Finish Something…

The good thing about a little bit of art every day is that at some point, you will finish something. Perhaps a lot of little somethings, but something nonetheless. And it never guarantees you’ll like it, but that’s the way art is anyway. Don’t get excited…I’m not done yet (quite) and I do like it. And I wonder what’s next. I know the subject but not the specifics. Hoping that this weekend helps my brain come up with something. It will…it’s just a matter of whether it’s something I want to make into a finished product. A lot of what I do on paper never makes it into the time-consuming process of making an art quilt. I feel bad about that, but then again, I do what I can. This will be the 6th finish of the year, but one of them is pretty small. I think I can make one more this year. I’d like to think I could make two, but this job isn’t letting me do much of anything at the moment. So one. I know I can do one.

I finished the quilting on Monday night…

I just had one section of the background to do, and it was pretty easy.

The thread behaved; the machine did too. It’s nice when it’s like that. It’s not always like that.

11 hours of quilting. Not bad.

Last night, after working all day just like always, and grading until 9 PM or so, I laid out the quilt in the entryway and was watched (hindered?) by the two kittens…Nova really did just watch.

Luna…in true Luna fashion…tried to fuck with it. I trimmed her down (the quilt, not the cat), got her edges straight…

Ironed and cut the binding and the sleeves, and sewed them on…

That was 2 hours last night. I’m glad I did it. I was tired. I had more schoolwork to do (I always have more schoolwork to do). I was incredibly frustrated by school yesterday, and apologized to one kid and parent and then stopped looking at email for a while (smart) until I had literally input grades maybe one minute prior and a kid is already asking for a redo. At least he asked. Someone else, in seconds, had already resubmitted. My lord, children. Give me a moment to talk to you about how to improve your score? Nah. Just give me another half-assed attempt. Please. The first one wasn’t disheartening enough…I was yelling at some point last night that I didn’t understand how they thought sediment could melt into igneous rock. You ask in class, they all know where igneous rock comes from…well, no, because then you have the kids who sit there and do nothing on the app we use for science, and then they leave early, because I said, “If you’re done, you can leave,” and they interpreted the ‘done’ in a different way than I did. Which ‘done’ I am, by the way. And therein is part of the problem. If I am mentally done with dealing with the shit, it means I have to work really hard to have grace and patience for those who are trying, but they’re 12, and that means they’re not very good at it.

I think I will just answer all emails once a day, in the morning. Except then I forget to go back and do that and then there are hundreds of them, all piled up, like dead bodies rotting on the floor. It’s just overwhelming.

Today, I will work on sewing my binding on. I thought I would be able to get the quilt to the photographer Friday, but that’s crazy talk. We’re going camping, and getting up there with enough daylight to set up is what we need. I can deliver it next week. It will be fine. I will also work on getting as much of next week planned as I can, because I won’t have this weekend to do that. Yikes, really, but it’ll be fine. It has to be.

Yesterday was my dad’s 80th birthday. We Zoomed from all over…mostly the West Coast, but the two East Coast women joined in as well. I was going to go over and drop off treats and his gift, but I got an email from my gym about a COVID positive test in one of my classes from last week, so yesterday I went and got tested and last night I didn’t go over there to potentially infect them. The odds of my getting it in class are hopefully low. We’re far apart, I wear a mask, sanitize, shower when I get home. But you never know. Better to be safe. I remember thinking back when Dad was in his 60s and his heart was being cranky that we’d be lucky to get him through 70, so I’m pretty impressed he’s still chugging on, fixing my sprinklers, helping me build a fence. Every year is appreciated.

OK, I’m tired (yes, I stayed up too late to finish) and I have a shitload of work to do today (what’s new?) and I’ll be sewing binding during book club tonight…one thing I can do while waiting for a negative test result. I will miss my exercise class tonight…my body really needs it, but maybe I will find one online that works.

I did see my ceramic piece fired…

She (and I) will be in 29 Palms in two 1/2 weeks for installation in the labyrinth. Should be interesting.

This from my reading…

That’s from Stephen King, believe it or not. The man is a masterful writer. Although this is the narrator speaking, so is King…and that’s how I feel about art and teaching (most of the time). This year has been a real stretch for that, but I’m hoping a pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime event. We’ll see. I’d hate for them to become as commonplace as school shootings.

OK, off to work…in the other room…not so far.

