Problematic…

I have once again, for the millionth or so time, made it to Friday. I would like to congratulate you, as well, for making it, although I know for some of you, Friday is just another day and not the last day in a school week that has already kicked the shit out of you and there’s probably more to come today that you don’t know about. Yet. Then I get a blessed 3-day weekend. There are things planned on the weekend, unfortunately, because I have two books to finish and a brain to mend (and possibly a body as well), plus three thousand things to grade and another four to lesson plan.

There are 49 days until Spring Break. In case you were wondering.

I made it to stitching meeting last night…I was only home, between helping to break up a fight and cleaning up a ton of lab stuff with my co-teacher, for about 20 minutes: peed and fed the dog and then got back in the car and drove north to hang out with my stitching friends. Which is always good. Our Google-search term of the month was ‘spray cheese’, something I don’t think I’ve ever had. Because apparently the Super Bowl is this weekend (did not realize). Also we solved the problem of the cats pulling down all my shirts in the closet; I just need to implement it. And everyone is making beautiful things, and I can’t show you what I was doing, because Sue Spargo hasn’t published it yet, but basically I’m doing the applique on the wool blocks and then giving them to my mom to embroider (she gets to keep the quilt once it’s done). Her birthday is next week and I’m supposed to have three more done, and that isn’t happening, but maybe one? We’ll see.

Wednesday night was sort of chaotic: got home late from the union meeting, then read for (probably too long) a while to settle my brain, then cooked late, ate late, then worked for a bit on school stuff, trying to fix the things (always fixing the things), and then went in to iron and realized I needed to enter a show or I wouldn’t have time to enter it at all, so I did that and THEN started ironing.

Which is why I only got about 41 minutes in.

I did the metal work on the leg and breasts. I did not get to the arm/hand, because it was in a different box and was a million pieces and I needed to go to bed. So I ironed something else small. An electrical plug and socket? Is that what you call the thing it plugs into? I think I call both of those plugs. That’s problematic. And probably wrong. Ah well. Don’t have the brainpower this morning to correct that shit.

Then last night, I had stitching until 8 PM, then picked up dinner for me and the Man, who worked late and was exhausted as well, then we hung out and ate for a bit, then I (guess what) did more work (answering an email from petulance) and THEN got up and ironed for another 41 minutes. I lied. Last night was 44 minutes.

Doesn’t look much different, does it? I ironed a uterus, quite a pretty one, blue and pink and red. And I don’t remember what else…oh yeah, a tattoo of a yin/yang symbol. Not much. Damn this is slow. Day job. Fucking day job. I’m still doing bits and pieces of what’s on the flesh in the torso and legs areas, but I’m close to done. And then I’ll be in the 600s box, although I’ve done some of the 700-900s already. I think the face was in the 1200s. And I still haven’t made a decision about the coloring of the extra arms, so that’s problematic. I think one wants to be teal, but I started looking for a run of light to dark teal last night, and that might be harder than I would like. We’ll see. I wanted bright and I might need to go dull. There might be an argument for dull as well, since that’s someone else’s arm and/or a 3D-printed arm and maybe teal is not as good as a gray blue that reminds one of dead things.

Still thinking that through. In case you were thinking I just randomly pick colors without thinking deeply about them.

These are the last two cover pages for science…

I’ve actually had a hard time getting these done this year; not enough time to draw and color them in class, so they just never get finished. This got further along than the last 7th-grade unit though. That’s a plus. Mostly because a bunch of the squawkers were absent and the rest were chill and working.

Fun stuff. Needs color.

Today I need to finish grading the roller coasters so we can pull them apart for next year (need to reuse the bases). Some are already falling down, but I did get video. I’ll have to process that this weekend maybe. I need to rethink forcing them to label things for next year. Not sure how I’ll roll that. But I should put the notes about it in the lesson-plan calendar, because otherwise I will fully forget about it.

Today’s a pretty chill day in both science classes…well, elephant’s toothpaste in 7th grade, but just notes and a weird video in 8th grade. Need some chill after the last four days of chaos (mostly outside the classroom, but it reverberates inside). Also taught my 4th period the word ‘hellacious’. I’ve found it very useful over my lifetime. Want to pass that wisdom on to the young ones.

With any luck, I’ll get a ton of stuff done at school today, then come home and read for a while and iron for a while, and then figure out how to do the work this weekend AND do some relaxing and sleeping so I can get through the next week. One week at a time? We might be there. One day at a time sometimes. It’s wearing…on all of us.

