Not Enough Hours…

You know, just when you give up on ever hearing back about something, you inevitably get some weird voicemail about it. Guaranteed. So that’s one fuckup in 2023 solved in 2024. May there be more. I had a defective insulin pen. It only took them 4 months to issue me a voucher.

I’m getting lots done each day; it just doesn’t feel like enough. I started tracing Wonder Under for the new quilt, which has an insane deadline, on Monday night…

I spent more time than I usually do on a daily basis, because it’s break, and I’m allowed. Plus I cleaned and organized beforehand. Pay-off. I did the same thing last night, but that’s because I stayed up too late…

That’s not something I should keep doing, because sleep is one of my major focuses of the new year. Sleep affects blood sugar. And stress. Also stress affects blood sugar. And sleep. Annoying really. There should just be a button I can push to fix all of those. ANYWAY. I’m in the 400s…planning on finishing today. Then trimming the Wonder Under. Fast fast.

Unfortunately, this is the part of Winter Break where I panic about not getting shit done. I took the dog back to the eye doc today; his eyelid is healing fine and hopefully the growth will not come back and his eyes will not deteriorate super fast. We’ll see. He’s a good boy. I have a haircut later today, after a COVID-related rescheduling. Works for me. I have pilates today. That’s normal for a Wednesday. I started lesson planning yesterday with a little grading on the side. I still have one assignment that’s not done. Well, two, but one is super small. I should plan to finish those. I wanted to lesson plan first, though. I have a hellacious January, with 4 sex-ed curriculum meetings that weren’t supposed to exist (ah fun) and a whole host of other meetings, plus progress report grades are due. So I’m trying to preemptively get my head above water through February. Ha! Yeah, I know. I’m trying. I managed to get through 7 days of plans yesterday, but they had already been sort of roughly put together, so it was just finessing things and making sure there were rubrics and due dates etc. That’s almost the first two weeks of school, because of holidays and the like. So I’ve got another 9 days to get through for February, and they mostly don’t exist…and I’d really like to get a rough draft of the whole genetics unit, if I can pull it off. I don’t think I can, but I often set goals that I have no chance of achieving on time. I also need to ship some stuff today, write a blogpost I keep talking about writing, and do some organizing for a class I’m taking next week. NOT school related. Plus the quilty stuff for other people that I haven’t finished due to a shortage of time to do all the things. As always.

This was in the grocery store parking lot yesterday.

Chainsaw animals…always fun.

OK. It’s raining here. That’s a good reason to stay inside. I was up way too early. I need to put a label on a quilt and make sure I have hanging slats for it. Then head out for haircut and random errands. Busy day. Not enough hours. Always.

Doing It Better…

Well hello 2024. Nice to see you, and all those folks in the back kicking 2023 to the curb and welcoming you with open arms. Not sure where I am on that yet. 2023 wasn’t fun, but I’m not seeing the light in 2024 yet. I’ll let you know. No matter what, it’s some sort of a mental reset, although for teachers, I think Winter Break is a reset even if you don’t give us a new year in the middle of it. For me, I will hopefully get caught up and even ahead of the game. That’s the plan anyway. Although, what I planned to do today didn’t happen. I cleaned up my office space instead, the area around the computer and the sewing machine. It needed it. It was a disaster. It will be again, but I can start clean and semi-organized. Just don’t look at the rest of the house.

So the Man and I planned a weekend away to start the New Year. It’s been rough for both of us in the last month or so, and this was a better gift than anything else we could think of. We didn’t have much of a plan, but getting out of here is always a start. We started with a winery gift card I got in 2022 for Christmas and kept forgetting to use…we drove out to Julian…

Had a tasting and got a bottle of wine out of the gift as well…

Nice gift. This is Menghini Winery. We made the mistake of missing the turnoff through Wynola (we came through Ramona, probably because Interstate 8 is still down to one lane eastbound), so we had to endure the crazy Julian traffic.

The bathroom at this winery is stellar…

That is a living ivy plant both outside and in. I’ve been looking at bathrooms for ideas; I’ve got at least one bathroom remodel coming up in 2024 probably. A living plant taking over one wall wasn’t on my list…until now.

