An Impossible Task

Yes, it’s not Monday. I was supposed to write yesterday. I remembered a few times during the day, but was trying to do stuff. I was not well on Saturday, Sunday still recovering, probably still recovering today, honestly. Seems like my immune system decided it wasn’t gonna work last week. It’s fine; I got antibiotics Saturday and I’m pretty sure I’m OK now (taking ALL the antibiotics until they’re gone, because let’s follow directions, y’all), but when they tell you to go to the ER with certain symptoms and the meds cause some of those symptoms…it’s fun times, y’all. Also, like, what IS a fever? So a lot of second guessing and kind of what feels like a waste of a weekend, thanks body for that, but all a necessary part of the whole life game. Better now. Mostly. Didn’t get to hike. Didn’t get a lot done. Sigh.

I couldn’t fall asleep last night, brain just whirring along, dragging me along with it. Yes, I meditated. I counted to 10 with deep breaths about three thousand times. It was just an impossible task. Sleep because you know what the week brings. Nope. Not happening. Ah well. Move on and caffeinate.

I did trace, despite the illness. Meds helped. Originally, going into the weekend, I had this crazy idea that if I traced for 3 hours each day, I could finish tracing this thing. Or maybe 4 hours. Like I had nothing else to do. I mean, it turned out that it didn’t matter if I had other things to do…but…here’s Friday night.

Made it up onto her left arm…then Saturday night, after the meds kicked in…

Oooh, here it is with the light off…

That might have been Sunday night…oh wait, no, this is Sunday night…

That’s all the Wonder Under I’d traced so far. The three on the left are mostly full. I’m working on the one on the right. I forgot to take a photo last night. It looks the same, y’all. Every night, it looks the same…I just have more things drawn on the Wonder Under. I made it to the mid 900s last night (not done, not at all done). If I keep up the hour a night, I won’t be done until Saturday night. One of the things I thought about last night in the multiple hours I wasn’t sleeping is how far I would get on this piece before I left for Oregon, and the answer is, not far enough to come back and finish it and photograph it before the deadline I’m aiming for, SO. I will have to ramp it up. Knock on wood. Get more schoolwork done at school. Like I can wish for that, but making it happen is a different thing.

I did make it to ceramics yesterday, which is good, because I missed two Fridays in a row. The heart is out on the drying racks (they finally cleared a bunch of stuff off of them…still no room for the torso unfortunately). I’m trying to finish up the building part on this so I can underglaze it.

I added stems and leaves and decorated a bit.

One more arm and then it’s ready for underglazing. That’ll only take 300 hours.

This is where I’m at, but add the California primaries with 62 (?) people running for governor, and the top two Repugs are really disgusting. I mean it sucks being in the US right now with the government we have, but California has been a bit better…big enough to be its own country, and no perfect governor, but not one with his head up the orange ass. We voted on Monday. Glad it’s done, but it did not reduce my stress.

Deep breaths. We’ll know in a week who the top two are. If they are both Repugs, then fuuuck. Is all I have to say.

Then this…

There must be a better way to power AI. It’s not leaving. Can we get the great minds onto how to better use it and power it, so we’re not using human resources to power little boys putting girls’ heads on naked women’s bodies? Is that a thing? Can we do that? Probably not.

Here watch some baby owls learning to do things…

Cute, right? Loud. They fly away a lot these days and leave partially eaten rodents all over the yard. Bleck.

OK. The kids are doing a research project on the planets today, because my past self was trying to take care of this week’s self. Good plan, because I can hopefully grade while they’re doing that. Low-key week for the win. Plus only 4 days. Plus no science interviews, thank goodness (we did 9 last week? 8? I forget. Tired of hearing the same key words over and over again, especially the guy who pointedly looked at me and said he had learned all the new science tech stuff for teaching kids, including…wait for it…EXCEL SPREADSHEETS…like WTF guy…those have been around since I was in school. Nothing new there.). Plus more ceramics after school to make up for not going Friday, then grading and dinner and tracing, at least 90 minutes please. Maybe more. We’ll see. This is the end of May, y’all. The end is coming (of the school year…not the world…yet).

Focus on the Owls…

Midweek. Testing week. Warm week. Lots is going on. Science state testing. Science department interviews. Juggling doc appointments. Trying to fit everything in. Crazy to even try, right?

OK, I underglazed the heart for the ceramic sculpture I’m working on.

I still need to finish decorating the arms and then underglaze the torso, then get started on the head. There’s still nowhere to dry the torso, which is part of my problem. I might need to finish it before starting the head. Problematic. I have a neck sitting on the torso and am trying to keep it from drying out.

Meanwhile, I’m tracing the newest quilt…

It’s going well except for the part where Scribble tries to dive under it or sit on it and tore the drawing in three places.

Last night, I seemed to be able to persuade her to stare at geckos and attack her brother instead. Hopeful. Made it into the 200s last night. I’m going to be here for a while…1200 more pieces, to be exact. Also I’ve found at least 5 pieces so far that weren’t numbered, so I’m thriving. Really.

So I’m working on that every night, thank goodness, because it’s meditative and I need that.

The owls babies are all out and flying around the neighborhood, although there seems to be one that is always on the box. But I think there are three now. So check these videos out.

Definitely three…just don’t know if one is mom. I don’t think so.

Apparently they go to bed at about 5:30 AM.

So cool. Anyway, I have to run a short union meeting this morning. We have state science testing. The kids leave early. We get to go out to lunch, and then grade, and then interview. I have pilates. And more grading. And then tracing. It’s going OK, but I feel like I don’t get anything else done but that. So I might have to water some things and plant some seeds and weed a little. Also, I’m not sure the boychild is coming home today. Don’t tell the dog. Fires abound. It’s only May. Not enough rain. Focus on the owls, though. They’re pretty cool. I like to think I’m helping the barn owl population in my area. Which helps limit the gopher/rat population. Also good.

A Threat Call…

I woke up at 1 AM out of a deep sleep, heart pounding, dog growling, as the two adult barn owls screeched a threat call. I wouldn’t ignore that if I were another animal. I don’t know what was out there, but I do know the babies were back to squawking away within 20 minutes, so it must have been OK. Scared me though…and the dog. Maybe a barn owl needs to make it into this quilt too.

So this new quilt comes from a drawing from last summer, which I did at the first all-staff meeting (before kids showed up). They wouldn’t let us have our computers open and they literally read to us from the slides, so I drew. I had copied the drawing back in December or January, but got sidetracked by other things that needed to be done. Originally, I was just going to make it into a quilt, just the drawing, but the world impinges on that, so I added paper above and below, and started drawing a couple nights ago.

Yes, Scribble is lying on the part I was drawing on. Why do you ask? I got some stuff roughed out in pencil…

And last night, I inked that and added more pencil…

And last night, while I was trying to fall asleep, I took notes on a couple more things that could go up here. And more down below. Although I am enjoying branching out into the dye paintings, there is a certain sense of relief about going back to how I ‘normally’ make quilts. My brain likes it.

I also drew, inked, and numbered a baby quilt drawing…

It’s taken me a year to do this, I think. It’s supposed to go in here…

And although it doesn’t look like it’s the right shape or size, I’ve shoved the paper in there and it works, plus I added an inch all the way around for marginal errors. So that’s on my list too.

Monday, I made it back to ceramics…and decided I didn’t need to attach the heart…I could just lay it on there.

It turned out bigger than I thought, which is funny, because I literally had the torso there in front of me when I made it.

I added some veins to the fabric piece, and then flowers to the arm.

We have these punch things, not sure what they’re actually for…cookies? I’ve used the leaves before. I was going to make flowers, but these were more fun.

I made three. I’m going to go back and texture the centers and add stems and leaves and maybe bugs.

Fun stuff.

I was trying to finish my book…

My lap charges a premium.

Our school is doing teacher appreciation week this week. Yesterday was nachos, but they weren’t ready during my prep. I was supposed to eat them during lunch, except I can’t usually substitute like that. Oh well.

But yeah. Give me back my time, show up outside, do the things, follow through…please.

I’m in. Although I can’t really eat ice cream unless we hike three miles in the forest first. Hopefully you’re up for that part too.

OK. Today I teach rock layers. It’s really hard: the rocks where fossils are found usually form in layers. It’s sedimentary rock. The oldest rocks are on the bottom, so if you find fossils down there, they are usually the oldest. The newest ones are on top. There, I’m done. Y’all, it will take all period and some kids will never get it. I’m doing the speedy version, not the fun one where I give them cards and they have to figure out the layers. The state science test is in a week. I’m panicking a little. Oh well. I started planning next year, in that, I made a copy of this year’s calendar and I’m changing all the dates and holidays. That’s it. That’s what I can handle at the moment. It’s fine.

After school is a union meeting. I’m already tired. Tired of meetings and kid drama and adult bullshit. I should start a new book (seriously, I finished that other one last night, so I’m allowed).

The Shortest, But Longest Days…

Oh hey, it’s Wednesday. Weird week. State testing started yesterday, so we have the shortest, but longest, days with kids for a couple days. I keep my advisory for 3 hours and 15 minutes and they annoy me the whole time by being unable to follow directions, log in, keep their computers in good shape, did I say follow directions? Be quiet, don’t turn around and make faces at or talk to your friend, stop trying to contort your body into stupid positions. Just take the damn test and then chill out. None of this crew brought a book for after. They didn’t believe me when I said no computers, despite that being a school rule for the last million years. Then they leave around noon and we go get lunch and then try to work the rest of the day. I did actually grade for two hours. It was yucky. Whatever. We have one more day today and then we skip a week, then math and science will be the week after that. I just need all this to be done. I need the rest of the year planned…usually this is when we take a breath and relax a bit because sex ed is a known quantity and it’s all planned for the end of the year. But no. Not this year. Sigh. I’m frustrated. And tired. I know that. I might always be like that at the end of the year. I probably am.

I finished sewing the braids down last night…it took longer than you’d think it would.

I tacked each braid down every few inches or so.

That was after one night. And then last night, I did the rest.

Bowie slept through most of it. I was trying to fall asleep last night and was thinking about what else to do on this piece. I have an idea, so I’ll hopefully work on that tonight.

I finished the heart on Monday at the ceramics studio.

It goes on the fabric piece…not sure when that will happen, because I have stuff going for the rest of the week.

I got a quilt back from a show yesterday…like this…

Luckily, there was no damage inside. It does look like they ran it over with something though. And it was wet, so recently? It rained yesterday. It was packed well, luckily.

I keep thinking of this, how we are all human, despite the stupidity.

And this…

I didn’t get to the history of DNA this year. I usually teach it a bit and always the Rosalind Franklin part.

And I had just heard a new astounding set of numbers about this…

We just absolutely suck as a culture for causing and ignoring this.

So here’s the owls though…

Mom is out and about (probably because those babes are fucking annoying). And you can barely see the two baby heads in the hole of the box. Right now, WordPress is showing that the video is private. Not sure how to fix that. Hmmm. OK, I think I fixed it. Love it when they change how things work.

OK. Today. Second day of testing, usually harder and shorter. But the kids are still here for three hours plus. Then some lunch, some planning, maybe grading. Pilates, pack bug quilts up, book club? Busy. Long. Oh wait, meeting this morning too, ugh. So much adult drama yesterday. Could do without that. OK, though, gotta go now. Art tonight…at some point.

Gonna Get There…

Gotta write fast; got a meeting this morning. My team had five kid meetings this week and divided them out. We usually all go, but we’re all burnt out on them and so we tried to be organized about it. We’ve been to so many meetings this year for kids…and mostly for the same group of kids over and over. And nothing gets solved at a lot of them. Hopefully today’s will go well…it should.

So art is a struggle at the moment. I guess I got to do ceramics yesterday…

I worked on the hands a bit and then figured out how to add a neck that was removable. There’s still no room to put her on the drying racks, so I figure I’m going to have to start underglazing her and let her dry on my shelf? And then try to do the head? Not sure. Actually, I remembered some other things I was going to do, so now that the fabric has solidified a bit, I might do that. We’ll see.

I managed to paint these for the bugs the other night…

I was going to start attaching bugs to them last night, but started to book flights to see the girlchild and got sucked into an Expedia loop that ended with me on two different airline websites instead, telling Expedia to fuck off. That was 90 minutes I would have spent sewing bugs on. So I guess that’s tonight. It’s fine. Really. I do like a big project. These little fussy ones finish up easy and quickly (well, though, is it?), but I get more frustrated with them. Like, it’s small…why isn’t it done already? So yeah. Getting there.

I also started some embroidery on this dye painting…

Hello Scribble…but I need a specific yarn for the hair, I think. And the yarn store isn’t open until tomorrow. So it’s on my list for after school. I do want to do a big piece next. Like the one I planned to do back in January. It’s been waiting patiently. It deserves to be made. I don’t even remember what it looks like.

I also finished this Critters block (Sue Spargo). The ants were fun.

Meanwhile, political shit is crazy. I mean, no matter what you think about what happened and how people reacted…

The difference between those reactions and those directed toward families who lose children in school shootings is boggling.

And those are the jokey ones. Here’s the real shit.

THAT. Is incredibly sad.

Followed by this crazy shit.

We’re already having issues getting treatments approved. We have an idiot in charge of HHS, increasing measles outbreaks, bad math when it comes to medical expenses (I would like a 600% decrease in my medicine costs please)…and now we’re trying to block new science. This will be why you won’t get new treatments for your cancer in the future.

Only the rich will be able to afford them, and they’ll have to fly out of the US to get them. The attack on science, women, people of color, the poor, LGTBQIA. And the billionaires get more billionairy. Vote, y’all. Vote loudly and often. Yell lots. You know what still hasn’t happened? Epstein files. Cheaper gas. Cheaper food. Nothing is great. We’re still at war. We’re still randomly killing people in the Atlantic Ocean. We’re doing so many illegal things.

Well. Cheery thought. Gotta get out of here. Giving a test on natural selection today. Then starting evolution tomorrow. Through state testing…in bits and pieces. Got lots of work to do. Got lots of planning to do for the summer. Deep breaths…gonna get there somehow.

There’s Always a Back…

It’s another Wednesday where my brain keeps skipping ahead to Thursday. Surely I’ve lived through three workdays by now. Only three more days of sex ed and then back to the normal shitshow. Which isn’t planned yet. Minor issue. I’d really like to be planned out more than a few days…more than a week would be nice. It’s a constant scramble and that’s part of the exhaustion. Plus grading on top of it. I’m going to have to start grading a test tonight that I gave yesterday. Not sure if it’s going into the progress report. I’m not that on top of things yet. Never am really. Don’t want to spend the whole weekend grading. So we’ll see where I get.

I finished the embroidery, for some definition of embroidery, on the quilt. I think.

You can barely tell in photos. Then I started adding beads last night…

You can barely tell…I mean, the larger ones are obvious. I’m not done. It’s more about catching the light with those.

Also adding to the texture. It’ll be way different in person than in a photograph I guess. I’ve been told my work is anyway, so there we are.

I added to the ceramic piece on Monday…

Pounded out a slabbish piece and kind of squished it up and laid it over her arms.

Hopefully it will hold up. This thing is getting heavy. Gonna do some arm decorating, fix up the fingers with some details, and cut a hole for the neck. There’s still no room on the drying racks. Might need another plan at some point.

My co-teacher gave the kids pipe cleaners for their nervous fingers during sex ed. I found this outside.

Not particularly accurate. To our credit, 7th grade teaches anatomy; we just teach what happens if you use it. Pretty iconic otherwise. The orange is disturbing though.

Melania does think AI can do my job.

This is the problem though. Melania needs to read more dystopian fiction.

I love this…it’s so true, and at some point, when I was answering a question about abortions, I mentioned that non-science people shouldn’t be making laws about science they don’t understand (ectopic pregnancies cannot be transplanted, you idiot politicians)…

Also the kid who wanted to know why he had to learn about pregnancy…HE. I congratulated him on his decision never to have sex with a woman. Yes, the boys are driving me a little bonkers at the moment. Today is STIs. Scary stuff, but less scary than when we taught it. It’s all less scary. Videos of childbirth are good because it scares them. The animation they make for pregnant moms, which is what we have to use instead, is very vanilla. This whole new curriculum is just a lot of teacher reading and not a lot of good interactions. I might have the energy to do something about that someday, but not today. The LONG email I sent with corrections still hasn’t been answered. Sigh. Whatever. Highlight the damn words that need to be written so my low readers can FIND them, you assholes. Sigh. REALLY SIGH this time.

OK. Like I said, teaching STIs today. Preventing them tomorrow. Then goal setting and we’re done. Hallelujah. Then back to natural selection and then state testing and I can’t believe we’re getting to the end of this shitty year. Only 40 days of school left and one of those is promotion. One is a field trip. Four are testing days, which are hell in their own way, but the kids leave at noon and then it’s quiet. I have pilates after school and then I will come home and weed or grade or both and then play with more beads. I did weed a lot yesterday too…hoping to get enough done to scatter the wildflowers (aka fancy weeds with flowers) the boychild gave me. May the planning and grading go well. May I be less tired than yesterday. May my voice last the entire day (questionable). Oh shit, I’m doing test corrections at lunch. May the kids remember to turn over to the back of the page. There’s always a back. Just sometimes it’s blank.

Juggling

So we’ve been back at school for two whole days. It hasn’t been particularly difficult (well, staff meetings hurt my brain…)…actually, here’s a legit commentary on staff meetings.

I’m still obsessing over the word ‘justify’ and what it really means and how it doesn’t mean what people say it means and this is why when you tell a word person that they have to use a particular word, said person will obsess over that word for the next 48 hours and then refuse to use it. It’s OK…it’s mostly an inner conversation that makes me just refuse to do a lot of things (or care sometimes, which is really hard). We start sex ed next week and we’re not ready and maybe it will all just magically get organized, but I find that rarely happens. I’m bringing home piles of work every night, trying to get caught up with all the assignments kids didn’t turn in before break because they left early for Eid or just because their parents don’t think two weeks is enough time to have off…they need two weeks and two days. More work for us, of course, or we could just not teach anything two days before any break, which seems stupid. Anyway, my frustrations with the system aside, hoping the next few weeks of teaching are fairly low-key. We should probably plan the stuff for after sex ed though, and I’m not sure what that looks like.

I made it to ceramics on Monday and did some things on the front of the torso…

It wasn’t what I was originally planning on doing, but it’s what happened. Which is pretty much how ceramics works for me.

I also quilting bugs over two nights…stitch down, pinbasting, and outlining the first night, then quilting the backgrounds last night.

Tonight will be legs…or trimming and then legs? Not sure. Might be easier if I trim first.

One of my students drew me.

Side part not captured. Nice though. She’s super quiet and never asks questions, but draws really well, so I put little comments on her drawings.

Last night after dinner, while watching weird German time travel…

Scribble kept reaching out toward Nova with her paw, suspect not in a gentle, loving way, but it a ‘get off my mom’ way.

This is one of the hardest parts of going back to school…wearing a bra all day again.

I don’t want to be buried as a body anyway, but don’t cremate me with a bra on either. I don’t want that shit anywhere near me.

OK. Today is long. Meeting this morning. I actually have a mental bet on whether admin actually shows up. Hope they surprise me. Then teaching natural selection all day, not bad, I enjoy it. Peppered moths today, maybe giraffes. Yesterday was dogs and pigeons (had to explain what a pigeon was to a large portion of the classes). Then I have pilates and book club. Don’t think I’ll get much grading done unfortunately. Ah well. I do my best. Then I’ll have to decide whether to trim the quilts and maybe put the edge on them before legs? I think it will be easier to see the available leg space if I do it that way. Also have to see if I have the canvases I put these on. Enough of them. I feel like I won’t have enough and will have to solve that problem. Plus pay property taxes. Gotta remember to do that. I finished my taxes last weekend, but not early enough to pay the property taxes, so I’m waiting for some money to move. Fun stuff. Juggling money, time, to-do list items…it’s what I do.

Completely Unprepared

Late start to writing; so much to do. Brain explodes and is replaced with AI…which doesn’t know where to start, how to prioritize. Still laughing about Melania’s AI in the classroom. Obviously the woman and her people have never stepped foot into a middle-school classroom. I wouldn’t mind a little robot assistance just for the stupid questions: “What are we doing?” “Do we have to read the whole thing?” “There’s a back?”. They could also do the copying for me and maybe input grades (can I trust it for that?) and answer parent emails…oh wait, no…I had to tell Chatty to be less kiss ass on one response to a parent because she was bending over backwards for one kid in a class of 33 with 7 SPED. Like IDK what drugs she’s on, but it needs to be possible for humans to do the things…I for sure know SHE couldn’t do it. It would take 7 or 8 robots to do all the things she suggested. I only tried Chat for a response to a parent email because I was fairly sure the parent had also used it to write their email and I wanted to see what the response was.

So there’s that. Today, so far, I wrote one warmup, I checked the weekly email doc and contacted my team to make sure everyone had written their paragraph by Sunday, I ate breakfast, took my meds, calculated the Man’s grocery costs for the week, went through my to-do list and transferred the things I hadn’t done to today and Saturday (and next week, honestly, because let’s be real), considered an email I got and wondered if it was passively aggressively suggesting I needed to do something and decided I would make them actually ask, read some of my book, drank two cups of tea, marinated the meat for dinner, put all the extra dishes away, started some eggs hardboiling for lunch, tried to write another warmup question but there was a feisty cat in the way, remembered the blog, oh wait, I also went to pilates and considered gas costs. So yeah. And showered and changed clothes and opened windows. Doing well. Not great…just getting little things done. Considered cleaning floors, but I have to eat before I go to yet another dentist to see if I lost a filling? I don’t have a filling there but something happened and IDK what and maybe I hallucinated it. I don’t think I’m finishing this post before I have to go eat and then leave. You won’t know the difference. I will.

I made it to ceramics yesterday. Picked up my new bowl, which I love, wonkiness and all…

Here’s a video of it…

Complicated to hold and film. It’s fun. I meant to make like a soup/pasta bowl, but it’s too big. It’s serving bowl size. Which is fine.

Then I finished the ribcage on the back of this one.

Also pretty cool. Lots of work left on this though.

I started the embroidery on the second dye painting…which is almost invisible in this picture.

But I’ll keep going. I want the texture. I’m adding beads and sequins at some point too.

I had Scribble on my lap for most of it.

She also hung out when I was grading things…

She might have missed me.

I didn’t have much free luggage space in my bag, but I bought a few fabrics (and napkins I will be using as fabrics).

Not a lot. And two t-shirts. And a bag and a cross stitch pattern. Which looks really hard to read. Fun times.

I saw this…related to my most recent quilt that will be at the New England Quilt Museum, opening in a couple of weeks.

There’s been a lot going on, as always. Go Christina Koch!

I’ve been in this space a lot the last three days…

As it should be.

Ready for this. I have a cat ready to go. Maybe four of them.

And I’m now following Amanda Oleander just for this, because I thought I was the only one doing this.

Mostly I swirl them up and make little galaxies (and then throw them in the trash), but sometimes make faces. Maybe I should worry about my hair falling out more, but eh. Seems real.

OK. So I ate, I have 17 minutes until I need to leave to find out about the tooth. I might go to Costco to figure out why my card won’t work and the app won’t verify me. It keeps asking me which street is near mine and none of them are, which is just really weird. So I have to go in person, which sucks, but I also need gas, so maybe I kill both those things. I don’t really want to waste time on either task, but whatever. I’ve got taxes to work on (STILL) and stuff to grade (FOREVER) and cleaning and yardwork (UNENDING), but will end the day with stitching. Need to find the sequins…not something I say often, but it happens. And this is the last official day of Spring Break…I don’t really count the weekend, because it’s the ramp-up to going back (so incredibly not-never ready). I got almost nothing done over break, so there’s that. Going into the last piece of the school year completely unprepared with my hair on fire. Nothing new.

Supposed to Do…

Hello all. It’s Wednesday, although my brain is convinced it has survived more than two work days this week. It’s wrong…well, unless you count the weekend, when I also worked. As always. I finally finished all the bindings on the dye paintings…with everyone’s help. Here’s Nova…

Who headbutts things and then drools on you.

