The Goddess of Something…

So I have two quilts in Daytona Beach right now…with the AQS circuit. So enjoy Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

I keep forgetting about the pieces traveling with all the quilt shows. I have a real shortage of work in house at the moment. I know, it’s an elegant problem to have, unless you have shows to enter and nothing with which to enter. I have two coming up where I think I just can’t enter. That kind of sucks. Oh well. I made decisions about what to enter where, and this is what happens. It’s kind of a bloody miracle I’ve gotten the last two pieces done in time for the shows I figured they were made for. So there. Keep making work. I love the chaos of the Lifejacket piece. Should remember that for the next big one. Maybe blow off the themes that are coming up and just MAKE something.

You’ve got a few more days to see the exhibit at Grossmont…we’re pulling it down next Saturday. Hoping to get a little more press out of it.

And I got photos back from the photographer of the new piece…

Her name is still in my brain, working its way out, so just know it’s the Goddess of something, I’m not sure exactly what yet. Possibly everything. Just like me…I’m the Goddess of something…of cleaning up cat puke. Of coupons. Of paperwork. Of Google Classroom. Of the bougainvillea. Of multi-tasking. Of blueberry oat bars. That seems like enough.

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

Hard to see anything, because I’m still in pencil, because I don’t wanna fuck it up. I think the male figure is almost ready for ink. Then I’ll need to turn it upside down to do the other female…and figure out what’s going on with the hair. And the empty spots. Probably should figure out the main figure’s hair before I draw his wings. You know, like you do.

I’m really annoyed by empty spots. I like to fill everything in. I blame Richard Scarry. And Dr. Suess. OK, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

I saw this last night. There were two, but there was a guy in the way of the second one. Please sir, move so I can photograph the scary faces.

And Midnight is in her standard place.

I’m buried in grading. I have a ton of yardwork and housework. I still need to finish taxes and start financial aid. I can’t deal with any of it right this second. I’m too tired. Sad! That said, I got up at a reasonable hour, finished grading tests and another assignment, then did yardwork, drew, ate, and I think I showered in there. I think I’m going to spend an hour trying to draw some more and then give up for the day. Because. Because I have to hang out with humans for some period of time or I go a bit bonkers. More than I already am. There’s a fine line between the bonkers that keeps me going and making stuff and the bonkers that throws me down the hole. I’m staying above ground right now. Need to keep doing that.

Slow Percolation

First of all, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I’ve had something (probably animal) waking me up every night around 2 AM and sometimes I’m so hyped afterwards that falling back to sleep is just troubled. Last night it was the mockingbird…the one that visits every year. Last year I was lucky and he (she?) hung out at the neighbors’, just far enough away that I could hear him while I was falling asleep, but not like when they live in your yard. Last night, he was in my yard. Move on, you bastard!

Then I woke up with a start at about 4 AM…someone kept saying “low battery.” What the fuck? Oh yeah, the smoke alarm. Pillow over head again until it started that loud horrendous screeching that I will appreciate only if there ever is a fire or…well, my house is so leaky airwise that there will never be a carbon monoxide leak big enough for me to have an issue. So at 4 AM, I was switching out batteries. The dog was mightily confused by the timing of all of it. And falling back to sleep was not easy.

I actually took a nap yesterday evening. Just 20 minutes. Power mom nap. Yeah baby.

My counselor is trying to graduate me…I get it. I’m not clinically depressed any more. That’s a good thing. But I still want balance in my life and we went through and listed everything and work has to give. It’s the only healthy thing. Can’t sleep less or exercise less or art less. Work is the time suck. Like I didn’t know that.

Moving on to the art stuff. I did grade last night, so I didn’t start artmaking stuff until almost 11. I started with the easy stuff, the cutting and taping. It’s rhythmic, meditative. Cut. Measure. Tape. Cut again. Measure. Draw a line. Cut.

So the finished size on this needs to be 16×24″…I measured the paper at 15×23″ to give me some space for a binding, and then I’m going to try to stay about a 1/2 inch inside. Maybe. Maybe not.

