I Quilt So I Don’t Kill People

Upcoming holidays terrify teachers. We know that however much we are looking forward to time off, we have two things going against us: 1. students who also realize a holiday is coming and will completely stop working and turn into psychos who can’t stop talking, and 2. a load of work to complete that could potentially take every waking moment of the holiday. So the week before the holiday is kind of a stress fest…in the past, for Thanksgiving, I’ve tried to finish ALL the grading by Sunday night so I can have the whole break to myself, but that isn’t going to happen this year. No freakin’ way. Because I’m the nutball who had all the cell projects, a test, and an entire science unit due this week, and I’m still behind from late October. Why am I behind, you might ask? Because I actually come home and do something besides grade. I know. It’s crazy. But I do it anyway.

So I’m finally mailing this off to its owner…

This is Breast for LM. The image is 8×10″ and she’s going to wrap it around a canvas. It’s from the Mammogram quilt. I redrew that one section after copying it from the original drawing, where that bit was about 8×10″ Then I moved the top hand so it was a little more symmetrical. She commissioned it in early summer and it’s been done for a while, but I’ve been waiting for her to get settled in her new place…so it’s mailing today.

The other one mailing today is Cat 3, going all the way to Austria. I put a label on it Saturday, and then noticed I had missed quilting between the leg and tail…

Damn. Spacy. So I quilted it. It needed customs forms, so I’ve done all of that and will ship it out today as well.

I had way too much to do yesterday. I washed another quilt at my parents’ house that is going to another buyer who is allergic to cats. My parents don’t have cats, so I wash it there and then pack it up there, and hopefully that means it doesn’t have a lot of cat dander in it. She’s done OK with the others I’ve mailed her. But it also needs to be mailed soon.

I graded a lot, I cooked all my breakfasts, lunches, and one dinner yesterday afternoon. And I finally got the finger pads from Amazon, post-razor-blade crazy, so I finished the binding on this one, Cat 6…the crazy one.

16″ x 12″, $285

My finger was unharmed during the binding process, so I guess those crazy stick-on things work. I drew this during a staff meeting when a coworker requested a drawing “with a cat in it.” Yeah. I can’t always follow directions, but “with a cat in it” kinda describes about 90% of my quilts. Or “with a bird in it” and often “with a snake in it” or “with Christmas lights in it.” I can’t really explain the last one.

My parents just handed me luggage for next week’s trip to Seattle (one of the reasons I might not get much work done) and I don’t know if my big sketchbook will fit in it. That said, I don’t want to take a bigger suitcase, so I will have to adjust. So yeah, I got a lot done yesterday, but Sundays are always crazy. Next Sunday will be lovely. I will only be grading and arting. Not panicking about next week’s lesson plan. Although there is some argument for panicking now about the following week, since I don’t have it much planned out. Whoops!

Honestly, I don’t know how I don’t own this T-shirt yet…

I’m fairly sure it’s true.

So one cat left and two hearts in hands, and based on my completion rate over the last week, that’s three nights’ worth, although I’m looking at the week and I have quilt class and I need something to work on there, but really want these beasts done. One of the things I did yesterday though was clean off the light table so I could start tracing the next quilt, because with about 773 pieces, that’s about 8 hours of tracing and then another 6 or so of cutting pieces out, and I want to be picking fabrics on Sunday, so that’s a mere 14 hours of work between now and then. While teaching and grading stuff. I think I’m fucking nuts. See shirt above…

Revelatory Moments That I Can’t Remember…

It was a long day, full of microscopes, slow internet, broken slides, irritating realizations, and a meeting after school. It was helped by hanging out with someone for dinner and some quiet time with the animals. The house is cold at night, so they get closer and closer. I can’t say I got a lot done, because I had to send a long union email and manage some other school stuff, plus read the boychild’s highly amusing rough draft for some pre-law class, and write up an independent study contract that the kid won’t do at all. Because when your kid is failing four classes, it makes sense to pull him out of school for an extra week. Because a week at Thanksgiving isn’t enough. Frustrating, but whatever.

I debated applying for a copyediting job and realized I already applied for another one last week and thought THAT sounded crazy. That’s two I’ve debated this week. I really need it to be a side job though and not an all-encompassing Other Job. I’m buried with the job I have. I’m scrambling to get caught up.

