I Hope I Put It in My Phone

I’m never really sure what throws my brain in a hole. It’s stuff that happens all the time, but then my reactions are different for some reason. Like a switch flips up or down and that’s it. There’s the hole. I’m in it. I often blame hormones. But who knows if that’s really it. I had a really successful weekend. I got a lot done. I went to an opening where I won an award. I don’t know what the deal is. Hopefully it won’t last long. Usually being around middle-school kids all day has a tendency to banish the blues. And calling it “the blues” is kinda lame too. It’s just a bad place my brain goes, a place it’s been before, and apparently a place I’ll never forget how to fall into.

With that, here’s what I got done on Saturday. Kitten was the model for this one…

She’s cute. Another quiet one.

Then the second owl…this is pulled from one of the bathtub drawings…in fact, it might be the one I’m going to make next into a quilt.

I haven’t decided for sure yet. I tried him on multiple blues, but this one worked best.

I finished all of that before going to the Interpretations opening at Visions…where I won the Director’s Award. Which is cool. Never won an award there before…me with my giant boob. The show is open until um…January 3. Long time.

Several people asked if it was me in the story…and yeah. I dealt with about a year of excessive mammogramming and ultrasounds and twisty pokey stuff, and then they proclaimed it a normal dark spot. I did actually see it on one of the scans. It’s been there for over 7 years now and hasn’t changed. It’s the alien in my boob. Much like the aliens in my uterus. Who might all be gone now. Who knows.

So that was Saturday. Sunday was filled with errands and getting ready for school, sending emails and fixing the website and trying to organize the week and get caught up on grading (I will never be caught up).

Then I came in to iron. It was late, but I’d been fighting that mood for hours and there’s no way to make it go away, but making art helps it feel less awful. So I ironed the last of the cats. Yeah, this is the weird one.

I drew it during a staff meeting…or a union meeting. Can’t remember which. The woman next to me kept watching me and it was annoying me, so that’s where the eyeballs came from. Anyway…I’m not really expecting this one to sell (although someone bought the eyeball bird last year, and it was a weird one). I like it anyway.

The next step, hopefully tonight, is to start sandwiching all of them, getting them ready for quilting. Progress…slow but sure.

So I was getting ready to go to sleep last night and looked up at my bedroom ceiling…

Yeah, so I had to get a stepstool and a tupperware and some cardboard and then he kept running, but eventually I caught him and set him free in the front yard. My biggest freakout with this is How do they get in? Because there was the baby lizard on my pillow a few weeks ago. I feel like there’s a lizard family living in my bedroom. But Kitten lives in my bedroom. You think she’d be aware of these things.

There’s also this…

I needed a fried egg in a circle. I was actually fascinated by the patterns of the oil in the tin foil. I once painted a whole 3×4′ painting of tin foil. It’s in the garage somewhere. Ah, the things you do in college. There’s also a 4-foot green penis. And another one of a tin can. That one’s cool. It would make a great quilt. I did it as a screenprint too. I was talking to one of the artists at the Interpretations exhibit about all the stuff I want to try and how I don’t have time, and she just straight up said I needed to retire. Then I would be able to do those things.

Oh. OK. I’ll get on that (excuse me while I roll around on the floor laughing, because I won’t be able to afford to retire until I’m dead).

Meanwhile, I make art in the middle of the night. I draw in my head while I’m in the car. I compose quilts while sitting in meetings. I color them in while I’m grading papers. I get ideas while I’m teaching (I got one the other day and yelled it out, and my students were amused. I don’t remember what it was now. I hope I put it in my phone. I usually do.).

OK. With that, I need to go earn a living.

Music in the Morning…

It’s Friday morning. Usually I sit at my computer, drink my tea, read a bit, and write, and it’s all in dead silence. Some of that dates from when the kids got up after I did, so I had to be mom quiet to let them sleep. But then when they went to high school, that was less of an issue…they were up well before me. I’m not quite awake this morning, so I just turned the music on. It might help. Certainly there’s no one here who cares but me and the cats and the dog. And the fat black cat just wandered in, so apparently she’s not offended by morning rock ‘n roll.

