Physically Impossible.

I’m sitting here with two computers in front of me, deep breathing, trying to get two things done at once, which is, of course, physically impossible. But one computer is incredibly slow, so I type in between, in the wait times while it responds. I’m also waiting for the electric company to show up to remove something so I can get a solar battery installed. Unfortunately, there are bees in my composter (right next to the freakin’ meter, talk about bad timing, y’all). I think they’re chill enough right now that it won’t be an issue, and I’m hoping they leave by tomorrow, because otherwise, I’ll need to delay the battery install. Sigh. I have an eye doctor appointment this morning, so things are already wonky and I’m already stressed…plus it took FOREVER to fall asleep (probably related to all of the above and other shit), so I’m tired. I’m always tired. This may not be any different. Also there’s the issue of not posting the assignments for school too early, so kids will actually have them to do in class and not have them done and be acting out. Yes, there are scheduled posts, but they work about 50% of the time, so sometimes, you just post everything early and pray a little to the Goddess of Education, who is a little over-stretched herself at the moment.

The weekend. Sigh. I meant to do some things and then got in the wrong headspace and didn’t. Love that for myself. I did apply to an artists’ residency, hopefully something I can do this summer. Maybe not though, depending on timing and availability. I got the banned book piece to the next step. I finished stitchdown and pinbasted Friday night…

Ironically, I un-pinbasted them on Saturday and put a backing on them…I think it’ll be better that way. Then I quilted them Saturday night…

All together, they took a little over two hours…

Not long. Not hard.

Little quilts are easy.

But still not cheap. Time is money? My time is worth something.

Then last night, I started construction…this is the hard part. Not exactly sure what I’m doing. Scary to cut it and not sure it’ll be the right size, but doing it anyway.

So hopefully construction goes well over the next couple of nights. Certainly I’ve done it in my head about 3,000 times by now.

Oh, here’s the bees…

I went out yesterday evening to put the compost in, opened the lid, threw it, and ran. I went back when it was dark, when they were all chilled out.

I knocked off the honeycomb. This morning, there were three batches of bees…one still on the corner, one down on the ground under that (the biggest chunk), and a smaller chunk on the lid, which still smells like home, but is 20 feet away now.

They’re fascinating, but I need them to live somewhere else right now. Well, always. They love the composters unfortunately. I have an anti-bee spray I’ll use this time. I wash with hot water and soap, but it’s not enough I think. This composter has had bees at least three times.

The SDGE guy is out there…he wants me to check on him in 10 minutes in case he gets stung and has an allergic reaction. Chill guy.

I did not make it to ceramics Friday. Had a meeting after school and then had to set up for the sub this morning, and I was exhausted by the time I was done. No energy. Came home and graded instead.

Here’s my dinner drawings from the last four weeks.

I can’t explain them. I just draw. No purpose.

I find it relaxing. Yes, I can talk to the people I’m with while drawing.

It’s the only time I really get to draw these days. Which is frustrating.

Sometimes they bring the food really fast and I don’t get to finish. Or I’m drawing super slowly and I don’t finish.

I thought the Man’s plants looked like they were talking to each other.

Laughing plants.

This is way too real.

Except I do finish things. I finished one last week. This current book is really good so far. Hoping it stays good.

I’ve been working on this in bits and pieces at meetings and things.

OK. Sigh. Today is chaotic, but I’m hoping it will even out once I get through them dilating my eyes, my going to Costco with dilated eyes, then getting to school and hopefully having my eyes undilate (last time, it took over 4 hours, so I’m a little nervous). Plus I didn’t tell the kids I would be out…some of them are just jerks when you do, so I just decided to make it a surprise. The SDGE guy did not get stung by bees (they are so chill still)…good thing. I want to read my book, I need to grade things, I want to go to clay (it’s quiet on most Mondays), and I’m hoping the eye thing goes well. The doctor wasn’t particularly personable the last time. Didn’t tell me all the things, but wrote them up and I read them later. I guess that’s a thing…if you read. Hoping to come home to no bees hanging around and plenty of time to try to make that quilt thing go together. And the headspace to do so. Mondays. They just are.

Hidden Away…

How is it not Thursday yet? I don’t get it. It feels like Friday and a half. I even looked up the date of the next full moon, trying to find an explanation for the crazy we saw yesterday, and nope, it’s not for another two weeks. Ugh. Today feels long and difficult already. Meeting this morning; I was at the school board meeting yesterday (with 6 people, not counting the actual school board) until after 6 PM. I had to speak briefly about the sex ed committee, and then I listened to the rest, grading the whole time. Then came home and managed to cook dinner and eat it.

