I thought these would be faster, but apparently not.

Then back to the ironing…lungs and heart…fussy little beasts.

And the left arm, down to meet the squeegee.

Then I rolled all of that up so I could do the top section…the right arm.

Next is the head and then all the stuff in the sky above. I think I have about 170 pieces left to iron together, and then obviously I need to put it on the background. I might get to all that tonight. Since I can’t fix the window.

Kitten told me it was time to go to bed (it was after midnight…she was right…)

But that mockingbird. Pillow over the head. Gotta pack up for this meeting…call my car guy and see if he has a recommendation for glass replacement. Text the gardener. Meditate.

*K.Flay, Giver

I Like a Plan

A Sunday without planning for school. Again. So delightful. No school worries. Although I’m in teacher professional development for the next three days, so that’s not really no school. But they will feed me. And hopefully it will be informational and useful and not just annoying overachievers. We’ll see. I think I use up all my people skills (what few I have) on my students all year. I need to rebuild those reserves. Maybe hanging out with teachers I don’t know for three days is not the way to do that…but who knows? Maybe I’ll be totally reflective and motivated.

Right now, I think I need a nap. The mockingbird is back. He’s been all over the neighborhood, but last night was in the tree outside my bedroom again. It makes me crazy. I slept with the pillow over my head. Drowning out noise with fabric and feathers. Ironic that. Bird drowning out bird. Very philosophical this morning.

I have this drawing I’m contemplating. I started it years ago, 2012? And it grew, but I’m not sure it grew logically, and it means something different to me now. I was going to just go with it and maybe add to the bottom, but now that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought about just using half of it, but every time I look at it, I see pieces I like and pieces I don’t like, that don’t go with the story as it is now. So I think I’m going to redraw it but move pieces around…make it less horizontal too while I’m at it.

It’s going to be my epic summer quilt. But first I have to tear this apart and redo the whole thing. No Biggie! It’s taken me a week of contemplating it and deadlines to finally make the decision. So redraw it I will.

But let’s go back…it’s been a busy two days. I had a voucher at the local ceramic painting place that was expiring, so me and a million moms and kids headed to the same place to use them up. No one would sit at my table…which was fine by me…but I got side-eyed by about a million people for painting nudes I guess…

These are before firing, of course…who knows what they will look like fired.

Well, we all will next week when I pick them up. I make about one mug a year…I tend to break them. Overuse them. All that.

I also made a uterus bowl…like you do…

With a lot of symbols on the outside.

And then I made a sign for Saturday’s march to keep families together. But that was once I came home and made dinner…I didn’t do that at the ceramics place.

San Diego had already scheduled a march for the 23rd and then the national one came through for the 30th. I already have stuff going on the 30th, so I’m just doing the one march…hope the second one pulls enough people to make a difference too.

I saw this cool sculpture walking to my meeting spot…

And then lots of speeches (too many speeches, honestly) and a short march to the federal building…

It’s frustrating to live in a time when we have to yell and stomp so much for our government to hear us…and they still blow us off. Sigh.

When I got back, my brother was texting me pictures of the boychild with his cousins…going tree climbing.

My kid is the biggest…so far. The others are getting taller every time I see them.

Mine is the long one in the middle…

Looks like fun. I wanna do that. I kinda miss those summers when I would drag the kids up to Seattle to hang out for a week.

Anyway, boychild will be leaving Monday apparently to head south. He should be here in a week or so. So that means cleaning his room. It’s not too bad. I piled the worst of it in the girlchild’s room last year when my guy moved in here and I hadn’t finished cleaning up stuff in my bedroom. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with stuff. I’m not sure if I need it or not and I hate throwing things away. I threw a lot away last summer with the garage clean out. I think I reached a limit at some point.

Anyway, that’s next week. And sometime in July, when I panic about the girlchild coming home.

Meanwhile, my office is always a disaster…but especially after I’ve picked all the fabrics and haven’t cleaned up yet…I leave everything out in case I lose a piece (I found a lost one last night)…there’s a cat in this photo…

There it is. Kitten on Mt. Batting.