I had quilt class last night, but I was crocheting. Long story. It will eventually end up on here. I’ve always known how to knit and crochet; was taught at an early age. I used to sit in high-school history class knitting scarves so I wouldn’t fall asleep. I find history classes kinda boring. Probably means I never took the right ones.

I came home and ironed after eating. I let Rubio feed me last night. Never met the guy, but he saved me from cooking.

So the plus with these little guys is that they iron so quickly. The minus is that because they iron quickly, I have to make fast, repeated decisions about backgrounds…which is hard. But I did it anyway, until I was too tired to stand. Then I sat and did some school stuff instead.

So first I iron the whole thing to a teflon sheet with the drawing behind it…

That’s some brightly colored cat there. Then I pick a background and iron it to that. Pretty much it takes less than 30 minutes per cat…some were only 15 minutes.

Easy peasy. And the ones with a lot of white in the same range, I will outline shapes with a dark thread, almost like drawing on the quilt with the thread. So those features will pop. This one is little…the littlest, I think.

Much happier on a background. I debated green, but there’s a little green in the background and she looked funny on the green. I actually pull a bunch of backgrounds and drop the cat on top of each one until it looks happy. Not washed out. Not lost. But happy. This one made her happy. The green did not.

I did a black and white bird last year, and the patterns made it kind of fun, so I wanted to try it with a cat.

This cat is a little perkier than the last one. All these cats are numbered so I can keep track of them, but I’m not doing them in order any more. Dammit. Because the boxes were piled up in no particular order. Wish I could tell you which one this was…maybe 5?

This is 3…and I used an actual cat as a model, although I changed the coloring. So calm.

Deserving of a calm background. She’s pretty. At some point, I’m going to run out of that fabric I love, the batik with the wispy cloud lines across it.

OK, you’re gonna laugh, because I had this sudden bug up my butt to troll the internet for that fabric, and realistically, it’s probably 4 or 5 years old, so I couldn’t find it, but I found three others that are similar that might give me as much joy. And utility. So yeah, I just bought them. The internet is such an enabler. It’s also amazing with all the fabrics I have that I always need new ones. Not quite the right shade or whatever. But I do try to use stuff up…I haven’t bought anything else for these cats. The background above is from my second mom, who died in June. The spiral blue is the leftover from another background on a larger quilt…can’t remember which one. Would have to go back and search for it. I think the other blue is also a leftover piece.

Anyway. So that’s what I do in the mornings before work. Troll the internet for fabric I need? Well, no, I don’t usually do that.

Tonight, I’m hoping to do another 4 or so…I have only 5 left, but I think 4 of them are the harder ones…more pieces, more complicated. So keep your eyes open.

These will be for sale, if you didn’t realize. I meant to do them over the summer and got sidetracked, but if you’re looking for a holiday gift for a loved one (or yourself!) and you see one you like, let me know. I won’t hold you to buying it until I have it completed with a price. I just keep a wait list. They’ll probably all be between $100 and 200, except for the owl and the weird cat. They’re way more complicated. Last year’s owl was $235.

Which reminds me, there are three small bird quilts from last year that never sold. The top two don’t have a binding or a sleeve…they’re finished with a satin stitch and have two small plastic rings on the back that they hang from…they’re each 8×10″ and $100 (cheaper because less finishing time). This is Dove 2, Bird 11…

And this is Diving Bird 2, Bird 13, same size.

This is bound and has a sleeve. It’s Purple Bird, Bird 8, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

And then I’m working on 7 cats, 2 hearts in hands, much like this one…

But not exactly. And a different owl than last year’s…coming up in the next week or so you’ll see them all ironed down. Actually, I wrote this part last night, and I’m hoping to see them all ironed down in the next 24 hours. We’ll see about that. I do have to grade papers too.