Damn thing is tiny. Anyway. I then stared at it for a while, trying to have a vision. It is kinda like that. I stare at the paper until what needs to fill in the space appears in my head. There’s some little elf in there, or a gnome or something, that’s drawing on a white board while someone else erases, trying to find something I like, because sometimes I’ll get picture after picture and almost shake my head like an Etch a Sketch (you would laugh to see all the words I just typed into Google because I couldn’t remember the name of those things). And then one will stick and I’ll draw it. It’s a slow percolation process. Nothing fast and furious.

I gave up on the staring and started to tape the two larger drawings together. This is Bathtub 6, I think.

It’s the creepy one. Some part of me wants to draw more around it, but the minimalist in me (which rarely surfaces) says it should stay the way it is.

Then I taped this one…tentatively named Heart-Shaped Box. It needs a lot more drawing…more room on the bottom. I think. Anyway, it’s there for when I want to work on it. You can see how much bigger it is because the first drawing is up in the top right.

I have another huge one that will probably be a triptych just so it’s not overwhelming to quilt…maybe that’s something to draw during Spring Break, since I will have hours and hours of alone time. Huh. Not looking forward to that…except I am. Difficult. This will be the first school vacation where I’m not visiting someone else or having the kids come home. I need to do yardwork like every day. Ugh.

So I finally picked up a pencil! (Sion is happy now…) Because I didn’t want to fuck it up.

Good thing really because I had to redraw the lower figure about 5 times. Still not sure what to do with the heads. Gotta let the gnomes do their white board thang. Will have to get back to you on the heads. Even hers needs something. Hair? Who knows. Why keep it so simple? Oh yeah, because the pieces are gonna be freakin’ tiny. I’m not enlarging this one. Need to remember that so I don’t go crazy later.

Cut and Tape

Tired morning. Sleep is messy. Whatever woke me up at 2 AM didn’t bother the dog. The cat was as alert as I was, but she gets to sleep all day, curled up in my laundry. (Doesn’t that sound nice? I should have been a cat.) Me? I’m a little on the edge of irritable and crazy. Nothing new there.

I was so efficient yesterday afternoon. Walked the dog…three miles uphill. OK. The whole three miles is not uphill. But the hill was easier than it was on Saturday. This is good. Then I came home and ran errands and talked to girlchild, who was trying to figure out insurance crap.

After dinner, I finished grading one WHOLE assignment (OK, I had 2 out of 5 periods already done, but whatever) and then I worked on some fabric hobby stuff, something I’m not allowed to show you, but Sue Spargo wool embroidery stuff, which really just gives my head a place to rest sometimes when it’s all over the map, wanting to be creative and stitchy, but not able to focus on that for whatever reason. So I traced freezer paper for two blocks and cut out the freezer paper, and now I can move on to the next step. It was enough to calm the brain down and let it focus. Unfortunately it was then also really late.

Sigh. Yeah. I know why I’m always tired. I don’t sleep enough or well. Really, I never have. Even as a kid. Not sure about as a baby. But never a deep sleeper.

So I did get up off the couch and try to deal with the stuff I’d copied. At least some sense of artistic achievement most nights, right? That’s what keeps Kathy happy and sane?

So I copied the one from Tuesday night. I stood there debating for a while if the part I cut off (on the left) would make a cool small art quilt all by itself.

Yeah. The composition is kinda cool. But I don’t want to make one that looks like the other one. So I recycled it. Now I need to add paper to this, measure the final size, and decide how I’m going to do the rest.

Then I had my smaller sketchbook, the one that travels with me. There were three drawings in there that I thought would make interesting smaller quilts. I enlarged them 200%. Honestly, with all the detail, I could have gone to 300%, but then I wouldn’t be in the smaller quilt range. I taped together all the pieces to get the one I was going to do next…

Sort of a reminder of Earth Mother for Ventura in some ways. No boobs! Technically no nudity. I couldn’t enter my local SAQA show this year because I had nothing small enough with no nudity from recent years. Guess that says something about me…and my local SAQA show. Oh well.

These all started in a sketchbook that’s about 9×12″, so these are about 18×24″ or so. Here’s the second one…

She looks like she’s related to the one above. One was done on the plane home from dropping the girlchild at college in Boston. The other was done either on the way to or from Seattle for Thanksgiving. I guess planes are my new sketching arena. Too bad I don’t spend much time on them?