Fastly Better…

Whoaaa. Yeah. Morning feels. I tried to catch up on some sleep this weekend. I’ve had to take some allergy meds to try to deal with the reaction I had to adhesive tape on my knee, and the ones that aren’t supposed to make one drowsy do apparently make a small percentage of people drowsy. You know whenever you read that a small percentage of people will have a certain reaction? It’s me. Often. It really is. I’m the one in a million on many meds, and it is truly annoying. I finally went to urgent care on Saturday afternoon, because the next doctor’s appointment I could get was March 9 and she wouldn’t do anything without seeing the rash. My doc is popular? Yeah or medical clinics are short-staffed. Everyone is short-staffed. Where are all the people who used to work those jobs? If they’re all in Tahiti on a beach, I’m jealous. Hopefully they are pursuing their dream of a teahouse in the mountains somewhere or hiking the Andes or counting penguins in Chile or something. If they’re just sitting at home watching Netflix, sigh. Whatever. I can’t control all that. I can’t even always control my irritation with trying to make a doctor’s appointment for something that’s keeping me up at night.

Ironically, even after urgent care (which was helpful: new allergy med that has not been making me drowsy but isn’t as strong), the cream I needed for the rash would not be available until today. Of course. So I’ve made it through two more nights of not-quite sleep, trying not to rip the skin of my leg. It’s fine. It is slowly better. I would like it to be fastly better.

This weekend went by too fast. My right eyelid is twitching like crazy still. Maybe worse. I did get in about 4 hours of ironing though…more would’ve been nice, but I needed to grade stuff…and grade stuff I did. Head above water, but only barely.

I ironed Friday night…

After going to Liberty Station for a closing reception. I ironed arteries and a rakunk, I think. A rakunk is a hybrid skunk-raccoon invented by Margaret Atwood.

Then Saturday night, it was a bunch of bugs…

DNA bugs, a cyber/robotic bug, and a regular bug. Because there will probably still be some regular bugs in the future. They seem to have a staying power that we can’t beat.

Then last night’s ironing…

More bugs and some slime things grown in a lab and some skull flowers. I like inventing things. I’m still deep down in the dirt though…getting close to ironing flesh, but not quite. I think I’m in the 300s still…no wait, nope, still in the 300s. This is gonna take a while. I’m OK with that. I enjoy this part. It’s fun. I average just under 10 hours a week on whatever art thing I’m working on. Most nights, it’s just an hour, but I did an hour and 20 minutes last night. I had less this weekend than I wanted because I started doing my taxes…out of fear, honestly. I need to know now if I will owe money. Ironically, I made more money on copyediting and selling quilts last year than I normally do, and there may not be enough deductions to help me. So I’m panicking a bit. I’m not done though. So there’s more stuff to do. Time-consuming for sure.

Friday night’s closing reception was for this show…

They’ll be up until the 24th…and then hopefully my two will be going to Grossmont’s Hyde Gallery. We’ll see.

We stopped by Visions Museum of Textile Art for the new shows hanging there. I didn’t make it to the opening day, but this was nice. There are four different exhibits…one with Alex Gano’s fascinating work…

It’s paper and fabric…very cool.

Then Jeanie Kashima’s work about the Topaz Internment Camp, where she was born.

Ree Nancarrow’s environmental work…

This shows the changes in the environment at this tundra pond from left to right: lower water level, more sediment, supporting different plants and animals than before.

And then part of the Full Deck of quilt artists, which has been shown before, but is always enjoyable. Especially this one by Katherine Brainerd…

I also went to my quilt guild meeting and stitched a thumb and three fingers…

Finished up one science unit last week and already graded it. Finishing the other one tomorrow and will need to grade 18 roller coasters as well as the packets and academic stuff. Plus a makeup quiz that I finally got around to writing. Need to finish writing sound labs and get set up for magnets and chemistry labs this week. Exhausting trying to keep it all in my head. The car needs oil, I need the cream for the knee crap, that’s all after a 2-hour staff meeting today. I could do without that. Anyway, the taxes get done a little at a time; same with the art. I’m glad to have the art to keep me going. Wish I could do more of it.

Oh yeah, this…

I do climb on counters to reach stuff. I also often use a stepladder. I hate kitchen cupboards. I can’t reach things.