So finally on the couch with animals, Midnight decides the cat quilts are hers…despite the pins sticking out all over the place.

She kept rubbing her head on the edge and I’d bop her, waiting for the inevitable Pin in the Eye injury. She eventually got up and moved right next to me (I guess I’m warm) while I stitched the binding on Cat 4…

14 ½” w x 13” h, $160. Contact me if you’re interested.

I actually stopped in the middle on this one to go write that contract for the kid who will be gone all next week and has turned in nothing at all this trimester. Good times! As I said to the administrators, I’m going to work harder on this ISC than he has all year in my class…I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it SHOULD work.

Three more cats and two hearts in hands to go. I’m debating taking them to gaming tonight. The callus is better, but still sore. Maybe if I just bring one tonight. I’ll think about it. Cat 3 did sell…she was my favorite because she looks just like Kitten. But I have the technology if I want to make another one.

Last night I had some revelatory moment about artmaking and living alone and creativity and whatever. I don’t remember what it was this morning, because I’m tired, I didn’t get enough sleep (when DO I?), I haven’t had all my caffeine, I’m prepping the lab in my head for today and revising what I think they can do, and I’m also writing Monday’s assignment in there as well, which could be an issue, plus I just realized I have kids bringing cell projects today, food ones, so I’ll have to grade them during prep so they can eat them at lunch. I seem to bring teacher chaos on myself.

But it was something along the lines of maybe having all the alone time helps me make more art, but I know that having less alone time (after Wednesday ALL DAY almost not talking to anyone) would be better for me in the long run. Some days I don’t even notice and some days the silence just weighs on me. And that’s silence that’s filled with loud music or something on TV or the computer. It’s never really silent here. And there are cats and a dog demanding attention, so it’s not even really that alone. But people constantly ask what it’s like to have the kids gone, and I try to explain, and usually the people who ask either went through it themselves or have absolutely no idea. They think deeply and say that they can see after a day or two of no one being around that they might start to miss it. Then again, yesterday I had both kids texting and emailing me on and off, so it’s a little like being connected in space, even when they’re not in the house. Though girlchild sent this…

With all that, I need to get to school to receive cell model cakes and set up microscopes for swimmy things (I saw some yesterday! Yay!) and cheek cells. Lots of washing slides will be going on today. They never told me about the dishes I would wash for science when I said I wanted to teach it.

My Lady Parts…

So it’s a school holiday, just one day, lonely in the middle of the week. Usually Veteran’s Day leans toward one end of the week or the other, so we get a long weekend, but not this year. It’s a nice break between two very frustrating days at school and probably two more frustrating days, unless I can get my mindful mind floating high enough over the stupid shit that it doesn’t drag me down. We’re nearing the end of a unit and there’s just a lot of crazy going on, both with kids and parents, and I don’t have the energy for it, I guess.

Part of that is art-related of course. I finished this amazing piece in September and it didn’t get into that show, and I fully realize there are more shows out there for it, and it’s a challenging piece and I shoot myself in the foot every time I make a challenging piece…unless it gets the recognition I think it deserves, and then it’s all OK. This last year has been hard for that, but I’m still making them, still drawing them, still entering them in shows.

And these cute little cat quilts…see, they’re easy enough to make, but I don’t love them. Well, I love Cat 6, but you can see why. And Cat 3 is sweet, sure, and Cat 7 is kinda cool. But they’re not really fulfilling. They’re a quick snack and I want a full meal. So honestly? I’m trying to finish them all as quickly as possible, which would be easier if I had my binding callus on my middle finger, but I don’t…so it’s sore as hell this morning after doing three of them last night. I will search around for those pads or one of the many thimbles I own, but I know from personal experience that I suck at thimbling…I just automatically switch to an unfettered finger, setting up new holes and sore spots there.

But first I had to go to the doc this morning, another MRI of my “lady parts” as they were called earlier today. That phrase makes me laugh. Because I’m so not a lady. But hopefully after fasting and lying in an incredibly uncomfortable position as magnets yelled at each other through my body, the scan will show my alien beasts (fibroids) reducing, disappearing, leaving me alone to suffer my uterus without them. I suspect one is still there, the big one, the one my kids used to kick during pregnancy. But the hundreds of little ones that populated my uterine muscle, I’m OK if they’ve left the building. I feel a little mean starving them of nutrients, but they were becoming ungrateful house guests who had outstayed their welcome. I was tired of dealing with them and their detritus. So hopefully it’s all good news.