This last one was drawn while watching Mockingjay. So there goes the plane theory!

It’s a reminder of another older one, although it doesn’t look like it at all…just a vague reminder. These spiral-shaped women often show up in my drawings.

So that’s three smaller ones plus the other one that needs to be done by the end of March (should get my butt going on that one).

I also copied two larger ones, out of the 14×17″ sketchbook. They’re both older…

One is the most recent of the bathtub series, a kind of creepy one…I can’t find it at the moment, although I know it’s filed somewhere. Oh well. And the other one is something I started drawing a long time ago but it wouldn’t fit on the paper. So I enlarged it to be able to draw the rest. No rush. Maybe it’s the next big one. Maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s a start anyway. I have some directions to go once the next have-to is finished. It would be good to have some smaller art pieces around this year I think. Don’t worry. There will be a big one. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Or whether I’ll draw a new one.

So tired still. Work calls. It’s kind of a whiny bitch, but I can’t ignore it.

White-Out Is My Friend

I have this crazy-ass dog (it’s my daughter’s dog) who likes to go in the pool. She just wades in up to her belly and wiggles around a bit, but then wants to come straight back in the house, which means a 5-minute struggle with a dripping Golden Retriever and a towel. Most days she just goes in once, but some days, it’s 3 or 4 times and all the towels are wet and I’m going a bit bonkers, because she’s like a big smelly 2-year-old.

I have this wacky cat who started out by finding all my hair scrunchies (yeah criticize all you like…I’m not and never will be a fashion maven) and dropping them all over the house. Once every couple of days, I find all of them, pick them up, and deposit them in the bathroom so she can start over. She’s recently started doing the same thing with pairs of socks and apparently with one flipflop (would have liked to see that in action).

The other cat, also the girlchild’s, has recently become overly needy, wanting to knead your belly into submission, which would be fine if the claws were not part of the process. She’s very pushy about her needs, biting you if you don’t continue the never-ending petting. She’s also a fat beast of a cat, so that doesn’t help.

Some nights I come home and feel like I am needed more here than at school…and after a long day of whiny stuff at school (from the parents, no less), it’s nice to sometimes have a break from the three furry creatures. Last night was not one of those nights. It’s OK. They love me (most of the time) and need me (way too much). Right now, I only have two of them in here with me, so I’m doing OK.

I graded for a while last night…I’m trying to do a bit every night so I don’t get too frustrated, but last night, about halfway through one minor assignment with only one period, I was about to chuck the computer through the wall. I’ve taught what organ systems are…multiple times. I even showed a short reminder video before we started the assignment, so they would know what the systems were…again…because I’ve taught them multiple times, but I realized I was having to repeat my instructions over and over. “Organs work together in a system. Name one of the systems? Yes. Cardiovascular is a system. Digestive is a system.” And this is my highest-level class, so it should be fine, right? Oh holy heaven, some teacher goddess must be out there for us, because I needed support. There were multiple kids that were so far off that I wanted to bang my head on the desk…so far off, I don’t even know how they found the answers they did (because they will say, that’s what the internet SAID! And I will scream at the top of my lungs and run flailing out of the classroom into the street some day when a kid tells me that…because I’m not allowed to simply say…”Bullshit. Show me where you found that.”). I bullied through though, because honestly, if a kid can’t figure out (after I modeled the first one even) what I’m asking for, and doesn’t have the guts to ask me (OK, I might have gone off if he had, because like I said, already TAUGHT you this multiple times, why aren’t you freakin’ listening, is it because you have a hearing problem or I’m not speaking clearly or what the fuck?), then they deserve the F they just earned for not doing what I asked them to do.

This year has been so frustrating so far…we are almost 2/3s of the through and I don’t know how I am going to survive the last trimester.

This is why I stop the working part at some point in the night and move on to less crazy-making shit, although last night, even that was an issue. So I had an idea for what I wanted for the next piece, which isn’t very big, so I have to watch how crazy I draw…nothing too tiny (I think I’ve already blown that). But I started…the main figure was fine, but then I tried to decide how to add the secondary figures, and that’s where it went all to hell…

That is so not working.

