Crazy Thoughts Have Quick Wings*

Eclipses are cool y’all. That’s all I have to say about that.

NASA has way better pictures than I do…not surprisingly.

I’m realizing that I’m still adjusting to new eating times…blood sugar was wacky yesterday, but then I figured out that we have a different schedule on Mondays. Hence my body’s complete confusion by the end of the day. Working on it. Still. Forever.

I’m a little tired this morning. Sure, I went to bed late, but I do that a lot. Puppy wanted to bark at everything last night though, so I remember 1:53 AM and 3:21 AM and 5:38 AM. I think those were all coyote responses, but I’m not sure. Ugh. Still can’t keep my eyes open all the way. Blargh.

Tired the dogs out after school yesterday…apparently not enough for Simba. We did over three miles…

I love how the old seed pods are mixed with the new…castor bean plant. Freaky beast.

I did…um…oh yeah! the three roses on the bottom right. It’s a stitch called rambling rose, which consists of French knots and stem stitches. Very simple.

I was mostly horizontal with Simba. He liked me then.

Eventually I made it upright and cooked some dinner. On Mondays, that usually means reheating leftovers…because if I’m not getting back to the house until after 7 PM, it better be easy.

So I had enlarged this one just because I thought it should be a quilt. And I taped it just to get it done. It’s not huge.

Who knows when she’ll get made…I have a waiting list at this point.

Then I started tracing the newest piece. The pieces are bigger than what I usually do.

I was really trying to keep it simpler than some of my recent pieces. We’ll see how that goes. I only traced about 87 pieces in an hour. Not bad. Not spectacular. But because I don’t have a lot of grading when I get home at the moment, it means all I have to think about is art stuff. So as long as I can fight the tiredness, I can get some stuff done. That gets harder as the year goes on. That part always stresses me out. I’m trying to keep my head in a positive place about school…I wonder if admin realizes every crazy-ass thing they do, messing with the master schedule, assigning yet another thing to teachers to keep track of, making us do a 2-hour homeroom with lunch 45 minutes late. We absorb all of it, try to cope, adjust the peeing/eating schedules, take lots of deep breaths, and come home and walk three miles out in nature to clear our heads. Yeah. Well.

*Jem, Save Me

There Is Still a Chance That They Will See*

Well I’m staring out at a cloudy sky that will probably clear by 10:23 AM, but it won’t matter, because our school district is not letting kids leave the classroom for the eclipse. It’s also not letting the teachers leave, which I find irritating (although I guess understandable). I teach science, but we can’t actually experience this part of it. Wait until they find out we do labs in the classroom. They’ll pull that as well, citing liability. I hope wherever you are that you get to go out and see it without burning your retinas. I’m trying to figure out how I can see it…and yes, I know there are live feeds, but how do you get kids to believe in science in a video when so much video is made up and contrived. Faked. Sigh. Frustrating day.

In the not-frustrating part of my life, I finished the drawing yesterday. In the long run, I think it turned out the way I wanted. I think. We’ll see.

Lots of doggy play these days with only me to entertain them after school…

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So I did a little over an hour of drawing on Friday night, after a bunch of work stuff got done. I really tried to keep it simple (don’t look at the heart when you hear me say that)…

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On Saturday, I did another two hours. This hand had to go over an arm that was already drawn…hence the white out. It happens. These are working drawings…

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Again, trying to decide how to put the message in there.

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I’ve been avoiding these spiders in my yard for weeks now…there had to be one in the drawing…

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This was last night, while trying to meditate. He’s not particularly helpful with that.

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I did two nights in here…more feather stitch in green in the bottom left, plus lazy daisies. I think Saturday was the blue French knots in the top feather stitch. Not sure.

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Midnight is very judgmental sometimes…

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So then last night I did another hour…

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And finished it…

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It’s not small. That’s why I was worried about time and number of pieces. Keep it simple.

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OK, there’s nothing simple about his back…

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Or the chalkboard behind her head…

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Almost 5 hours into the drawing full size…there was more time in drawing the two starter heads, but I don’t usually keep track of that because so many of those drawings don’t become a finished piece.

