Eating Cheese on Toast*

I quilted. This is good. Because I got through the intestines…and that’s the purpose of the intestines, for things to get through them…plus stress release dammit.

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And for some reason that complicated bit in the middle of her torso was fucking with my head. It really was kind of fun to stitch…around all the bits.

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Somewhere in the middle, Kitten whacked me because I tried to pick up my phone to take a picture (probably the one above) and it was under her tail and I offended her. I don’t know if you know about calico cats, but they are kind of attitudinal. I guess I’m a calico cat. You can see in her face that she’s still significantly pissed off at me…

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But then goes quite happily to sleep in the pile of fabric I obviously left for her benefit.

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So I kept quilting…got the right arm (well, it’s her left arm) stitched…

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And then stopped, because the other side has that crazy-ass skeleton ribcage, and that’s gonna take a lot of fussy stitching. It was after midnight too, and I needed to be up early today for a parent meeting. Staying late for a union meeting. Still sick to my stomach over the DeVos confirmation. I’ve seen a few of my more conservative friends express their joy (?) over DeVos as a choice (my non-US followers or non-education people may not know that Betsy DeVos is now the Education Secretary of the US, despite her utter lack of qualifications to be such a thing…don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like Arne Duncan either, but she is a significant order of powers less qualified and more likely to fuck us over more than we already are, also damaging my students. But whatever.). I would invite any of those conservative friends to spend a week in my classroom. And do my job. All of it. We ran out of our budget last week, I think (I haven’t put the last receipts in). For the year. In January. And strangely, I still have to teach for the next 5 months. I won’t even tell you about all the extra hours, especially this year, because we have no curriculum. And both my kids have federal loans for college on top of scholarships. Because otherwise I couldn’t afford to send them (honestly, I can’t really afford it anyway, but that’s another point). But let’s put someone in charge who doesn’t even know the difference between proficiency and growth.

Sick to my stomach. Just keep teaching and dealing with kids and all their stuff, trying to get them at least to think about what we’re learning…despite the crazy that’s going on in my government.

I stitched…the yellow three-pronged stitch in the cretan stitch on the right.

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This morning’s sunrise over the possum/armadillo tree (it’s actually two trees)…

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I realized yesterday my meditation app has an SOS mode…quick 2-minute meditation for days like yesterday. This will be useful.

*Kate Nash, Merry Happy

We Always Take More*

Wow. Need focus. I’m trying to relocate my gym/hiking time now that I’m back at school (let’s not talk about how I’ve been back for a month, OK?), and so I did that yesterday…bribed myself with reading my book, and it worked. I really enjoyed working out. But then came back and had to make dinner and deal with some other stuff, and by the end, it was almost midnight. No quilting at all. Sigh. So frustrating. Of course, I’m in that difficult part of the quilt…the part where it feels like it will never be done. Where it just seems endless. Where it’s hard to even sit down at the machine. Where it seems like if I don’t have a big block of time, there is no point in even starting. I have to get my head past that…because I suspect with a few more hours of quilting, ironically I will be able to see an end. Aaargh.

It probably didn’t help that I had a 2-hour staff meeting last night…although it was shorter than that…by 20 minutes? But it was after duty in the crosswalk (prepare to die!) in the rain. I was not in the mood. OK, it’s possible I am never in the mood. That said, I had a professional development on Saturday morning, worst time of the week ever, and I was engaged with the content for the entire 4 hours. Can’t say that happens with PD…certainly hasn’t this year. Luckily because of all the holidays this month, I won’t have to deal with this for another month. I did draw. I just need something that will keep me engaged. I can listen and draw. I can even stop drawing to discuss stuff. (In reality, I can draw and discuss, but people think you’re being rude if you continue to draw while they’re talking to you. Which is too bad. I am listening. I’m just entertaining art brain…like you would a child.)

I had my little sketchbook with me, so everything is tiny.

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And perhaps a tiny bit weird…

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I didn’t finish this one…

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This was after dinner. I did the star stitches in the cretan stitch.