Back to the little quilts. Sizes and prices are listed below. Just let me know if you’re interested in one of them. Shipping is included.

This is Cat 1…

11” w x 10” h, $120.

I do actually calculate prices from time spent and then add average shipping costs in. There are no fancy formulas on these. I’m actually debating giving Cat 1 whiskers…so she may look different tomorrow.

Cat 2…

13 ½” w x 10 ¼” h, $155. Might also need whiskers…hand-embroidered if so…

Cat 3…

13 ½” w x 12 ½” h, $180. Kitten sleeps in this position all the time.

And I rephotographed Owl 2.0 in the daylight…

17” w x 10 ½” h, $235.

So the rest of my day off will be filled with errands and cleaning more of the boychild’s room out, moving it back in here. I’m actually going to move another section of stuff in here out into his room so I can go through it easier as well…because it’s been piled on the floor for so long and I’m tired of it, but there’s no way to force me to get through it in here, so I just don’t. A deadline like a kid moving back for 5 weeks is a lot more motivating.

I love how I can psych myself out. You’d think I would catch on…

While I was cleaning stuff out, I found this body-part crazy quilt I started ages ago (no dates on anything)…I used to do crazy quilts. Still love the idea of them, love the embroidery, but don’t have the time for it. So I drew a series of body parts, maybe 12? on white fabric, and then crazy-pieced the rest of the square around it. You can see some I haven’t pieced yet on the left.

I didn’t do a uterus, but I did do some lady parts. Each part got one main color…that’s a knee, by the way.

A nose…obviously orange.

Eyeballs when you have blue eyes…a predominant number of the eyeballs in my quilts are blue. Some green. Very few brown.

Penis is obviously red…

That’s a strange elbow.

So I think what bamboozled me after that is what color do I do next? Do I do repeats? Obviously I can do green, but after that? I debated gray and black and brown and white, but didn’t like those options. So there are inbetweens, I guess, although I didn’t really censor the colors I used so far, indiscriminately using lights with darks in the color range. Or using colors more than once. Which is probably the best option.

I start these weird projects and my kids will find all of them after I’m dead, including the pile of 50 eyeballs on orange fabric, and they will wonder What the Fuck I was thinking. Sometimes I do too, if that helps.

Anyway, I have one cat left to bind, and then will have 6 to sew by hand, if my finger can handle it later today. If not, maybe I’ll take a break and trace Wonder Under for a while instead. I should probably take advantage of the time and grade something as well, but every time I think about grading, I think about the kid who complained yesterday that I hadn’t graded his warmup from last week yet, because instead, I graded the thing he needed for his study guide, but he didn’t actually turn that IN, so he currently has a zero. He thinks the warmup will save him, but even if he got 100% on the warmup, he’d average out to 50%. Math is not his strong point. It’s often not mine either, but at least I admit it and ask for help.

I really really really want to draw, dammit. Like right this second. Aargh. Set timer. Draw. Then go do cleaning and errands. Days off shouldn’t be wasted…they should be honored with artistic endeavors. And more sleep. And peeing whenever I want (ah, being a teacher often sucks).

Brainpower

Yesterday was more stressful than it needed to be. Dropping 6 new kids into my classes on a Monday when I’m doing a lab is a pain in the ass, and it was entirely avoidable. They could have told me the week before, let me know what their names and schedules were. I could have emailed their current teachers and checked on behavior, especially since the microscope labs seem to bring out the worst in that. I could have had their science folders ready to go, the seating charts adjusted, all without the last-minute scrambling. But no. Instead I got crazy. I didn’t need any of that crazy.

Today should be better (unless they’ve found more new students for me that they haven’t told me about). The lab is mostly set up, I have a plan for dealing with some of the stupid from yesterday, and those poor new kids have now been terrified by my class and will never misbehave. One of them, a sweet little thing, has been saying hi to me for the last three weeks. Apparently she was very excited to come to my class (whatever) and made sure she knew how to pronounce my name. Very impressive. We’ll see how they do.