Then I spent about an hour numbering it…

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Good news, though…it only has 800 and something pieces. Fewer than the last one. It’s about 50″ square I think…maybe a little bigger than that. Tonight I start tracing Wonder Under. I actually have a decent amount of time to finish this…but I say that while knocking on wood, because y’all know how plans go, right? OK. Well. I can probably finish tracing it this week…maybe. We’ll see. It was hard to keep the recent events with the Alt Right and protests out of this, because it’s not really about that. It creeps in, though, and that’s hard. So many things to not stress about…hence the meditation. Tonight I’m going to try the other type of meditation…the one with dogs on a leash and outside in nature.

*The Beatles, Let It Be

Now War Is Declared, and Battle Come Down*

First Saturday attempt to sleep in after school officially starts. Pseudo fail. Puppy bark. Cats cleaning butts. Neighbors banging doors. Today’s list is a mile long. That’s what got me out of bed…the to-do list. What’s new?

I had some serious artbrain meltdown last night. I’m still not sure I’m past it. This drawing is just so difficult. I often work in symbols or metaphors. I don’t always draw an actual event, but sometimes the effects of the event, or I hide the issues in tattoos or the objects someone holds or wears. It’s easy enough to tell a story with words, but I also tell them with pictures. This story is so easy to tell with words…it’s one most of us teachers know at the moment, but it’s harder to show. But I’m trying. I don’t know if I’m happy with it though. I almost pulled the whole thing apart last night and started over. That’s rare. But it wasn’t working.

I did this first…played ball until they were both tired…

Then I did a green feather stitch over the orange one in the bottom left…

And all that was after working on school stuff for about 2 hours, finding all the student photos and trying to print them and going to buy a new color ink cartridge and I still need to print the damn things.

Finally, after all that, I stood up (feet recovered…I think I need new shoes. My arches are killing me by the end of the day) and headed to the drawing. This is near the end…the wine didn’t come out until after 11:30 PM. I did a bunch of stuff in pencil before going to ink, which was good, because I changed my mind about three thousand times.

Pencil first, vague lines showing where shit should go. I don’t use pencil most of the time. But this thing isn’t fully coalesced in my head, so I have to see it somewhere first. This is probably how most people draw.

Then ink. I’m trying to keep it simple. It’s big. It can’t be super complicated. I won’t get it done in time.

Says the woman who just drew octopus tentacles.

I didn’t want to fight violence with violence. I write that as my daughter is considering going to the protests in Boston. One part of me wants to tell her not to go, but I’m fully aware that we need to stand up and not be afraid in the face of this crazy shit that’s happening. If I were the mother of a child of color, I would be terrified all the time of sending my child out in the world. As a mother of a white kid, I still get scared…they’re adults, but I worry about them. But they have privilege; this means they and I have to be willing to stand up against all the racist, sexist, and what’s the word for being anti-religions that aren’t your own? All that. So I tell her to be safe, stay with a big group, stay away from cars. Stop drop and roll. Whatever. Because it’s not a safe world we live in and we want it to be better for everyone. Even the dumbasses who think fascism and terrorism are acceptable. Maybe if enough faces are staring back at them that mirror their own, without the anger against others, maybe then some part of their brains will start to turn against what’s in there right now, stop blaming others for their lives not being golden and amazing. I know that’s unlikely. There’s no magic answer.

So octopus tentacles. Nature fights back. Symbols. I won’t shoot. I won’t pick up a gun. I won’t lynch someone or kick them out of the country or tie them up or drag them behind a car or mow them down with one. I won’t fight a war. I won’t launch a nuclear missile. I won’t hit or kick or punch. I say that, but if someone were coming after my students…I would. I’d throw things at them. I’d trip them up. I’d bodyslam them. So there’s that.

Anyway. More of the drawing today, I hope. I really am hoping that when it’s all done, it’s what I want. It will work. If not, maybe I will start again. It’s rare that I do that at this stage, the full-size drawing stage…but I do redraw at the smaller stage pretty often. We’ll see.