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I almost put a tree in. But then I decided to finish dealing with the cretan stitch first. I might change my mind. This stitching helps me relax, find my brain. Except for last night…last night, it just reminded me that I had seventeen thousand other things to do.

I honestly didn’t do anything else artistic. Which explains how frustrated and tense I feel today. Well, partially, because part of it is that I didn’t do any grading either, so that’s weighing on me. Plus we’re trying to plan this unit and it’s taking so much brain power and time. I even need to do a drawing for it, which isn’t hard and probably won’t even take that much time…I just need the mental space to do it. I know there’s a 3-day weekend coming up, but I don’t want to spend all of it working. And I have so much stuff going on this week. I hate feeling this overwhelmed. And I know the only way to beat it is to get more caught up. So work harder. Yeah.

Music helps…here’s a video for today’s title…didn’t realize the song was so old…

*Zero 7, The Space Between

I Know Who I Want to Take Me Home*

Well now I know the difference between concrete and cement…and more importantly, I know the history of concrete…because I have to teach about it…what’s funny is that for 4 hours, I was completely engaged with the content…unlike every single staff meeting and school district professional development thing I’ve been to all year. That was Saturday morning.

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Frustrating, eh? I didn’t get paid for THIS 4 hours, but it was way more interesting and useful than all the stuff I’m paid for. Yes, there is a 2-hour meeting this afternoon about 8 pages in a book. I don’t disagree with the book. I disagree with how my district is interpreting the book. Oh well. Bring a sketchbook. Try not to increase blood pressure. Just ignore the stupidity. Insert rant here about micromanaging professionals.

Some of my eucalypti were dropping branches in the last storm, so we made them look funny. Don’t worry…they come back.

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I wish tree trimmers were smarter. Oh well.

Then we spent part of the evening wandering a mall. I never go to malls if I can help it…but look! Sewing machines! And all the clothes in this store were black and grey…

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My kind of place.

Unlike this Hermés scarf…holy crap, that’s some color.

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Celebrating the new year…

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And part of a whale tail…

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I was so tired, I slept through the movie…it’s OK. If I’m that tired, it’s best if I sleep.

This is two days of stitching…the cretan stitch in green on the right with the fly stitch in blue.

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Sleepy puppy while I stitch.

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I was watching a show and wanted to finish watching before trying to quilt, so I cut and ironed some pieces while it finished. This is more of the Folk Tails BOM.

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It’s kind of a crazy BOM…lots of overlaps. Kind of a pain because of that.

And then I finally started quilting, after nothing all weekend. Sigh. I’m 7 or 8 hours into the outlining and not even halfway up the body.

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That said, I think there is less outlining and more background quilting in the top section. We’ll see…if it takes another 7-8 hours just to outline? This week is a clusterfuck of meetings and stuff before and after school, so it will be a challenge to get a lot done…

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But I did get SOME done yesterday…look how big it is!

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Holy crap. No wonder it feels like it’s taking forever. Anyway. My goal is to have all the quilting finished by the end of this coming weekend and get the binding on. Then maybe get it photographed by the following weekend and be started on the next one…which means drawing it. Which means no more trying to avoid drawing it or avoid quilting or just being too mentally tired to deal with any of it. Yeah, like I can proscribe that.

I shouldn’t really give myself so much shit. I wrote 4 pages about my quilting life for an article yesterday, plus packed two food boxes for the kids, entered a show I wasn’t even planning on entering (because I’m nuts like that), and who knows what else I did. Lots. Stuff and things. There’s just too much of it. That’s the word I associate with Sundays…Overwhelming. Always.

*Semisonic, Closing Time

Watch Out, You Might Get What You’re After*

I guess I got to sleep in on Thursday morning instead of going to school, so that makes up for being awake early on a Saturday to go to school. Ugh. My brain is so not ready. It wants a 3-day weekend. It’s coming, dear brain, it’s coming. But then you’ll have to get up early to go to the dentist. Because teachers have to do all their dental work on holidays and breaks.