And I will be at the Visions opening tomorrow night…posing with my quilt? Who knows…

A Brightly Colored Cat…

So yesterday was a giant time suck of catching up on everything that didn’t happen on Saturday…because I really did go to a baby shower and then found a coffee shop and graded and then went to an amazing opening of Bhavna Mehta’s paper-cut work. The exhibit is called Gush and it’s currently at the Oceanside Museum of Art.

I have more photos, so I can write a post for our group’s blog. I saw Bhavna’s work years ago, well before she joined the group. It’s amazing stuff. Her brain works in these incredibly intricate ways. And I’m so glad she’s in our group now, because that means I get to see her work all the time.

Actually, before I got in the car, I managed to finish cutting fabrics out for the weird cat…because I was already halfway done.

That’s a lot of fabrics for such a small quilt.

After the museum opening, I kamikazed back to my home town, where I did this drawing in a bar watching a band play.

Then Sunday, after de-installing the 17-foot woman, going grocery shopping and to two other errands, taking the trash out, dealing with laundry, cooking for the whole week, and grading a bit (all that took until 9:30)…then I finally got up, stood up, stopped staring at screens (there were three of them)…and made it into the studio space for some real stuff. I decided on Saturday to trace this one again and make a brightly colored version. I really wanted a brightly colored cat. What can I say? I cut the Wonder Under out on Saturday too…so last night, I got ready to pick fabrics.

There’s the selection! Yup, it’s a little crazy.

I was in a mood apparently.

It doesn’t take long to do these little guys.

And even to cut them out.

I got another two small quilts cut out last night as well…

It’s fast…but I still have two more to go.

Hopefully tonight I can get those done and maybe start ironing these together. I’m already tired, though, and it’s still supposed to be hot today, although it’s not so bad right now. Plus I need to get exercise back into my regular routine. My life is kicking my butt at the moment. I know y’all are like “OMG how does she get so much done?” but I’m like holy hell, why am I not more efficient? I do need to do some major cleaning tonight after the mess I made last night, but at least I have lunches for the week and one dinner in there already made. That’s the shit that saves me during the week. Then I’m aiming for two days at the gym and one hike with the dog if it cools down. Plus ironing all those beasts down. Plus catching up on grading, whatever that code phrase “catching up” means.

Every year, I donate to SAQA in the form of buying one of their small auction quilts…this is what I bought this year…

It’s even nicer in person, a silky organza-type fabric that shimmers a bit. It’s by Daniela Tiger and is called Let’s Chat. Soon it will join the other pieces hanging around my house. It’s hard for me to simplify enough to work small. I appreciate others who can.

Melty Brain…

I swear the hot weather sucks my brain out of my head and spits it out on the ground, where it sizzles and bursts into flames. We took 140 kids to the zoo and it was over 100 degrees. Significantly hotter back at school even. By the time I got home, I just wanted to sit, and then I napped. And that’s how you know you’re old. A nap on a Friday afternoon/evening. But after that, I graded papers (took way too long…couldn’t focus). And I finally got my act in gear and headed into the studio…

I didn’t get very far…

So this is the weird cat. You can’t even see all the weirdness in this photo. But it’s weird. But I like it. So worst case? It’ll be mine.

I started ironing these pieces down and then I hit the mental wall of exhaustion…for like the third or fourth time in one day.

Man, even the camera was tired and couldn’t focus. Ugh.

I’m not a whole lot more awake this morning, unfortunately. Boychild texted me for a turkey burger recipe, girlchild is at work, bored stiff, and I’m trying to wake up enough to deal with leaving the house for about 12 hours straight. I have two events up in North County, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, so I’m just going to take my grading with me and find a coffee shop in between and sit in air conditioning, instead of the heat I have at my house. Then I come back down here to a show. Somewhere in there I need to eat a couple of meals maybe? Or maybe survive on baby-shower food and art-opening snacks? Probably not going to be enough.

And hopefully by tomorrow it will cool down, because I have to go take down the 17-foot woman, and it was incredibly warm in that space last time. I should remember the ice water this time.