*The Clash, London Calling

Just a Simple Flower so Small and Plain*

I don’t really know how to start. I think that’s just Friday morning first week of school tiredness, the tired that makes you yearn for a Saturday-morning lie-in. Just sleeping in until you’re not tired any more (it’s rare that it happens, but it does). Self care for teachers is hard, even harder when you have family at home who don’t realize you spent all day talking and walking and making decisions and remembering stuff well above and beyond a normal day. I do have that…but they’re all furry. With both kids gone and me at school every day, they are all suddenly very needy. VERY needy. I understand that. I am also needy. Unfortunately, no one is filling that need at the moment. Well, there’s something nice about a furry beast right next to you. And petting them is nice. Until the black one bites.

I don’t know if you can see them all…one dog on the right, one by my left foot, and then a black cat on the other side. Just before I took this, the black cat was snugged right up against me, because it’s August? And she’s cold? Nah. She misses the other humans.

She’s the biter.

Simba eventually moved a little further away from me. Only a little though.

Calli had her head on my foot for a while.

Right now, Kitten is on the chair behind me. So there’s some furry interaction that needs to happen. Although I walked the dogs earlier this week, I haven’t had the energy since then. It’s on my mind for tonight, but I will need to find some additional energy reserves to pull that off. Maybe I will just sit in the hallway and throw balls for the dogs to chase.

So yesterday was Day 2 of school, and I came home and collapsed on the couch. Again. I hate feeling that tired. I think I achieved flatness, like a melting scoop of ice cream. Too tired to hold myself in a seated position. I remember thinking about getting a deli sandwich before quilt class…I have a coupon, but it has to be used before 6 PM. I could buy it then and eat it later. I would just have to leave about 20 minutes early. Um no. Did not manage that. I do have leftovers in the fridge, but I forgot that thing where I get tired of eating the same thing for almost every meal. Ugh. Learning curve. I should cook all summer and freeze it all up for the first month of school.

I did finally get up though and sew some strips together. Obviously the next quilt is not ready to be moved around. It doesn’t even really exist. I don’t draw in front of people much, certainly not at this stage, so I figured I would just work on the Folk Tails quilt blocks. I even sewed the two sheep blocks together finally. Then I remembered the birds. They need a border. So I grabbed the stem fabric and sewed the strips together and found all the bits and pieces and even some sewing thread that matched, and I went to my quilt meeting. I managed to pin the stem strips on in some semblance of the correct place (wonky is good), and started to sew.

Hanging out with humans is often recommended for people like me. The furry beasts are fine, but humans respond a little bit more coherently. Although one of them is also currently teaching (the other two are retired teachers), and she was even more incoherent than I was.

I made it around two corners, I think, but only on one side of the strip. So I’ll have to go around a second time. It’s not hard, but it will take some time. You’d think I’d come home from quilt class and get right to work on that drawing from yesterday? But no.

I never did get that sandwich, so I started dinner, and then I tried to spend some time with the last bit of cleaning in the bedroom. I found all these pieces for an applique quilt that I haven’t worked on in years…I’m not even sure where the current block is or how many blocks are left. I know I have a lot done. You know how that works? You get close and then never finish? That’s like half the quilt blocks on eBay. Someone died and never finished and their heirs want nothing to do with it. I have a bunch like that unfortunately. They’re all somebody else’s design. I don’t usually not finish art quilts though. I have a couple that are not finished. One that is finished that I don’t like. At all. But mostly I finish them.

I’ve been watching a lot of British television this week while vegging out…River, which was good, Doctor Foster, which was OK, and just started The Bletchley Circle, which I like so far. I’ve been binge watching while doing art stuff all summer. I can’t always watch stuff, like when I’m quilting. But in the drawing and tracing stages, it works. Thank goddess for Netflix, right?

I did the zigzag chain stitch in the bottom right.

I can’t really focus on filling in at the moment apparently. So I keep doing something else on the edge.

Kathy on school (girlchild and I were snapchatting on location)…it’s my new 7th period prep, where I have literally no brain power to do anything.