I was encouraged by a friend the other day to say No Thank You to a bunch of things. I tried that yesterday with a doctor’s referral. Let’s see how that goes. (It’s OK…it’s not really something I need…it’s something the insurance company thinks I need, which is ironic, because usually insurance companies want to do less rather than more.) I have some social commitments where I feel the same way, though, so I’m going to try the polite No Thank You with them as well. I’m just way too overwhelmed with stuff in general this year, mostly because of the art stuff and the constant planning of curriculum for school. Every day, dammit. And some people are really not understanding about that and it irritates me. So instead of trying to explain to them that my life is not like their lives, I’m just going to say No Thank You over and over again until it catches on.

So sometime last night, after 90 minutes on chat with AT&T, who can go suck my dick right now (seriously), and another 20 minutes with my dad talking about how my house is falling down and how the trees are trying to kill me and my pets, and then trying to get in touch with my daughter, whose phone is intermittently dead at the moment (see AT&T above), I was done. I wanted to come home yesterday and be uber-efficient and grade for like 3 hours and…holy shit, because I graded for like 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday and I didn’t even make a fucking dent in it…but that didn’t happen. I sat there and did my stitch for the day…the weird purple flower thing above the e in Prosper. It’s a whipped thing with some other stuff.

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Seriously, I’m not getting up to figure out what it’s called. It’s one of those spiderwebby things, but whipped around, so you get the ridges on top. And I had thread left over, so I did some lazy daisies and a few French knots. There’s a shitload of French knots in this thing. Doing this makes you realize how few stitches are actually out there. I should probably pull a different stitch book out…maybe one of the crazy quilt stitch books.

I should go back in the day. I picked this sweet beast up from the other house after work (don’t even ask)…

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How can you not love that face? Then in my mail was this patch/mini-quilt from Joshua Durst, a quilter who saw that my quilt was banned from AQS and made this patch and wore it around the next AQS show and then sent it to me…

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After yesterday at school, this was nice to get. It was really nice. Even though that seems like a million years ago. Still no penis though.

And then there’s this guy.

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He wanted a tummy rub. They’re cute when they’re small. They’re also bitey and barky, but cute. Almost makes up for the other crap.

Anyway, after all that, I graded for a bit and then made dinner and then sat down again and thought, holy shit, self, I’m way too tired and stressed to do anything, let alone quilt, and I stewed in that for a while, graded some more, tried to release some of that stress, because that’s really just shit I’m doing to myself and I don’t need to do that.

I finally got up and came in here and did some stuff online (paid bills, cleaned up email, worked on some stuff for school), and then sat down to quilt.

And oh my god, why do I never remember how relaxing it is to just quilt and listen to music (when the machine is behaving and the world is good)?

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So I finished the bottom part of the skeleton and wandered around the pelvic girdle and did the sides of the stove and then that tree with all the peaches and the tiny hands and came back up and did part of a ribcage and THEN…

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Then I was tired. Because it was after midnight. This is a large beast and it is a bit of a pain in the assholular area in the middle to move it around, but it’s getting done. I’m not quite halfway up on the outlining, and there’s a lot of stuff in the gut area, but I’m getting there. Please remind me next time when I’m sitting on the couch all cranky as shit that this crap makes me feel better and yes I stay up way too fucking late, especially when I have to be up early, but whatever. This is me and how I roll and what’s goin’ down. Fuck yeah. Now I’m going to teacher school to learn about concrete. Fuck me.

*Talking Heads, Burning Down the House

It Doesn’t Matter if You Want It Back*

I didn’t post yesterday. I had a good reason. I also didn’t quilt on Wednesday. Good reason. And didn’t go to work for two days. Good reason, but I might have to do some damage control today, looking at what didn’t get turned in. I hate that. Teacher’s not there, can’t do my work. Frustrating. If teacher’s not there, there’s a damn good reason for it.

I did quilt last night for a bit…

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The machine is still quilting just fine. Who knows what that tension clusterfuck was about. I’m about 5 1/2 hours in…hopefully more tonight…the weekend is a little busy though. Probably only have 20 hours to go.

Here’s where I spent a good chunk of time the last two days. Grading stuff.

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So at least I got a bunch of that done…not enough…never enough.

For the year of stitch, I did two days in one…see? I didn’t even do two stitches…or did I? I stitched the whipped running stitch and then dropped some extra French knots in the flowers where the running stitch stopped and then filled in the ‘s’ with something…not split stitch. Aargh. Can’t remember the name.

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Stem stitch. That’s it. It needs a hand. Like an actual stitched hand.

Then I went to my stitching meeting last night and almost finished this block with the stuff in the center of the flower. I needed a marking pencil and some circle templates to do the last bit.

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I can’t find any marking pencils. Should have bought one when I was at JoAnns hell the other day. I know I have a circle template somewhere.

This is the 2nd block in the Folk Tails quilt. Those are warthogs. Aren’t they cute?

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They need eyeballs and tusks and hairy bits. All of which is coming. I was pretty braindead at some point last night, so I started tracing and cutting the Wonder Under for the next month of these. I actually have the first three months all sewn down, but not embroidered. The next few months, four months actually I think, are cut out, but not sewn down, so I figured I’d get the rest cut out. I really like this pattern…it’s funky. But I don’t have a lot of free time for these any more. Perhaps I should add to my daily stitch practice…must stitch something down on this quilt.

Anyway. I had some good ideas for the next quilt. It’s impossible to keep it from skewing politically. I can’t keep that shit out of my head. I’m sitting here trying to teach my students not to make claims without evidence that backs them up, and my government has decided that lying and making shit up is the new status quo. I hate this. Yes, there’s always been lying going on in government, but not like this. This is just plain crazy.

*Amanda Palmer, Want It Back

I’m Gonna Free Fall out into Nothin’*

For some reason, it was a relief to let January go. I even changed the calendars (yes…more than one) last night. Both pages now have colorful pictures instead of gray January days. You’d think calendar makers would realize we need more color in January, not that it’s really an issue here in San Diego, weatherwise…just mentally. February is a nice short month with two 3-day weekends. I have some free time in February…well, whatever free time is for me, because it’s generally not sitting around and relaxing. It’s not really my thing.

That said, I’m not at school today and tomorrow, and it’s not to relax. Or quilt. But that’s the way it is sometimes.

I’d like to introduce you to one of the players in 2017…this is the asshole mockingbird who will try to keep me up every night for the next 6 months.

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Yup. I saw him. Although he’s still in a neighbor’s yard at night at the moment. He’s not moved into my hearing space. So that’s good. Last year there were two…dueling mockingbirds. He shut up when I walked closer to him. Yeah asshole. I see you.

I did something on here…it’s pretty washed out…that feather leaf thing on the right…it’s got a light blue tint on the top in real life…

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And then I came in the office and sent a cranky political email to the ignorant slob who is my state senator. He started it by sending me an email asking for my moral support for discriminating against immigrants. Asshole. He won’t read it. One of his little college flunkies will. I’m hoping to get an answer that makes very little sense. Then I entered another art show. I’m trying to keep entering, even though I have a ton of stuff traveling and a solo show coming up. The stuff needs to get out there.

Finally I quilted. I got the whole oven door section done…

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Yes, there’s a skull of death on the door.

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It’s the kitchen…where women get trapped, even these days. Like there’s something on the X chromosome that makes us better at it. Bad argument. Men have an X chromosome too.

After all that deep thought, I got into the stovetop…at least one side of it.

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I’ve always had cats who were fascinated by the stove top, although mine is separate from the oven. Right now, I have one who is pretty cautious about it and one who never goes on the counters…a nice respite from some of the furry bastards who would appear out of nowhere when pots were bubbling away everywhere. None burned their fluffy little toes, but I think that was a miracle some days.