My goal for the small quilts this week is to finish ironing Cat 6 (above), finish trimming all of them (5 are done, 4 to go), and then iron them all together and down to backgrounds. The bird backgrounds were obviously blues. Not sure about the cats. And I kinda still want to do one crazy-colored cat, but I did them all normal so far, so I’m considering retracing one and doing it in crazy bright colors. However, I don’t think that’s happening today.

I guess it could, but I’d have to get my butt organized. Saturday mornings are not my strong point. Hell, mornings in general aren’t my strong point.

OK. Focus Kathryn. Get up and do stuff. Yes, it’s still hot. Your brain is still in your head. Get on with it.

Walking in the Dark…

I took the dog for a long walk that ended up being in the dark last night. Apparently she doesn’t like to walk in the dark. I don’t mind. It’s cooler. The cars get annoying on certain parts of this walk, but that’s only at the very end. Most of it was fine, except I had to put her back on the leash, because she was way too interested in the bunnies, who were coming out with the waning light. I had spent all day with people, trying to get them to do work or listen to me, so it was nice to not have to talk to anyone. Just walk. Just look. Just listen to music. OK, I had to talk to the dog a few times. She gets nervous sometimes. If and when I’m ready to hike with other humans again, I will. For now, I need the silence.

Then I came home and I didn’t even sit down. I cooked from scratch and THEN I sat down. After food, I graded papers, because I’m so far behind. Again. Still. Hate that. Hate how it feels. But I tried to be efficient. It takes 2 1/2 hours for me to grade one medium-sized assignment. The Unit 1 journals that I’m grading at school? About 2 hours per period, so 10 hours. I had a couple people tell me that my job is not hourly, that it’s salaried, so I can’t complain about all the extra hours I do, but I know what salaried people get in terms of salary and perks, and I don’t get that. So it’s not OK. And I don’t get paid during the summer, which is hard. I work as a teacher almost every single night, every Sunday and many times Saturday, and almost every holiday. Sometimes the workload weighs on me so heavily, I wish I could be a barrista…just make coffee all day on my feet (I’m already on my feet all day) and then come home and slough off the job and not have to BE my job for another 3 or 4 hours.

Which is why the art is so important. It’s where I get that sense of peace that I need to get up the next morning and sometimes drag myself to school, to yet another meeting where they will take 90 minutes to say in one sentence what we want to hear: Yes, we will help this needy child by providing services. Holy god, yes. Say that more.

I ironed well last night…not long, just well. About an hour and 10 minutes on art…I ironed the more complicated heart in hands…

It had quite a few fabrics because the hands had fingers. What the fuck was I thinking? Simple? Not quite.

They’re ready to be cut out. Trying to decide if I’m going to take these to my stitching meeting tonight or just take grading.

Because either I’m going to grade there or I’m going to come home and grade. I can grade there and then come home and cut stuff out, or if I have enough energy, I can iron the last one, which is bigger and more complicated.

Then I did the owl…

I did three owls last year, but they were all the same pattern, just three different colorways. This is a different drawing.

We’ll see if he’s popular.

Kitten was in there the whole time, my inspiration for most of the cats in my quilts. Before her, it was Juniper, also a calico. Apparently I have a calico personality. Friendly, but a little feisty…known to bite or attack if provoked.

Here though she is kneading my batting into submission.

OK, another early start. Tomorrow is a field trip. I’d like to say I’m going to the gym tomorrow after school, but I suspect the field trip is gonna kick my ass and I’m going to come home and grade stuff until I can stand up again. At least this time I will have leftovers in the house if I need them.

One more to iron, and then I can start cutting them out. I’m hoping to be ironing them together next week.

Just a Thought…

I have not achieved school/work/life balance yet this school year. I’m either grading or working on some freelance job or making art, but it seems a decision to do one means I can’t keep up with the others. And I tend to prioritize the freelance stuff first, because…deadlines, and then grades and then art, or sometimes art and then I’m horrendously behind on grading (like I have been the entire school year so far). I come home too tired and then have to cook or deal with crap and then I look at the clock and it’s holy-fuck-o’clock and I need to think about sleep. So I might desperately spend a whopping 26 minutes doing art stuff at night (literally, that’s how much time I had last night).