Anyway. So there’s a damn good chance I’m gonna come home tonight and still have no energy to draw or even sew the rest of that green stem on. Oh well. It’s not the end of the world. It will get done. I just need to get some rest and adjust to the new shit. I’m disappointed that my school district is not letting us take kids out for the eclipse on Monday. Some liability issue. But I have a distinct and strong memory of one eclipse in elementary school, going outside with our pinhole papers and watching the eclipse happen. I’m not happy that I’m going to miss it either. This just sucks…here’s science right here, right now, exciting stuff happening, and we have to sit inside and watch it on the NASA feed. It’s unreal. It’s so contrary to what they always tell us to do in science, to give them experiences so they can discover shit. Not on the screen! Ah. Well. How can I sneak out during 4th period to see it? Figuring that out.

*Gillian Welch, Acony Bell

Shed Our Skin*

The first day of school is always exhausting, even when you don’t talk as much as you used to. Really. I try to talk way less than I used to. They don’t need to hear me all the time. They need space to hear what’s in their own heads and process it. I also got the opportunity to hear what they thought a good science teacher was…interesting. It gave me the opportunity to tell them that HELP doesn’t mean giving them the answers. It’s good that they’re hearing that on the first day.

I’m having to adjust my eating schedule to my new prep period, which is proving difficult. I think I’ll get used to it eventually, but I’m not there yet. And honestly, the real test is today, when I’m too tired and nauseous in the morning to want to eat a decent breakfast. I won’t make it to lunchtime if I don’t eat, but I don’t want anything right now. I will figure it out. Just not this morning (why I buy a few Evol breakfast things for the freezer…I’ll take it with me and hopefully be able to stomach it before the bell rings).

I managed to remember to bring my sketchbook with me to school, though…not so I could draw naked things during my prep (although I had a year when I did that, because everything else was so painful and I needed a place to park the depressive thoughts midday)…but so I could go enlarge the drawing of the head. Normally I do 250-300%, but this is already big, so I went for 200% instead. I copied the meditation angel that I finished as well, but I don’t know when I’ll have time to work on it.

When I got home, I succumbed to exhaustion. Even napped for the requisite 20 minutes (I was reading and fell asleep…I never used to fall asleep while reading. Proof of aging.). Literally couldn’t barely move off the couch for about 2 1/2 hours. It’s OK. It gets better. I just tell you that because of all the people who think I work relentless hours. Well maybe, but I have my exhausted moments too. It takes will power to get off the couch and work at 9 PM.

I finally ate dinner (hallelujah for leftovers) and was able to stand up and cut shit out. Actually, I did this first…

Orange feather stitch on the bottom left.

Then I took Tuesday night’s drawing and attached it to the drawing from early summer.

I got rid of the other incorrect bullet. I also started adding paper around the two pieces for what I’m seeing in my head. I don’t want her to be too huge or I won’t be able to finish her. I don’t want to talk about what I’m thinking yet either. This is a difficult concept for me to make obvious in a drawing. In fact, it may not end up being obvious at all. But I know what’s in my head and ideas are now trickling in about how to make it. It even has a title already. But not sharing yet. Still drawing. Probably will be for a few more days. Being tired doesn’t help. More standing after standing all day. Anyway. The hardest part is that the drawing is emotionally difficult, and then I’ve been watching all these British dramas that are kind of dark and difficult as well.

I guess it’s difficult times in which we live. Not as difficult as say the Dark Ages, but still. Not sure Netflix helps…binge watching is not always a good thing.

Calli sleeps through it all. She occasionally comes over and noses me for attention. Simba sleeps right next to me when I take breaks on the couch (feet hurt). Midnight too. Kitten was antisocial last night. Not sure why.

I’m feeling kinda lost by the kids being gone. I know they’ll be back in 124 days or so though (ah, apps…there is no mystery any more, is there?). But I miss them. And at some point, they won’t come back. That’s hard to think about.

I need to be finishing up the house tasks that didn’t get done over the summer (there are always many of them), but there’s no energy for that this week. Maybe Saturday. You know it’s bad when you can’t even pick up a needle or a pen. Well, for me, that’s really bad. I don’t just sit and watch TV unless I’m sick or exhausted.

Better next week. It will be.

*Ivy, Edge of the Ocean

Both of Us Searching for Some Perfect World*

Today is the official start of the school year…you know, the part where you realize on the first day that (a) you are woefully unprepared, even after 14+ years of teaching and (b) that kid who is already annoying will never ever ever be absent. I met and freaked out my first student yesterday. He shook my hand. That’s nice. No really, it is. In general, I really like my students, even the truly annoying ones. When they ask if I missed them, I say “Every day.” Well. Not for all of them. I am brutally honest with some of them, but once they’ve been with me all year, they would expect nothing less. But today…today I just mispronounce about 140 names and try to start memorizing faces. Honestly, though, if I remember a kid’s name on the first day, they were highly notable in one of a few ways, none of them probably good. I do forget them over time, though. I always tell the kids there will be someone else like them in the next year, so one of my old students that showed up yesterday wants me to introduce her to The New Her. Because she thinks they can be friends. I love that. Not upset that she’s not supremely unique…just wants to make friends with herself.

Anyway, we try to start every year with the right positive mindset, to make sure the stuff that always drives us bonkers won’t do that this year (ever hopeful)…meditation and mindfulness has been incredibly helpful with this, although I still honestly suck at it, I think.

I did good yesterday. My room is mostly done…

I’ve got more fussy bits to do, adding pictures and putting labels on folders. Fun stuff.

And then I went to pick up my quilt from the photographer…I’m still debating the name.

As always, they’re better in person.

What’s also better is finishing it three weeks before the deadline…

Mostly because there’s a deadline right after it…

It’s the smallest and least complicated quilt I’ve made in many a summer. Evidence that the summer was large and complicated.

Made dinner and did two nights’ worth on this…the green feather stitch and red double lazy daisies on the top.

With both kids gone, I have a lot of animal interaction…

She knocks everything else off, but generally leaves my teacup alone.

So I have the next deadline. The drawing has one part done. It’s been enlarged and has been sitting around since the beginning of summer, I think. Not that it’s done any good, because honestly, I just throw a bunch of images and shapes and ideas around in my head until it all makes sense. Sometimes I do a bunch of preliminary drawings, just to figure out where my head is going. But last night, I finally sat down with one of the many images in my head and started drawing.

I got schooled in bullet shape post-shooting, which is fine. I’m actually OK with not knowing what they look like afterwards, but I did change them for the drawing.

This cat has partied too hard.

And I got to here. I need to enlarge it and combine it with the other piece to figure out what else is going on.

But by the time I got to that point, the copy place was about to close. I knew I couldn’t get there in time, so I’ll do that after school. The post-it has ideas for what else needs to be on there. Now that I have this, I can try some other stuff out in my head.

So it wasn’t bedtime yet…and this drawing wasn’t done. I think it is now…

I like how it turned out. She’s way mellower than I feel. Then again, she’s not starting the first day of school in an hour. So hopefully I’ll be drawing again tonight. That’s not a bad place to be.

*Thompson Twins, Hold Me Now

(Move out) Don’t Mess Around*

So I’m running on about 3 hours of sleep. Woo! I think the boychild is on a plane that took off 5 minutes ago. Unless he fell asleep in the terminal. In which case, um, well, he’ll call eventually, right? Certainly after this morning’s “I’m awake” proclamation that was an obvious lie, I will probably never trust him to be up when he says he is again. Ah well. He obviously does not have the crazy morning adrenaline that his mother, a teacher, has. The alarm goes off? We hit the ceiling running. Or at least stumbling.

Luckily I will be dealing with ZERO kids today. OK, that’s sad in terms of my own children, but it’s a damn good thing there will be no students today, because I’m gonna crash at some point. But before that, I need to get my room set up. I’m mostly ready to go do that, except I need about 5 more cups of tea. British tea. Twice the caffeine.

Anyway. The events in Virginia over the weekend are still on my mind, especially after I saw a few posts that the Alt-Right is planning on taking its idiocy across the country to a wide variety of colleges. I don’t advocate violence. Ever. Well. That’s not true, but we can have that conversation later. I do advocate for about a thousand peaceful protesters who are pro-human to show up and surround Alt-Righters anywhere they think to gather. To stand with signs and stare them down. Photograph them. Tweet their angry faces and Hitler T-shirts. Call Them on Their Shit. I’d advocate for getting them fired, but honestly, that’s just going to add to their feelings of injustice. And trying to brainwash them into consciousness is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange. “Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” Plus this…

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Although it’s tempting. I just don’t think it would be effective. And I can’t argue that harassment would be either. We don’t like it when the trolls come after female gamers for not having penises…it’s not OK to advocate harassment for the trolls either. I’d like to hear what they have to say, although with Peter Cvjetanovic, it’s not like he makes more sense when he tries to explain himself. Frustrating.