I started embroidery (finally!) on this one last night…

Probably take forever. I was going to do more applique on it, but that would have meant getting off the couch and I was well past that. I will still DO the applique, but I need to prep for it earlier in the evening. Probably not tonight. Today is a mess. We’re going on a field trip to the Midway (big military boat; my favorite thing really…ha), then we’re back in our rooms for two periods and I still don’t have air conditioning (it was 97 degrees outside yesterday). Then pilates and cooking dinner. Ugh. I’ll be half dead by the end of it. And I’m grading like crazy to hopefully limit what I have to get done over break.

I went to the ceramics studio last night and took this half-assed photo of the bowl ready for glaze fire.

It took me almost an hour to do the glazing. I’m hoping it turns out well.

The Forbidden Words Project quilt is done…I have three words/phrases in it.

Let’s see if I can find them…

The girlchild might make it to the opening where this will debut up in San Francisco. It’ll travel…hopefully I’ll see it at some point.

Yesterday was crazy hat day AND tattoo a teacher (fundraiser)…

What’s funny is that I went to the ceramics studio after and forgot I had the tattoos and got some weird looks until I remembered.

Good times. Getting them off was a bit more challenging, but I think we’re good.

This is where we’re headed. Again.

I’d like to bring up the guy who said my comments about the Repugs/MAGA need to throw women back to the 1900s were a conspiracy theory. After I bring him up, I’d like him to explain what’s happening now and how I was wrong. (not happening; it’s fine. It’s not like I wanted to be right.)

And this. Sigh.

Keep voting y’all. And caring about all the people. It’s what we’re supposed to do.

What Happened to Your Face?!

Hey yo. I’m not sure I can feel this tired in the morning forever. I feel like my body should be adjusting. I’m going to bed at the appropriate time for the time shift, so I’m getting the ‘right’ amount of sleep (or the amount of sleep I normally get anyway, which is probably nowhere near enough)…but I feel like a truck hit me every time I get up. I’m sure this happens every year and I feel like shit like this every year, and every year, I mentally block it out and think it will never happen again. And then it does. Good times.

Quilt progress…I finally got binding and sleeves on all four quilts…OK, this isn’t a picture of that. I think I finished quilting this one? I don’t even know.

I just pick up the next one on the pile and figure out what to do with it next.

I used the same purple binding on two of them because the fabric store I was at is apparently phasing out the fabric parts and there were very few fabrics that would work and I didn’t have time to drive to the next fabric store, the better one, before it closed. So I got what worked.

They have different sleeve fabrics, which doesn’t matter at all. To me anyway. Don’t look at my backs. They’re not meant to be pretty. Some people do that; I don’t.

So tonight, I’ll start all the handsewing of the bindings…I think I’ll leave at least some of the sleeves loose so they don’t get in the way of any embroidery I might be doing.

Monday, I cut a hole in her chest.

I needed it to be sturdy enough for that. And then I started adding things…

That took a long time…and it’s not done. Fun though.

My bowl made it through the bisque fire.

It has one tiny crack on the edge that will either fade away or turn into something horrible in the glaze fire. That’s how it goes. I have no room on my shelf for it and I didn’t bring my glazes on Monday, so I’ll have to remember on Friday to do that. Clear glaze on the outside, something on the inside. I don’t have a lot of choices for the inside.

I have two pieces in this show that opens this weekend. I should be at the opening in the first hour.

It’s usually a pretty cool venue/gathering of quilts.

I finished a book yesterday. This is a quote…I used to know how to screenshot stuff with my iPad, but apparently I forgot and resorted to taking a blurry picture with my phone.

I agree.

And this too.

OK. My mouth is still sore. My face is still bruised but better. I’ve had a billion students yell, “What happened to your face?!” at me in the last two days, even though I explained it. Shows you how much they listen. I’m exhausted. I still have six stitches in my gum, which will come out Friday. I’m running out of pain meds, but will be fine…really…I think some of the pain is the weather seesawing between chilly and rain to Santa Ana winds and hot weather. They fixed my air conditioning at school before it hits 93 degrees tomorrow. I’m behind on EVERYTHING. In case you were wondering. Today, I am continuing to teach Punnett squares and then going to a union meeting. Then coming home and grading and handstitching. And OMG sleep. Ugh. So I can be up even earlier tomorrow morning. There’s 8 days of school before Spring Break. And one assembly. And a field trip. And and and. Ugh.