Also this…

Not sure what Steve did, but there we are.

OK. School. Prep labs for today. Get ready for stressed-out roller-coaster builders. Use my time wisely. All that.

Leaning into Bright and Crazy…

Ugh-a-rama. I did not go to the gym last night. Instead, I sat and read my book for 45 minutes. It’s quite good. Light from Uncommon Stars. You think it’s just a violin story until the aliens show up. I figured I earned it. This week has been exhausting. They all are. Barky dog at night though made it harder yesterday. He was better (slightly) last night. Then I graded for 2 1/2 hours (I did not earn that. I just have to do it.). I graded all the late and redone work from the last two weeks. It was a good thing, even though it was irritating to have to do that many more hours after I left school. It was only a 10.5+-hour day. I was standing in my room at 4-ish and couldn’t focus on anything, and one of my teacher friends was there, saying, hey, are you going home? I’m thinking, no, I should grade something, and I was so tired, so I didn’t. Came home, made cup of tea, read for a long while. THEN graded things.

It is Friday though. That’s good. I need a break from the stupid behaviors. In positive news, I had sent an email to the resource teacher for a bunch of my kids, and it resulted in those kids completing some work and their grades coming up. Yes! That’s what’s SUPPOSED to happen. For the first time in forever. So I feel good about that and will spread praise among those who need it (apparently including the teacher) so that it continues. And then add a regular email to my to-do list so it keeps happening. The work never ends.

So ironing is also happening, which I love doing. This is not something I have a hard time getting off the couch to do usually…and the best part is that I’m visualizing this quilt as bright and crazy, so I’m leaning into that.

Finished the 100s and laid out the 200s…

Followed by what I ironed on Wednesday night when I left my computer at school, which I should do more often, but I can’t afford to at the moment.

I actually didn’t iron much. I was exhausted.

Last night, I did much better, because I didn’t go to the gym and I was efficient with my time, just eating leftovers and the Man was at band practice so it was just me and the animals and quiet. So I got more than an hour in for once…

I ironed a small bizarre creature I made up in my head and then a lot of hills. Bright greens of Spring and genetically altered plant life. It’s going well. Albeit slowly.

Today at school, I’m hoping to be more efficient than yesterday (I really was braindead, although I did do the warmups for next week…well, for one of the two grades I teach anyway). I have a to-do list I wrote last night, so hopefully that will help. I have a closing reception for the show at Liberty Station tonight, and I’m hoping to stop by and see the Visions exhibit too, and then get dinner, and hopefully have enough brainpower to come home and iron. We’ll see how that goes. Certainly I’m not grading tonight or tomorrow if I can help it. We’ll see how that goes too. But I’m excited about ironing all these crazy things I drew in as many wacky colors as I can. The future world should be more colorful. Says the person who lives in black and gray. Ah well. My socks are tie-dyed. That’s how I roll.

And here’s how NASA rolls…

Specific and to the point. Happy Friday y’all.

Green Instead of Brown…

I’m semi-awake this morning. That’s interesting. I must have slept better last night. Some nights are better than others. I was definitely exhausted. Not sure why.

I didn’t bring my work computer home last night. I had a long day and I knew I wanted to go to the gym after all of it (which I did, dragging myself by the hair), so what’s the point? I have some time to grade/plan in class today for once (someone is giving a presentation), so I can give myself a night off. I also had an art show to enter and some other paperwork to do, plus something I forgot to bring home (oh well). So I did all the things I could and then started ironing a little earlier than usual. Which is nice.

Monday night, I straightened up the studio and put away the fabrics from the last quilt, which was the little one with the Christmas lights. So that didn’t take long. Then I set up for the new quilt, hanging the drawing up so I can see it…

Laid out the first 100 pieces…

They’re in piles of 10, numerical order. And laid out the detached Wonder Under bits…

Plus one unnumbered piece and one piece that was a line on the Wonder Under but had no number and pieces inside it, so I’m not sure how I fucked that up, but it will probably eventually become apparent. Probably I forgot to number it and I can use this to trace a new one without a hole in the middle. So yes, I’m somewhat of a hoarder, but there are reasons for it. Yes, I know they all say that.

I didn’t get many pieces ironed the first night…just some dirt and rocks…

Last night, I managed the right corner, mostly dirt and lava…there’s some ironed lava right there with Kitten.