So yeah. I didn’t get much done yesterday. The boy and I tried to get the bedroom straightened up…vacuumed. He packed. Managed to fit it all in his bags (I don’t know how). We ate dinner at the parentals. Facetimed the girlchild. Normal Sunday, I guess. I tried to get some school stuff organized for today and next week. And at the last minute, we tried to migrate everything over to gmail for me. We’ll see if that works. Probably should have done it earlier in the summer so he could troubleshoot it for me. Oh well. I’m not internet stupid most of the time.

I did the feather on the right…the orange was for Saturday (although I did it Sunday) and then I filled in with purple for Sunday…

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Then as I was sitting at the parentals, I worked on the right side of this one…finished the tortoise and the blue flower.

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Then I came home and eventually started drawing her.

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I’ve had ideas about meditation poses for a while this summer. I meant for her to be more upset, but in the end, she wasn’t. I guess that’s a good thing. She’s not done. But I like the shapes. A good start. More drawing. Nope, this isn’t the one I’m supposed to be drawing, but it was all I could handle last night.

It’s always hard when the kids leave. Girlchild was only here for 2 weeks, but boychild’s been home for almost 3 months. Empty nest again. May they stay safe. That might be need to be true for all of us.

*Yazoo, Situation

Please Don’t Bother Trying to Find Her*

Most summers I manage to make some monster of a quilt, something with 2200 pieces that measures the size of a refrigerator or something. Not so this summer. Too much cleaning and other work. I did finish one though. Well. First I have to embroider a bunch of eyeballs that I decided NOT to cut out of tiny pieces of fabric for once. I know, right? I totally forgot about the eyeballs last night. I came home from school exhausted, ordered pizza and sewed binding for about 3 hours straight. Because that was easier than thinking about anything. The quilt goes to the photographer tomorrow, and now I need to do eyeballs this morning. No problem. That’s easy. But I was already in bed and about to turn the lights out when I remembered the eyeballs thing. So I put a reminder on the calendar…so yes, my phone keeps popping up with a reminder that says Embroider Eyeballs.

It’s all good. Artistically arranged puppy good.

He was helping me. That background…think it came from one of the donated piles of fabric. It got well used. There’s about 5″ of it left, which I could realistically use in a quilt somewhere.

I’m trying to be a responsible fabric user…haven’t bought a backing fabric in a year or so. I just reduce and reuse.

She’s long and skinny, that’s for sure. About 68″ long (so taller than I am).

I’ll post official photos next week. I don’t have total hours yet either…since the eyeballs still need embroidery.

One of the things that’s interesting about this quilt is in the time analysis. It’s probably the same size as the Bathtub quilts, except it’s long and skinny. But it had almost twice as many pieces than the most complicated one of the Bathtubs. It took much longer to trace pieces and iron them, but the same amount of time to quilt. The amount of detail is greater, but the length of the stitching line is about the same? This analysis helps me figure out how to estimate future quilts, both time and price. And to try to control some of my detail tendencies…but it does explain why size doesn’t matter.

Which reminds me, The Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos is currently in Birmingham, England, at their Festival of Quilts.

She no longer belongs to me…but I have another meditation-pose piece in my head at the moment. I should draw that. Is there time for that in my crazy schedule?

More stuff in the feather stitches…straight stitches and some French knots, filling in space. That’s the official title of this thing, by the way…Filling in Space.