But after all that drama and stress, I had to go to the gym. I did grade at the gym, using the iPad on the stationary bike, but then I rewarded my weightlifting with reading my book on the elliptical. There was only so much crap I could deal with yesterday. I have one assignment that really needs to be graded quickly. I got through 3 classes yesterday; will get through the other 2 today. Google Classroom won’t let them see an assignment once they turn it in, mostly so they can’t keep editing it before we grade it, so if I want them to use it for say a study guide, then I have to grade and return them. Speed grading…the worst kind of speed dating.

The gym was a smart choice. I came back and dealt with dinner and the boychild trying to renew his license online and one more class of assignments, and then I took myself off to the studio, which is where I wanted to be anyway.

This is Cat 5…the foxlike kitty.

I had to find and bring in the orange fabric drawer for that one. I couldn’t find anything that was dark enough and in the right range. The belly fabric is only tiny pieces, not enough for a binding. But I managed to find some weird thing in there that I think came from Sandi. It was folded weird, and many of her fabrics were folded weird.

Then I did my favorite one…Cat 6…

Seriously, how can you not love this one? It’s weird, it has a cat, there’s eyeballs and a disembodied hand. OK, I know my taste in images runs a little strange.

All that’s left is Cat 7, the brightly colored sister of Cat 5. Hopefully tonight…then I have a bunch of bindings to handsew, and then I’ll be out of the studio for a while (except for cleanup). Wonder Under tracing goes on in the living room. Same with cutting it out and sorting it. Presumably I can get that done before Thanksgiving break and maybe start picking fabrics then (don’t think about the huge number of projects that will be coming in…seriously).

Meanwhile, I’ve been applying for some more editing jobs, even though it feels lately like I would be unable to actually DO any freelance work (in my spare time). I guess I really don’t need to sleep or eat. Right? Whatever. I’m a few thousand short for college, so somehow I need to make up that shortfall. I just don’t have the brainpower to figure that out right now…my brain just wants to draw and play with fabric. It’s kind of a grump at the moment.

Art Before Chaos…

It’s funny. I finished grades around midnight Friday, and then I resolved to do no work all weekend. I mostly held to that, except I had to do a minor bit of prep and send the team email, but otherwise, I refused to sit down and grade last night. Then sometime around 1 AM (yes, I was still awake dammit) I realized the kids would need one of their turned-in assignments in order to get ready for next-week’s test. Dammit. That means it needs to be graded ASAP. So I’m back in school panic mode. Which truly sucks.

The pro is that I moved a good chunk of stuff back into the studio in the last few days and I did get a bit of art stuff done. I made it to two art openings yesterday as well.

But really, I wanted to focus on getting some bindings on so I could move on to the next project, especially after getting another rejection yesterday. Giant sigh. It’s OK. That piece can go somewhere else.

Here’s the first of the two hearts (still traveling in backwards order apparently). I needed a red fabric for this one that didn’t zap too much with the blue, so that’s what made me move half my studio…just to get to the reds.

It worked, because before that, all I had done was this…

Some of the bookshelf put away, the drawers below shoved in (one of them is empty…I don’t even know how that’s possible).

But with moving reds, I had to move all this stuff in…

Because the red drawer goes right next to it. So I did. Yes. All that fabric needs to be put away, except I’m using it at the moment. These are all the fabrics from making the small quilts, and I try to use those fabrics for the bindings when I can. The red…the red, I couldn’t. It was too much.

But for this little guy…

Although that’s not the green of his eyes, it came from the pile I used on one of the other quilts. I finally started going in order with Cat 1. I thought it would be strange to finish Cat 7 before Cat 1.

So this is Cat 2…

Easy enough to pull that gray for the binding. I don’t always have enough to do that, but this one I did. She will be straighter and flatter when I finish the hand sewing.

You can see my model hogging the chair. Every time I sat down to sew again, she’d have to shift around, and sometimes she’d leave, and one time she full-on attacked me.

Such a sweet beast.

Cat 3…

Another gray binding. Calm like the kitty.

Cat 4…

Not so calm. I had three choices for the binding, but I liked the randomness of this one.

So that’s five more bound and ready for hand-sewing. I only finished the one last week, so I have six total. Plus three more cats to bind tonight, if I get to it.