Four hours and a bit into the quilting. Not even close to halfway through the outlining. There’s a lot on this beast. Plus it’s big. It’s behaving mostly…its sheer size means there’s a lot of pulling and shoving under the needle, trying to get it to move around better. That will get worse in the torso area. Oh well. My hands start to hurt with too much of that, but if I look a week out, I don’t think there’s any long stretches of sewing time that will exacerbate that (pros and cons). Ironically, about the time I get more time (3-day weekend), I will probably be done or close to it. Hopefully. Which means I need to get the next one drawn! Or do the other bathtub next. We’ll see. I can’t get my head around that yet. I will have my sketchbook over the next two days. Maybe something will dribble out.

*Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Free Fallin’

Want to Get out My Brain*

Just paid college for February. Ouch. Let’s hope they save the world. Or at least take care of me when I’m old.

With daylight savings time, it makes it hard for me to get home early enough in winter to walk the dogs, but yesterday I ran home and changed and threw them into the car to beat the sunset. I got to one of my favorite hiking spots and out of the car and there’s the old guy with his two ancient dogs and then I see the path. Yes. That is the path. Those are ducks swimming down the path. Huh. Damn.

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OK. I can do this. Hiked around through the brush and found a spot to go over the stream (because now there’s a stream), but the mud wasn’t as solid as I thought…

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Hmmm. Well that’s what boots are for, right? Impressive.

Saw this on the trail. Assume it’s for photographing wildlife, so they’ll enjoy Simba pooping and my scooping it up into a bag.

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It was gorgeous out…but when we got over to this side, the second valley, Simba started balking like crazy. I picked him up. Calli didn’t show any signs of distress, so I took my headphones out of my ears and heard the yipping, fairly close, of a small pack of coyotes. Huh. Well.

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Over there. Never saw them, although they did get fairly close at some point. We did turn around and head back…at a fairly fast clip. I didn’t think they’d bug me and the Golden Retriever, but the little guy is a delicacy.

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I’ve seen coyotes out there twice at a distance, just watching, but never heard a pack.

The path was crisscrossed with many streams from the massive rains a week ago.

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It was awesome to get back out there. We were glad to get home and relax a bit after. We all have our own way of relaxing, right?

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Me? I stitch. I put flowers on all those stems from yesterday…which was three colors, three strands of thread, so more than I have been doing in one night.

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Then I headed in to quilt. I wasn’t sure it was going to go OK, so I was hesitant after all the machine problems last week. Kitten meditated for me.

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But after a slow start and a broken needle, everything was fine. No tension issues at all, the bastard.

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It’s going to take a long time to quilt this. I worked for about 2 1/2 hours yesterday and I don’t even have the whole oven door done. I did go up the sides a bit on each side though.

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Putting it up on the machine to keep cats off of it.

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It’s a big quilt. Expect to see me quilting for days.

The dogs stopped bugging me at some point. I stayed up way too late because the quilting was going well and I didn’t want to stop. When I finally headed for bed, there were no dogs in the living room…instead they had put themselves to bed…the same bed…

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Awwww. Sweet puppy. Zonked old lady.

*K. Flay, Get It Right

Watch It All Fall Down*

Some days, I get to the end of them, and it feels really good, really satisfying, mostly because I blasted through a bunch of stuff on the to-do list. I think my whole life is the to-do list sometimes. I’m driven. Sometimes to tears or insanity, but definitely driven.

It was a productive weekend (not for school, but that place eats up too much of my time anyway). I spent most of Saturday afternoon, evening, and night finishing the stitch down on the newest quilt. I spent a lot of time fighting tension issues with the machine, but for the last 2 1/2 hours, it stopped. Proof that it’s crazy. So at some point, even though I was tired (over 5 hours of stitching), I just kept going because (a) I wanted it to be done and (b) I was afraid if I left it for Sunday, it would start fucking up again and I just couldn’t deal with that.