Tonight I get to decide what color an iron snail would be in the future…

But before that, I have yet another early parent meeting (rescheduled from Monday afternoon), a day of 3/5 grading/not teaching and 2/5 teaching. Plus some dumbassery from yesterday that is still pissing me off. But whatever.

The boychild always tries to get Simba and Kitten to be friends, but Kitten has sharp bits and gets annoyed.

And Simba knows it.

Luna asking for pets…

And Kitten in her fabric/batting hidey hole up high…

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Gonna pack my lunch, make more tea, take meds, shove everything in a bag, and go back to school. So I can come home and iron some snails and more dirt, or maybe I’ll make it into the grassy knoll tonight. Green instead of brown. That would be good.

On the Thrifty Side…

It’s raining again. Sort of. Pushed off to tonight mostly…oh yeah, and my drive time (which is remarkably short and only notable because one must get TO the car and OUT of the car). Rain is good for California…I’m just kinda done with it. I’ve got some yard stuff to do. That said, the sprinklers have been off for a good long time now, and that’s a plus. A slightly smaller water bill will not cover the heating bill, but it will help. A little.

Here’s a teacher thing…two of us on my team were checking our account balances yesterday to see if we would bounce with the groceries. I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be like that. It’s been an expensive few months. I have some extra in this paycheck though (backpay on our new raise), so I’m putting that aside for travel. I’ve got some stuff lined up and some other stuff I’d like to do, if I can afford it. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I spent a good chunk of the weekend grading (and not planning, unfortunately). I’m not done. I’m never done. I was hoping to be done with the roller coaster drawings, but I needed another hour and a half I lost to an art meeting or buying dog food or trying to find leeks. Fun stuff. I did work on cutting out the Wonder Under though…

Simba was not helpful. I finished cutting Saturday night.

And then sorted it last night, which took over an hour…

Some of the Wonder Under I was using was from the end of a bolt, and I am incapable of just throwing it out, even when it’s releasing the fusible from the paper, which gives me a bunch of weird pieces like this…

Which I will lay out on a colored lid (so I can see them all) and every time I find a piece with no fusible, I’ll try to match it up to one of these, which is a little (perhaps more than a little) insane. If I can’t match it up, I’ll retrace it. Sigh. I hate it when this happens. I could have prevented it by tossing out the last few yards, but I’m a little on the thrifty side, I guess. Perhaps a little too much.

The good news is that I get to start ironing to fabric tonight. I love that part. I bought the background fabric yesterday (the dark blue) and some others…

Hanging out mostly in the batik ranges these days.

No hike this weekend, not much of anything but grading and a 2-hour art meeting at the Mingei, which required parking a mile away. Not a bad walk for a Saturday though. Good news, though…we have an upcoming show at the downtown library gallery. More shows that need new work! At first, they said a year old, but we petitioned for longer (like how long do they think work takes to make? Plus I’m already buried in this one. Sigh. I don’t work fast enough). We’ll see what they come back with. I have so much out right now that I think I’d have to make something, perhaps something smaller. This one is not particularly small. I think finished it will be about 46″ wide by 72″ high. OK. That’s not small at all.

Saturday night’s drawing…

Actually took two Saturday nights. The Man can’t eat certain things right now as his jaw is healing, so our places to eat dinner are fairly limited. Ah well. They serve fast. Not enough time to do a whole drawing, unfortunately.

Well let’s hope I am efficient today and get lots done, and the rain holds off until I get home, and the demonstration in 7th grade goes OK, and someone else is cooking dinner. Oh wait. That’s me. Ugh. OK. Well. The rest can still happen, right? And I need to grade a lot and plan a lot. As always. We are officially past halfway and I can start considering that I might survive this school year. Like the last three.