I did the next cat…

Decided to make her a ginger. Not quite a tortoiseshell…not dark enough by far. But more like Rusty, a rescue cat we had years ago, back when we let cats roam. She was a coyote dinner at some point. Too bad. She was a sweetheart. I don’t let the cats out any more.

Rusty had more pieces than I was expecting…

So I did a gray, a black, and an orange kitty, and a couple of calico-types.

Some blue eyes and some green eyes. I think there’s only one more cat, and it’s a weird one. A Kathy quilt for sure. And there’s an owl and another heart in hands. I would have done another smaller one last night, but the last three aren’t small. They’re complicated. So I knew it would be another 45 minutes and that was well past midnight, so I stopped. I have another freelance job I’m working on this week. I’m trying to get enough money together to make the first of about three college payments I have to do for the boychild. I think if I spread them out instead of trying to do three months in a row, I’m going to be better off. It’s just too hard for me to come up with that lump sum in one go.

This is another early morning arrival day for me, unfortunately. I have 21 minutes until I need to leave for school. Yes, I try to write every day before school. For a while, I did it at night because it cleared my brain and I could actually sleep, but this seems to work better now. I can set goals for the day and try to wake up (I really don’t morning well). I eat my breakfast and drink my tea while I write. I try to reflect on the last 24 hours, on what I got done and how I feel about it. Ugh. I feel tired. And stressed. And overworked. Progress reports go home tomorrow and parents will start to panic. One parent yesterday wanted to know why we didn’t contact all parents when a kid didn’t turn one piece of work in (um. Lady. I like to sleep occasionally.). And then proceeded to tell us how busy she was, too busy to check her kid’s grade. Really? It was an interesting meeting. There was another one after school. Another one today. Don’t get me wrong; I love when parents give a shit. But give a shit and take some responsibility yourself for your child, and then at the age of 12? Make them take some too. I will make these kids more capable in the classroom. Or I will die trying.

So. When I get home from what is likely to be a contentious, stressful meeting today, I will hopefully have the energy (and time before dark) to take the dog for a walk, and then quickly do dinner, and do some grading, because I need to. And then I’m hoping to iron the last three quilts. It’s probably 2 hours of ironing, so I should start by 9:30. Just to be safe. There’s the schedule I need in my head. And honestly, if I have that? I am a million times more likely to actually DO it.

Just a thought.

Would Have Been Nice…

I need to leave for work in 26 9 minutes. Early day due to a parent meeting and having to be on duty every day. Ugh. Hate duty. So I should be writing faster than I am at the moment.

Yesterday, I met the other artist who will be in a show with me at Grossmont College in January. He has some paintings, but mostly sculptural work using brightly colored tin…very colorful and cool…kinda like a tin equivalent of my quilts in terms of color. I think the two types of work will go well together. You’ll have to come to the opening. There will be lemonade and cookies (it’s on a school campus…no wine). So I have to start thinking about what to put in it. She wanted to know how many quilts I had, like 5 or 10 (um. I have 90. Some are traveling though.). So I’m fine for content. I just have to choose. I have some time for that though.

So I spaced out for a little bit after all that last night…tired. But then managed to get some of the smaller quilts ironed down onto fabric. These don’t take long. I think the fabric ironing on this one was maybe 20 minutes, and that’s because I waffled about one of the fabrics. The harder part is deciding what kind of cat coloring it should have. I might do one all in bright colors, now that I think about it. But not this one…

Then there was a simplified version of the heart in hands I did last year…there’s actually a more complicated one as well, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s got about 25 pieces, compared to the last big quilt with almost 1900 pieces.

Even then, though, I do take my time to find the fabrics I want. You can see I have the other quilt pulled up on my iPad, just for comparison’s sake.

It’s not exactly the same. But I did use that weird lollipop-looking fabric again.

This cat is all grays mostly…and a little white. Like Limbo, back when he was alive. I tend to make calicos for some reason. But I’ve had cats of all colors.

Here’s the grays. She got blue eyes.

Then this one had to be a calico…too many color spots on her. She’s got a whopping 38 pieces in her.

So a tad bit more complicated than the first, which had 23 pieces.

I think these were hers. Not sure now. It was late. I was sorta fascinated with the piles of fabrics I’d used. I don’t always think clearly when it’s late and I’m tired.

I was going to give up before I got to this one, but I’m glad I didn’t, because my brain kicked in and reminded me how I liked the little black bird last year. Hey. Cats can be black! No way (I have a black cat sleeping in my red fabric drawer right now. She would prefer the blues, but those are still closed because I haven’t used a lot of blue yet in the cats…strangely.).

So a black kitty with lots of patterns in her…

I guess they could be male. I just think of them all as girls. Weird cat sexism. Here’s all the cut-out pieces.

So three cats and a hand/heart combo were cut out last night. I didn’t actually spend much time last night, just under two hours, in case you’re keeping track. And I had to really push to get the second hour out of me. It was a long day. It rained and the dog was a mudball when I picked her up, and then after I dried her off and cleaned out the car where she deposited mud everywhere, then she went in the pool, so she was dripping wet again. All before I had to drive downtown and find parking and act human. Hard at the end of the day, honestly. Plus that whole thing where I have to cook for myself. Ugh. I need a wife. Or an assistant. I hate that being a wife has that connotation: the one who takes care of everything, cleaning, house, cooking. Because I’m not married, haven’t been for years, but I’m still the one who takes care of everything: Christmas presents, flights home, paperwork, tax forms (12 texts from the girlchild this morning, as she gets ready to start work for the first real time). Sometimes it just wears you down being the “wife.” I’m not even a wife. And I’m OK with that part, don’t get me wrong…but it would be nice to have someone else do the cooking once in a while. Or go to the grocery store with you. Or dry off the dog, because you have to go downtown for a meeting. All those things would have been nice.

Restart

So the studio is relatively clean, in that the piles of fabric are put away (well, mostly…it gets harder and harder to find room for them sometimes). I straightened up some of the chaotic piles that live and breed in here. I even threw out a bunch of school stuff that I will never use, but felt guilty about, because the district was so psychotic about it 5 years ago, and now have dropped it almost completely. It’s not like I was going to read through those silly pieces of paper again anyway. I should remember that after the next PD (which, whoops, is today…and which I don’t want to go to, because none of the courses are really something I need, and they don’t interest me either). As everything flips online anyway, I don’t need as many samples of what kids might have done…or if I do, they are online and I should save those. I tried to do that last year too…save examples of each assignment where students might need that. Although often if you give them an example, they just try to copy it. So maybe it’s better to throw them in cold.

The studio got cleaned in the middle of a smallish copyediting job…small in that it wasn’t a lot of words or work, but it was significant to me because it was my first in many years, since I started teaching basically, and it was also online for the first time for me. I was worried, but it was easy. My brain knows exactly what to do when I edit. It took about 30 seconds for that editor brain to kick in and start a style sheet. So that was good. And I even now have an Excel spreadsheet for invoices (in the old days, I had no such thing). I started with the next number on the list, 283. So yeah. I wrote 282 invoices for Harcourt/Elsevier when I worked for them…usually 2-3 per book, depending on the length. I think I figured at one point that I had worked on over 65 books. Anyway, the job wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t hard…just time-consuming and eyeball-straining. I actually liked the ability to use technology to make the job easier…searching for corrections that needed to be made throughout the manuscript was a piece of cake.

So hopefully there will be more of those. Grades are due Tuesday. I input a lot of stuff Friday night, but I still need to finalize the actual progress-report grade with effort and behavior grades and comments if I have time for those. Some day we will be allowed to write our own comments. This system doesn’t allow it. My last school district allowed teachers to write 3 or 4 of their own comments, although “lazy butt” is generally still frowned upon, as is “can’t think for himself” and “please don’t send sugar with your child” or “why do you let them stay up all night playing video games?”. So it might not be particularly useful if I can’t write what I really think. Or sometimes, honestly, “I think your kid is awesome and you did a great job raising them. Thank you.” No really. There are some of those.

