One Headline Why Believe It?

Well. I’m up. I’m showered. I ate something. I fed animals. I’m not sure I’m ready or capable of teaching all day, but at least it’s a short day…mostly because I have to sit through a staff meeting after, but our new meeting space has beanbag chairs, so I can curl up in one of those if there’s a problem. I have in the past sat upon my rolly chair and propelled myself around the classroom when I didn’t feel well. Standing is problematic, for long periods of time even more so. Going to the grocery store yesterday took it out of me…precipitated a 2-hour nap. I can only assume I needed it.

No art yesterday, none at all, although I rallied enough to finish grading the second homework assignment. That’s a good thing. I wanted to draw, but I was too tired. Ironing wasn’t even a realistic option. I’m hoping for tonight…maybe if I come home and nap, I can do some ironing.

I did do two more nights on this…caught up again…still all in the lower left, filling in spaces.

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My nap companion, faithfully guarding my butt from invaders.

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This morning…

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It’s a new day. I don’t feel completely like crap. I think I’m over the hump. That’s good. Because I need to get some art done…it’s like grinding my teeth constantly when I can’t.

*Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World

I Want to Put on My My My My My Boogie Shoes*

Well I am ill. Not illin. Just ill. Ill enough that I spent a lot of the day on the couch, trying to grade stuff. And here, at the computer, trying to grade stuff…but not being very successful. I can’t tell if I’m better today or worse…I’m hoping I’ve hit the peak of yuck and it’s all clearing up the phlegm from here on out. But who knows.

It means I’ve gotten almost nothing done. I feel like warmed-over crap…can’t stand for long enough to iron, I guess. I did venture out yesterday and maybe blew my energy for the day. No ironing. I read a lot. I watched some TV, but even that wasn’t anything I felt like doing. I slept for quite a few hours. I know all those things are fine and good for a sick person, but it’s irritating to have to give in to it. Lost time. I hate lost time. Waiting. Standing in line. Sitting through useless meetings. Being sick. Some social events.

I’m not very patient with reality, I guess.

And there’s times when I’m making stuff that I wonder if it makes sense, if it’s what I want it to be, if I’ll make it and it won’t get in, if I’ll make it and it will never get in anywhere. That happens. Those are down moments in the making process…there will be up ones.

I did three night’s worth on Friday, all in the lower left corner…I’m now a day behind again.

See. Yesterday. Sitting. Not a lot getting done.

Although being a cat couch is something.

This was also Friday night…I felt pretty good on Friday night. Compared to yesterday.

OK. So revise the schedule. Finish ironing today? I dunno if I can do that…so let’s say I survive tomorrow and finish tomorrow…and then start cutting out all week…iron together by the weekend? That could happen. It depends a lot on how I feel the rest of today and tomorrow.

Someone asked if I call a sub for my classes if I’m sick. The reality is that we have very few subs in our district and they generally don’t like middle-school science. Plus we’re doing labs and there’s no way in hell I’m leaving these little hellions who will consistently do everything I have NOT told them to do without being called on it constantly with a guest teacher. It’s not even fair to the guest teacher. I’m still training these guys not to touch everything just because it’s there. Not to lose lab materials (there’s a marble loose somewhere in my class and I guilt-tripped my whole 8th period over the cost of that damn thing, and if you’re not a teacher and you’re thinking, it’s Just a MARBLE, you don’t know what we have to do to (a) get funding and (b) train these kids to respect the lab materials…it’s a marble today and a microscope tomorrow.).

Yes. I cannot feed my college kids because y’all lost a marble.

Anyway. It can only get better. Right? I don’t think I’m worse today. Maybe the same. Not very energetic. Not very clear-headed. But alive. And mostly upright. Watching the hurricane hit Irma…sending good thoughts that way. Someone said I should put hurricanes in my quilts…I have, for years. But more now with the climate change stuff in my head all the time.

This song? So not how I feel. But that’s OK. Maybe it will help.

*KC and the Sunshine Band, Boogie Shoes

I Wanna Be Sedated*

Oh yeah. That’s a cold. Bam. Some kid’s germs. Ugh.