Delightfully Wrong…

I don’t remember weeks feeling so long in the first two days before. I don’t remember feeling so tired after Tuesday. Tuesdays are the big planning days for science, so maybe that’s it? I don’t know. Or it was the feeling as I drove away from school yesterday that the slog that is 7th grade at the moment will just continue until I die. Which it won’t. Really. I’m sure of that. Even 8th grade had a moment yesterday…actually, just one table of 8th graders had a moment, where they realized they had no idea what to do and I wasn’t going to help them (we were building a roller coaster element and they talked during the instructions, so I pointed them to the relevant videos). They kept begging people around them to help them and I told them no (multiple people)…they need to listen. Hopefully today is better, or I will separate their group and stick each of them into another group for being idiots. Everyone else was pretty much awesome (although there were some tables I had to direct to involve themselves). 7th grade though. Ugh. Cried when driving away from school again. Just frustrating as fuck. Behaviors and lack of work completion. We’re on the third day of trying to finish something that should have taken a day and a half. Not listening. Not getting it because not listening. And a few behaviors that honestly just drive me bonkers. So yeah. I guess I’m at a point where about 2 days a week, those 2 classes aren’t half bad. And 3 days a week, they fucking suck. Which makes ME feel like I suck. Which maybe I do. Or maybe it’s just a bad combination of kids, time of day, and COVID crap. UGH.

I come home and grade roller coaster drawings, though, and although it’s kind of a pain in the ass, it’s also mostly enjoyable seeing what kids created. That’s the art part of my brain. Although I don’t like teaching art…well, to people who don’t like to do art. Teaching art to the already artsy isn’t that bad.

I’ve made it to the cutting-out stage. I started Monday night and got (I thought) more than halfway through a yard. In fact, I thought I was pretty close to done with it…

Stupidly, I covered up what I had actually cut with what was left to be cut. Which doesn’t look like much. Except I think it was all the tiny pieces and the bigger pieces got cut first? I don’t know. Because it took me another hour last night to finish it up…

So that is 2 hours of cutting? Yup. 2 hours and 2 minutes. Doesn’t look like much. 4 1/2 yards to go. Fussy little shit pieces. Realistically…let’s see…I have another Zoom meeting tonight (2 book clubs in one week seems a mistake)…I actually have 3 Zoom meetings today AND school and physical therapy. Long. So I might get another hour done on this. Thursday is delightfully open (Zoom meeting but I could cut things out if I wanted to), so is Friday…so maybe I’ll be done cutting by Monday? That’s my guess. I was wrong by two days on the tracing, so I’ll be delightfully wrong again if that’s how it rolls. It’s not a very exciting process to watch. Then sort Monday night? Start ironing to fabric Tuesday. Wait. Do I have a background big enough? Probably not. Must think that through, because the damn quilt store is not open late enough during the week for me to go. Still. OK. So that needs to happen Saturday. Put it on the calendar. Saturday is already chunky. Good to know. I do sometimes plan ahead.

I’ve been working on this (not my design!) after dinner, while we watch our daily whatever-the-fuck-we’re-watching (Kindred…which ended quite precipitously).

I reduced it in size 50% because I didn’t want a huge quilt, and the letters are fucking tiny.

But not undoable. I appreciate the wonkiness of hand applique. I know the foundation-paper-piecing people are having heart attacks with the lack of straight lines, but I’m good. I like to hand applique and I found two things I was working on (there are 17 million things I’m working on, just to be clear) and decided I wanted to really work on them and not just put them in a box and pretend I was working on them.

There, that’s the closest to a resolution you’ll get out of me in 2023, until August, when teachers do their resolutions.

The boychild has been crafting wood…these are spoons 3 and 4. Or spoon 3 and scoop 1.

They’re quite pretty. He has no desire to make a business out of it. CalFire has downtime, and this is how he uses it. Seems appropriate to me. He’s got about three or four more weeks, and then he’s off for three months. That will be weird. Or very spoony.

OK. Today. Yeah. Building more roller coaster stuff…straight track and loops today. Then notes in 7th grade. Woo hoo. That will go down well. Who am I kidding? Very little goes down well. Kid meeting in the morning, sex-ed meeting in the afternoon (chaos of a district that would probably prefer NOT to teach it), then PT and book club. Oh yeah, and I popped my temporary crown off, so drinking cold things hurts like a bitch and IDK when I can get into the dentist before it’s time to put the permanent crown on anyway, so that’s a possible week and a half of some disturbing occasional pain. And the rash on the knee from the adhesive crap is not getting better. I’ve tried cortisone and benadryl and neither is helping. Emailing the doc on that one.

In positive news, I’ve been reading a lot. It’s a nice place to be, in a fantasy world somewhere (even one filled with murders) where there isn’t a pile of grading papers and lesson planning threatening to take you under. I’ll stay there for a while.

This Is How It Goes…

OK, normal work week, normal number of days with kids, let’s see if I can do the rest of it on schedule. Blog on the right days, remember to do the things after school, or even the things before school. Act like a normal human being, as much as that is possible when you are an artist and an introvert. Yup. All the things.