From there, we drove out to our Airbnb…it was OK. Not the most comfortable for a cold night. A fireplace would have been nice, but we left things too late and decided a real kitchen was more important than a fireplace.

There were horses on the next property over…

And turkeys wandering around both properties…

There was a lake with kayaks, but we weren’t in the mood…

Although it was a pretty lake.

We went for a hike on Sunday…

The Secret Canyon Trail from the north end…it’s pretty flat for apparently the first 7 miles. We did not do 7 miles…

Nowhere close in fact. There were two water crossings that weren’t bad at all, and then we got to an iffy one, but realistically, the Man’s back was bugging him…

So we did a little over 3 1/2 miles…not much…

But it was nice. No one else on the trail…that’s always a plus.

Then we spent most of the afternoon and evening reading, playing a game we both won…

I did some drawing…

(small table)…I was drawing on the bottom of the drawing I’d chosen, which was from two locations and dates in 2022.

I added more after this.

Then I numbered it…

And then some crazy drawing I did late at night…

I can’t explain this, but I’m glad to have the mindset and the down time to have done it. To more of that in 2024. However I can figure that out.

I do notice that the harder stuff is, the more I dive into reading. I went well above and beyond my Goodreads goal…

Not sure what this year brings for reading, but hopefully it’s a lot. I realized today that I hadn’t read the book I need to read for school…I’ve read it before, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember what happens at all. I should work on that. Or not? Hard to say.

Anyway, we drove back from the mountains today, and I started by cleaning up this workspace, at least some of it. And then the boychild disconnected all the cable TV boxes to return tomorrow; that’s been on my to-do list for months, so I appreciate his help. I packed up a box for the girlchild, who hopefully flew home tonight. I have a long to-do list for this week, catching up a lot of loose ends, but also a lot of school stuff. And tracing that new quilt. Tomorrow, hopefully I will be writing a blogpost about the Supreme Court quilt and how it came to be and what all the things mean (well, most of them anyway). Then it will ship off to its new owner. The purple quilt is at the photographer. I only made 5 quilts this year, which is down from previous years. I’m not happy about that. Usually I make a little photo thing for them all, but I’m not in the mood tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I’m sad that I didn’t have time to make more. So that would be something I’d like to change in 2024, but also something that will take a lot more than my just saying it in order to happen. I just updated the whiteboard calendar on my fridge, and January is hellish for school. I’m not happy about that. I also can’t do much about it. My teacher morale is low at the moment.

For now, though, I’m going to start tracing this new piece and consider grading the easy assignment tonight, or part of it at least. Tomorrow, I’ll get some errands done and trace some more. Plus read some more. Plus clean some more. I can’t really hit rest and relaxation with so many things that need doing, but tracing is meditative and that will help. May 2024 be better or as good as or whatever you need it to be. I’m going to focus on surviving the next 6 months and then doing it better after that.

May Art Sustain Us…

Weird frame of mind. I don’t have a clear idea of what art I’m working on next, which is hard for me. So I’m trying to get that taken care of in the next day or so. Plus I’m realizing I have to go back to school…I ignored school for almost a week and then I couldn’t any more. I graded the last of the big unit yesterday, so I just have one really short and easy assignment to do next week. The bigger deal next week is planning for the rest of this unit and as much of the next one as I can get through. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and my brain is trying to plan things that give me some down time in class. Please give me more time. I’ve been just slotting assignments in without thinking about how demanding they are on ME…and I need to try to fix that. Best I can. So that’s next week.

Artwise, I took all my smaller sketchbooks (not the super smalls, but the 9x12s) to the copy store after skimming through and tagging some I thought would work. I copied 11 drawings at 250%…

I started at 200%, but the pieces were too small. Then I started cutting and taping them together, numbering them as I went.

Takes about 12-22 minutes a drawing, depending on how fussy the pieces are.

Then I stared at them and tried to decide what to do. These are all just random drawings, mostly while camping or traveling, some during the Winter Break Draw-a-Day things I like to do (no time this year). So they don’t have a purpose or a theme to them, which is fine. I think of them as practice for the real stuff, but although I feel like I just finished some really complicated stuff (still recovering from the Supreme Court quilt), I can’t just do a light, easy quilt right now. And most of these roll in that realm. Not really light, but not really purposeful. So I picked this top one (of the 11) and added paper to the bottom…which is where I’ll add some purpose. Whatever that is. I have some ideas, just not fully formed.

That said, we’re taking this weekend off in the mountains, not camping (it’s raining and cold), but a little Airbnb with some hiking and nature. A reset. Of sorts. Might need one a month to get through the rest of the school year, but that’s not an option financially. Ah well. This should be nice. Hoping. I am taking the drawing (and two more sketchbooks) with me. And books. And stitching.

I got all the embroidery done on this (mom did the majority…I just did the little in-between bits).

When we get back, I’ll put borders on it and sew the little snowflake circles (we’re not doing all of them), then hand it back to her for embroidery.

This year has been difficult. There hasn’t been enough time to make art, and I hate that. I managed to stop thinking about work for a few days, which was good, but yesterday’s run through town to donate fabric, books, and clothes seemed to let the work back in my brain. Not good. I’m trying to make some positive changes in the next half of the school year, though, and hoping the next school year is better, but I’m counting on nothing at this point. I remember drawing every week. I remember making art almost every weekend. I just need more of that. An hour a night isn’t enough. Keeping that in mind…

Here’s my tree, which is already undecorated and back outside, so it can (1) enjoy the rain and (2) not be eaten by Kitten, who keeps throwing up the needles. Sigh.

It’ll be the New Year when I’m back…so happy new year to all, if that’s how you roll. If not, happy weekend. May art sustain us, however we take it in or push it out.

Protective

In-between days. I finished the quilt last night. I’m in that weird space between quilts that I hate. I don’t like having the next one ready to go. It freaks me out. No down time! No worries; I have a bunch of drawings tagged; just need time later today to go make some copies and then make some decisions. It’s a pro to have so many pieces out at shows or sold, but it makes it hard to enter new shows. And the day job is really not conducive to my finding MORE time for artmaking at the moment…unfortunately. I’m debating one show, trying to finish something for it. Ugh. Still thinking. Hence the headache, probably.

I did most of the binding and sleeve stitching on Tuesday night…just binge-watched stuff.

Walked away for 5 minutes and Nova landed.

I’m waiting to hear back from the photographer. For this show, I could take a half-assed picture and enter it, luckily. So I might need to do that. We’ll see.

Maybe take a picture of the WHOLE quilt, not folded over. So that was the 5th quilt for the year. Sigh. The previous year, I only hit 6 because I did a super tiny one that only took 9 hours in the last few days of the year. Seriously, the last 3-plus years of school have really sucked time away from the artmaking. It’s so frustrating. I keep trying to pull time back, give me more time to make (and sleep and clean and honestly just function) and the job just pulls back. I already know January is bad. It makes me cry. I just finished an art fellowship application, and they asked about how the money would help, and this is it…I need to retire. Not this year. But soon. Because it’s not fair to Art Brain to be working less and less on art because this country is taking more and more teacher time. So yes, the brain is trying to figure out how to make the rest of the school year easier, how to protect ME time, and I don’t have a solution. Let’s hope I find one.

I’m still working on Mom’s Tinsel quilt…got most of the extra embroidery done, hopefully done today, then borders on, then circles on, then hand it back to her. Then get the other quilt done for Barbara. Plus figure out what I’m doing next. I seem to be ignoring school right now. I’m gonna have to stop ignoring it soon. Tomorrow is the day I get all the donations done and delivered. Then the Man and I have two days of no work, although art is allowed, reading is allowed, games and puzzles are allowed.

Dropped the girlchild at the airport yesterday. She went to Texas (friends) for New Year’s, then back home to San Francisco.

I told her I wanted to visit when her SO was there so I could meet him. So that’s in 2024. Death Valley might be in 2024. It’s hard to plan until the Man can get a job, but he got more treatment approved by his doctor today, so hopefully this will solve it and he can get back to work. So much stress around the holidays this year.

For me, the rest of today is three Zoom calls, one with a naturopath, which I’m looking forward to helping me with blood sugar etc; one with one set of stitching friends, where hopefully I’ll get those Mom and Barbara things further on the road to done; and the last with another set of stitching friends. Who knows what I’ll be doing by then. I think pilates is in the middle of all that. It’s a weirdly busy day in between pajama days. I think I need to trim all those tree bits the boychild cut down and get them into bins today too. Yikes. Deep breaths. I don’t see peace in 2024 yet. I see me as the Hulk, standing protectively in front of my art and my time, growling at anyone or anything that tries to mess with me. I guess that’s a thing. Sorta like this…

Yeah, I can see that. Don’t mess with me? I wish it were that easy. I saw this video of a young elementary school teacher ‘showing’ how we could reduce our work week to 43 hours. Yeah, she used her prep period…the one I rarely get. Sigh. Making more tea. Being protective.

We Do Our Best…

Well I’m off by a day again. Christmas seems a good excuse. I probably could have written this yesterday in between things, but I did other things instead. It’s all about choices, right? I’m the one who makes my rigid schedule, and there’s good reasons for it…it makes me write, but I’m also the one who can revise it at will. Besides, this is the floofy part of the year that has no purpose and no actual days of the week. Except for the one when the trash company picks up. You should know that one. And if you have to donate stuff by the end of the year, you should realize that is coming. And if you are trying to take advantage of some special sale deal thingie, they probably are up by now. Too late. So sad.

The holidays are days of chaos, no matter what your choices, I think. So Friday night, I picked up one friend and her kid from the airport and went out to dinner with them. I’ll see them next December probably. They live far away and I don’t get to travel much: money, time, all that. I kept quilting Friday afternoon and night…

And Saturday morning and evening…

Then Christmas Eve, I trimmed her…

Before we went to that party. I was wearing the outfit below, but with knee pads.

That was the Man’s holiday party. Then after Christmas night’s dinner, I put the binding on…

Hand sewing tonight and tomorrow…emailed photographer now. There’s a deadline on this one. So many have deadlines.

I managed to get all the applique pieces on this and started the embroidery at last night’s event.

We’re changing up the borders. I needed mom to cut a bunch of tiny circles. She has a machine and dies for that, which she brought to Christmas dinner…like you do.

It didn’t have the one size we needed, although the box said it did, which was just weird. So we cut some varying sizes. Figured we’d alternate between 1/8″ bigger and 1/8″ smaller. We’ll see. Certainly this is easier than cutting them out by hand. There aren’t dies though for most of what I do.

On Saturday, the Man and I went for a hike…

Apparently he was more excited about halfway than I was.

There’s been lots of dog activity. Or really, lack of activity…

Annie is still injured, so the cone is on most of the time. She licks her paw otherwise…occasionally she’s allowed out with supervision…Grandma is her favorite…

But she’ll settle for the Man…some sort of communal napping going on here.

Simba is always tortured by the girlchild’s costuming choices…

Poor little panda guy.

So I sucked at family pictures. Again. Here’s Christmas morning…

Chaos all around. Then dinner at the other house…

I didn’t even take pictures of the food. Spaced out. Ah well. We hope, as always, that we’ll have another year of it. Maybe I will remember photos in 2024. Luna hopes so.

But I have plenty of pictures of her. Here, she wants pets. More pets. This is after she hooked my finger with her claw. Bloody beast.

We also cleaned out the owl box.

We found the owlet I suspected had died in June.

Headless this time. Less of a haul this year. There were some rats too, but not all of them…heads missing. That might be their skulls. Hard to say. We’re leaving the box down for a few weeks. There’s 6 trees that will be trimmed in January, and the hope is that they will not destroy the owl box in the process. We might pull it off completely; we’ll see. Certainly I’m going to have to pull up some plants to protect them. Ah well. That’s January’s problem. And stress.

This week is not stress free. I have an arts application to complete, plus some stuff to ship out, plus donations to make before the end of the year. Lots to do. Grading still too. Hoping to get a good chunk done before the weekend, when we’ll take a couple nights of destressing. We hope. Then I’ll have to start planning the next unit and a half next week. Head down. There’s so much I can’t get done. I don’t feel very productive so far this break…or relaxed. I’m hoping to get there, but it’s been difficult. I know it’s supposed to be a mindset, but the weight of the to-do list is ever present. The only solution to that is to cross things off it and carve out some time for my sanity. Which is what the rest of this school year looks like. So not really thrilled with that. I did get some ceramics classes for Christmas…literally gonna carve those out of the schedule once I survive January. So that’s something to look forward to.

Hoping your holidays were what you needed them to be. I’m glad the official stuff is over and I can stop worrying about food and wearing stuff besides pajamas. Says the woman who needs to shower and go to the grocery store today. Yeah. Well. We do our best.

Gloom…

It’s dark and gloomy this morning. That California storm finally hit us last night, but not super hard. We’ve had over half an inch of rain and a tiny bit of thunder and lightning…nothing like up north. Enough that I don’t have to water for a few days though. Enough that I don’t feel a need to leave the house today. Wait. I need binding fabric for this quilt…I want to finish it before the 26th so I can contact the photographer and give him more time…and the fabric store I usually shop at has heinous hours these days. Which they say they aren’t changing. So it’s today or tomorrow, and tomorrow is more complicated. I did finish stitchdown on Wednesday…just sat down and did it all after writing the blog. That is one of the things I miss about teaching before COVID…coming home for the weekend and spending ALL DAY Saturday just doing art stuff. It’s hard to pull that off these days. I always have to do all the stuff I didn’t get done during the week. Stitchdown took a whopping 2 hours and 44 minutes, then I sandwiched and pinbasted that night, so I put in 3 or 4 hours.

Delightful. I still haven’t finished putting up Christmas stuff. Or wrapping it. Or putting it together.

But the tree made it into the house.

Yesterday, I was doing other stuff all day…it took 3 hours to put labels on two quilts, clean them up, iron them, and pack them up for shipping. They’ll both be traveling until 2027, I think. Hopefully I’ll see them in the traveling exhibition at some point. So far, they’ll be too far away. So I did that all morning.

Then in the afternoon, I had a couple of Zoom calls, one with stitching friends, so I started work on this thing…

So this is Sue Spargo’s Tinsel block of the month from 2022. I wasn’t going to do it, but mom likes Christmas stuff, so I signed up. I thought I’d just make it for her, but realistically, I wouldn’t finish until 2030, so I did all the applique, gave her three blocks last Christmas, three for her birthday in February (a little late because I got sick), and three for Mother’s Day. She did all the embroidery, which is the fun stuff anyway, right? Then she handed them back to me in September or October.

So yesterday, I trimmed them all.

One of the fun things about this is that the seam allowances sometimes get a little tiny. Luckily, I’ve done quite a few of these and know how to fix that. Sometimes you need to re-embroider something over the seam allowance…like that bottom tree branch on the right, and the bottom of the pot in the middle one…plus the blue bits at the top of that tree. No worries.

I pieced them on Zoom with my stitching friends.

Then there are some bits to be appliqued and embroidered after it’s all together.

Then put the borders on and applique some of the dots…I’m actually changing up the border embroidery. Mom likes it better too. I’ll give it back to her for the border embroidery, hopefully next week, and then she’ll give it back to me to be quilted and bound. Then it’s hers! It’s only taken a year plus. I’m the slow cog in the wheel, as always. I have another quilt here from a stitching friend who finished her part…so next week, I’ll put her borders on, quilt it, put a binding on it, and then hopefully hand it off before the end of break. That’s the plan anyway. We know how plans go.

Meanwhile, I did start quilting last night…did a little over an hour…

I’m going to continue with that this morning, with the plan of buying binding before the quilt store closes today. At 3. Too early, y’all. I probably won’t finish quilting all of it, but I can finish the outlining. I don’t want to be stuck without binding on Christmas Day. Yes. Ironic. There’s a break between morning and evening stuff, though, and a hike and some stitching is the best way to fill it. I know what I want for binding, and I don’t have enough of it in my stash. So shop.

I also finally framed and hung the last two Quilt National posters.

I had to email and pay for shipping to get them, because I couldn’t go to either opening…timing plus cost plus COVID. Annoying. Maybe I’ll get into another one to fill that space on the right, and I’ll make it to THAT opening. Sigh.

Simba’s eyelid seems to be fine. Hopefully the growth will not come back. He’s a good boy.