I had other stuff to write about, but my coteacher just texted me that they added 6 kids to my classes, starting today, and I’m doing a lab…and there’s no way I’m prepped for 6 new kids, so I’m kamikazing out of here to school. Pissed off. Because how hard is it to tell us that 6 kids are transferring from the newcomers’ classes to ours? Seriously? I just quickly tossed all of them on Google Classroom. They can learn how to use a virtual microscope before I let them on the real thing.

Welcome to chaos…the teacher world.

Taking Care of Myself…

I would love to report numerous small quilts bound and ready for hand-stitching, since I know Mad Max: Fury Road arrives from Netflix today, but no such luck. I went to a big contemporary art show last night, just a quick runaround to look at mostly big brightly colored crap with some bits and pieces of nice. A group I’m in has a booth there. I could have been in it, but I don’t work particularly small and there were 11 artists there, so not much space…and even then, very expensive.

Then I came home and graded. I had one period of a very nasty assignment. Well, I thought it was a perfectly reasonable assignment, but apparently their brains left the building and they forgot that living things are made of cells and things inside cells must by definition be smaller than cells or they won’t fit. So I spent the last 24 hours bleeding red pen all over these papers, hoping they would get it. Might be a waste of time. It’s been a rough week for our team. Not a lot of work completion. Frustration with trying to get kids to turn in makeup work. Wondering why the parents are so checked out. Dear Politicians: You can’t have any accountability for teachers until you get parents to buy in and be a part of the team. There’s no way I can make a kid give a shit when the parents don’t. Occasionally I’ll get one that rises above it, and I hope more of that happens in high school and college as their brains mature, but 12-year-olds? Not happening. Stop threatening me with accountability if you’ve never been a teacher. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. This is not a job where if I work harder, magic happens and kids produce. Some kids are just checked out. I can work my butt off trying to get them to check in, but sometimes it just won’t work.

So my goal this weekend is not to look at school stuff for as many minutes as possible. I have two art openings tomorrow and some relaxation time scheduled for tonight. I need to do some cleanup in here too, try to move more stuff from the boychild’s room. If I can get the bookshelf restocked with whatever was on it, then I can move the larger furniture/storage pieces out of there. The chaos is bugging me.

I also want to get more of the small quilts done and maybe start tracing Wonder Under on Bathtub 5. Here was the original drawing back in April…

You can see the owl in the top right is like the one I just finished. I added stuff below and in the top right. I also had to add some lines to break up the edge of the bathtub, so I wouldn’t have to find a piece of fabric big enough to go all the way around the bottom, like I did last time. Big white and off-white pieces of fabric for bathtubs…the last one had more bathtub showing. This one doesn’t have much. Not as much water showing either. But these two huge rugs on the side. Gotta wonder what I was thinking.

That’s the key though. When I draw, I’m not thinking about the production or how much of a pain it will be. I’m just drawing.

This is one of those days when I want to pretend that I am not a teacher at all, that I don’t have a frustrating week of microscopes ahead of me (actually, my co-teacher gave me an idea about how to manage the frustration and I’m totally going to use it, because otherwise, some kids will take 5 days to look at a newsprint e under the scope. And that’s just wrong.). I’m going to act like the end of the trimester doesn’t even exist. I’m going to turn off the teacher part and let the artist part just ramble. If I can.

That’s the other part that drives me nuts…when people complain that teachers don’t care about kids and that’s why we won’t (insert crazy-ass comment here about spending more hours than we already do unpaid or something about how THEIR husband doesn’t get paid overtime, which is nuts, because I don’t even get paid what their husband does and I work monster hours at this job). I care way too much about my kids. Even the assholes. And yes, there are assholes. And I tell myself repeatedly that a 12-year-old does not become an asshole without parental (or guardian) involvement or environmental shit, that they are still redeemable, that the parents aren’t doing their jobs. I care even about the assholes. And I spend hours calling home and putting together makeup work and getting in their faces or encouraging them or whatever it takes to get them to stop sitting there and actually DO something. I don’t care? My ass. Fuck you. My job is not a corporate job. I’ve had one of those. I know what that looks like. This job sucks it out of you. And if you let them, they will take even more time. I had about 20 student emails last night, panicked. I had a parent yesterday blaming me for her son’s computer not working, demanding that I fix it, or excuse her son from the assignment they left until the last minute. I just walked away from all of it. I answered one email. I ignored the rest. Most of them didn’t need anything anyway.

