Glorious Bit of Sky…

Glorious world. Hmm. Not a good start. Glorious SKY…that I can attest to this morning. Well, only in one direction. Don’t look south. Very grey and cloudy. Glorious BIT of sky. There we are. I can see that and stare at it. I should’ve gone to bed earlier…every night of my life, but I have not. Unless I was sick. Which I’m not (knock on wood; everyone else is). Yet. Wait, no, this is not a time for ‘yet’. I will NOT get sick. Ugh. Anyone else have a fuzzy brain? Hell, it’s not even fuzzy…it’s just like not vacuumed and the cat puked somewhere but you can’t find it. YET. There’s a good use of that word.

OK, so lets get through this because apparently I have to go to work. I checked. It’s a yes.

Monday night, I finished sorting. Or maybe it was Sunday. I think it was Monday. Fuck.

Apparently I also started ironing that night…

I didn’t get very far. And I laid out the 100s first for some inexplicable reason, and then didn’t want to waste the time to put them back in the box and start over with the less than 100s, so I just started at piece 91 like the brainless pile of art brain that I am right now.

I did none of it last night, because I was in school meetings and/or teaching from 8 AM to 5:30 PM (got to school at 7:40) and then went to ceramics, not home until 9 PM. Not ironing after all that. I did make something…

It may all collapse (the sponge and newspaper are currently holding everything up)…

The holes are for hanging fabric down into it. I don’t know that this one is as successful as what I did last week, which is still drying, but these are all experiments anyway, so we’ll see how it goes. I did sign up for a membership though, so there will be more. Experimenting. At least through summer. We’ll see how it goes after that. I need to be able to go in and work for an hour or so and then leave it to set up a bit before I go taller. So I need more time.

I have decided that every unit cover page I do for science this year (and maybe forever) will use rainbow colors in the title, just to fuck with the people in my district who say that rainbows are dangerous and should not be student-facing. Even though we teach the science of them.

Yeah, I still have some coloring to do. I realize I am so behind, so buried, at school right now that ugh. Fuck it. I am trying. I need all the to-do’s to go the fuck away. After I count cow eyeballs today. After I find the fucking screwdriver so I can get the damn bucket open. IDK what the fuck I did with it. The prep room and materials are kicking my ass.

Trying.

Yeah. I teach both at the moment.

OK. Fuck today. It’s nuts. Gonna get through it the best I can. Hopefully someone will feed me when I’m done.

Mit dem Geist sitzen…

I don’t know what’s happening to the school weeks, but it seems like the first two days are the hardest. Tuesday nights, I’m like, WTF just happened. And why? Yesterday was a masterful example of that. But I made it through…and am hopeful that today has less stupidity involved. But probably not. I had to hand back last week’s homework and tell them to redo it. They hadn’t been explicitly taught by ME how to do it, but I gave them everything they needed in order to do it. They just didn’t use any of it. Not the notes, not the slides, not the genotypes I had them write on their paper and told them to use. Mind-boggling. So I guess the plus is that I don’t have to try to come up with another homework before break. I had two and needed a third. Otherwise everyone (but 6 kids) would have started the trimester with an F. I saw a teacher video about apathy the other day. Yeah. I care way more than they do about their grades. And promotion. And going to high school. Sigh. That’s not entirely true. Some of them care. Just not enough of them. And I realize as a parent that a lot of the dumbass behaviors we are seeing is precisely because some of these kids are worried about going to high school.

So less of that. I had a sex-ed curriculum meeting after school…the ‘last’ one until APPARENTLY WE ARE MEETING AGAIN NEXT YEAR? WTF. I did not sign on for all this. Ugh. I left early to go to ceramics class, which was fucking awesome because it was slab night and all we did was slam clay into the table. I needed that outlet. That was fun. I had an idea last week to try to make ceramic bases/forms that could pair with fabric, so this was the first idea…

It’s a box that hangs on the wall, but the body parts are on top. I’m imagining a little quilt hanging inside the box. I’m hoping anyway. We’ll see how that goes. I also made a tiny tray, just because I wanted to try the rollers…

Not perfect; I ran out of time. Next week, it’s make what you want…so I need to figure out what that is. And then I think we glaze. And then I consider whether I can pull off a membership here. I want to. We’ll see.

I did iron Monday night…

Almost done…just have a bunch of bugs and a bird to do, hopefully tonight. I’m borderline exhausted. Or maybe it’s just people related. We’re going on a field trip. My team is driving me bonkers. I just need consistency and that doesn’t happen. Plus the kids are whinier than heck about going. ‘My friend isn’t going so now I don’t want to.’ Your friend got suspended for hitting another kid from behind. You should pick better friends. I’m not redoing all the lists. You’re going. Shit. I think I have to redo the lists if that kid isn’t going. Oh crap. I’m out. Seriously.

FOCUS ON ART.

This year has been burning me out since September. A teacher friend yesterday said something along the lines of ‘oh yay, we only have one trimester left,’ but I’m like, I don’t think I can do another one. I just don’t have it in me. Next time someone tells me to call a parent, I’m gonna quote the district on self care.

I wish that were true, but it’s not. I always give a fuck. That’s part of the problem.

My meditation app decided to teach me German last night.

Luckily he didn’t talk in German, although it might not have mattered, because I stopped listening and just started counting the breaths. It was all I could handle.

Final picture of Nova conquering the scratching toy.

Oh wait! I have video of Kitten making her toothless face…

She is a good kitty. And I love her goofy face.