First of all, I finished tracing after some mammoth tracing sessions this weekend. Well, not really mammoth; just more than the normal 54-62 minutes I do during the school week. Friday night with my quilting group…

There was probably some Thursday night as well…since I didn’t blog on Friday…because I’m totally off schedule.

Warm Compress on My Life…

Hey. Hey there. Hey there you…who does not know what day it is anymore. Like me. I thought yesterday was Thursday. I think part of it is doing Pilates on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, due to a massively long union meeting last night. I came home and thought it was Tuesday though, because I was confused by the trashcans being out. But then I definitely was checking my email for Imperfect Produce, which comes on Thursday. I think my tired brain wanted it to be Thursday, but my realistic brain was like, you’ve only worked two days m’dear, must be Tuesday. Fuck both those brains.

I’m running on 5 hours of sleep, maybe less, due to the dog barking, possible skunk or zombie incursions (hence dog barking) plus stupid brain that is trying to (a) consider school drama and/or future student/parent drama plus other crap related to students, (b) plan a magnet exploration lab in my head, (c) remember to open the file for the art meeting on Sunday so it doesn’t delete itself because we only have 24 hours to open it and I don’t remember when it came, and (d) fuck, I don’t remember what d was for. Thank you, brain. Really. Plus I think I have a stye in my eye and I can’t tape my knee because I’m having some random allergic reaction to the tape even though it’s not latex.

Fucking sigh. Seriously.

Pros: I finished the union notes and sent them (no help there). I watched three videos (or most of them) and picked the best one. I started the magnet lab on an actual doc so it’s not actually just in my head. One of my co-teachers bought me lunch yesterday, which was really nice. And this kid made me another cat! A cat loaf. A cat head on a bread loaf.

Here’s the three she’s made me…

I’m kinda loving this.

In art news, well, guess what, I’m still tracing shit.

I did hit halfway on Tuesday night though. And if I continue in this way with about an hour and 100 pieces a night, I will hopefully finish Tuesday. NEXT Tuesday.

Seriously, it pretty much looks the same every night. I might cut a new blank piece of Wonder Under and start filling it in (I’m on my 4th yard right now), but that’s it. Fill fill fill. I know it’s totally boring on your end, but on MY end, it’s very meditative and relaxing. Become one with the Wonder Under. Trying to fit as many pieces as possible on one yard. Not wasting a single inch of this stuff that costs maybe $2 a yard. Yeah. Whatever. It’s a game, a puzzle.

Is it still January? Yes. And grades are due Tuesday. Deep breaths. I can’t get any grading done because I’m setting up labs and putting labs away and planning for the next unit and I haven’t even finished planning for THIS unit because my preps are gone, but I need to use my prep today for planning 7th-grade stuff that didn’t get finished (or maybe it IS finished and I just don’t know it, but I don’t THINK it is, and this stye is driving me bonkers need to go put a WARM COMPRESS ON MY LIFE).

In other news, here’s one of my kids.

In an Airbnb I stayed in last year…I have a picture on Instagram that looks very similar except it’s me on 3 hours of sleep. Can’t find it right now, but it exists.

Balloon labs this week.

Cleanup is particularly fun for our teacher aides. Pop pop pop.

Here’s something I cut out over a year ago and then lost in the pile. It’s brainless.

There was a foundation paper piecing quilt designed by ugh someone…Berene Campbell of Happy Sew Lucky. And I don’t FPP. So I traced a block to make it regular applique, then realized I didn’t need a full-size quilt of this, so reduced them all 50%. Somehow. I don’t remember how I did that. But I did. And then drew patterns for all the rest. Hey, this is still Berene’s quilt. And then I finally started actually appliqueing them last night. Don’t expect much out of me. Actually, they’re pretty simple really as regular applique. That FPP stuff though? Uh uh. Not doing that.

OK. SCHOOL. It’s Thursday. Finally. Or my god, still? Depends on which part of my brain you talk to. I’m making 8th graders draw roller coasters. I’m making 7th graders write and learn shit (that’s already an issue). I have a meeting after school, and then need to pick up the parental dog for the weekend. Fun stuff. Tonight’s Zoom meeting was moved to tomorrow night, so I might actually finish grading the late work before I get another snotty email from a sweet 13-year-old who doesn’t have to cook dinner and plan magnet labs instead of obsessing over one assignment. Yeah. I (do not) remember those years.