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Sometime around dinner time, I took a break from stitching down though…and did two days of a year of stitches…the yellow french knot flowers above Long and the purple flowers around the P.

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That’s a month of work, basically. This piece of fabric might not be big enough. Huh.

I was waiting for the pizza guy. No, I didn’t plan for Saturday dinner. Don’t ask. I thought I might have other plans. So I kept working on this one until he showed up. It’s almost done.

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It’s the first block of Sue Spargo’s Folk Tails, started a long time ago. Sigh. I like the hand-stitching part of these…not so much the finishing though. I have one that is ready to be quilted and one that is ready to be pieced and borders put on…and this one is from two years ago? I think. I love her stuff, but without soccer games to waste time at, I don’t do as much of it as I used to. I’m more inclined to grade papers if I have time in a waiting place.

Then I got back to stitching. This is when it started being much smoother…about an hour in.

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I finished around 11:30 PM.

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What a relief. The machine was being a pain.

This is Sunday’s year of stitches…the green little plants in the middle. They’ll get flowery bits too.

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This is how it ends up on the couch when it’s cold. Kathy sandwich.

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I only just persuaded the cat to get off my lap so I could sew.

Then came the hard work of the day. I pieced, ironed, and taped the backing to the floor. I had realized around 4 that I had no piece of batting big enough, so I kamikazed to JoAnns and bought that and thread for quilting. I thought ahead! Then after dinner with the parentals, I finished drying the batting, which I had washed quickly…and then ironed the front. It was too big. I knew I’d be trimming like 6 inches off each dimension, so I did it beforehand, so I wouldn’t waste time and fabric quilting all that extra crap that I was gonna cut off eventually anyway.

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And then I pinbasted it. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

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I started around 10:15 and was done around 11. It’s currently measuring 56″ x 92″. I think that’s the longest quilt I’ve ever made. I warned my photographer. His eyes went a little wide.

Anyway, it’s such a relief to now be ready for the quilting stage. And as for the tension, it was freakishly perfect during the straight stitching…so I’m wondering if this machine just doesn’t like the new invisible thread. Except it started doing this on the last quilt a little, which was the old invisible thread (different brand). I honestly think it just needs some adjustment. My machine guy said I had to bring it in once a year to stay in his warranty, and I will do that, but I suspect with the amount of quilting I’ve been doing, that it needs more adjustment than that. We’ll see how the quilting goes, starting tonight. I’m expecting the quilting to take more than 20 hours, so no way am I finishing this week. And with a 4-hour class on Saturday, the weekend is kind of a mess too. Oh well. It will be enough to get started and try to get 2-3 hours done a night. And hopefully start drawing the next one.

I’m revising goals left and right. All the solo show stuff needs to be done and photographed by April 28. Oh shit. OK. I got this. There’s an immigrant quilt in my head too, as of the crazy of the last two days. I have to say it’s at times like this when I really love my country, coming out in support of those being detained in airports, of governors and senators showing up in airports and demanding release, of judges doing the right thing, of people yelling loud, of McCain and Graham, Lindsey Graham for gosh sakes, standing up for our people. I never thought I’d have a positive thing to say about that man, but there it is. So yeah, this quilt is huge in my head, YUGE, but I don’t have time to draw that right now! So I’m writing notes about what’s in there, sketching out some stuff. For later this year.

When the boychild was a baby, he loved the Natalie Merchant album with the song below on it (Tigerlily)…he had colic and would scream and cry for 2 or 3 hours every night. I would stand and rock him to this album. I wonder if he remembers the songs.

*Natalie Merchant, San Andreas Fault

Alright Already We’ll All Float On*

OK, I’m getting there. Somewhere. Crap though. I just realized I was supposed to email a photo somewhere and I didn’t do it. Damn. So keeping on top of all the little shit is driving me a bit bonkers. Overuse of the calendar…

So I have a bunch of stuff to do this weekend, as always, but mostly it’s art. Well. And politics. But hopefully that’s a good thing. You don’t stop doing that because of the crazy facing you, because you think it’s not doing anything. You keep doing it because the little stuff will eventually add up and make a difference.