Honestly, I came home from school last night, after Back-to-School Night, and I fell asleep on the couch. Like an old person. Cuz sometimes I am an old person. I woke up to dark and no desire for dinner (I never did eat dinner) and a need for another cup of tea, because I’d made one but now it was cold. My kids will tell you that I constantly heat up my tea…I could put it in one of those things that keeps it warm, and at work I do, but at home, there’s something comforting about the ritual of heating the tea, of 60 seconds passing and my reading a page of my book while it does. It tastes better in ceramics than in metal too.

Today I will try to keep myself upright and not use my voice too much, because there’s not much of it to use. I can’t stay home…it’s a lab day and no substitute teacher can handle a lab day. Plus it’s only a cold. We don’t waste sub days with a mere cold. Even pneumonia isn’t a reason to stay home. Gastrointestinal flu? Well yeah, we stay home for that. We don’t have enough subs either. And none of them want to teach science. Gee, I wonder why? I will have to wander the classroom during the lab today though…measurement is still a skill they are learning.

Here I was for a bit after waking up, tea heated, needy animals.

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Then I got up and ironed. I should have graded things, but I couldn’t face it. I will pay for that this weekend. Here’s a bunch of numbers and alphabet things…

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Here’s the baby lizard I rescued before Kitten found it.

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It was very cute.

I finished the blackboard behind the female figure and then picked the run of flesh tones for the second figure, the male.

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A slightly different run of colors. I don’t want them to be the same. But he’s still a white guy. Because they usually are.

I didn’t add a lot of colors in yesterday’s ironing…a few greens but mostly white and beige tones.

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At that point, it was about 11:30, I knew I had to be up early for a meeting this morning, and I didn’t feel well. So I didn’t start ironing the next figure, because once you start, you can’t stop until you’re done. And this is what faced me…

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Plus a whole ‘nother box or two of pieces to get through everything that’s happening on this guy. Much better to consider that tonight or even better, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see. Sick is not helpful in this case.

Here’s a boxful of pieces…

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I’m expecting to be able to start cutting them out on Sunday. Hopefully. If I get through the grading. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and get it done. Sometimes you just have to go to bed! We’ll see where I end up tonight.

*The Ramones, I Wanna Be Sedated

Words Make My Mouth Exercise*

I think all the surrounding coughing and sniffling is finally gonna take me down. On Back-to-School Night no less…ironic that. I’m feeling the throat pain, the spacey, the beginnings of something. I don’t get sick that often any more…also ironic, because I work in a middle school AND the diabetes is supposed to affect my immune system. Ah well…maybe this weekend will be all about sleep and cold medicine…if I make it there. Trying to explain to a non-teacher what Back-to-School Night is like…after teaching 100-plus 12-years-olds how NOT to kill each other with a triple beam balance, I’m going to talk to 50 or so parents and try to remember what their kid is like in class, and I only have an hour…GO! Yeah. Well. It’s a marathon day…let’s just put it at that and hope it ends well. I do know it’s harder than any day I ever did working in corporate world. Some people find field trips more difficult…they are tiring, yes, but I enjoy field trips…getting out of the classroom with the kids is a plus. I’d like to do more of those.

Anyway. I made it to the gym yesterday and then cooked dinner and then graded stuff…so it was a very late start on the art stuff.

This guy turned 2 yesterday…

He was kinda playful and demanding for a bit.

This guy is venturing out more…but trying not to be so aggressive, so that’s a good thing. Adjustment is slow for all…

I swear I scooped this Tuesday after school, and then came home yesterday to this. I’d swept too.

Sigh. The trees have decided it’s Fall. Fall all over the place.

I ironed for less than an hour last night, but I did finish all the 400s…well, most of them. This is what I’ve used so far.

Yesterday I ironed the weird arm in the middle…mostly grays. The box is filling up quickly.

So I’ve reached the halfway point on the ironing. I don’t think I’ll be done until Saturday. I actually have some time on this one before the deadline, but I still want to get it done quickly…some of that is because I’m not sure about it and some of that are the other deadlines behind it. I’ll find out on September 20 if I have to make a new piece for a show I was already juried into (sigh. no comment.). I’m looking forward to coming home tonight and doing something with this…at least dinner is mostly made already (did that last night) and I don’t feel like I have to grade anything if I’ve been at school for 10 hours straight. Just saying.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up

Like Spun Glass in Sore Eyes*

I’m kinda losing track of things at the moment…sitting here looking out the office window where the leaves keep falling (because it’s Fall? Not yet in Southern California…we’ll hit 100 again before the month is out, for sure), wondering how some days go so quickly I can’t even breathe, don’t even see them slip past. Yesterday was like that…zip! And it was gone. There are pros and cons to that of course…some parts of the day were unbearably long. Lunch is never long enough, nor prep long enough to get it all done. Sleep is never freaking long enough for anything.