Everything Changes

My computer is trying to download a video from iCloud that I need for my Patreon. I tried to do it last night, and nothing was showing up. At first, the computer said it would take two hours (for a 90-second video) and now it’s down to 2 minutes. Wildly inaccurate, if you ask me. But it’s where I’m at…not believing the technology. Seriously, I’m still looking at the weather app for this week, going into October, with temperatures of 104-105 degrees for the next few days. Ugh. I’m gonna die here in the no-A/C. I’d like the app to be wrong, but I’m sure it’s not. And I know the download speeds vary for the internet, mostly because my internet is a cranky bastard (I was gonna write bitch, but no…let’s not land all the bad shit on women…we get enough of it as it is)…yesterday, it kicked me out, or Zoom kicked me out of class 4 times in one 45-minute period. I suspect today will be the same. When it’s warm, it’s worse. Hopefully not, since I’m doing a demo today. Boychild and I set up stream tables in the living room (you know, like you do) and tested them.

The animals were fascinated. What’s really fun is the sand needs to be wet to do this, and it’s supposed to be hot as hell today, and I’m not just doing it today because all the schedules changed, so it needs to stay set up until after I teach on Thursday. Ah. Well. Life is interesting. The cats want to be in it. After today, I’ll move the trays outside until Thursday, although we’ll have to cover them out there as well…don’t need to make a bug nest or some intriguing place for a skunk to poop. Who knows what will happen with them.

I do have a prep period in between the two classes today, and I start with my smallest class…I’m more worried about the huge class on Thursday with a bunch of special-needs kids. It’ll be fine. I’m sure.

Here’s the temperatures…should keep the sand drying out (not what I want, unfortunately)…

So yesterday was like the first day of school again, except now I have three grade levels and three class preps and 40 more kids than I had last week. But I’m not in the classroom. Pros and cons. Today all my peeps go back with actual kids and we’re taking bets (not really) on how long it takes to shut school down with the first case of COVID. They’re in cohorts, so one will go home at a time, but you still know it’s going to happen.

At the end of the day yesterday, after managing a bunch of stuff I wasn’t ready for and also wasn’t completely comfortable with (ah, what’s new, 2020?), I rested briefly.

This space is over-crowded at the moment…and I need to figure that out, but right after that picture, we were setting up the stream tables and then I was running around watering, folding my laundry, making dinner, setting up the slides for today’s teaching, trying to figure out how the fuck far I can get in the lesson in an HOUR. Ugh. An HOUR. Too long. I’m hoping to get them to a certain point and then push them off to finish on their own, but yesterday, they were leaving when I said, hey, this thing needs to be done, and then it wasn’t. Sigh. So conversations need to happen today.

In good news, I think I said this before, but the quilt I haven’t been able to touch in a week (or more?) is tentatively sold. A deposit is on its way with a signed agreement, and as soon as I can get the two things off my shoulders that I need to finish this week, I’ll be finishing that one up.

She’s still in this stage. Not much ironing left…and then stitch down and quilt. Close to the end. Then I need to make some smaller ones.

First, though, I needed to finish this…

There were some very tense moments when she tried to collapse, but I have a strut inside right now that hopefully will help. Also, hopefully, she doesn’t explode in the kiln. I’ve tried to be really good about air spaces and all that. But you never know. Worst case, her parts will be by the side of the labyrinth we’re building.

It’ll be better if she’s whole though.

OK, well now I just need to figure out how to get her to our amazing ceramics person and her kiln before her deadline. I think I’ll need an assist on that. Then onto the fabric piece for SJSA, and then I can get back to the one on the ironing board. Which is sold! Good thing…money is tight right now. Not getting paid all summer is hard.

OK, survive today…only three classes instead of all six. Time to prep for next week, hopefully, or even beyond. Teaching art is still difficult for me (after the first day!). It’s not the same as in person…it’s really hard. Plus I don’t know the program we’re using very well, or any other programs, and there’s the matter of getting kids supplies when they can’t come in or won’t come in, for whatever reason, and what supplies actually exist and how to grade this shit anyway (I really don’t remember what I did a million years ago). It’s a lot of mental energy that I don’t have at the moment. No exercise in the last two days either, and it’s going to be hot as hell today, so that will make it hard. Hoping for a walk, if merely to clear the brain. Everything changes. We adapt, we adjust, and then it changes again. It’s a rough year for everyone…but teaching has been incredibly difficult. I’m not having fun right now, and I hope that changes…it has in the past few weeks been fun again sometimes, but right now…ugh. Nope. Not.