Then my brain froze. I was exhausted by the conference yesterday…really more a matter of too much interaction (900 teachers is a lot of interaction) than actual physical exhaustion, like what teaching does to you. I had to get up way too early and I didn’t sleep well the night before. I seem to be alternating between stressy interrupted sleep and conking out the next night. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I think I was talking about this Sue Spargo BOM Bird Crazy (oh wait, that’s not the real name…that’s what I call it…it’s called Bird Dance) last summer, about all I needed to do was to trim the blocks and sew them together and then put borders on, and I was debating that, because it seemed easier to sew the 96 circles in the border on before sewing the borders on the rest, but they do need to BE in a certain place, and that’s a pain in the butt without having them sewn on. SO. I didn’t do anything. They’ve been sitting in this box on the couch since then. Like a year (I just looked it up. I finished the last bird on July 29 last year…the BOM from 2013.). You have to be impressed by that, right? You don’t even know how many soccer games these bird blocks saw…so with my braindead brain, I went and trimmed all those fuckers down to the same size (well, except for the two that are not quite big enough). Which I was going to do last August. And didn’t. And then once you’ve done that, you’ve got to sew them together because you just cut off all the knots that are keeping the embroidery in place.

So I laid them out. The cat was NOT helping.

Luckily I could just follow her picture, because if I’d had to make decisions about what went where, we’d be sitting here in 2020 trying to figure that shit out. And I started sewing them together…until I got distracted by moving the bed and fixing the shower faucet and then stressed out about how I never ever ever get my house clean and organized. EVER. I’m going to finish sewing them together today and put the borders on though, because this is something that can be completed and checked off a list and that’s a good thing right now. I really should be panicking more about school at this point, but I can’t even.

It’ll be a year at least before I get 96 balls sewn on and embellished. No worries about a quick finish on this. And the other BOM of hers that I finished? Still pinbasted from last year. Oh yeah.

So I went to bed way too late last night because I was cleaning at 1 AM, you know, like you do. Because if someone can answer the question of What the Fuck Do I Do with All the School Shirts I Have That I Don’t Like to Wear? Well I’ve got a reward of some type for you. Like a bunch of school shirts I’m thinking. I even got rid of like 5 of them already.

Then the dog started barking early this morning (up way way way too late last night) at the construction next door (will it NEVER END???) and boychild made good smells throughout the house (clearing out the freezer I believe)…

Both kids can cook. And it’s not because of me. Impressive. He leaves Monday. It’s gonna be a rough week. And I have to try to start drawing the next quilt, because it has to be done in 80 days. Well, before that, so it can be photographed. No problem. (ha ha ha) But first the damn embroidered eyeballs.

*The Zombies, She’s Not There

War! What Is It Good for?

I was not very efficient yesterday. It’s OK. It happens. We can’t always go go go every minute of every day. I wanted to be done quilting, and I’m not. I need to go buy binding today though. I’m done with the outlining and I started the background stuff. I don’t expect it to take very long…

She has eyeballs! So I’m gonna finish that today and go get the binding fabric. Which means now I have to finish the other drawing. The drawing that has not fully coalesced in my head. The drawing that needs to come from somewhere difficult. Sigh. OK. So I need to find mental space for that. In between starting school and trying to finish up the bedroom and sending the boychild back to college. Hmmmm. OK. Yeah.

Drawing sounds nice actually. Sitting on the deck with some tea or wine and drawing. Music playing while the neighbor kids scream their tiny little guts out (oh wait). Turning the music up and making sure it has lots of swear words in it (I don’t actually do that…I just think about doing it.). Getting out the flamethrower…oh wait. Also not appropriate.

Right now I’m sitting here, reveling in the bird sounds, the sound of faraway dogs barking, the sound of my pool needing to have the filter cleaned. Aargh.

OK, I did some stitches around the hand, in between some of the buttonhole spiky bits. And lazy daisies in purple…still filling those in.

And then I went to book club to discuss a book I didn’t finish. And they forgot to bring my food. It was interesting though…I think of war as a distinctly male thing…even when we’re talking about the queens in the past who have started wars, I kind of think their upbringing was distinctly male in some ways, to make sure they would react that way if needed, or maybe they weren’t really allowed to make decisions without approval by all these men around them. Or they were raised to be leaders of a country and that meant they should automatically consider war, no matter what. Or they are just anomalies.