More Than a Cloud

I totally forgot yesterday was Monday. Well done! Good start. I mean, I appreciate the extra day to get stuff done. I even made myself a special post-it to-do list for the weekend with things to cross off (I did not finish all of them, but I did a lot). These two months, January and February, there’s this delightful smattering of 3-day weekends that make me think I can be caught up, and then the disaster of March happens, with 5 long weeks of no days off. No breaks. Just a slog until Spring Break. Teachers know what I’m talking about. May is very similar, but at least ends with a 3-day weekend. Two-day weekends…I lose a whole day to trying to get ready for the week, so just Saturday is free…and it often isn’t. I have progress reports due next week, so this coming weekend is looking a little stressy. Trying to get ahead of that now, but we’ll see how it goes.

It rained all weekend. Like a downpour. Not as bad as further north of us, but at over 3 1/2 inches of rain here (I bought a rain gauge just for this); that’s sometimes our annual rainfall. Everything is exceedingly damp. No trees went down here, not even a fallen branch (knock on wood), so that’s good. A few water issues, but nothing major. The garage will be damp for days. I need to actually sweep water out of it when I get a chance (not sure when that will be). So we didn’t go a lot of places…but I did work a lot. As always. Don’t seem to be able to escape it.

I finished basting and delivered the cross-stitched blocks back to my friend, so she can spend a few months hand-quilting them before I have to figure out how to put them together. I also picked up one of my quilts from a show that closed.

This show was extended into February…

I’m hoping to be at the closing reception, only because it’s First Friday in Liberty Station, and that’s always cool.

OK, on to the weekend tracing, of which there was a lot, although not as much as I would’ve liked. Like maybe 2 hours a night instead of 1.

This is filling in the little spaces in between bigger pieces…

I had a strange leftover piece of Wonder Under I used at the end of a bolt. Some of it was releasing from the paper, so I cut those bits off. Don’t want to deal with it.

Friday night might have been one of those 2-hour nights…

Saturday night definitely was. We had a neighborhood party to introduce ourselves to our new neighbors, and then I came back and did more as the Man crashed…he had emergency dental surgery Friday and was kind of a mess all weekend. Hopefully it’ll be better this week for him.

Lots of complication here…still filling in the spaces.

I think this was Sunday night…another 2 hours…

But Monday night, I was working later on school stuff, so only an hour and a bit. I’m in the 700s, I think. Close to halfway, but not quite.

I thought I’d be further up the drawing by now, but no. It seems there are more pieces in the top half than the bottom half. Even though the bottom half is solid pieces and the top has a lot of open bits. More smaller pieces up top; bigger pieces down below. I have the upper torso and arms, plus head, plus everything she’s holding. And when I say arms, one is done, three to go. Yup. She’s got four. Like you do.

So based on how many pieces are left and how fast I’m tracing, I suspect I’ve got another 8 days of this. Not so exciting to watch on your end, but pretty meditative on mine. I’m OK with that.

This is from the book I’m really enjoying, The House in the Cerulean Sea…

Books are nice, especially on rainy days. And sunny days. And windy days and cloudy days. Yup. All the days.

My possibly permanent existence…at least while I’m still teaching.

Friday afternoon’s sky, before the rains started.

The caterpillars are still here, still eating. I bought them more food. Planting seeds for more after that.

Simba does not like the rain. At all. His raincoat seems to help a little.

Mom’s flowers on Sunday night. Did I take pictures of my parents? Nope. Forgot.

Sigh. OK. It’s only a 4-day week. It’s a busy 4-day week, though, so bracing for that. But I have tracing every night and a good book to read and this week is actually planned out. I didn’t quite get all my planning and grading done, but that’s always the case. It’s not supposed to rain much more (although the clouds have rolled in again and my co-teacher sent me a photo of a double rainbow, so maybe we’re not out of it yet…it’s dark as hell to the west and sunny on my left shoulder).

Fully appreciated yesterday’s social-media roll through MLK quotes I hadn’t seen before, the ones challenging the white capitalist take on him and his views. One was from 1967 and could still be used today, sadly. Things have changed but nowhere near enough. As long as people are using ‘woke’ as a bad thing and ‘patriot’ as a good thing (after Jan 6? Really?), there are still some major problems in this country. And the world. Brazil. Talking to you. So we work in small ways to improve those things, best we can, through our relationships with people and through the web and all the other crap. Making art. Reading more books. Listening to more people, different people. Dark clouds rolling in here, y’all…gotta get to work before it turns into more than a cloud.