Everything Under the Sun

I try not to be the person who counts days from this to that, although I have a Countdown app that always has the holidays in it, the week off for Thanksgiving, three weeks for Winter Break (I know, lucky!), two weeks for Spring Break, eight weeks (unpaid those) for Summer. And then the trips…last year was the Arizona/Utah National Parks in Spring, a couple of winery trips (one right before everything shut down in March), a trip to Portland and another to Joshua Tree National Park. All good. But right now, the numbers in my head are how many days to the election? How many days I’ve been mostly stuck at home (it’s a lot, over 6 months, just like the rest of you)? And the big one, how many days until I can go back to school? It’ll be at least 365 more, I think. That’s the hard thing to contemplate. Up to now, I’ve had a teacher team to plan with, dealing with the same kids, the same schedules, the same curriculum. As of Monday, I have none of that. Or very little. I’ve felt incredibly isolated as it is, but this is throwing me. It’s OK…I’ll get through it. I’ll survive it. I have a job. I’m mostly competent at it. There’s too much right now and I’m so fucking sick of 15-hour days focused on school school school, but I will eventually either get a handle on that time suck or I will quit and copyedit full time while selling one loaf of sourdough bread a week, because that’s all I can manage to make. It’s hard to say how close I am to that moment. I’ll let you know.

So the artmaking is sporadic and I have to fight for that time and yesterday I was told I should be watching education-related videos WHILE I am making art, because that’s time I could spend on school stuff that I’m not. Eye-opening. And don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I’m already in a half state of crying on a daily basis, and I think that might push me over the edge.

This shit sucks, y’all.

And then I wake up this morning, not really sure what I’m teaching today. I’m sure it’s on a calendar or a post somewhere; I just didn’t review it yesterday like I usually do because I couldn’t. And I checked my email, and Bigger in the Outside was accepted into Excellence in Fibers VI…

She’ll also be at the Front Porch Gallery in Carlsbad after this weekend with two other pieces of mine. The Excellence in Fibers show was supposed to have a corresponding museum exhibit, but that’s postponed until we don’t know when…if ever. Like many things this year. I guess the acceptances motivate me to make more? They don’t actually at the moment. It’s more a matter of where to put my brain that ISN’T school. Making bread is just as useful a place. Maybe. I don’t know. I know I’m not getting any peace out of artmaking right now, but then, maybe I never did. It’s meditative, and maybe without it, I’d be jumping out the window and running as far and fast as I could. We just don’t know. Because I haven’t stopped making it.

The SJSA Remembrance block is still in progress…I traced it on Wonder Under a few nights ago…it only has 116 pieces, so it’s not horrendous. And then I started cutting them apart one night, Tuesday? And didn’t finish.

Last night was my now-biweekly stitching Zoom, so I quick cut the rest apart, and then after the Zoom call, started ironing them to fabric. It’s not ideal, because I still have the last 80 or so pieces from the COVID Daughter piece on my table, and it’s precariously on my ironing board, waiting for me to come back to it (I want to!), but I got about half the pieces ironed down to fabric.

I quit when I got to the flesh, because I knew I was tired and couldn’t handle it. And I also knew I needed to do schoolwork. Yes, I took a break from about 6-10 PM…and then went back to work. I did also make a trip to Home Depot for new roller blinds to block the AM sun from my work spot and to pick up and drop off stuff at school after hours. I saw two people and waved. That was all.

Anyway, I’ll finish ironing the pieces down sometime in the next 24 hours and then cut them out…I might actually do some of that during gaming tonight. It needs to be done by 10/3.

I’m still working on the clay vessel for the labyrinth…

If I do a little each night, it hardens enough by the next night to support the next few inches.

So after the Wonder Under was done last night, I pulled this out and got a few inches higher.

I’m not going to be able to go high enough to put a full torso in, but that’s OK. I was trying to fall asleep last night (ha! What a fucking joke) and my brain told me how to finish the top, wherever it is.

Here’s my fat cat odalisque.

I want to be more like her.

And the girlchild has been gone for almost three months now, but we are still finding remnants of her cooking experiments…

I obviously don’t clean anywhere near enough.

OK. It’s the Friday before everything switches again and I gain 40 students and two more preps and two more grade levels and minimal support from anywhere, whatever, and grades are due Sunday and I was grading last night at midnight, fuck this job and COVID and the stupid government for not doing its job and stupid people for not wearing masks and staying away from each other and I need to get some exercise this weekend, maybe even this afternoon, plus get everything under the sun done that needs to be done and maybe a little less of the crying stuff because I can’t see to type or grade shit when I’m doing that. Peace out y’all. It’ll be different in a few days.