OK, so I’m outline quilting until it’s done, probably another hour or two. There’s thunder again. And more rain. Gloomy as shit this morning. Then to the quilt store. I have a friend and her son flying in tonight, so I am braving the drive to the airport this evening to get them and drop them at their hotel. Then quilting again tonight, hopefully, at some point. It’s movie night first. I think. Tomorrow is grocery shopping for Christmas, plus a hike, I hope. Finish quilting. Get a binding on probably Sunday? Not sure. Sunday is when family stuff starts for the Man, then mine on Monday. Y’all know how that goes.

Anyway, enjoy your holiday however you can/need to. I know for some it’s not enjoyable, so do your best. Read a book. Drink some spicy something-or-other. Cuddle up with a blanket if appropriate. Southern hemisphere, do what you need to do. Make some art if that’s a thing for you. I’m working on a fellowship application due January 4. Plus all the other things on the to-do list, including grading, unfortunately. It has to be done. But also doing some things that make it easier to get through the have-tos.

Aiming for Balance…

Well I was up at an ungodly hour this morning to take the dog to the vet…he had a growth on his eyelid that needed to be removed. He’s fine. Slightly sedated. About as tired as I am. I had some breakfast and graded while I was waiting for him. Then came home and graded some more while waiting for the tree guy. Six trees to be trimmed, one is huge, and another to be removed. Not cheap. If you wanna know what I’m spending my quilt money on. It needs to be done so nothing falls on the house. I think that’s one of the biggest expenses here…the trees. I love them…they give shade and coolness in the summer, which saves on A/C (which I don’t have), but they do require maintenance. Lots of maintenance.

Anyway, so I have been working on the quilt but not more than I would during the work week. I have been doing Xmas things and dealing with house stuff. Shopping. Shipping. Doctor. Vet. Blah. But I did finish ironing the whole quilt together…here’s Monday night…

And then I pieced the background and ironed it all down.

It’s not huge or complicated. Then last night, I started stitching down…

It’s not hard…just time-consuming.

I think honestly I’m going to do more of that this afternoon. I worked on school stuff, finished grading two things, input them, fixed the 7th-grade calendar, TOC, and draft class. I shouldn’t have to do more schoolwork today. I have tons on my to-do list. I made a phone call about the stained glass. I ordered meds and cat food and cat litter and all this stuff. I set up the tree trimming. I should make a dermatologist appointment. Then I can stitch down. Finish it. Get it pinbasted tonight. Start quilting tomorrow. I still have one big assignment to grade…it’s not hard, just time-consuming…and one small one. Then a ton of planning. It doesn’t help that I killed my screen yesterday…

That’s my work computer. Whoops. An errant headphone got stuck under the lid. I didn’t think I pushed hard on it; I didn’t close it all the way. Might be that a cat sat on it. Still my fault and IT is out until January 2. I’ve been projecting the screen to the monitor to the right to get stuff done. Glad I have that option anyway. I have this computer in here too. So not a loss, but I would like it fixed before school is back in session. What are the odds of that? LOW. Fuck. Let’s consider that a 2023 fuckup. So 2024 starts clean? Maybe. What are the odds.

I do occasionally toss stuff out and not grade it. Not these though. It’s the entire Unit 3 so far. Hefty. Not tossing it. Maybe grade one class a day for 5 days? Or try to get it over with sooner? Hard to say. I also need to deal with Xmas gifts and decorating and cleaning. Plus ship some stuff and/or get it ready for shipping. But for now? I’m gonna put that book on Audible (I’ve already read it, or I would be totally lost with this story) and do some stitchdown. Sounds good. There’s a balance…I’m aiming for it. Not quite there yet though.

Also still puppy sitting on and off…

She doesn’t like the cone. Or the sock. This is morose Annie. Hopefully she’ll get approved for cone/sock release today. She’s so sad otherwise. There’s no in between with her…sad or hyper as shit. OK. Stitching now.

Shopping and Shipping

Just listening to @underthedesknews about university admissions and the Supreme Court…legacy admissions could be out! I’m good with that. And that is how I am spending my Winter Break? Listening to social media news? Nah. It’s been a little chaotic so far. Let’s start with quilt progress, which has not been as much as I’d like, but whatever. I’ve been ironing…here’s Friday night’s progress…

Then Saturday night…

And Sunday night, when I stayed up way too late…

Because I was ALMOST done and then I felt like I was too tired for the last half hour so I didn’t actually finish. So yeah. I thought I’d be done ironing yesterday, but I forgot how much time having both kids around takes, and you wanna hang out with them, so there isn’t as much time for other stuff. So I suspect I’ll be done tonight. Hopefully. Stitchdown tomorrow. Quilting by Thursday? Maybe. IDK.