It happens…especially when I haven’t been drawing regularly for a while. And yeah, people are like, look you crazy woman…you’re drawing with Sharpie, not pencil…what do you expect? I get this flow with the Sharpie that I never get with a pencil. I like it. And my drawings aren’t the final product, so I don’t care if I mess up and have to use white-out. And I rarely DO have to use white-out.

The bottom arm on the left was fixed…but the rest of the body just wasn’t working. At all. So I got rid of the whole body.

And then I drew a face.

Now you can see the body under her arms is gone (but that one boob is giant-looking in this photo)…I’m actually going to go copy this to size and try to draw the rest. I might even use pencil to start. It happens. But I’m much closer than where I was before, so that’s a good thing, because this whole coming home and NOT having a project in progress, where I can just pick it up and do the next step or continue what I was doing…well, I’m not liking that. I’ve been pretty much booked solid on projects for months now. And it’s not like I don’t still have a deadline. I do. I just don’t have the next step ready to go yet. When school is this frustrating, I need a nice outlet in the evenings. Really. I do. Every night.

So I’ll copy this one and another one that I think will make a good quilt if I enlarge it and draw the rest. And another smaller one, so I should find that sketchbook too. Letting my art brain lie fallow is not a good plan. Especially if the only other thing I have is incredibly frustrating student work that makes me want to throw my computer into the pool. After the dog. Yeah. Bad plan.

Pen on Paper…

I’ve had this idea in my head for days and finally last night after school and the gym and dinner and then grading stuff, where my mood slid from acceptable into dark and grim (actually, that might have been after completing the FAFSA), I drew. Finally. But I don’t like it. And that’s OK. I mean, it has its moments and it was something to do with the pen last night so hopefully I can get my head where it needs to be for the drawing of the next quilt.

I have this book I’ve owned since before I was divorced (so officially a million years ago) of mastectomy nudes. I can’t even remember where I got it or why, but the scar has been in my head. It’s visible maybe. So many scars aren’t. The drawing isn’t done, but I’m not sure I will finish it, because the next one is niggling at me and that’s the one I need right now. Plus another one is tickling at my amygdala. Man, that’s a hard word to spell. Maybe I should just draw every night this week. Don’t worry about fabric right now, although damn, there was a quilt top that was squealing at me last night, like a teenaged girl who just got asked out for the first time.

I think my moods are full-on hormone-related, because my body is confused as heck about what it should be doing and they hit like a random summer storm…no warning, just BAAM. And you’re out. And down. And wow. Seriously? I did not deserve that.

In response, I made a Starbucks fake of their blueberry oat bars and they are so damn good that I had to freeze 3/4’s of them so I wouldn’t eat them all in a week. Seriously. These things are good. Now I just need to rework them so the calories aren’t so heinous. It’s fine if you just eat one. I want it to be fine if I eat two.

More pinups below…then I have a parent meeting. Ugh. I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t fall asleep. Stupid brain.

By Marea Korea…

Jacki Geary…

Lauren Grant…

Chelsea Wilde…

I can’t explain why I pick the ones I do. But there they are. There’s more…but I have to go do my job.

Art…It’s What’s for Dinner…

The part that sucks about finishing a really time-consuming piece, even early, is that all the stuff you blew off in order to get it done is still waiting there, sometimes not very patiently, like a Rottweiler behind the door, slavering, ready to attack.

I spent all weekend working pretty much. Lots and lots of hours of grading and lesson prep and trying to do taxes and FAFSA. Trying to just find all the paperwork to do those things and make sense of the federal government’s wording and questions. Even the help box doesn’t clear it up. Luckily, there’s Google. I’ll be glad when the kids are done and I don’t have to do this any more…I just will be paying it off. It’s ironic that my scrambling to make more money so that I can pay college bills will probably result in their qualifying for less aid. Frustrating! Cornell seems to understand how much money I have available. Too bad Brandeis is less helpful.