It’s something to do with September, I think…even without kids’ back-to-school nights and packets full of paperwork and new soccer seasons, this month impresses on me some level of urgency. I wish it would stop so I could just watch the leaves fall and wonder why they do that when it still looks and feels like summer. Look! There goes another one. It’s not even yellow. Green leaves falling. Stress from last week’s heat? Perhaps. It’s still a marker of time in my brain. FALL.

I did some of this last night, lower left corner again, some chain stitch in some color I can’t remember…a green with a pink in it, I think.

Even Pandora is playing all wistful mopey music.

Still not sure about this quilt. But it continues. Last night, I got lungs, hair, octopus tentacles, and bullets ironed down.

I lost one of the octopus tentacles, so I redrew it…and then found it in the next box. I usually check, but this time I didn’t. Mistake. I also figured out where the unnumbered piece belonged. I had traced it but forgotten to write a number on it. That time I had gone through the next three boxes looking for it…and then glanced at the table, where the lonely unnumbered pieces go. And there it was…409…in all its glory. It was the right shape.

Leaves falling 5 and 6 at a time. There’s no wind…just leaves dropping straight down, twirling a bit as they plummet to the ground. I won’t sweep or rake them up…I let them decay where they are. Well, except for the 700 leaves that fell in the pool over the weekend. I tried getting most of those out yesterday.

It’s funny, I try to find an hour or so a day to make art…some days, like yesterday, I’m over 2 hours in and trying to negotiate a later bedtime with my brain so I can keep going, until the mom brain reminds me what it’s like to teach 7th graders metrics and measurement on not-enough sleep (oh yeah. bad.). So I’m 8 hours into the ironing and hoping more will happen tonight, but also I need to deal with the 720 emails from students yesterday and last night (it’s OK…they’re making up work because I explained yesterday how to fix those Not-A’s) and food and the gym is on my to-do list. So I can read my book. OK, also because I need to go to the gym. I do actually like the gym. I just like artmaking more.

With that, I need to book out of here early to deal with stuff…but I did get through all of the 300s and into the 400s, but not very far. I’m doing the weird arm in the middle and then starting on the other figure in the quilt. I’m not quite halfway, but I’m close. That’s something.

*Elliott Smith, Coming Up Roses

Pulling Your Puzzles Apart*

It’s funny…I thought I would have all this time yesterday to iron, but grading took forever, plus we walked the dogs in the much cooler weather. Yeah. This dog…

The clouds were low and it was in the 70s…a huge change from 109 on Saturday.

There’s an endangered bird species or two who live here…it’s nice that someone makes their homes decorative.

We tried a new way back, one we won’t try again, because it goes past a variety of sewage treatment areas.

Plus at some point it’s just a paved road. Not my first choice, although this piece of equipment was pretty.

I graded for a couple of hours after that, then cooked dinner and did something on this. Hmmm. French knots in the bottom left, in a variegated thread this time.

And because we were trying to finish watching the first episode of Ozark and I can’t just sit and watch TV, I kept sewing parts down for the next month’s worth of Folk Tails.

I think I made eyeballs too.

Finally to the ironing! I finished ironing down all the pieces of flesh from the day before.

Which probably took close to an hour. And then I started on all those pieces that weren’t flesh but were in the body…there were a ton of pieces in the heart this time, and many more arteries/veins…so the reds were more extensive than normal.

I don’t feel like I got much done really…just the eyeballs and one tattoo and the bloody stuff. I still have parts of the face, the lungs, the octopus tentacles coming off her hand, and another tattoo.

I started the bullet trails through her head, but didn’t get to the bullets. They’re lined up on the bottom. Anyway. I’m almost 6 hours into the ironing and I still haven’t gotten to the 400s…some of them are in the hair too. So I guess that will be tonight. I hope. I suspect 15 hours for the ironing is a good estimate…although I hope it will be less. Maybe by the end of the week? This is a tough week…back-to-school night will kick my ass. We’ll see.