I’m still not done with shopping and shipping, and that will be an issue, so I need to get my act together on that front. Ah well. I did do some today…and passed by these weird things…

On the walk to the used bookstore.

Poor Santa in a cage…

So Saturday, we went on a friend’s birthday hike…

It was warm for December…high 70s. Warmer than you would like. But a winery solved that issue afterwards…

Sunday was family stuff…

I finished one book on Saturday…

Light fiction…I finished a harder one, nonfiction, on Sunday. Well on my way to finishing one a day? OK, probably not…

Sleepy cold kitties. We are also babysitting the puppy so that she doesn’t chew her foot off. She’s been pretty chill. Apparently she is depressed because of the cone and the wrap on her foot. She tore part of her claw off. Whoops. Silly girl.

Yeah, that’s been going on for a while. Needs to stop.

OK, I need to do some schoolwork and set up the tree so I can get the cats out of the needles and maybe clean some stuff. And figure out the rest of Christmas. Ugh. At least there’s no school in that. I can appreciate that.

Absolute Delight…

Hey. Friday. Before Winter Break. I love you.

Actually, I’m stressed at the moment because of the next 8 hours, but then I love you. My brain at 3:30 in the morning was not helpful. My teammates helped me write a difficult parent email this morning (no thanks to 3:30-AM brain), so that’s done. Now I just need to juggle potential issues in advisory (which is short, hallelujah), then get everyone to be quiet, turn in a huge packet, and answer a simple question. While I get the room cleaned up enough to leave after school (they’re doing the floors over break…which is good…they look like crap). Today is, of course, an assembly day. Plus pajama day (it’s going to be 80 degrees) and Santa hat day (I don’t have the patience for itchy hot head today). And I have duty after school. Then a work party.

The girlchild arrived just before midnight last night, but I haven’t seen her yet; she went to the other house. But she’s here! Makes me happy.

OK, I haven’t been ironing much. I got an hour in on Wednesday night…

Scissors for scale. Those are my small scissors.

This is not a huge, complicated quilt.

I got nothing done last night, because I had my monthly stitching meeting with friends, which was nice…I worked on shutters on crooked windows…

Then came home and finished cleaning up the girlchild’s room, ran some laundry, packed up some gifts, and dealt with some art paperwork. Then it was 10:45. So I got ready for bed. Not sure if tonight will be any better? Who knows.

This is coming up…which is cool.

We picked a current piece and something that was at least 10 years old (mine was from 1993, I think). Mine is 2nd row down, 4th from the left. Screenprint with drawing.

My advisory holiday door: Fortnite Winterfest.

They did OK. I drew Jack because the kid in charge of that was absent. He colored it though. The tree coloring is particularly nice. We’re not going to win. To be honest, we never win. Some adults get way more into this than I do. It’s strange how proud they are of it though. This is one more thing I have to do after school today: take this down. It’s funny the party starts at 3:30 and I have duty until 3:45 and then have to get my room in order. Who knows when I’ll get there.

Yesterday, I met with my co-teacher-on-leave to try to figure out some stuff she wrote on the calendar last year. It was lovely to plan with her, even though it was 7th grade and I don’t even teach that right now (I will in 2025? I think?). So yeah, we spent an hour on stuff we don’t even teach. It was an absolute delight and relief though. To have someone to plan with and see the big ideas. I miss that. I cried on the way home…missed that. She’ll be back. It’ll be better. I refuse to say when, so the universe won’t slap back.

Anyway. I hate these days before break, but a lot of kids will be absent because of that. Pros and cons. I was really angry with my advisory for an incident on Wednesday; I’m still pissed off at a couple of them. Made it hard on a couple of classes for their behavior with the sub while I was in a literacy meeting. That said, I have the next 20-some days off (although, yes, I will have to grade and plan). So that’s not bad. I can do that.