The quilt progress is slow. This thing is big and complicated. I finished the stitchdown on Monday night; it took just under 6 hours to do. I love seeing the back of the quilt top at this stage…

And then it gets hidden away inside the quilt sandwich forever. I do actually check for things I’ve missed at this stage too. Although I don’t catch them all sometimes until I’m quilting.

Then last night, exhausted, I found and pieced fabric for the background, cut the batting, washed it, and tossed it into the dryer before I went to bed. Tonight, I’ll sandwich it all.

I’ll have to clean the entryway floor first. So clean floor, iron top, sandwich it, pin it all together. It’s moving, but slowly. Somewhat like me. At least mentally. I managed to cobble together something I worked on in 2023 for the filler day we need at school tomorrow, but we lose our prep periods today for the walk-to-the-high-school thing. Take the kids over there (it’s not super far), have them do the rah rah thing, see all the sports and clubs, talk to people, then try to corral them all back to walk back before 3rd period. My biggest concerns? Well, a couple of kids, but whatever. Also I usually eat and pee during 2nd period. This is important! We’ll figure it out. I had a packet of nuts at school for such emergencies, but I needed it last night at the board meeting. I maybe need to stop at a grocery store on the way to school…if I have time before the meeting.

In other school news, this was deposited on my notebook yesterday. So I recycled it. Ah no, it was the behavior contract of a student who was having a day…and continued having a day. As you can imagine.

It was rough for the rest of us as well.

So bee/owl box update. I noticed the bees were ‘gone’ the other day/night, so I pulled the box off, and then had the boychild help me move it about 15 feet away, with the plan to install the new one the next evening. I figured they’d left to find a better place to hang out. Went to install the new one and saw this.

Um. Guys. It’s over there. So yeah. Not sure what this was about. Where were they the night before? Anyway. So. When bees swarm on an unprotected spot, they usually leave within 48 hours, so we waited. We also cleaned out the old owl box and found what looked like possibly 1 or 2 baby skeletons (matches up to the two separate babies I heard last year), and what looked like part of an adult. Bigger feet, adult feathers still attached to part of a wing.

Baby on the left? Maybe? Barn owls aren’t actually that big. I know it just looks like a pile of feathers and stuff, and now that carcass on the left has been dragged off by something last night. I knew that would probably happen. There were still some bees in the owl box, but not much honeycomb…not enough for them to have killed the barn owl (they can do that apparently) back in spring, when I last heard the second baby, and then built a hive. It’s all very strange. ANYWAY. Last night, the bees were gone off the pole, so we’re gonna try again. I have a bee repellant spray that is supposed to be arriving today that I’m going to spray on the pole and around the owl box. It’s natural, not poisonous. I was trying to get a natural bee repellant I could put inside the box, but it’s not an easy thing to find in California. It’s late for mama to be building a nest, but I can hope.

This is the 2nd tree in the Sue Spargo Rooted quilt. I started the embroidery during book club on Monday.

Actually, no, I started the embroidery in my Allied Craftsmen meeting on Saturday. Embroidery is not fast, y’all. But it’s relaxing.

Speaking of relaxing…

Bowie at 8 months (9?) is almost as big as his aunties. He is still being a teenager, harassing everyone in the house. My old lady cat does not like him and lets him know that…and she has a new scratch on her nose that is probably from him. He’s very curious and wants to know about her, but she’s not having it. I’m carrying her out of her cubby in my room to the food and the litter tray, but she does come out without me sometimes.

OK, besides the walking tour of the local high school, the rest of the day, we’re reading about light rays and writing about them. Fun times. Then pilates and hopefully installing the owl box. Then sandwich and pinbaste the damn quilt. After washing the floor. It’s a lot.

Made It to Halfway…

It’s amazing how quickly I get tired…I’ve been trying to train myself to go to sleep earlier again. I just suck at it. The boychild says I can easily train myself to be a morning person, but I’m not so sure. Maybe when you’re younger. I know Monday night, I’m trying to fall asleep, and my brain is just tossing stuff out that needs to be done. I finally gave up and pulled up the calendar app on my phone, and scheduled a bunch of stuff. Then I could sleep. As the week goes on, with every morning an early wakeup (tomorrow is even earlier ffs), I get tired enough to fall asleep before the meditation app turns off. Pros and cons of that. I’m trying to carve out art time, though, and that’s usually after dinner. I should’ve graded last night, but I didn’t. Monday I came home and took a nap…and we didn’t even have kids on Monday! Just an all-morning staff meeting. I’ll get used to it; I always do. Maybe. Right now, it feels like I need a tea injection. My fault for taking the head meds late…they make me tired, so I have a reminder on my phone to take them at 8 PM, but then I keep forgetting and not taking them until bedtime. Ugh. I don’t think they’re going to work anyway. They’re another migraine medication the doc wanted me to try so she could finally rule out migraine for the visual disturbance I have…she calls it a ‘scotopia’ or a visual disturbance. I call it the swirling universe and am convinced it has alien origins. She laughed at that. At least she has a sense of humor. The scotopia is not quite correct, because I am seeing colors…anyway, I think she really doesn’t know what it is and it will either go away, stay forever, or eventually turn into something the docs recognize. But for now, I’m taking a medication for migraines that I don’t seem to actually have. So there’s that.