She spends a lot of time there. It’s safe from the other kitty and it’s comfortable and in the room where mom spends a lot of time.

So at some point yesterday I felt awake enough to iron for a while, up into the thighs. The sun comes in here in the afternoon and makes it hard to see stuff.

And then I took a break for a while and went to dinner and then came back and worked on the lights and the squeegee and the uterus…not all of that is ironed down though, because stuff is supposed to go behind the top part of the pelvic girdle…

Kitten came down to visit (and watch Supernatural apparently)…she sat on the chair that is hidden there for a while, until the other cat came in and got territorial. Sigh. At this point, I had cleaned about half the papers that were piled on my desk…I still have the other side and then the desk to the left. School sucks up so much time that there are balls that just drop…and cleaning the paper crap up is part of that. So I lose shows sometimes in the paper piles. I forget about them. I try to be logical, but I’m not always good at it. I want to try a different organization plan in here, but I need a new stacking file thing…the two I have don’t fit into each other unfortunately. So that’s a trip somewhere. Organization has been my issue my entire life. I like it when it happens, but I keep changing how I do stuff to try to get MORE organized, and then I wait to see what sticks. I’ve reorganized in my office/studio about 3000 times. I have a plan for hopefully next summer (need money) to do a remodel of the whole room…but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, I was ironing the gingko leaves separately, because they had a lot of tiny pieces and I needed to see the pattern before I ironed them onto the belly fabric.

There they are…

And then I put them on the belly fabric, but folded the leaf itself down until the stuff above was done…first a stomach, liver, and intestines…

And then the ribs and abs…then I could iron the gingkos all the way down. I still need to add a bunch of detail bits in there, but it was just after midnight at that point. I took a break in the middle because the library emailed me that my book was due soon, so I finished it…plus my feet hurt from standing, so I gave them a break.

I’m officially more than halfway done now…lots of complicated stuff still to be ironed. You can see all the bottom bits are rolled up at the bottom. I decided to just keep going instead of ironing the parts separately and trying to fit them together at the end. Especially with the hand that will come down and hold the squeegee…I wanted to make sure everything meets up.

Oh yeah, I finished all the red balls on this quilt and started doing the embellishment of the fuschia balls, which are only a slightly different color than the blush pink balls (there’s one of those on the top for comparison). The stitch around the fuschia balls is fairly easy, but requires going around twice. I only did one…I took time Friday night to finish the 4 red ones that were left and start the fuschia, which is why I got no artmaking done. Plus tired.

I made up for it by doing no ball stitching last night…but I figure if I finish embellishing 3 balls a night on average and there are 80 (79) left to go, then that’s 26 nights. So sometime in July. Plus I should be quilting the other wool quilt, but I have to finish the cotton one that’s under the machine, and ain’t none of that happening in the next three days. So there.

So there’s finishing ironing, maybe quilting, getting prepped for tomorrow’s teacher PD, groceries, maybe a dog walk…if it cools down enough. Maybe some cleaning or organization. We’ll see. Yardwork that’s never done. EVER. One week of summer break gone. I hate that feeling. Then I have to persuade myself that there’s a ton left, everything will be fine, don’t panic. DRAWING. I need to draw. That’s a plan…I like having a plan…

That’s When the Energy Comes*

OK. The animals are starting to get a clue that mom doesn’t budge in the morning until later. That mornings are longer than they used to be. That’s a good sign, because it’s the first summer in a long time that someone else gets up early (and wakes them all up) and I still need to be asleep. It seems fair…I’m going to sleep like way later (still) and my body doesn’t actually have to be up at 6:30 in the morning. Those who work with me know that I am not a morning person. I can do it, but don’t talk to me. I don’t wanna talk. Chat. Trade niceties. I want silence until I’m ready. I will however totally have a conversation with you at midnight about the motivations of the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale. You don’t want that? OK. Well then. That’s what my late-night texting friends are for.