Here’s the pile of pieces that are ironed plus the fabrics before I organized them…

I’m trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour (ha!), which just means midnight instead of 1 AM. So I’ve been watching the clock and making myself stop.

Here’s what I’ve used so far in fabrics…the flesh run on the left at the back of the box…and a ton of reds.

I have to remember that I have tutorial today after school, so exhaustion will be high. But I don’t have to cook dinner tonight…so that’s exciting. No really, it is.

*Coldplay, The Scientist

From the Mess to the Masses*

Three days off is always so nice. The weekend is so rushed when it’s shoved into two days…mostly because teachers need so much weekend time just to prep for the next week, unfortunately. I really enjoy being able to stretch work out a bit with that third day, although I’m sure if I always had three days off, I’d manage to fill them up and feel the same day-before stress I usually get on a Sunday. Too much to do in too little time.

The weather also cooled off considerably, so my brain is back. We got a little rain and it’s about 20-30 degrees lower in temperature. It’s like we’re human again.

I am trying to persuade Kitten to stay in the office for a little while, even with the interloper in the house…it worked for a bit.

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There were treats involved. Who uses an ironing board base as a pillow? Cats are weird.

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Speaking of weird…I almost bought this just for the raccoon. Yes, that’s a Disney princess behind him.

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Majorly weird. And not cheap.

So when we got back from the store (must have food), I started folding and putting away fabric, both from Saturday’s run to get a background fabric (the brownish gray or grayish brown)…the green is for the chalkboard behind her. And some other stuff that leaped into my hands.

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Then I found and sorted by color all the fabrics from the last quilt…

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And put it all away so I could start the next one.

And then I graded for a while. See this stuff? They all do this. Inhabit me with their tails. Plus that’s the gradebook he’s lying on. AND he looks pissed off that I might want to do these things near him.

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Trust me, Satchemo, I feel the same way about grading. But you’re not helping. I need to do more of it today.

Then I hung the drawing…big but mostly square. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, I’m making it. We’ll see.

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I tell you that so you don’t think I’m always totally confident about what I’m doing…that there are times when I’m not sure it’s going to turn out well or at all. And I keep doing it.

I just have to hope it works. I started out in the earth, so browns…

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But I quickly got into the flesh run for the first figure in the quilt. She used a run of 7 fabrics, although that brown was only used for one thing. I laid out all the flesh pieces last night…

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Here are all the pieces that are part of the first figure but aren’t flesh…so a lot of artery/heart pieces, some lungs, eyeballs, and I don’t remember what else.

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I’ll get to those today. It means I was almost to the 400s, but I haven’t done all of them. I don’t know what that means in terms of how far I am. I’ve got more to do, for sure. I spent almost 4 hours ironing yesterday and finally had to force myself to stop to go to bed.

She has words on her neck.

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I still have the three lightest fabrics of flesh to iron down…that was 1 AM. There’s a lot in the box…honestly, I need to pull a bigger box for the pieces.

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It’s already full. Ahhhh. I love this part; I really do. That and ironing it together.

OK, today. Well grading, of course. And a dog walk for sure…now that it’s cooler. And then ironing. Lots of ironing. Yay.

*Phoenix, Lizstomania

Glitter on the Mattress*

Do you ever spend all day checking your email obsessively, waiting to hear about that one thing you really wanna know about? Did you get in? Were you rejected? Well, was your work rejected? After 30 years of entering shows, I don’t really worry about rejections. They happen. A lot. And that’s OK. But sometimes I just wanna know. It’s not even the end of the world if it’s a rejection…you just wanna know one way or another.

I have all these mental deadlines for my art, everything neatly spaced out and organized in the calendar in my head, and then things come in and blow that all out. I thought about one art invite for about 12 hours and then decided no. Not for me. The other one though…sigh. I’m a little irritated, although I have yet to see deadlines…it just wasn’t on my calendar and I’m not sure I want to shove it in there. I have this quilt, then one other, and then hopefully a commission. I won’t plan past that right now because I can’t. But it does mean I need to stay on task, on top of the work. Which I can do. I don’t have a lot of mental down time between quilts because there are always about 50 of them in my head and even in process in sketchbooks or already copied. I remember the days when it might take weeks to get the next one going. That is no longer the case. And I’m OK with that. I like the work being there all the time in some form or another.