So last night, after all the school stuff that I wanted to do was done (well, plus some I didn’t want to do, but did anyway), I finally managed to touch fabric without the purpose being to put it away.

Look! It’s fabric being chosen for a tiny cat quilt! Oh yes. Finally. I drew these all in what…June? July? Numbered them all. You know, it’s funny. I have an app for that. Seriously. I use a task-managing app to keep track of how much time I spend on stuff, including writing and copyediting. It makes life so much easier. So I numbered all the little quilts in early July. And then I traced the Wonder Under in early July as well. I cut it all out around mid-July. And then I put them in a box and squirreled them away until now, because two giant projects jumped the line. Which is fine. It may actually make more sense in terms of being able to sell these to finish them in October, with Christmas and other gift-giving holidays just around the corner. So I’m OK with it.

And yes, I only finished picking fabrics for one last night. I was significantly tired from the weekend and working so many hours. It’s not physical, but it’s mentally draining. My brain starts to rebel and wants some art and movies and comic books and whatever else it can get besides more workity work work. So it is an incredible relief to turn around to the ironing board, flick the iron on, and start climbing around on the floor looking for the perfect pink for a cat’s nose. I’m hoping to do more of that tonight, but I have an art-related meeting after school and then grades still have to be finished. If I’m incredibly efficient, I might get it done during my prep period, but I’m remembering that my before- and after-school duty starts this week (giant Ugh Sigh), so I will have to be remarkably efficient to make sure each day that I’m ready for the next. I hate duty. I really do. And there’s some chance of rain today during that as well…which is good for San Diego, but bad for my lack of dampness. It also means I need to make an attempt to leave earlier for school each day, because on my regular schedule, I will have a whopping ten minutes to pee and set up my classroom for 1st AND 2nd period, and that sounds like an issue to me. Damn. I hate this.

But…art has restarted and that’s a good thing. I know. I took a week off. Sort of. Finished one on Monday, September 29…then cleaned up all week…and started the next one on Sunday, October 4. That IS a long break for me actually. How did I manage no art all those days? No wonder I’ve been cranky. Remember that. Shit, I know that. It just wasn’t in the cards those days.

Fight Uterus. Teach Illness. Stitch Legs.

Aargh. I’m working my butt off at the moment, between my job and my art. It’s good, because I’m getting stuff done, but it’s bad, because it feels like that’s all I do. Yesterday, I worked at school from 8-4:15, then came home and worked another 2 1/2 hours on grading. Then I stitched stuff down for another hour. That’s not really balance, is it. Girlchild is on a rant of huge proportions about college apps. I irritate her just by existing at the moment. Hell, sometimes I irritate myself just by existing. The house is still a freakin’ disaster because of days like yesterday, where the only house-related thing I achieved was to divest the girlchild’s bathroom of all empty shampoo containers and to pack up the door handle that we decided I didn’t need, so I can take it back to Home Debit. I know I have the receipt. Now I just need to find it.

And everything hurts. Girl parts are vengeful in some way. They behave for days at a time, and then they screech at you like the world is ending and they’re on fire. Imagine trying to stand all day in front of a herd of middle-school kids while your uterus contracts, doing its JOB (structure and function, the basis of what I teach), and the kids are whining because they have been sitting too long (10 minutes) in front of a computer that isn’t GIVING them answers like their teacher used to do (really, it was easier for them, wasn’t it? OK, I was never the answer-giving teacher though), and I’m getting irritated because someone has forgotten their password for the 17th time and they didn’t write it down and I have to try to reset it, which is a pain in the ass, while trying to make sure Jimmy and Johnny don’t play Angry Birds all period (I have an app that watches all their screens, but I have to watch the app…although honestly, if you just PRETEND to walk around with a tablet that has the app on it, it doesn’t really matter; they assume you’re watching them. Very amusing) all the while yelling “Key Words, People! Key Words! because they don’t know how to figure anything out)…and meanwhile, my uterus is trying to win some muscle contest, almost killing me in the process. Yes, you’re an efficient little beast, my dear organ of reproduction, but it seems like you hold it against me when I don’t use you for your intended purpose. Let me make it clear. More babies? Not happening. So get over yourself and behave like the adult you are. You don’t really want to go through that whole babymaking thing again. You just think you do. Get over it.