Now my brain takes a lot longer to get functional. I’m really trying to hit relaxation mode…the place you have to be in order to recover from the school year so you can teach the next one. I met with my co-teacher yesterday to try to plan next year (another mess of reordering units and tightening some and adding to others…this is year 3 of new standards…maybe we’ll finally have it?). I now have 17.000 more things to think about. Whoops. I think we’re just going to plan the first unit and then be done with it. Hopefully I won’t have jury duty some Monday or Friday in early July and we’ll be able to pull that off. First we need a place with free wifi, beverage service, A/C, and bigger tables than a Starbucks. Preferably at the midpoint between where we each live. I’m sure there’s a solution…I just don’t know what it is yet.

Meanwhile, I didn’t have a lot planned yesterday. I could have done some things, but apparently school planning sucks your brain out. So I did a lot of sitting on the couch, binge-watching Doc Martin (which now I have to find elsewhere, because Netflix is not getting the current seasons…although some part of me is significantly annoyed by the series and doesn’t know if I want to watch it anyway.), and trying to just keep my hands busy. So more of sewing these bits down…

Because it’s totally brainless and yet I’m achieving something. I’ve thought about drawing like every day for the last 5 days, and I can’t get there. I’m aiming for it. Maybe today? Just sit on the deck with a beverage of choice and some music and just draw. What will be my epic quilt this summer? What deadlines am I actually going to take on? When will I get my act together? Why don’t I just accept that the first week of summer is always a lost one? Anyway, almost all the things are sewn down on that month. I think I have to sew blocks together for the next month…and it’s easier to embellish on smaller pieces than big ones…so I’ll have to think that through.

Meanwhile, so I have to try a new diabetes medication. I’ve been diabetic for 16 years now and my control is iffy at the moment. I need more exercise. I need more time to exercise. And I suspect menopause (which is still not totally a thing here, unfortunately) is messing with blood sugar etc. So I agreed to try the new medication, even after last year’s clusterfuck. She suggested one and I immediately Googled it and found a similar side effect to last year’s, so we rejected that one. This one does not have that side effect, but it does mean injections. Sigh. This disease sucks. So those were delivered yesterday. I have to do everything mail order that’s a long-term prescription, so I get this huge heavy box…

This is so annoying though…I really am trying to reduce my footprint. I’ve been cutting back on using plastic, recycling more, trying to keep plastics out of the house. Now I have a huge styrofoam box coming every three months that is almost filled with ice packs. Plastic ice packs. Which apparently I can’t return to them to be reused.

So they just get thrown out? There has to be a better way. This is such a waste. Plus the injection equipment, single-use. So annoying. So don’t get sick! There’s so much waste in medical stuff…and yeah, I know it’s better than passing on disease and infection, but it’s still hard to stomach.

This was on the way back to my car yesterday. Impressive…

Next Saturday, the 30th, my cohabitant here will be playing at Nicky Rottens with his cover band, the Radio Thieves. Their lead singer likes to make funky retro record covers…

I’ll be there with my sketchbook and a table…maybe I’ll be relaxed by then.

I’m still embellishing balls. I did four last night…stepping up the pace!

And then I finished cutting all these out, which means I can start ironing things together tonight. That’s the fun part…when the image starts to show up.

It took a little over 10 hours to cut them all out. It’ll probably take 15 or so to iron it together…

This is Calli…she wants her morning meds. She thinks it’s a treat, but it’s really just arthritis stuff. She’s a good girl.

This one, Simba, wants to lie around in the sun. I should probably walk them sometime today.

After I get my hairs cut. Might be drastic, might not. You never know. I kinda want to color it too. Maybe this is just a ruse to get out of jury duty (is purple hair a good excuse?)…or maybe I’m just tired of having the same haircut for a million years.

One of the things I track is how many hours I spend each month (week?) making art…the stuff that I track (which doesn’t include drawing or any of the hobby embroidery). In the last month, I’ve only done 36 hours of artmaking…less than 10 hours a week (that’s grading and being sick for you)…the month before, which included teaching fulltime, I managed 75 hours (almost 19 hours a week, on top of working 50 hours or more a week). Kind of crazy that. With no actual day job at the moment, I should be able to do 50 hours a week of artwork. Hear that, brain? I know. I’m giving you a break right now. You need it.

*Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery