Still Napping

My goodness, we have reached the end of the week. I’m still napping every day after work. Yesterday, I had to do something after work (deliver a bunch of art to an upcoming show), and that was the max of my physical ability. I was supposed to go to a stitching meeting after that and totally had already canceled, which is good, because I drove home and fell asleep for an hour. Listening to the body. Best I can.

I got to talk to my real doc yesterday (video visit). They tried to reschedule it into 4th period 3 times…seriously, they kept calling and saying, “the new time is…” and I’d say, “I’m teaching then…”. Very frustrating. But finally got 15 minutes to go over all the crap that happened and confirm that I will be tired and recovering for at least another 2 weeks. Uh huh. OK. Trying to process that and all the shit that needs to happen. Please don’t expect me to clean house or perhaps even cook? We’ll see. I’m supposed to cook tonight. I have cooked in the last week. Once. Twice. Well, does avocado toast count? Probably not.

Needless to say, although it was my 56th birthday yesterday, we did not really celebrate or party. Really, I persuaded the Man that I needed cooked food instead of pizza (yes, pizza is cooked, but…), and I read my book a bit, slept a large bit, then watched some USS Discovery while figuring out a Seasons activity for the kids next week. Yup. 8th grade is officially planned through…drum roll please…TUESDAY. Fuck me. Maybe Wednesday. Do not recommend.

Hopefully I will be rested tomorrow and we can go out to dinner. Maybe. Because now the Man has a nasty cough and is going to Urgent Care this morning. Ah well. ‘Tis the season of yuck.

I am still in the cutting world…

Wednesday night…lots of green and some skin stuff in there.

Last night, honestly, too much napping and working, so I only had about 35 minutes to cut things out…

Working on some little creatures and eyeball flowers…

It seems like I’m in the 200 and 300s, but I know I flipped the pile at some point, so I think I have more than that left. But I am getting close to the bottom.

I have a bunch of show deadlines coming up. Some of them are frustrating, very little info given; another had a restriction that work had to be made in the last year. Fuck me. Do you have any idea what the last year has been like for teachers? I’m lucky to make 6 pieces a year, and many of those are currently in a show. Plus it’s a themed show? I guess they think I can make a new piece between now and May 1. Maybe? Probably not, the way the day job has been sucking up the moments. Guess I won’t be in that show. We asked for a time extension. I guess not. We want FRESH work. Then you need to pay my bills so I can make art full time.

Simba would appreciate my being home (and awake) more.

The cats too…this is Luna and Nova stalking a bird or a bunny, not sure which.

And this is one of the freesias I planted two years ago because I found them lingering in the garage from IDK how long ago.

Finally enough rain for them to bloom.

Nice image for Friday. We got through the photosynthesis lab yesterday, which is good, because it’s supposed to rain today. We have an in-school field trip for one grade level today. Hoping I don’t collapse from exhaustion until I get home. And then more couch time. The next step on this quilt requires lots of standing, so I need my energy back, dammit. Hmmm. Maybe another nap.

Slow but…

Oh yeah. Still recovering. Feel like it’s gonna be a while until I feel back to normal. The skin is still prickly, but more obviously, I’m absolutely exhausted at the end of the day. Exhausted enough to come home and nap the last two days. Today will be harder for that because there’s a union meeting, but I’m hoping the other two reps show up and I can leave early. We’ll see how that goes.

The pro of coming back to school is that I was able to get stuff organized from my kids, force them to turn stuff in and realize oh yeah, it counted, plus trying to come up with random shit they can do while I’m gone? That is just exhausting and I’m glad to be done with it. That said, the next two days in 8th grade are very low maintenance for me, which is great…I can sit and grade 7th-grade stuff. 7th grade is a lab today, but it’s not hard. The hardest part is the stupid behaviors that I’m still fighting this many months into school. Still clapping randomly and throwing pencils. These are our future what? Sigh.

OK well, improvement on all fronts otherwise. And falling asleep with the prickly skin is easy, because I’m exhausted.

Monday night, I seemed to cut out enough that I could finally see progress…

Bottom left is what’s left to be cut, bottom right is cut out. I spent about 2 hours cutting Monday night. Came home, read, napped, worked a little, then cut stuff out until bedtime.

I didn’t get any done last night…we got tickets to Neil Degrasse Tyson’s lecture about Bizarre Astronomy about 4 or 5 months ago. Little did we know what a shit show of a week it would be, but after a nap, we met for food and then headed down for a 2-hour lecture on astrophysics.

Like you do. I’m about as tired as I look. It was good though. I teach space science next week, for almost approximately exactly a week. We’re running out of time. Even though we are only 2/3 of the way through the school year, state testing for science is in May. Crazy shit. Luckily, the relief is that I have taught genetics and natural selection before. I even have lessons and tables of contents and vocab. Sort of. Long enough ago that I’m gonna have to wiggle a little, but not as much as creating something from scratch, which is what I’ve been doing since the beginning of the year. I’m impressed by the rest of my team. They don’t seem to be losing it as much as I am. One has a slightly better counterpart team in 8th grade…my one person is awesome, but has 3 littles and is as buried as I am. The other one, well, died. But wasn’t really working with us anyway. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like it’s just me. But at least I feel like I understand this part of the curriculum. Although it would make way more sense to teach the skin cancer part of the light unit AFTER you teach them DNA. We used to do DNA in 7th, then it went to 6th, now it’s all in 8th grade, and it feels really late. They don’t have any idea what it is. Writing notes in the calendar for next year. Stupid curriculum doesn’t even call it DNA…it calls it genetic material. Why are we pulling that punch? Don’t get it.

So I didn’t cut anything out last night. I came home, made a relaxing cup of tea, drank it, and went to bed. Sounds lovely, yeah? Thinking.

My birthday is this week. I have these dragonfruit plants that I’ve had for years but didn’t have the right supports. I finally went out and bought the wood, I think like 6 months ago, and my ex made them for my birthday. I just need to plant them this weekend and then hopefully we can get these beauties to flower in the next year. Certainly they are not happy in the pots they’re in.

OK. Work. Sit a lot (still). Get stuff done. Lots of it. Then come home, read, and nap. Then pack up 5 quilts for delivery tomorrow. Yikes, tomorrow is a little busier than I need too. Ah well. At least I am up and out of bed. Recovery slow but happening.

Lost Week

Somehow I lost a week. It happens. Right? I think it happens when we’re really busy. It also happens when we’re sick. I’m still recovering. The skin stuff turns out to be some scarlet fever and THEN a massive allergic reaction … to … something. The strep? The original doc thought it was the meds I’d been taking. The second doc guessed a reaction to the strep in my system. I don’t really care…well, that’s not true. The next time I get a cold, I’d like to be able to take cold meds without being paranoid they’re gonna knock me out in a bad way. Whatever. On the road to recovery. Still got another 5 days of meds I need to be on, and then we’ll see. Definitely the basic shit tires me out, so my team and the Man were sort of hammering me to take another day off work, but my stress levels about work are already through the roof. I need to see what I have in the classroom. I need to see the papers that are copied. I need to get the chaos reigned in. I will also need to sit a lot. And come home and maybe nap. Or read my book. Which sounds delightful right now.

I didn’t sleep at all Thursday and Friday nights. At all. Not kidding. No microsleeps. No dozing off. Wired to the fucking hilt. Turns out some details about my meds earlier in the week would have been helpful. When and how to take things together. So Saturday morning at 7:40 AM found me here again…

Urgent Care. So many days in Urgent Care this year so far. Because if I didn’t sleep for a third night, I was sure I’d kill things. Anyway, talked about meds, gave me a new one, explained the allergic reaction best they could. Came home, worked, because you know what? Grades are due. I worked on grades all day Friday (prone, on the couch) and all day Saturday, but by then, I was almost done. There are a couple of things I have to do today, but then they’re done. Miraculously. Can’t say kids will be pleased, but hey, Trimester 2 is always rough.

I also did some staring at flowers…

Which I find very relaxing.

I also read a lot. I attempted one nap for 30 minutes. Probably took me 27 minutes to get close to a nap state. But I felt better. Less vibrating of the mind.

There was some cutting stuff out each day…Friday night…

Simba is very supportive.

I like comparing the piles each night. Left pile is cut out, middle is trash, right pile is to-be cut.

Saturday night you see a ton of pink pieces at the top of the to-be cut bin on the left…

And then last night, I gifted myself another hour of cutting instead of another hour of planning.

Harder to see here, but a lot of the pinks are cut out and in the top bin, and I’m down in another layer or so in the to-be cut bin underneath.

So there’s progress. I saw some 900s in the cut-out pile, but I’m mostly going backwards at the moment, so maybe more than a 1/3 done? Really hard to tell at this stage. I’m about 8 1/2 hours in, though. I would’ve been further if I hadn’t gotten sick, but that is what it is. There’s always something. In fact, you should just put that in the to-do list:

buy dirt
set up vet appts
something

Might as well be realistic.

Sleepy puppy. He’s been a pain at night lately, in bed. Very barky. Last night very Lie All Over Me. His boy is in Boston with his girl, until tonight, when I pick the boychild up from the airport and hand Mr. Barky over to him for sleeping duties.

He sleeps just fine everywhere else.

My sleep? Still problematic. Skin is not my friend. Largest organ of the body! Currently the most annoying.

Gotta keep the nose warm.

OK. TAKE IT EASY. That’s my mantra this week. I will probably suck at it, but I will keep saying it until something sticks. Come home, read, rest, make art. On the couch. Definitely feeling every second of my age this last week. Thankful to be better, looking forward to Really Better. Also wearing a bra when you have prickly skin is THE WORST. Stupid day job. Can’t really NOT wear one to middle school. Ah well. I haz the prickly boobs right now.

Forgot! Great quote from the book I’m enjoying at the moment…

So ironic. Written by a woman. That’s a man doing the search. I laughed a lot.

Definitely a Lot…

Hey. So my immune system has decided to take a vacation this year. I was thinking about it and I’ve been sick every month since November. I’ve been to Urgent Care way too many times (not just for being sick); I guess I’m glad I have that option. I might be there again tonight if this sore throat doesn’t calm the fuck down. I had one of these a little over a year ago…again, not COVID, just the sore throat from hell. Not strep either. Just bad. And they’re like, hey, gargle with salt and use a throat lozenge! Um. You think I haven’t thought of those things? I didn’t sleep last night it was so bad. I’ve barely eaten in two days it’s so bad. Soup and oatmeal. I guess I have yogurt too. Warm liquids don’t help. Cold liquids don’t help. Ibuprofen doesn’t help. And the thought of trying to stay home for a day to continue to get better? I literally had nothing for the 7th graders to do, and the 8th graders would’ve taken some serious time to get prepped for ‘on your own’ instead of ‘directed by teacher’. My fault, I’m sure. Tomorrow, I could skivvy off from 8th grade, but 7th grade still needs to do a lab to get to the next step, and you don’t give an unknown sub a lab with those kids unless you want to see a report on the daily news.

Ugh. On top of how shitty I’m feeling, we lost a staff member over the weekend and are expecting kids (and honestly adults) to have a hard time of it. Empathy for those who knew him is easy. It’s dealing with the other kids…who don’t always know what to say, but need to say something, and it’s not always appropriate. I’m hoping everybody is pretty chill today and those who need the emotional support get it. I didn’t know him well, but he was a few years younger than me and this was fairly sudden. Sad for his family and friends. So counselors will be in advisory classes to announce it, they changed the schedule up today, and instead of a staff meeting, we have a pizza party? Not sure I’m up for that. I may ask for permission to go to Urgent Care instead.

I think this might be the first death we’ve had at this school directly. We’ve had students who came here die after they left (usually car crashes and gang activity, sometimes a health thing). Tough on the kids who had him as a teacher.

I didn’t get much of anything done this weekend besides a hefty amount of sleep, which apparently I needed (might still need). I finished ironing on Friday night…

It took 30 hours and 31 minutes to iron all of those pieces to fabric. Very complicated. Very time-consuming.

I used 204 fabrics…

More than usual. Definitely a lot of color and time.

Saturday night, I slept from about 4 PM to Sunday morning at 10 AM. So no art work. Last night, I managed sitting up for some period of time. I did grade things and then I cut out things for a little under an hour…

Doesn’t look like much. Never does. That’s a bird, though. Lots of color in that bird.

Also picked up some of my art…and took a full picture of the bench for Sion.

I forgot to look for the placard that says who painted it. This is in Liberty Station, in Dance Place. There’s painted benches throughout this building and some of the others, like near Visions and the Watercolor gallery.

OK. I am exhausted. I am going to sit a lot, talk quietly, drink a lot of fluids, take naps as needed (not during class, ideally), and hopefully get tested for strep after school. Ugh. Take care of yourselves, people.

Might Be Damp

I’m watching the weather today because it’s supposed to start pissing down rain sometimes later today and I have duty at the stoplight after school. Might be damp. Then tomorrow, as it’s in the middle of 2″ of rain in 24 hours (which doesn’t happen here…that might be our annual rainfall some years), I will be picking up two quilts. Can’t park anywhere close to the pickup location, so that should be fun too. At least none of it is during rush hour traffic. I have multiple art pickups and dropoffs in the next few weeks, which is a good (but annoying and stressful) problem to have. One tomorrow, one, next Thursday (moved that one by a week), then another one…not sure when. I saw an email and promptly forgot about it. Problematic.

I am not at QuiltCon…which sucks, but also, I still get to see all the pictures. There’s some stuff I’d love to see up close. Ah well. The next QuiltCon on the West Coast isn’t until 2025. That said, one of my guild friends posted this…

That’s mine on the right…although the name is wrong. I emailed the lecturer and she responded right away. Frank Klein does own the other one, so it wasn’t a huge deal. It’s just that quilt has an awesome name: The Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos, which is kinda how it’s felt since I made it in 2016. Or maybe the goddess of increasing chaos at this point. Or unsustainable chaos.

It’s Friday. Hallelujah for that. If only I can get my head around the next batch of things while finishing up trimester 2 grades. It’s a lot to ask, especially with no more 3-day weekends. Tomorrow is all art pickup and socializing with friends we haven’t seen…well, I haven’t seen them before COVID I think. Pretty sure. So that’s crazy. But then I just have Sunday to catch up on everything. Yikes!

Be Efficient. Be Be Efficient.

I keep thinking I’ll be done with the ironing and then I’m not. Here’s Wednesday night…

Eyeball tree and IDK what else.

It’s a huge stash of fabrics I’ve got in this quilt…

And every night I add some more, because I don’t QUITE have the right shade of brown or gray or whatever.

Last night…I did an arm, a glove, and a basket, and some barcodes, but got stymied by the eggs the barcodes were on.

I wanted to do more, but my brain was done. I worked a lot yesterday, got a lot done, walked kids through the beginning of sound (I know more about sound than I thought I did…let’s hope the same thing happens with space, but I suspect not, because I never ever had space in school and I’ve never taught it either) and then the other grade, I got more and more frustrated with the inability to just focus for 20 whole minutes. Write me…shit, I didn’t even ask for sentences. I’m not sure what the deal was. I know that by the time I got to 6th period, I wasn’t letting them leave without finishing the assignment, so I made it their ticket out the door. You don’t leave until you’ve typed these four things in. On topic. The kids who are on top of it totally were done and ready on time. The kids who want the answers handed to them, who whine about everything, who spend the entire period trying to figure out how to throw something or clap loudly without being caught or just not DO anything at all, they were flabbergasted. What? You can’t keep me (I can). I don’t know what to do (I explained it three times). You’re gonna make me stay? (yes). The last kid was maybe 5 minutes late out of class, because you know what? With the threat of having to stay until he finished, he figured his shit out. Learned helplessness. Plus post-COVID stuff. Plus a batch of really immature kids (probably also COVID-related…no social skills learned during a pandemic, as we’ve seen nationwide). There was more after school that was halfway between laughable and WTF, and then I went to physical therapy and came home to a Zoom meeting, with about 12 minutes in between. That was enjoyable, but I can’t show you what I worked on, because it hasn’t been published yet.

Ironing started at 9:36 PM. I don’t have a lot left, but I keep saying that. Hopefully tonight. I’m frustrated by my days…which lean heavily into my nights.

Meanwhile, Hi, Kitten, but also, that mug in the background?

I painted that with a friend before she moved to Seattle, and it has a crack in it. It was working fine last night, but this morning decided it was done being a mug and wanted to be a small fountain.

It makes me sad. Yes, I can make a new one, but IDK when (not anytime soon). I don’t NEED a new one. I have plenty of mugs. I just really like all the naked people on it. Although the one I replaced it with also has a naked person on it. So yeah.

And I forgot to post this the other day…the owls are back in the nesting box!

This is exciting. But also means I can’t trim that tree for a while. Oh well, can’t afford to do it anyway. Birds are more important.

I still have Cheech photos…

This has no color, but the wires and phone/electric lines plus the background just fascinated me…

This is Roberto Gutierrez‘ piece Untitled (at least, I think that’s what it is…three labels and three pieces of art…making some assumptions here).

And this is It’s a Brown World After All by Eloy Torrez, who is quite a portrait painter.

That’s Cheech Marin himself, in case you don’t recognize him.

OK, I’ll do more later…gotta go to school again. Labs today in both grades, what am I, nuts? Didn’t plan that well. Who am I kidding…I can’t plan at that level this year. I’m in survival mode.

Damn ducks. School. Duty hopefully not in the rain. Set up classroom for next week. Come home and collapse. Um. I mean make a healthy dinner and make good choices and get some work done in preparation for not doing any tomorrow for a WHOLE day and then finish ironing and get a good night’s sleep. Ha! We’ll see.

Whack.

Didn’t sleep well last night…wind was blowing. Some weirdo winter storm out here, bringing snow (hopefully not to us) and rain and wind (obviously, from last night). I don’t sleep well through storms. Even rain wakes me up. Plus three animals in the bed who all wanted to be touching me (or on me) and then school brain, which needs to shut the fuck up when I’m not actually there or working on school stuff. Seriously, just be quiet so I can have a life. Yesterday was stressful. Lots of strange and not-so-strange things going on. I did come home and finish some stuff I’ve been trying to get done for next week, though, so that was good. Then I can plan the next unit, which will be fast and furious. Reminds me of some of my students.

Preparing for more of the crappy bits today. Hoping for some moments of clarity, where kids explain the things and I can see they’ve been thinking. That’s mostly 8th grade at the moment. A small portion of 7th grade, but mostly not. I think the crazy outweighs the thinking in there unfortunately. Wish me luck with all of that today…I’m already tired. Also, today’s self wishes yesterday’s self had gone to pick up the cat meds, because today’s self remembered she is cooking dinner and the meat needs to marinate for an hour. Uh huh. Well. Yesterday’s self just wanted to put pajamas on and read her book for an hour before starting to work again, so that’s where we’re at.

Maybe today’s self will just NOT work after school (not sure I can afford to do that at the moment). Maybe she will just iron after dinner. Because I have maybe 200 pieces left. It’s close. 26 hours in! Yikes. Crazy.

Here’s Monday night…

Here’s Tuesday night.

I actually pulled all of the pieces out of the box looking for one (which I never found) because I was trying to match something. Gave up on it. It’s not that important.

Lots of fabrics. Lots of colors. I keep adding more. I have a little left to do on her head, plus another arm, two birds, and some giant eggs. Then I’m done and can cut things out for a week or three. Hopefully not three. I’d like to finish another smaller one in there somewhere. Probably not happening. It might, though. We’ll see.

Sleepy Simba last night…

Finally stopped barking.

So on the weekend, after the Skirball and a night in Pasadena, we drove to Riverside to go to the Cheech. The exhibit was of work Cheech had collected over the years. Fascinating, lots of color, artists I didn’t know about, even though I grew up in Los Angeles and got an art degree in Orange County. We didn’t see a lot of local art (we should have) or art from people of color or even art by women…the art history book we used had no women in it at all, but my professor added some stuff. No internet back then, so it was hard to find anything out. Even my Frida Kahlo class was more about Diego Rivera than Frida herself. Truly annoying.

So let’s see how many of these I can add to this post before I have to go to work for a parent meeting.

This is a woodcut, which is pretty amazing. It’s also big. Bietenaladxi naa (Remember Me) by César García Gutiérrez.

When I can find artists’ websites, I’ll link them. Beautiful detail of the skeleton.

These pieces were actually part of a different exhibition in the front of the Cheech, but they caught my eye. This is Rebuilding by Priestly Henry.

This was a fun little piece…

This is the piece that made me want to come to the Cheech…Frank Romero’s Arrest of the Paleteros.

Huge and beautiful. You can follow him on Instagram. Here’s a detail…

It’s not just beautiful; it’s political, about arresting the street vendors in LA.

OK, that’s all I can do today. More next time. I will get through them all. I love the use of color in all of these pieces (well, even when I get to the black and white ones).

I’m not ready for today. The weather is whack. My brain is whack. School is whack. But there’s ironing at the end of it all.

Fabric of a Nation…

Hello. It’s a holiday for me. Hence my writing at a weird hour. It’s been a weird day. For one thing, we left on a short road trip Saturday morning and got back yesterday afternoon, so today I’ve been trying to do all the things I would’ve done yesterday and the day before, and I’m running out of time. Which is pretty standard for my weekends, unfortunately. I needed some significant brain power for one thing though, so I did most of that first. I’m not done, but I’m on a roll, and I think that will help in the long run.

Meanwhile, why the road trip? Two art opportunities: Fabric of a Nation is at the Skirball Cultural Center through March 12, and it’s been on my list since it opened in Boston. So that was my original plan. Then figured I might as well make a weekend of it and do a loop past the Cheech in Riverside, since I hadn’t been there since it had opened. Both incredible shows. Lots of color. Lots of amazing imagery. I’m going to try to put it on here, but there’s a lot (and there’s more photos I took, but I don’t have the time to do all of them, so I picked the best of the bunch).

So this was my first Bisa Butler piece in person, I think. I’ve seen photos and videos, but it’s never the same as closeup.

This is To God and Truth…

Her use of patterned fabric is amazing.

There’s no such thing as ‘too busy’.

This was a detail from an old applique quilt that had some racist blocks on it. This is Scenes of American Life by Mrs. Cecil White.

I always wonder if she meant to be racist, or was completely clueless about it. Or if it was commentary (unlikely; the quilt is from the 1920s). There’s so little known about some of these. Her technique is pretty fascinating for the time. Too bad parts of it are questionable in subject matter.

This crazy quilt was kind of amazing. It’s by Celestine Bacheller.

Fascinating. Most crazy quilts might have one center pictorial block, and then regular pieced crazy quilt blocks around. I’ve never seen one like this.

Carolyn Mazloomi’s graphic Strange Fruit II was even more emotional in person than in photos.

Just black and white. No way to shy away from the topic.

A detail from the Harriet Powers’ quilt…

I always think I take more (and better) pictures than I actually do. I remember seeing pictures of this one when I started quilting in the 90s. It was mind-boggling then in its simplicity. Still is.

And this one, Ruth Bader Ginsberg by Kisasi Ramsess.

Amazing use of color, again, and patterned fabrics that don’t seem to belong together and yet do.

We spent the night in Pasadena, near where I grew up. I worked on one of the Sue Spargo blocks in the car and while watching a strange movie…

And I did iron on Friday night…

Wings and a strange cat. Not this one…

Although she is pretty strange. And toothless. Or light on teeth, anyway.

There were signs at the Skirball as part of another art project by Chloë Bass called Wayfinding, up through September.

Lots of thought-provoking stuff. Do you laugh or…?

Hard to say. We walked around Pasadena a bit looking for art (all closed up), found some food and drink.

Drew something weird.

Then the next morning, drove through my old neighborhood and said hi to the house I mostly grew up in…

Cool house. Interesting what they cut down and what they leave. It was a nice place to grow up in, the house anyway. Some of the town was not so nice, but that’s another story.

OK, I have work to do, so all the Cheech photos will have to wait until later. I did iron yesterday night though…these were all the fabrics I used on one kind of weird steampunk butterfly.

I’m a little more than halfway through the 1200s now. Getting close to done.

I do need to go back to work now, though…need to grade some stuff and do some more planning, make sure I’m ready for tomorrow (don’t FEEL ready, and there’s a staff meeting in the morning, which is different). This week, I will hopefully be very efficient (unlike last week) and finish all the things, plus get done with the ironing on this thing so I can start cutting them out. Everything is taking a lot of time. I’m glad I took two days off and did some ME stuff, but I knew I’d pay for it today and the rest of the week, so there’s that. It’s nice to have the extra day, though, to catch up. Won’t see that for another 38 days. To be very specific.

Totally Deserved

Hmmm…sliding into Friday like…oh no, not sliding. I’ve been sprinting for it since Tuesday morning! Yesterday I was at work at 8 AM, by the skin of my toes, and left at 5:30 PM, but came home and after reading for 30 minutes (yes, I set a timer and then finished the chapter I was on when it went off), I started working again (it’s that bad) and finished around 9:15 PM. DO NOT RECOMMEND. ZERO STARS. Ignored the three snotty emails from a parent about something that didn’t happen. I’ll deal with that today. I think I answered ALMOST all of the other emails. Maybe. My science co-teacher and I flipflopped a project yesterday, starting today. Like we’re bonkers, but it makes sense, and we might have figured it out sooner if we were allowed to meet with all our brain cells present (not this week). So I fixed all that, copied a bunch of stuff for that and 8th grade, then came home and created Tuesday’s assignment for 8th grade (still need to copy that), plus graded an academic assignment for three classes. Ate leftovers, sat on the couch for almost 4 hours doing all this crap. I have a desk setup, but it was freezing last night, and we can’t even put the heat on until 6:30 because it’s been costing so much. So a thick sweatshirt, hood up, cats around, get it done.

Some of this stress is because we’re going to be gone for most of two days for art stuff, so I’m trying to get caught up (ha! never happen) before we go. Plus I’ve got some art pickups and deliveries coming up, have to get ready for those, and the trimester ends soon, so I’m just full-on, straight-up panicking, where’s the cookies, losing my mind. Still deep in the depths of planning activities about light waves, haven’t even considered the space unit, never taught that shit before, not sure how it’s gonna roll. At least with light, there’s labs and simulations. Space? We’re just gonna watch Star Trek and give them a test. Klingon or Vulcan? And why? Good answer.

Looking forward to the art-stuff trip though. Deep breaths. Almost there.

I have been ironing every night, despite the chaos. I will not give up on making art because my day job is untenable, unsustainable, unbearable. In the last two nights, I’ve gotten through about 200 pieces, ironing a pigoon (Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake) and all its requisite stuff, including goggles (if you were a pigoon, you’d want goggles too. Don’t lie). And an ‘easy’ button. One hundred years in the future, they won’t know what an ‘easy’ button is. I’m OK with that. I’m in the 1100s. And almost 22 hours of ironing. If you’re wondering. I started on January 30th. Not a fast process. Even with 3-day weekends that are sucked up by the day job.

So here’s last night’s progress…

That box keeps getting more and more full. I’ll be trimming over the weekend, at least a little. I think. I’m debating. It’s a pain to travel with stuff to cut. So maybe I’ll just take embroidery (easier in the car) and…well…I know I’ll be doing most of the driving, because the Man gets stressed out in LA, and I don’t. He can drive through Riverside. I’m also taking my book and my school computer. Maybe. On the school stuff. It’s either do some while I’m gone or spend all day Monday doing it. Forty-two days until Spring Break. One hundred and eighteen until summer. I need to get one smaller quilt and another larger one done in that timeframe. Ha! At the rate I’m going? This year sucks.

I’m blessed to have the team I have at work. I can’t imagine how hellacious this would be without them. One of my former teammates (still on the 7th-grade team) called last night because she hadn’t seen me at work for days. Love that. I do miss having lunch with her. She brings stuff for taste tests. Anything to distract us from the stupid. You can’t imagine how happy donuts make us. Sad but true.

This year. Yup.

Apparently I am a meme.

I have a rule that I don’t answer school emails at night for exactly this reason. Sometimes I don’t answer them until my science co-teacher is in the room and can talk me down off the message I was going to send.

It’s fine. Really. I vent because it makes me better able to be calm and productive in the classroom. I’m getting through it. Sometimes I even enjoy it. Sometimes a kid gives me an amazing answer or I see progress with a kid who hasn’t been doing it or I make a connection that wasn’t there before. Sometimes I don’t.

I went to make toast this morning…

The part of my brain that is overwhelmed and wanted toast for breakfast was very sad about this…until it saw that most of the loaf was not so holey. The part of my brain that is creative tells me that I can cook an egg in this for breakfast tomorrow and it will be very nice. So that’s how I get through it all.

To school. Teach magnetic fields, start talking about MRIs. Like you do. Prep stuff for next week. Send stuff to Print Shop for copying. Then teach reptiles and incubators…ironic since I just ironed one the other night. Not ironic. Just normal. Then duty at the crosswalk at the light. Exciting. Set up classroom for next Tuesday, clean up some of the chaos, come home, read my damn book for a while. Work. Pack. Iron some more. Then enjoy some art this weekend. Totally deserved.

But Still I Iron…

Hola. This morning, I added four things to my calendar notifications that need to be done today, all of which kept me up at some point last night. I am thankful for technology, which hopefully I will pay more attention to than I do post-it notes. Actually, I do pretty well with post-its as long as I don’t move them or lose them, or there aren’t too many of them. Which is always the case. Let’s hope I remember my pilates gear this week, because last week, I forgot it and had to kamikaze home to change before class. Which was fine last week, because I had more time than I do tonight. Let’s hope the walking trip to the nearest high school is nothing like the last walking trip I was on with kids, which was before I ever started teaching and was with 5th graders, who I was sure were going to push someone into the street and get them killed. I’m sort of convinced that 8th graders are more chill than 5th graders, but not all of them. I’m supposed to wear a hat, but the only one I have says “Bite Me” and has a picture of a mosquito on it. I’m not really a hat person. I realize someone who just got treated for precancerous skin cells and had a biopsy taken (not the first one) should be more hat-conscious, and I do have a hiking hat. I guess I could take that one. Ugh. This whole ‘being an 8th-grade teacher’ existence is weird and I don’t know if I like it. They are a different animal…some in good ways, but yesterday, wow, some in bad ways. I guess those who don’t graduate…it’s on them at this point. Probably about the time I write them off is when they will be begging me for extra credit, which I don’t do. Ah well. I can’t do anything about that right now. Right now I’m panicking about finishing this unit and starting the next one and then the next one. I’m so behind on planning it’s freaking me out.

But still I iron.

This was Monday night, when I ironed an incubator full of weird creatures.

And a flask for other weird creatures.

Then last night, I did her metal heart and most of the metal arm…

I had to dig through the already ironed pieces to find the right fabric for the fingernails and one piece of the chest that didn’t get ironed before, because I couldn’t find the piece at the time, so everything is mixed up, but the stuff on top is mostly the stuff I did. I almost finished the 900s and I’ve ironed some of the 1000s and 1200s already, so I’m over a thousand done! Well over halfway. Still, with only 100 pieces getting done a night, I won’t be done before we go to Los Angeles. That’s OK. I’ll be close.

A shit ton of fabrics are being used in this piece. So many colors. I can’t quite visualize it at the moment, because you see the fabrics, but some are going to be big pieces and some little, so you don’t quite get the mix. I know the figure is very pink and the land she’s sitting on is very green. So that will be vibrant. There’s a lot of color to come, for sure. Looking forward to it.

It’s my mom’s 82nd birthday today. One of my calendar notes is to call her later…it’s a super busy day, so that’s why I need a calendar reminder. Otherwise, I will get to 10 PM and have no idea how I got there. That’s how most days go. We had dinner and celebrated on Sunday, but I hope she has a nice relaxing day doing whatever she wants, which is hopefully how most people’s days are at 82. Did I take a picture with her on Sunday? Nope. Totally forgot. Like always.

The Man bought me a Vday gift. We keep saying we don’t do Vday and then he does. This is cute though.

I feel like Ruth BG approves. And certainly there’s a sugar skull next to it from one of my co-teachers, so it’s in the theme of things I like to stare at while working at home. Another co-teacher gave me a gnome yesterday, and I’m very happy about it too. I think about when I die, how many of these little things I will have and I hear my kids complaining about having to DO something with all of it, but they should know that those things made me happy while I was working and that was worthwhile. Remind me of that when I have to clean out my parents’ house, yeah?

OK, parent meeting, then walk to high school with the whole 8th grade, then force 7th graders to think academically. Fun stuff. Oh, and I need to find that stupid fireworks video we used to show. Seriously. More videos, less me talking. Then pilates after school and book club for a book I didn’t really like except for two moments. Ah well, I need to chalk that up to this author. She’s not a bad author; she’s just not an author I like. So there’s that. And I’ve read at least three or four of her books, so I know. Then ironing! At last.

Happy Foreseeable Future

I am very lucky to have today off. Well. Luck. I will still be working. I’ve worked the last two days; why not continue? I’m sick as well, a minor cold at least, but enough to make the working harder than I’d like. Mostly Saturday. I fell asleep on the couch, which is a perfectly healthy thing to do, even when you’re not sick. I need to grade a couple of higher-level thinking things today, plus plan more for the rest of the unit, because I feel like I’m really far behind and can’t get my head around any of it. As usual. Ugh.

So let’s think about things I do have control over (or do I?)…ironing! I’ve managed that despite the cold, although this weekend has reminded me that in the past, I could’ve ironed ALL weekend and done fuck-all with school because it didn’t take up this much of my life. So there’s that.

Friday night’s ironing…

I ironed a small green fishboy. And an embedded phone…in a leg.

Then Saturday night…

We did not go out. I wasn’t feeling great. I don’t remember what I ironed at all. There’s a bunch of little details going on all over this thing.

Sunday night I remember!

The incubator with everything in it and attached to it. I had to recut three pieces out of Wonder Under because I had numbered really badly with the overlapping tubes from the uterus to the incubator, but it’s OK. It’s done now. Some of this is just difficult to figure out in terms of what colors and how to portray what I want to show. But all that is good for me. It would be easier if I didn’t have to also figure out what to do with the light waves portion of the current unit and then next unit about space, which I haven’t even looked at. Yeah. Freaking out about some of that for sure.

So much better to think about what I’m ironing next, which is a flask (glass) with liquid in it, always problematic…reflections and all. Ironically…just like what I need to teach next. Yeah. OK.

I’d really like to be done with the ironing this week. We’re going to LA/Riverside next weekend and I’d like to be cutting things out (much more transportable)…although I have enough to cut out that it doesn’t matter if I’m done or not…I have plenty to take with me. It’s more a matter of needing to finish this one so I can move on to the next two.

I lost this piece. Then found it. Then lost it again, spent 10 minutes looking for it, couldn’t find it, decided it didn’t matter, then found it again.

It’s fucking tiny. In the scheme of this quilt, it doesn’t really matter, but the fact that it’s reappeared more than once means it does matter. So I know exactly where it is right now and will be ironing it down to something immediately before it gets lost again.

Simba guarding my leg…

Kitten rubbing her head all over things I’m grading…

She was doing the same thing a year ago. A year ago, I went to QuiltCon, which is not happening this year, because it is much further away (Atlanta). Too bad. I’m still debating Quilt National…it’s a long way, a pain to get to, expensive (the biggest issue), and during the school year. Near testing. Ugh.

These guys are friends again.

It’s nice when they’re friendly. Sometimes they’re not and it sucks. It’s mostly Luna having issues. Nova is pretty chill.

This is one of my students. She’s an English-language learner, but it turns out a lot of them don’t know what Dry January is…

Which is a good problem to have, I guess. Not sure if I should just ignore this and move on, or…?

Yeah that. Explains middle school appropriately.

OK, well the car is at the shop for an oil change and some other crap that may or may not need to be done, the boychild is officially laid off for at least three months (CalFire is weird), I have a shit ton of work to do (nothing changing there), I have a dermatology appointment so they can tell me I should’ve worn more sunscreen as a child (there wasn’t really sunscreen when I was a kid…it was SPF10 and lasted 5 minutes for a paleface like me). And I’ll be ironing later tonight. Again. For the happy foreseeable future.