Become One with the Slow…

Friday the 13th. In a middle school. Wait, what’s the damn moon doing right now…OK…we’re just waning gibbous. That should help. Yeah. Usually I enjoy a good Friday the 13th, but this week has been rough for everyone. I’m tired, the kids are tired. I thought yesterday went OK, but then I got an email. Sigh. Well I’ll hopefully deal with that today, with admin support, plus I don’t think I have a lot of grading for this week, because we just started a bunch of things (although I’m still playing catchup with stuff from December). I spent an hour yesterday dealing with late work for all but one class. I still need to do redoes. Where I let kids fix their work. So they learn from it. Even though it’s torture for me to try to regrade these, looking at what they wrote originally, what comments I left, what does the rubric from December or November say, and how did they change it. Ugh. Hate it, but it’s necessary.

Glad it’s Friday.

I’ve done a little tracing the last two nights…honestly, not even getting an hour in each night. Starting too late, trying to get back in the habit of going to bed earlier. I started training myself back on the 10:30 bedtime last week, but mostly failed at it. Ah well. Soon the exhaustion will help. Hopefully.

The first 150 pieces are mostly big dirt pieces with some smaller stuff interspersed. Big rock pieces take longer to trace because they’re big. And sometimes complicated. So it seems really slow.

I have to become one with the slow. I had to cut a second piece of Wonder Under because the weird shapes wouldn’t fit between all the other weird shapes and they’re all big. It’s OK…when I get to the little pieces, they will all fit between all the big pieces. It’s a puzzle.

I’m only 2 hours in…more this weekend, I hope. It’s supposed to rain most of the weekend. I’m hoping for big chunks of tracing time while listening to weird TV. Although I need to have a crown replaced, my neighbors are having some sort of dessert and drinks gathering, two animals need to go to the vet, we’re having dinner with the parentals…see, the days just get filled up.

Ah, complicated. This is the complicated I like.

Last night was my monthly in-person stitching meeting. Fun stuff.

Fun little house. Fun stitching. We spent time oohing and aahing at each other’s projects, complaining about work, looking up the pronunciation and etymology of syncytial, and talking about books. All worthwhile. This is still Sue Spargo’s Homegrown. I’ll be working on it all year probably. Easily.

Um. I am both of these. Except I don’t delete emails after reading them. I might need them again. I delete a LOT of them, but not all of them. And 12 tabs is nowhere near enough. On this computer, which I don’t use for work as much as I used to, there are 23 tabs open. You can imagine that the work computer is much worse. It is. I organize my Flair pens by what I use them for: writing on docs in class (dark so it’s easy to see on the doc cam), light and bright for grading (make it cheery!), ugly colors I will never use but will never throw out (because that’s anathema). But I also have an entire drawer, another box, and random other locations where pens go to die. Or live free lives, depending on how you look at it.

I think my right eye stopped twitching for maybe 2 days over break. It’s back.

Here’s Luna being sweet.

She didn’t even whack me after I petted her…she just reached out like she was GOING to whack me.

OK. School. Get classroom ready for today. Teach centripetal force and momentum (a little bit), give a quiz, get kids learning about the history of roller coasters, then pivot to atoms and matter, finish up the elements exploration lab that should have been done yesterday, make kids read an article even though they don’t know how to read (pretty sure we have a recording of one of us reading it) and watch a video where they have to pay enough attention to answer the questions. On a Friday. The first Friday back after break. That’s two grade levels there…I’m not teaching the same classes both roller coaster physics AND atoms and matter. Just to be clear.

Stand at a traffic light for 15 minutes, ready to call 911 if a kid crosses at breakneck speed while staring at their phone because some parent was in a hurry to turn the corner without looking for kids…around a school. Go home and spread some wildflower seeds for the upcoming rain deluge, PUT MY PAJAMAS ON, take my bra off, read a book? Drink some tea? Maybe grade some stuff that’s easy. Maybe plan something that’s easy. Maybe not. Maybe stare at cat videos for 45 minutes. Then make dinner (who thought THAT was a good idea). Then trace a bunch of dirt. More dirt. Lots more dirt. Things in the dirt. Dirt. Love me some dirt.