Read…

Big deep sigh. You know what I WANT to do today? Stay home and iron this quilt together…in between reading my book while curled up on the couch with a dog or cat or two. I am mentally exhausted. And today is LOOONG. Hate those days. Things before and after school. Ugh. 8 AM to 6 PM without stopping…the plus is that we are in literacy group this afternoon, so not full-on teaching, but also I know my kids in the last class of the day won’t do their work and may destroy the classroom. So that sucks. I warned them yesterday, but you know how that goes. Well, if you’re a teacher, you know how it goes. If you’re not, you probably think if you’ve built a relationship with them and gotten down at their level and shared some respect, that they will be perfect angels. Well, try a title I middle school three days before Winter Break and tell me how that goes. Yeah. I thought so. Stupid time for these meetings. They really didn’t think it through. I think one meeting is the day before Spring Break. A Friday. There will definitely be an assembly. Are they on crack? Possibly.

That said, I’m pretty proud of myself for getting mostly caught up on grading. I finished last week’s academic assignment last night. I have one batch of homework I’m hoping to do today and tomorrow. There’s a few easy things that need to go into the gradebook. Then on Friday, they hand in their packets, which I will need to take home, and one homework assignment. Plus warmups. I’m still debating an easy question on Friday. I should do it, but IDK if I’ll have time. Playing it all by ear. I hate that. I want to know exactly what I’m teaching when, at least 3 weeks in advance. But no. Not for the last four years. Not without a significant amount of replanning and juggling and rewriting and shit. This is why I set a retirement date. I’m just tired of that part of it. The actual teaching? I can handle that. The rest? Ugh.

So the current quilt…I finished cutting things out on Monday night.

It took a little over 7 hours to do that. Longer than usual, I think. Not sure why.

Then I sorted them last night…

Such an easy sort…

Just under 500 pieces. I do think I need to wash all my bins over break though. The pencil lead is transferring onto them. I never noticed that with older bins, but these seem to show it, and it’s probably transferring to fabric. Weird things on my to-do list.

Then I started ironing…

I didn’t get very far. These are tiny people. I should have put something in there for scale, but just trust me, they’re little. I had to set up the room a little, move stuff around, then sort out the first 100 pieces by 10s. I’ll get more done tonight. I’m hoping to be done ironing Sunday night, then stitchdown, quilt, bind next week. We’ll see. I have some other shit to do. That whole Xmas thing. And the next quilt is waiting…it’s been enlarged and numbered for a few years, so it’s my last quilt of the year, assuming I can finish it in time. Not huge, not complicated. Then I can get my head around the next one. I have a deadline where I need to work with a collaborator and I’m not sure what that will look like, since we don’t use the same media and we don’t live in the same city. Minor issue. We’ll figure it out in January. I’ll probably start something else at the same time.

I spent some time cleaning up the girlchild’s bedroom last night; she arrives late Thursday night. I still need to put some quilts away and figure out where to store all the ones I know need to ship out in the next few weeks. Then maybe persuade her brother to store his packs elsewhere. He has a lot of them. Then make her bed with everything I washed last night, which is probably where I got the weird ring of spider bites around my elbow/arm.

I finished a book yesterday that made me cry. And then went to school, still crying (not good), but since I often drive to school with the urge to sob and/or scream, it was nothing new. Just discombobulating. And it had an essentially sort of happy ending; it was just all the shit before it that threw me. Then I started right away to read another book, and that one is also seriously speaking to me about quitting and becoming a full-time reader (is that a thing? Please let it be a thing.)…

But no, I have a parent meeting this morning and a union meeting after school, so no books until 6 PM. WHICH SUCKS. Oh wait, I can read at lunch, but I’m also supposed to be reading this book for school and I haven’t gotten very far. Ugh. Yeah. It’s a pain. My responsible teacher self is NOT going to let me bring the other book I’d rather read. Although it’s on my phone. So there’s that.

OK. Do the 10-hour day. Come home and READ. Then do some work and hopefully the Man will let us finish the movie we’ve been trying to watch for days. I wanna know what happens! Dammit. And then ironing, which is fun and relaxing and I love seeing the image come to life in color. So that’s cool. Three more days of school and then more reading! Woo hoo! Don’t look at the to-do list. READ!