I currently have this one I’ve been working on…hopefully getting the Wonder Under all cut out today, deciding what the background fabric will be, and starting the ironing onto fabric this week. Then there’s the smaller climate quilt…it’s all cut out of Wonder Under and ready for ironing as well…it’s been sitting around since June or so, and it will keep sitting around for a while. Then I have at least three or four drawings that have been enlarged and numbered and are ready for tracing. And another two or three drawings that are enlarged and partially drawn. Plus quite a few drawings in the sketchbooks I have lying around.

Ironically, I haven’t drawn the next quilt yet…but if that takes me a while to process, like the last one, I can do some part of one of the ones lying around. This is my meditation, my relaxation, my happy happy joy joy.

I have almost 6 hours into cutting out here…

Probably have 2-3 hours to go…I’m binge watching The Crown now. Finished Hinterland. This quilt brought to you by Brit tv.

Satchemo is still adjusting…and the other two cats have kind of been pushed out of this room, hopefully temporarily.

I had gaming last night, but I finished this one on the right…

And started working on this one, but because I’m doing May before April (for no real good reason), I was missing two threads that came in April and were in my other box. But I worked on the leaves and came home and found the other threads.

I really should do things in order.

See? Now he’s taken over the light table…also Kitten and Midnight’s domain. We’re working on sharing spaces…

Here’s the 10 completed blocks…

This is Sue Spargo’s Folk Tails…it’s a pretty fun stitch, with lots of different embroidery going on. Plus animals. This is what I do when my other stuff is not portable and I have to go places and either keep awake or stitch with friends. None of it is quick to finish, but I’m OK with that.

So a long weekend. I have 4 things to grade (ugh. already) and I need to clean up the studio so I can pick fabrics and I want to sit on the deck and draw but it’s still uber hot today and tomorrow it’s supposed to rain so that might have to wait until Monday and there’s errands and cleaning and who knows wtf else. And I miss my kids. Boychild is hiking again and girlchild is idk, but if I ask her, she’ll tell me. Anyway, must eat and get cutting stuff out…try to focus a bit on art stuff today. Maybe school can wait.

*The B-52’s, Love Shack

Legs Up with a Book and a Drink*

Last night, I graded one class worth of the first real assignment for the year, the first one where I can sort of evaluate what I’m dealing with in terms of writing. They’ve had one quiz as well, which was open-note, so that evaluates something else. My original plan was to grade all the classes last night on that assignment, but oh, hell no. One period was enough. Now walk away. It’s funny how each new group of kids has a personality…this group listened to me when I said to put a space after punctuation (oh hallelujah! Finally!), but the run-on sentences might kill me. I mean, I’ve seen run-ons before, but this is like the run-ons have run-ons.

Yeah, I teach science. What’s your point? I need them to communicate better, clearly even, and so now I’m scrambling…as a science teacher…trying to figure out how to help them with that. Wish me luck. I suspect it’s not a one-day lesson (I don’t even have one day…I need a 5-minute lesson). Put it on my list of things to do. The ever-growing list that threatens to overtake the world.

I’ll find a way to grade the other four periods…absolutely will have to. Might even do the last period next, because I suspect they are the lowest. And I will ignore the four emails that came from one kid whose paper I returned…because if I get four emails from him every time I return something to him, it will drive me bonkers. And he’s a sweet kid and doesn’t deserve that.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about how to turn school off when you come home…how to walk out the door and get into your car and then Not do school at home. I think it’s impossible to walk away from the workload, and even harder to walk away from the kids and not keep it in your head…not constantly be trying to problem-solve the job while you’re trying to clean the bathroom. We try. Maybe some are good at it. I’m not.

Bottom left, more chain stitch to define an area…no real plan in my head except to fill that in somehow.

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Selfie with Wonder Under and cat.

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I didn’t start cutting out until late, but I did finish a whole piece, so that’s a plus. I think there are 5 left?