I have this picture in my head of a world run by women where the first thing we do is NOT bomb the shit out of people. And maybe that’s just my age showing, because the younger members of the book club were arguing that it is not just a male thing, that women want war all the time too (I don’t know any of these women…but I don’t know a lot of men who want war either…product of my choice in friends I think.). I also blame religion for wars personally, or at least for this feeling that something needs to be other and other needs to be bad. But maybe that’s just human nature, a leftover of the brain aiming for survival. I think of wars as being pissing matches, this power against that power, and that feels very masculine to me, very testosterone-driven. If I were male, would I feel more warlike? Maybe not. I know men who aren’t. Did women-run societies run toward war? See the queens might have been in charge, but those weren’t female-run societies in the long run. So you do what you need to do to survive?

Anyway. As we sit here on the West Coast with two male dumbasses waving their peni at each other and us in the middle, it’s hard for me not to associate war and powermongering with a certain type of person.

Honestly though, that’s not helping me get through what I want to get through today. So I’ll think about my assumptions and maybe read some stuff and try to keep an open mind. While I build a bomb shelter in the backyard. That’s a drawing right there. Aack! Don’t have time for all this in my head…OK. I liked. I just went and bought a book on war and gender. Light reading for the back-to-school set.

Now let’s go back in time to 2004, when the girlchild was only 7, and consider the fact that she is now 20…

And she’s still always hanging out with dogs…miss that kid.

Last Hike of Summer Vacation

Today the boychild and I hiked to celebrate the girlchild’s 20th birthday, because she is 3000 miles away and wouldn’t have hiked that far with us if she were here. Or maybe it was just the last day of summer vacation where I could actually find the time to hike at a reasonable temperature (time is irrelevant in Southern California summers…temperature is the determinant factor of hiking time). Yeah, that’s it. Boychild leaves Monday and it’s been a while since we hiked for realz, so he picked one hike and I vetoed it because climbing mountains is not good for me right now, and then he and I decided we could figure out random trails (really, I figured that HE could figure it out, and he did) to try to make a loop out of something we’ve done as an out as far as the girlchild can possible stand it and then back (which usually ends up being 5 miles or so, but because she was only there in spirit, we managed just over 7 miles). AND…there was fog in the morning, which was abso-fucking-lutely delightful. Seriously. Cool wet fog. Who woulda thought?

But wait. Because I am chronological. Tuesday night, I did some of this in the feather stitching again…a fly stitch with a straight stitch…

Kitten is more playful when the dogs are gone…

Then I quilted…about 2 1/2 hours yesterday…

Then Windows tried to auto-update and killed my computer…

Boychild fixed it this morning.

More quilting…

All I have left is the head and the rocket and the spaceship…and then the whole damn background. I was going to get some done today, but that hasn’t happened yet. It will.

So we got up bloody early to beat the heat and went out to the Crestridge Ecological Reserve, which had mostly no people, a few coyotes, one tiny snake, and a shitload of bunnies.

I haven’t been out here for a couple of summers…

Yes, the sun eventually came out, but it wasn’t too hot out there. Sweaty, but not hot. And poison oak, yes. Right there. At one point where the trail was kinda not trail-like, I was inching around a poison oak bush and talking to it about not touching me.

Yup. Proof the girlchild was with us in spirit. Left by the side of the trail.

She whines on hikes. Unless there’s chocolate. And sometimes even if there IS chocolate. Lots of old trees…

And some transmission towers for the noise effect.

There’s those towers after hiking a mile further on…

Pretty much this is always my view, behind the spiderweb destroyer…

The trail had been hit hard by last winter’s rains…at least this part of it. This would be the off-the-beaten-path part of what we did.

I think he has air!

This part was blocked off…the ditches are taller than I am…

I saw lots of whatever this is (Julie!)…

More ditches…to be avoided so no broken ankles.

We went around and up to and past that water tower…

Up up up. Yeah. It’s warm. It’s near the end. He trudges on, happily. I’m tired.

But I did it. Only an 800-foot gain though. That’s about right for the bad shape I’m in. A good end to the summer hiking with the boy. Man. Whatever. That kid of mine.

OK. Need to finish the quilting and put a binding on that sucker. But first? Chiropractor. He’ll be amused by my morning activity. I always wait until he does the first check and asks, so what the hell have you been doing? My back is fucked up differently based on whether I’ve been quilting, hiking, lifting weights, or grading papers. He loves it. Really.