I finished the drawing. I did use pencil to sketch in where the guy would go, just to make sure I didn’t fuck it up at that stage.

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My quilts have a lot of detail in them, but not this much. Although looking at this, I think it would make a great quilt. But all those leaves and tree bits! Maybe I could simplify (but then it won’t be as cool). Aack. Anyway, the drawing probably took 5 hours or so over the two days, and that doesn’t count the drawing I did back in December that was sort of a pre-draw to this…which I didn’t like. But it got me here. There were 4 or 5 other false starts. It happens. I’m going to hopefully have some drawing time next week, just because I’ll be somewhere my sewing machine is not.

More of this year of stitches…the variegated green above Long. I’ll probably toss a bunch of french knots in there.

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It’s pretty cold at night here. Simba’s nose was apparently cold. So the whole time I sewed and drew, he had it shoved under some part of my body.

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I finished the drawing, scanned it, and sent it off to its person. And then started trying to sew. I almost gave up completely on the machine. I had cleaned everything out and rethreaded everything, and the tension was still way off. I don’t know how to open the top part…I’m suspecting I’m not supposed to, but there was a possibility there was thread in there. I haven’t figured that part out, although sewing made a short piece of monofilament pop out. Interesting. Then I switched needle size and it seemed to behave. And then it didn’t. I’m hoping that’s a brief fart of stupidity that won’t continue. I’m frustrated as hell over not getting it to behave.

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I didn’t get very far last night. It’ll get done this weekend and hopefully sandwiched as well…even if I have to pull out the old machine to make it work. It worked so well for the last two quilts. Two? Or has it been three? It’s been three. There were some tension issues in the last one. I thought it was just me. Sigh. I don’t have time for this.

*Modest Mouse, Float On

Karma Police, Arrest This Man*

Plagued by frustration this week. Really. So what is one to do? Well actually DOING does help, although sometimes, like last night, it causes additional frustration. At some point, sleep is the only option.

I did start stitching down at a fairly early hour, and was mostly successful…

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Although the tension was having issues, which is more than a little frustrating. I’m thinking it needs adjusting of some sort. It seems really random. So I kept trying to get it to its happy place (and me to mine).

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And then I broke a needle (still not sure how) and then I couldn’t get it to anywhere happy at all. I rethreaded everything. Tried everything.

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Finally turned it off and walked away. Fucker. It better work tonight. I did finally bring the other one home, and it does work as long as it doesn’t get too hot (not a problem this week), so I can throw it in for a while if this keeps happening. But so frustrating…because there doesn’t seem to be a logical reason for the lame-i-tude. I hate not being able to fix it myself. How long have I been sewing? 42 years? I should be able to make it work.

That was after a frustrating day at school. So. Hopefully today will be better, because this week is kicking my butt and I’m not even halfway through.

Sometimes puppies help with that and sometimes they’re just bitey assholes. You pick.

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I added the orange stars and crosses on the left. Gonna fill in all that space around the words.

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I pulled the beanbag out of my son’s room into my office, so the puppy could sleep in there while I’m stitching. But this is what happened. And she’s scary, so he just stares at her. Now I feel bad, because Simba really did think that was his beanbag. Sigh.

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My daily ball-throwing exercise…once they had decided they were too tired to run any more.

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Calli gave up way before Simba did. He would just leap over her.

OK. Well. I have a plan if the machine continues to create stitch nests. I’m not sure I have a plan for how to deal with students being frustrating today, but I’ll work on it. I know they don’t think things through and I have to remind them of 17 million things, which frustrates me as well. Today will be different than yesterday. I just have to keep telling myself that. Also true of the big picture…the political stuff is weighing on me. I just keep taking tiny actions, because that’s what I can do. And not engaging with those who still think I don’t have a right to object. There’s really no relief at the moment.

*Radiohead, Karma Police