Four weeks until Spring Break though. I’m alternately looking forward to having some time off (already!) and worried that it will be too many hours with just me. Inevitably, I will have plenty to do. At least one art quilt, hopefully two in process by then. Plus the yard. The yard is a disaster. So is the house. I keep considering getting a roommate, although they’d have to move out for the summer, but I can’t behave well enough for a roomie. They’d have to tolerate my late nights, sometimes sewing on the machine with music blasting, my inability to clean. The crazy-ass cooking I sometimes do late at night. I made to-die-for blueberry oat bars last night. They’re a knock-off of the Starbucks ones, and they’re not the healthiest things in the world, but holy hell, are they good. I’m gonna have to freeze them so I don’t eat all of them.

Anyway. So the weekend was a clusterfuck for art…except I finished the binding on the quilt in progress and will be delivering it to the photographer today, a full week early. Whoo! And I went to an opening Saturday night. But that was a plus and a minus…

There’s this new place in town called La Bodega Gallery and it’s in this huge old building with soaring ceilings that are a little ragged. And they throw a LOT of shows. I don’t know how much traffic they get during the week, but they’re open 9-5 M-F. Or 12-5…it’s hard to say. Anyway, the thing I love about this gallery is that they get a LOT of traffic, they get a ton of people coming in to see the art. Part of this is because it’s changing up its exhibits every two weeks or so, and they tend to be popular themes, like the Frida Kahlo exhibit last year and the Star Wars one in December. The exhibits sometimes are invite-only and sometimes they put out a call, although honestly, they don’t give a lot of heads up on some of them. The show I saw Saturday was a Pin-Up exhibit and the call went out in mid-January. I couldn’t have done something for that (honestly, I don’t really do pin-ups anyway). But the biggest issue with them is that there doesn’t seem to be a curating process…there’s no culling of the bad stuff. And this time there was some seriously amateurish stuff. But then you see mom taking a picture of her kids in front of the piece dad painted and you think, eh, there’s the future art community maybe. It’s definitely more low-brow than some of the exhibits I go to…in fact, if you go later than 7 PM, odds are you can’t even get photos of the art because it’s so crowded.

So. There’s that. But we went and I got pictures of some good pieces, although I didn’t get them all resized today…running late! I don’t know why. Some perfect trifecta of work, laundry, and dishwasher. Or something. They all need assistance.

They don’t usually have a lot of fiber in these shows, so this one really stood out…even if it’s biologically inaccurate…

By DeAnna Munoz

And this right next to it…which had no name or number I could find.

Everything is for sale…that crotch is a little terrifying.

There were lots of guns in with the pin-ups. Somewhat disturbing as well.

This by Raz Holly. I’ve liked his stuff before. I’ll post more over the next few days. There’s always some interesting stuff and sometimes some stuff that you’d consider dropping $50 on. And they bring art to the masses…I just wish they’d edit sometimes. See…even when I don’t MAKE art, there’s still art.

My next step is a drawing. Gotta make time for that. Maybe I can start tonight…we’ll see. Still battling the FAFSA and taxes for now. Also grades. But I want to get started on the next quilt soon. I don’t like not having something to pick up when I’m having a bad day.

What Next?

With very little stitching left on the new quilt, which is being photographed Monday (that’s one in January, one in February people…don’t expect that level of crazy to continue), I’m already looking forward to the next quilt. Except it’s supposed to relate to a larger piece of mine. And I’m sure some of the artists, maybe the painters, can do two pieces in a month, but I can’t, certainly not while teaching at the same time. Then the show is about feminism, or at least the things listed on the prospectus, which leaves it pretty wide open: sexism, body image, class, race, family, gender politics, biology, history, etc. But I have a ton of my newer quilts out traveling or already promised to shows. Or they’ve been entered in shows and I won’t hear until too late if they got in or not. So I can’t base a new small quilt on a piece that might not be here for the exhibit.

So I started making a list of what was available. Like Tsunami…

I do love this quilt, but it’s more of an Earth Mother quilt. I have lots of those. And I don’t know if that’s got anything to do with feminism, except that we have a history of earth as mother, which probably leads into the female as caretaker…not just of the world, but of children and husbands and houses and food. But I think I’m pushing it with that. And I’m not getting a hit for a smaller quilt that goes with that idea.

Then there’s Spread Out on the Pavement…

Made it into Quilt National. Funny I really don’t like this quilt. Seriously. I originally drew the body, head and part of the car back in 2002, as my marriage was dissolving. Then I pulled it out 10 years later, finally able to process it, and added the rest of the truck (now it was a truck) and the eyeball tree. It has all the things that are supposed to make you feel better: meds, chicken soup. It’s not a happy quilt. Which isn’t the problem. It’s about a failed relationship. I have lots of quilts about that shit and I don’t really want to dwell on it right now. And I guess it’s gender politics, but it’s not speaking to me.

Then there’s this one…One of My Kind…

I love this quilt. This is four generations of women in my family (plus the boychild, who loves that his naked ass is up there). This is all the connections and history of being a single mom, my mom holding all the things she taught me, my grandmother, long dead, her bones still in me, still part of me. Not all good, of course…she had some crazy ideas about race and my daughter’s name that kind of drove me nuts, but isn’t that how you decide who and how to be? Based on not only the good stuff you saw growing up in your family, but also the bad stuff. Stuff to avoid. My daughter mentioned something about how I had reacted to something my parents had pushed when I was younger, how they dealt with my college choices versus how I dealt with my own children’s choices. We learn from the shit we don’t like as much as from the shit we do like.

It’s a powerful quilt…that’s never gotten into any show but the one it’s in now, the one I put it in. Totally feminist. No problem. Easily could do a smaller quilt related to this. But it’s HUGE. And if there are going to be lots of other people in this show, I don’t know if I can get away with such a large piece. I’m debating emailing the curators about it. Because there are other choices. The other issue is that a lot of the people in this group have already seen the piece in the Grossmont show. In fact, about three of the pieces I thought about for this exhibit are hanging in Grossmont right now, so maybe they should just be out of play.

This is Here…it’s actually the first one I thought of…

But I have shitty pictures of it. Wonder if I should rephotograph. This one is old. It’s about being female, but mostly about breast cancer. A friend was dealing with treatments and this came out of me. I already have an idea for a smaller version of this, and it does apply to body image and biology, so it’s an easy fit. It’s also a smaller quilt. So…we’ll see.

I also considered this one, So Deep, So Wide…

But the feminist link is sketchy. And there are other reasons I don’t want to use it.

And this one, Held Hostage…which needs new photography.

And is all about the biology but doesn’t even have a uterus.

And High Tide…about being a single mom…

But not really what I want.

So I’m down to two possibilities. Emailing the curators now. That might just make the decision for me.

Then I can draw. But I need to do a bunch of schoolwork first. Heinously behind in grading. It’s a gorgeous day. Gonna sit inside and stare at a computer screen. Not by choice. It just has to be done. But at least I’ve worked my brain around this new quilt a little bit.

Bound…

So two days in a row this week that I’ve worked on art for more than 5 hours…and neither of them was a weekend or holiday. Now how much work have I gotten done? Yeah. Don’t ask that. Is the house clean? Don’t ask that either. Last night, I managed to kamikaze out of school, pick up the dog, who went right in the pool for her daily wade (she won’t swim), then cleaned the entryway floor enough so I could trim the quilt. On Wednesday, I had bought two possible binding fabrics because I couldn’t decide…I picked the green one…

Which is funny, because there isn’t a ton of green in the quilt, but it works. The other one works too, but it detracted more from the image, and there isn’t a lot of room between image and edge, so it was too much.

What’s funny is that I miscut one strip and I had already cut both sleeves, and I had only bought a yard, so there wasn’t enough for the last strip. So I cut it out of a sleeve and just barely had enough of the background color, which I used for the backing as well, to cut another sleeve. So not a whole lot is leftover of either fabric, which is too bad, because they are both lovely batiks. That said, I really don’t need more fabric. Well. I do. I always do. I’m always missing that one color that would transition between this or that, or the turquoises are out of fashion or the purples aren’t quite right. Seriously. I do always have this issue.

So the top fabric below was the other binding contender. The two blues are because I haven’t seen good ones in a while. The rest were from an attempt to replace a really good pale gray/white I had for the last 5 or so years, plus they were having a sale on batiks and those spoke to me.