Yeah. Today. Going to gym. Straightening things. Putting stuff away. Playing with fabric. Hanging out. Not school. I have to be able to go back on Monday and be in a better mood about it. I just have to. I have to take care of myself…

Stop the Breaking…

I got in the car on Saturday after finishing that post, ready to run errands and buy a dryer. Ms. Efficient, totally handling everything…completely laughed off the repairman’s death sentence on my Maytag. Yeah. I guessed. Because you know. The universe. Whatever. My mantra for the year. What-the-fuck-ever.

I got in the car. And it wouldn’t start.

So I sat there for a minute, because it had done this twice before this week, but the kids’ car is already in the shop, so I don’t have a backup. I was waiting to see if it happened again (and fatally, because the car eventually started the last two times with some tinkering…and it’s not the battery, and my car guy hates it when I bring in the car for nonreproducible problems) and for the Honda to come back.

I tinkered like the last two times, trying my solution and my ex’s solution (it died in front of his house earlier this week). Nope. I call him, hoping he did something I don’t remember. I try it and it doesn’t start. And I guess that was the straw…the one with the camel, you know? I started crying. But my brain’s already a step ahead, trying to figure out the car situation at my parents’, realizing they must have a car there, and I need to go over there to get their Consumer Reports anyway, so I bum a ride over there, grab the book, steal my dad’s car (I did call first but they didn’t answer). Run my errands. Come home and buy a dryer online. Do a ton of grading work, input grades (which is why I have 20 panicked student emails this morning), and then go off to watch not-horror movies.

Mischief managed. Hey, I’m not saying I was calm and collected all day. I was pretty irritated at the universe. I cried quite boisterously for a while. Then yesterday I got the damn thing towed to the fixer guy and left it there. This morning I’ll drive over and give him the run down and the keys. I still have dad’s car. If he needs it, he can come steal it back. Maybe it’ll be something easy, instead of fatal error (that’s what the repair guy called my dryer issue).

I also got everything back in the closet with the hot-water heater, cleaning out years of junk in there. Then I cleaned the cupboards above the washer and dryer, making room for all the crap that’s been stored on the washer for way too long. Then I installed a plastic-bag holder and hooks for the dog’s swimming towels (this swimming habit of hers is killing me). Finally, because all the pantry stuff had been stored in the kids’ bathroom, I went in there and cleaned it. It’s freakin’ spotless (well, don’t look too closely at the tub…I was getting tired). Now I just need to put the studio back together with the same zeal.

I graded for a little bit more last night, until I was sick of it…and came in here and quilted the second heart…well, first I had to negotiate chair space with Kitten.

She allowed as I might have her claws in my butt. Then I quilted it…

And started the owl, before realizing that the clocks had in fact changed already and that was real time.

Dammit. So it’s outlined, but not quilted yet. Tonight. And then I can start trimming and binding…not my favorite part, but the almost-done part. So far, the simplest one has taken 27 minutes to quilt and the most complicated one has taken 61 minutes.

Then before I went to bed, I found all the drawings I’d enlarged so far. There was one I’d forgotten about, so I think it’s next. Maybe. I’m still debating. There’s the one the owl above comes from, but it really needs more on the bottom. I guess I could enlarge it and then decide. Because last night, I thought the decision was made, and this morning, that other drawing is still talking to me. Guess I should listen.

Got a busy day. Hopefully nothing else breaks or stops working or gives up on me completely.

Just About Drawing…

Adjustments. I’m constantly making adjustments. To plans, goals, routines, lesson plans, curriculum. Last night, I made it to an art opening and Costco (kind of an incongruous pairing, but it made sense at the time), then came home and made dinner and ate it, and then that was it. And I was sitting on the couch, trying to figure out why I was SOOOO tired, why I was almost falling asleep. You know, it really doesn’t matter why. I needed to sleep. But I felt bad going to bed early without getting anything ELSE done. I mean, I only ran a huge gel electrophoresis lab all day with 150 kids and then sorta cleaned up after school and carved a pumpkin for the school contest and then came home and dealt with animals and then drove halfway across town for an opening and then traipsed through Costco, hauling 42-pound bags of cat litter in and out of the car and then into the garage. And then standing to cook from scratch mostly cuz I’m kinda crazy that way, so much standing and walking. I think maybe I earned that tired.