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Or maybe 4? Not sure. When I went to bed, the cat was sitting on them so I couldn’t count. I am still hoping to be done with cutting out earlier this weekend rather than later, so I can start ironing down to fabric…a nice long stretch of that would be good. Because that might balance out the grading, which needs to start in earnest. I always forget how much of my life is spent grading grading grading. I’ve spent 15 years of teaching trying to figure out how to simplify that and still get what I need out of my students. All the magical posts from people who have solved that problem…sometimes I read what they write and then I try to impose my kids on that. Doesn’t work.

Anyway…let the attempt to balance my life begin…and may it end each day with artmaking.

*Squeeze, Is That Love?

A Good Place to Be…

Well yesterday I managed to post my blog in the wrong place, but then fixed it. And then lost my keys. Or couldn’t find them. For long enough that I thought I might not make it to work. I “lost” my purse too, but since I knew I brought it out of the dentist with me, I assumed (correctly) that it was in the car. I did eventually find my keys and make it to work in 7 minutes flat (yikes…you can’t really be late when you’re a teacher), but it threw me for the rest of the day. Honestly, I don’t know where my keys are now either, but I usually drop them in the same two places every day, so they’re probably there. I hope. Unless the beginning-of-the-school-year brain did something crazy with them.

I’ve been misplacing a lot of things lately…too much chaos. That’s one of my goals for today at school: control the chaos. I have too many piles and pieces of paper. I need to get those organized and handled. What’s on the counter reflects into the brain. I’ve never been a particularly neat person, but generally I know where shit is. Organization doesn’t have to be neat by the way. I get nervous in houses and rooms that are totally and completely neat and minimalist and put away. Which is funny, because people generally clean up before you show up…but that’s not always who they really are. I can never get really truly clean and put away. I try. That’s all I can say. And no, I never volunteer my house for meetings. That would be crazy.

So I draw in class. We do cover pages for each unit and mine are generally a little crazy because I’m trying to get kids to think about what we’ll be studying and go outside the box. Plus I guess it’s another intro to their teacher. So this is Unit 1…

It’s basically the nature of science, how we explore and figure stuff out etc. The kids told me to put a student under the desk with stuff dripping on them…and then I added the wing mutation.

I always try to toss female scientists into the mix, so the girls get into their head that they can be a scientist. I tell them about my Physics teacher too, the one who basically thought girls couldn’t science and turned me off it.

Plus we’ve already done some days about safety in the lab, so it’s good to reiterate those things. I think it turned out pretty well.

I have to admit to not having a ton of energy when I get home right now. Girlchild reminds me that it will get better…that the first full week or two is really hard. Yup. It is. But if you think I’m always go go go…nah. I stop on the couch and barely move sometimes for like an hour or more before I find the energy to get up and do stuff. And then I get up, because just sitting on the couch is boring honestly.

So I forgot to do this the night before, so there are two night’s worth on here…

Stems and leaves on the roses…

And the sheaf stitch…totally forgot about that one.

That’s why I have so many stitch books…to remind me that stitches exist…brain extension.

So I started tracing around 9 or so and worked for almost 3 hours…

It’s really boring to just post pictures of what I traced. I think. Maybe you’re inordinately interested. I have I think 5 yards I’m working on right now…

I quit right before having to cut yard number 6…because there was a long piece that wouldn’t fit on the Wonder Under I already had cut. So I’m on piece 555 with about 7 hours into the tracing. More than halfway done…but no way am I gonna finish tonight. Maybe tomorrow? It depends. I’m already really tired and I have a show to go to tonight…so the odds of my being up early tomorrow are pretty low unfortunately. And I’m still trying to get on a good gym schedule, to make it routine again. It’s hard to do when you’re tired, but it’s important. So that’s tomorrow as well.

Anyway. I have plans for getting organized at school, maybe walking the dog this afternoon, since he’ll be on his own tonight, and finishing the tracing sometime this weekend (ha ha ha…because this weekend is kind of a mess for that). Hopefully I can get it all cut out next week and then start ironing over the 3-day weekend? That would be cool…sounds like a nice way to spend a long weekend. A breakfast out, maybe a walk somewhere with the dogs, and then some ironing. OK, I know that sounds weird to most people, but I really love the part where I’m picking out fabrics. It’s very relaxing and meditative. A good place to be…