There is a whole shitload of batik fabric in my stash. That and Kaffe Fassett. And random black and white stuff. And skulls. Anyway, so I had quilt class last night and the kamikaze binding event was so I could get the machine stuff done at home so I wouldn’t have to lug everything with me and I could just hand sew the rest at the meeting. And I was rocking that until the girlchild called, which was FINE. I love to hear from her, but not when she missed her stop and is randomly crying and standing in the freezing dark 3000 miles away, waiting for an Uber with a strange man driving, so I’m gonna just keep talking until she gets back to the dorm.

Which I did. It slowed me down a bit, but that was fine. It was nice to hear her voice, but then I get sad because they’re gone. Ugh.

I made it to class about 10 minutes late, which didn’t really matter because I’m always late anyway. Really. And then I did handsewing for quite a while. Came home. Made 48 mini cornbread muffins (like you do) for today’s chili cookoff thing at school WHILE making dinner and trying to edit something and send out a bid on something else and manage a third thing. Oh yeah. Shipping a quilt for a show. Not a bad thing. Sort of half-assed lesson-planned, because I do need to have stuff done for next week and the rest of the unit (ha!). Then kept stitching.

Naw. She’s not done. I have one more sleeve to stitch down. That was at 12:30. Ugh. And then I didn’t fall asleep until after 1 and some animal…OK, definitely a skunk based on the odor this morning…was barreling around outside my window at 2:19. Scared the crap out of me. The dog rolled over and sighed, but Kitten, my attack cat, leapt out of bed to her observation post at the door, where she’s pushed the slats of the blinds to the right enough that she can see out. Good to know someone’s ready to take care of intruders, because the Golden Retriever didn’t even whine or bark. Eventually my adrenaline levels returned to normal and Kitten came back to bed, my erstwhile companion in sleep, and I got a few more hours in, but I’m feeling it this morning.

Almost done with this one though, and a week early. I haven’t totaled up the hours yet. And I started looking at stuff for the next one. It’s supposed to be a smaller quilt of a particular size that relates to a larger one that has something to do with women or feminism or gender or whatever. And yeah, a lot of my recent work does that, but sometimes it’s harder for me to see that in the earlier work. And most of the current work is out traveling or has been entered in a show, so I can’t use it for this one. But I think I picked one. And now all I have to do is draw the smaller one…without 700 tiny pieces. Ha! No problem. There’s already a picture in my head. I just need time to put it on paper. And sleep. I’m gonna need some sleep.

Lemonade Afternoon

You know that quote, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” Well yesterday I had CPR/First Aid training. And it was boring. It could have been worse, but I’m easily amused by bad video. Like when the worker goes “Hi, little buddy” to the small furry animal you can’t see and gets bit. I laugh. Because my lord. Seriously. The trainer promises there will be a better set of videos in two years when we have to take this again.

The plus was that we were so quiet and asked so few questions that we got out way early. And I came home and quilted. When life gives you a free afternoon because you did CPR training so you could take your students on a field trip next month, use it to make art. I should have graded all afternoon, and to my credit, I did try to grade at the gym, but first the wifi wasn’t working and then the damn app wasn’t functioning correctly. So I gave up. And then came home and kept quilting. Because I have a deadline and my photographer is flexible, but hell, I have to get started on the next quilt too.

And grading. Sucks. Yeah. I did monitor my students on their computers all day. That was fun. We can see what tabs they have open and send them messages, like “Get off Facebook and get to work.” A couple kids just didn’t get it. I kept shutting them down and finally shut down every tab they had open as soon as they opened it. It didn’t take more than about 5 minutes of monitoring per class before they were all in the folder they were supposed to be in. Ha! Bastards. Big Teacher is watching you. My co-teacher in crime (also in CPR) was doing the same thing, so I think by the end of the day, the kids all knew they had two teachers watching everything they were doing. Sometimes being a teacher means being an evil villain character.

So I quilted for 5 hours yesterday. I know. Wow. Cool.

There’s lots of eyeballs in this quilt. Twelve to be exact. Well. There’s two on the cat, but they’re closed. And the little figures, there’s four there too. So 18 eyes. No snake on this quilt though. My imagery is shifting maybe? No Christmas lights, no bird…no bird is weird. Most of my quilts have a bird.

Anyway, I think it’s turning out well…

And at some point in the afternoon yesterday, I went and got two possible binding fabrics for it. Not sure which one is best. I was in a hurry. They’re in the dryer and when I get home from school tonight, I’m going to try to get the binding on, because I have quilt class tonight and I can do the hand-sewing there. I don’t want to lug the machine along and do the whole thing there though, so I have to quick! Come home, iron it, trim it, and bind it! No problem.

The animals were confused by my presence all afternoon…

I have five blurry-faced photos of the cat. She wouldn’t stay put. Same with the dog. Ten hours almost total quilting. Half of what I had estimated…although I knew my estimate was too high.

I feel much better about things today. I got taxes and FAFSA started, I got the quilting done, I got a quilt packed up and ready to ship. I still have a ton of stuff to get done, but it’s less looming and more manageable-looking. I will be so glad when the kids are done with college and I don’t have to deal with all the financial aid hoops any more. They are really stressful. Especially in a divorce situation. I’m really worried about how I’m going to pay for any of it next year. I don’t have any more cushions, no more college accounts to cover my portion of the fees. It’s scary.

But I’m going to try not to think about that right now. Because I’m finishing a quilt, and that’s a cool thing (although now she needs a name…aack!). And I can start thinking about the next one, which will be smallish. In fact, a difficult size for me…not super small, like 8-12″ squares really challenge me, but at least they don’t take long, but this is a size I never do…16×24 I think. Totally off for me. Remember not to do a lot of tiny pieces! Yeah. Like I listen to myself. Oh well…at least it will be a challenge.

Responsible Adult…

Adjustments made. Taxes started instead of quilting all night like I wanted. Have to be a responsible adult, dontcha know? Up early today to retrain on CPR and that heart device that I will hopefully never have to use. I had two students one year where we had to drag that thing with us on every field trip. I don’t envy my sub today…my kids are getting increasingly antsy and boisterous. We have one teacher out and the guest teacher is…eh. She’s eh. Four and a 1/2 more weeks until Spring Break. Then the math teacher will come back. I hopefully won’t kill them all in 4 1/2 weeks. Definitely in burnout. But it’s not just school. Life itself is wearing on me. Too many tasks. Want to run free in a meadow or something. But that would probably cost money I don’t have.

Really I’d be happy if I could remember to find the time to fold the towels and put them away. Plus whatever else has been living in that laundry basket for the last two months.

Quilting is so peaceful, so meditative, while I’m actually in front of the machine.

I don’t think about school or stress about people or money or college or taxes. I just quilt. Move the sandwich around and around. Listen to the music or the thing on Netflix. Don’t think too hard about it. Just draw the line, careful around the teeth and the eyes, draw around the tiny little words, thread breaks, tie it off, start up again. Bobbin runs out, fill it up. So simple. So linear. So peaceful. Don’t watch the clock. Don’t stop until you’re ready. Just go.

Sometimes I think I should just do this stuff every night and not be a grownup. But then reality kicks in. I graded. I did taxes. All very grownup. No one told me how much shit would end up on my plate though. I teach 12-year-olds. I spend all school year with kids who mostly have no idea how much work it is to be a grownup. They’re testing the boundaries of being a kid, growing up into teenagers, but not quite ready to take on the world. Last year’s failures just got lectured about not graduating. Some of them come to me and talk about their grades improving, but there they are, on the failing list. Some are just still failing, almost proud about it, beating their chests like it’s a plus.

I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the parent yesterday who said there were no consequences at home if he fails. None. No one taught her how to raise her child. He doesn’t have to be awesome. He just needs parents who give a shit about his future. Then he can too.

I think I need more walks on the beach and in the mountains. I need more hours on the elliptical. I need more time with my sketchbook. I need more time with needle and thread, fabric too. Having the kids gone gives me very little room for moods and stress. There’s nothing for them to bounce off of…they just reverberate in my own head.

Sigh. Off to learn how to save the world. Again. Damn hormones. They really fuck with you.