So I made another cup of tea (those don’t keep me awake, amusingly enough. I think my blood might be caffeinated.) and took my sketchbook (and the dog and one cat) to bed. Now really, I could have just gone to bed and that would have been OK. I was certainly tired enough. But I drew instead. And then slept.

Goofiest totem pole ever. Heart in pieces. Lotsa details…the stuff I love. This is the medium-sized sketchbook, about 9×12″? I usually enlarge 250%, so it wouldn’t be huge if I made it into a quilt. There were a couple other drawings in the book that would make good smaller quilts. But I really want to do a bigger one next. It took about 30 minutes to draw that. And no, I didn’t finish quilting the little quilts, and I probably won’t finish them until maybe Monday, and then they still need binding and sleeves. So a week later than I planned. Oh well.

Really, this was just about drawing. Because I just wanted to. And then I put the sketchbook down on the floor, took my last sip of tea, and fell soundly asleep. Probably a good thing, because today is Halloween at school, and that takes a whole ‘nother level of patience. An extra hour of sleep will probably come in useful. A coupla shots probably would too, but that’s apparently not allowed.

Losing Myself in Art…

I did this DNA extraction lab with my students yesterday and it barely worked. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I assumed it was me, that I was fucking it up somehow, water too cold or hot, chemicals in wrong order, something. It wasn’t until the end of the day and an email to the people who supplied the kits that we tracked the problem down…a new supplier of wheat germ that didn’t break up easily, so the DNA wasn’t being released in those nice long snotty clumps…it was just little tiny blobs. Frustrating to say the least, but my co-teacher has the benefit of my experience now (and maybe the supplier will make some notes for future users). Someone asked why I didn’t test the lab out the day before, but we’ve done this lab for quite a few years, albeit usually with a lot of help, and it’s always worked. I had no reason to doubt it. And honestly, here’s the kicker, I didn’t fucking have time to test it the night before. My prep is usually trashed by stupid stuff, I stay late some days but often have meetings or appointments (chiropractor on Monday). I could get up earlier and go in or spend hours on the weekends, but then I get crankier and crankier, because my body really doesn’t fall asleep before 12:30 and that’s on a good night, and I would like to stay away from school on the weekends. Last night I stayed and made sure I mostly knew how to do today’s lab, because I couldn’t remember how to use the micropipettes, but I didn’t go through the whole electrophoresis process. And I don’t have a prep before I teach any more, so I won’t have a chance probably to do that today either. Maybe I can.

Meanwhile, the dryer stopped working. It had to dry all those towels from the water heater experience, and it just died? I’m not sure what the issue is. Checked the circuit breaker, found the book on it, doesn’t seem to be something I can fix. But it’s 10 1/2 years old. Average life span of a dryer is 10-13 years. Life has gotten a bit frustrating in the last week and I’m not handling it well. I think I was already at my stress limit and this stuff is just over the top. I’m also trying to clean up post water heater, go through stuff, throw some out, recycle some, clean up and organize the rest. It’s overwhelming as well. I made it through one pile of damp papers last night. Amusing what some of it was. Don’t know why I couldn’t find time before to toss it. It’s gone now. But some of it was important. Now that it’s dried out, I can find its home.

I know why I couldn’t toss stuff before. I make art. In the moments when the rest of the world is cleaning house and straightening up and organizing and tossing stuff, I sit down at my sewing machine and make. And there’s no one else here to pick up the slack, to straighten that pile up or deal with this issue or that mess, so it just becomes a task I can’t handle. I’d like to say I’m going to spend some time this weekend…or even tonight…dealing with this, and maybe I will, but grades are also due in about a week and a half. And they were totally sidelined by all this water damage etc.

Whatever. Do what you can. Keep making. Because I paid the second kid’s college payment last night, and I still need $8100. More than half of it by March 1. I know where $1500 of it is coming from…and there’s another $100 I know will come in. $6500. Yikes. Dear colleges…

So that was last night. It only made sense to sit down at the machine and lose myself in some quilting…here’s the cat that resembles a fox…

Two things: first, I didn’t quilt in the gap in the middle because I forgot. I did go back and do it later when I realized…and I realized because the second cat is the same cat, so it reminded me. Second, I was aiming for a cat we used to have, Rusty. He came to us because a friend’s daughter brought him home from the store…a woman out front had free kittens. And then their landlord said no. He was a coyote dinner at some point, because my ex was determined that cats should be able to roam free. Rusty was the first one we lost. When Kiwi went, I closed the doors and put my foot down. Rusty was probably orangier than that, but hey, it’s art.