Art! I am ironing, and finally hit halfway last night. I’m mostly in the fussy little bits, so there looks to be very little progress from day to day. Monday night, I ironed the heart with all its flowers.

There were quite a few pieces in there. I also added some bits and pieces to fill in blanks. Last night, I did the arm and the neck.

I’m in the mid 800s, so halfway. Still fussy shit going on, trying to make everything fit. The bottom was getting too heavy; it kept pulling everything off kilter, so I removed the teflon sheets from the bottom and rolled it up.

You can see it all rolled up there. You can also see the ginormous quilt I’m quilting for (this is my plan) 30 minutes a night. It’s for a friend of mine. Her mom made the quilt before she died and was able to quilt it. It’s large. I’ve managed to quilt all the way around the center medallion, although I will add some quilting in the middle once I figure out the rest of it. The next step is to quilt around some of the outside icons and then do an allover stipple in between all of that. The hardest part is that I got a bag of thread with the quilt, but I don’t know what mom wanted. How I would quilt it vs how someone else would quilt it? I try to channel mom thoughts while I’m quilting…it’s weird…I’ve done finish-up quilting on projects before for people who needed help finishing something up for someone else, and there is a moment while you’re working when you picture the person and try to think what they would want or need. Definitely communing with intent. Or for intent? I’m not sure. It’s a strange headspace. Anyway, I feel much better about it now. It was an overwhelming project when I first took it, and now it’s just ‘do this one thing’ and then ‘do this other thing’. One piece at a time. Much more manageable.

I did more clay on Monday…honestly I thought I’d be doing clay stuff all the time during break and that definitely didn’t happen. I barely made it in. Which sucks. But whatever.

Shoulders. Still not sure how I am going to handle arms. There’s a roll of plastic-covered paper towels holding the boobs up. Some sagging is allowed. But also, the weight is all pitched forward at the moment because of the construction I’m using to fit the two parts together.

Lots left to do. I haven’t even started decorating this part. The other part is over on the drying shelves. AND…I’m almost out of this clay. I’ve used almost 20 pounds. Crazy. Hopefully I’ll be back there on Friday (possibly exhausted by then).

So we dropped the owl box…definitely bees in there…

You can just see a bunch of bees and the honeycomb on the right.

I talked to a very helpful, very nice bee woman who lives too far away to help us, but she gave me some ideas. I ordered another owl box. This one needs to move with its bees, we think. Someone local will need to help with that. The bees probably won’t survive being moved out right now. Not enough resources. So I’m still trying to figure out how to handle the next part, which might just mean moving it over 10 feet so we can put a new owl box on. We’ll see. My brain is overwhelmed with school right now, so I’m taking small steps each day toward my to-do list. Yesterday was an art thing and a retirement thing. Today will be bee things.

Yesterday, we started Unit 4 and I actually finished a cover page the same day I started it.

Sort of miraculous that.

OK. Teaching light vs sound waves today. Kids are reading out loud as characters in a story. We have new seats, new folders, a new unit. Kids are still tired. They got a lecture about trying harder and redoing work when it wasn’t up to standards. About how they’ve already done hard things and they can still do hard things, that hardly anything goes right the first time. Meanwhile our grade file opens tomorrow and I have some more stuff to grade. I do love their confidence sometimes though. Actual conversation: I filled out the regrade form and you didn’t grade it. I did look at it, but didn’t see a change. I got a better score. Did you get my email? No you didn’t email me. I did, on December 27. Oh. If you can screenshot your score, I’ll change it. Otherwise, I can’t grade something I can’t see. OK, Ms. Nida; I’ll do that. Luckily, I keep pretty specific notes or I wouldn’t remember anything.

After teaching, I have pilates. I’m not cooking tonight, so hopefully I can read my book a little and then grade the silly things I have left to grade. And then quilt and iron after dinner. I’m better with routines. I get more done. I need the breaks from school, but the break in routine doesn’t always help. Still tired, by the way.