All that. And art too. I made this pact that I was going to draw once a week, every week, and then I forgot to put it on the calendar, so I missed it last week, so I put it on again for Sunday night, and it still didn’t happen, so now it’s calendared for every Friday night, and its name is Draw Dammit. Hopefully I’ll continue that. If the calendar yells at me. I need an owl…the Hogwart’s owls that dropped those screaming letters…hey, I just Googled “harry potter screaming letter owl” and got what I needed…they’re called Howlers and when you open the envelope, it howls at you until it’s done, and then it erupts into flames. That’s what I need. One of those every Friday night. I love Google by the way.

Meanwhile? Stitching down…

I’m 3 hours in (see the cat behind the machine? Annoying.). All that’s left is the man’s legs and head, half a bird, and all the stuff in the tree: probably two more hours, honestly, so I really should be able to finish pinbasting by Saturday night. I should check the stash of batting…I think I have a piece big enough. God knows I have enough bits and pieces.

So Sunday night (no, I didn’t post Sunday night or Monday…too tired still), I had this cat in the drawers…

She chose green. I didn’t want to clean up all the fabrics until I finished ironing everything down, which I have now down, but now I just don’t feel like cleaning, which is unfortunate, because this room is a disaster at the moment.

Then I had this cat on the ironing board…

Which IS clean at the moment (a brief lapse on my part). They don’t like each other (actually girlchild is just to the right of this picture, because she was ALSO in here, but she’s not a bitchy cat)…and at some point, they realized they were in the room together (hey, can you see the big pile of batting on the shelf up near the top? That’s all SMALL pieces, because I MAKE SMALL pieces? No, because I’m a hoarder. Not a bad hoarder…just a minor one. I do go through the pile and toss pieces that would only work if I made quilted postcards, which I don’t.

Yes, my brain is rambling all over the fucking place, because my UTERUS is contracting like a bitch and I can’t think straight. But I am going to go to school and teach middle schoolers about respiratory illnesses today, and if some kid whines about ANYTHING, a demon will rise from my mouth and devour them, and then all the other kids will be silent workers for the rest of the period. Right?

So here are the two cats (and all the mess)…hissing at each other.

Because I need more drama? To their credit, mostly they avoid each other. Midnight (the lower cat) is a sweetie. Babygirl has channeled Satan.

I have lots of pictures of Babygirl, because she inhabits my office/studio, which is where I am most nights at some point or another, usually after 10 PM. So when normal people are going to bed, I’m moving to the work area to keep going. Sometimes she appears quite sweet and adorable…

which I think is how she reels in prey…like my teenaged son.

If you don’t feed her fast enough, she whacks you with her paw, claws extended.

And the cats are the reason I always pile my quilt top up on the machine…

So they can’t lie on it. Because they will. It’s not a very exciting thing to write about at the moment, stitching down. Pretty much, I turn Star Trek on really loud and adjust the zigzag and drop the feed dogs, and go around every single piece. My brain spends most of its time trying to figure out what Picard said and where to stitch next without having to restitch over what I’ve already stitched. Add in the psychotic machinations of my uterus, and it’s just fun fun fun all around. And the mood that comes along with the uterine games? Yeah. It’s not good. Whatever.

Seriously. This stage will be done soon and I’ll be on to the quilting. I have to get caught up with work too, though, because Houston is next week and that’s going to mess with my workload a bit. And grades are due a week after I get back. And I have a show to take down and a bunch of other stuff to deal with. Buried is an understatement. One day at a time. Today? Fight uterus. Teach illness. Stitch legs.