Then I decided I wanted a really brightly colored cat, so I used the same drawing…the color under the machine is apparently really hard for the camera to handle…

And I sewed this one last night as well.

It’s cute…kind of a counterpoint to the quiet cats I finished earlier.

So there’s one cat left, the really weird one with the eyeballs. Then there’s two hearts in hands and the owl. Those are all more complicated, so they’ll take longer. The second one, Cat 7, has taken about 2 1/2 hours so far to make. Still need to trim, bind, put a sleeve on, and maybe give her some whiskers. We’ll see how long that takes. These two are almost the smallest…Cat 1 is smaller.

So even just writing about sewing the cats and the thought process makes my brain in a better place. It pulls up out of the muck and handles life. So I guess that’s why I do that art stuff more than the cleaning stuff. Like I didn’t already know that. The way my brain works, it needs the art stuff to balance everything else out.

Issues with Starting…

So hi. It’s morning. We’re not friends, morning and I. Never have been. Although it feels incredibly bad to miss morning completely, because then it feels like I’ve wasted so much time. But OK. It’s here, brought on by the alarm clock and time passing and all that crap. I’m running two major labs over the next two days. Plus: kids will be engaged. Con: I might have to kill some of them. We’ll see how that goes. I’m sure teachers shouldn’t have to talk about killing students. We aren’t really. Everyone knows that, right? It’s just that consider the one point when your own child is at their most annoying and you want to strangle them, duct tape their mouth shut, and lock them in the closet. Well I have that kid every day. Sometimes more than once. So when I’m doing something in class that requires people to listen to instructions or there will be a giant mess to deal with, I get a little cranky when that one kid goes, “Wait, what are we doing?” Or makes a dumb joke and looks around the room for attention. Or is messing with the lab materials. I can be very calm. Please get up out of your chair, take all your stuff, and go sit outside. In 7th grade, brains are often absent. It’s a special form of senility.

So I’m hoping it goes OK. I prepped yesterday all day and I have more to do today for tomorrow. It’s just stressful.

Quilting is going slowly…but it’s going. I had to do some other stuff last night (always do) before I could start, so I only got one done. Plus I was tired, so I tried to go to bed early. Mostly I suck at that. That might have something to do with not liking mornings. They start too damn early.

Cat 4 in all his spotty wonder. His? Hers? Dunno.

Thread kept breaking. Probably I should change the needle. Always forget to keep track of that.

I have this one fabric I bought about 4 or 5 years ago that I really love. I love it so much, I’m down to about a 4×6″ piece of it and a bunch of tiny scraps. Of course, I’m never going to find it again, but I was trying to find a replacement. The top one is too yellow and I think the one on the right is too busy (I’ll still use them…don’t you worry), but I think the one on the left works as a replacement.

It’s still more lines than white space, unlike the other one, but it might work.

OK, well my car has been having issues with starting, and with my luck, this morning will be the one where it dies completely. A day when I have to get in early to get the lab ready, right? So I have to leave early enough that I can call for help if I need it. I really wish I could spend less of my life calling for help and more of it just living. Or drawing. Or quilting. Or something.

I spent all day yesterday trying to make these gels for the lab. The first batch was too hot so it melted the tape and went everywhere. Then I dropped one. Then at least 4 of them split down the middle, probably because I was moving them too early. They take so LONG to harden up. I guess the lesson is patience, which I suck at in the first place. I don’t have time to be patient. Unless it’s with cutting out a million tiny pieces, and that’s not even really patience. It’s just how long the job takes.

Speaking of which, I need to start the next big quilt. I just realized how much time I’ll be gone over Thanksgiving and how busy I’ll be with school up until then (and after, because of all the stuff due right before). And I have a baby quilt to do in December as well. Not enough time. Never is. I guess it’s all about having issues with starting! Quilts, cars, me. Taking on another large project…I’m ready but I’m buried with school, so it feels like a mistake…although I know the bigger mistake is letting school take over my life. Setting boundaries. Priorities. Knowing what you want but not knowing how to get it. Story of my life…