OK. IDK what to say about today. It has to be better than yesterday. Well, except that clay stuff was fun. I just came home and read my book. I couldn’t do anything else. Tonight is pilates and book club. Hmmm. Not sure I’ll be mentally aware for either of those. Tomorrow is the field trip. Yikes. We couldn’t get buses for Friday…that would have been better. Coming back for a Friday…ugh. It’s OK…I’m going to finish ironing fabrics tonight so I can get to the next stage of this little quilt, so I can eventually start drawing the big-ass crone quilt that’s growing in my head. That’s a plan.

Bandwidth

So. Midweek. Full school week. Not heavy on the meetings, unlike the next two weeks. I should enjoy that while it lasts. Not a lot of normal quilt art happening, for a variety of reasons. Grades are due in less than a week. I might actually have them done with a margin for once. If kids stop trying to turn everything in late. I had to rush to grade an academic assignment so I would be able to give them two days to fix it. Of course, you give them a deadline and they ignore it and try to resubmit for days afterwards. And then they tell you it’s HAARRDD and you show them that they didn’t even read what you gave them. It’s hard because of that. Not because, like they say, I didn’t teach it to them. They literally didn’t look at the information provided. That shit is always frustrating. I refuse to dumb down all the assignments for the post-COVID laze. It’s been a rough trimester. For all of us. I’m certainly looking at being 2/3s done with the year and feeling like I just can’t do another one. Another 12 weeks? Can’t. Uh uh. I’m so tired of the planning and the adult incursions on my time. The kids don’t really bug me this year. The adults? Ugh. Too much. Admin: Here do this. And this. And you have time for this, right? I took on one thing my team asked me to do (of the many) and they didn’t tell me it involved this Portrait of a Graduate thing the district is pushing, that I really don’t get, you don’t have buy-in from me, but all of a sudden I need to write an elevator pitch for it? I don’t have a pitch. Y’all haven’t inspired me INTO a pitch. Sigh. I have homework. I get paid for it, sure, but what I’d like is time to fix my house and make art and read my book. Ugh.

Yeah. So. Good times. Make shit up. Google it! Hey, I’m just like my students sometimes. I understand it. I don’t have the bandwidth at night, when I get home, to do homework. And I do so much of it as it is. Why did I agree to add more? Sigh.

OK, so in the art stuff, I’ve traced nothing in the last two days because I need to get grades done and that baby quilt done by Saturday. So the last two nights, after grading, I quilted.

Nothing fancy, although it’s for a baby girl, so I quilted a little woman power in there.

Both the woman power that’s gonna bring her into this world, care of my good friend…

And the power that’s been sheltering her for the last 8 months or so…

On the back…

I quilted her parents’ names into it too. Going for all the good juju. Anyway, I stayed up too late last night to finish the borders, so I could start binding it tonight. I should be able to get it done in time. Baby shower is Saturday.

It’s gonna feel good to have all these have-to things done so I can do my own thing, to be honest.

I went to my second ceramics handbuilding class last night…coiling. I love coiling. Although I did not use the extruder…I think I’ll try that in two weeks, when we get to do whatever we want.

I did ceramics in college quite a bit. But honestly, I don’t really think of what I do in ceramics as art? It’s more like what I do with embroidery. It’s a creative outlet and I enjoy it, but it’s more meditative relaxing process than creating something that evokes something for me.

I’m considering a membership at the studio. It’s reasonably priced and I can go in whenever. Sounds nice.

Then I think about my time and what little of it I have at the moment. I’m sacrificing artmaking and gym time for this. And it’s totally worth it and fun and I’m loving it…

But I’m not sure what to do with it long term. I might get a membership in the summer, if there are any available…

Or…I don’t know. I’d like to think I could carve out some time, but this school year has been so bad and I don’t think it’s getting better. Certainly not if I have to fit surgery in before the end of the school year. No call yet. Damn health carrier is getting a new scheduling system, so they’ve basically shut down scheduling completely until it switches over this Friday. Sigh.

Anyway. So there’s that. That pot is gonna slump some more. One of the issues of trying to build so fast in a short period of time. Normally I’d work for an hour and then let it harden a bit. Didn’t really have that option. Ah well. Not sure what I’m doing in there anyway, except playing. Which is fine. I’ll have a lot of pot shapes at the end probably. I’m not very good at the practicality of it.

Monday night, I stitched during book club. Kitten did not help.

Just stitching things down is about my head space at the moment.

OK, so today, my kids are making pedigrees about a genetic disorder using a genealogical history we reviewed yesterday. They got to choose their groups. I’m wondering if I should have done groups of two instead of four. I’m seeing some loser behavior going on. As usual. Sigh. Well hopefully they’ll do the things today and tomorrow and I won’t have to work too hard at getting them on task. Yesterday, all I did was talk really. I need a break from that. I’m trying to plan the next unit, but I need about three hours of blank headspace to do it. Not sure when I’m gonna get that. I really did spend most of yesterday explaining inbreeding and intermarriage. Fun times.

The pool pump died yesterday. Expensive replacement. How am I supposed to pay to fix the house when shit like that keeps happening? The fridge will go next. I’m surprised it hasn’t already. It’s been going for a good long time and appliances don’t do that any more.

Pilates after school, grading again, then making dinner. Hopefully getting that binding on that quilt. Dreaming of art stuff. I’ll get there…soon. My art drive is strong, always has been. 18 school days until Spring Break…not that we have anything planned. Sigh. Except stuff here. No money except to fix shit.

Give Them Cookies…

My days are still off. Whatever. I think I know they’re off at the moment…certainly I chant the current day in my head over and over just as a reminder (THURSDAY THURSDAY). I’m kind of exhausted and braindead, but also getting stuff done, but really not all of it or enough of it. Y’all know how that goes. I know that my car key fob battery died yesterday, so I have to set the car alarm off to get in the car. That’s fun. I did it in the school parking lot, then went to one place to buy a battery (nope), set it off again, went to Pilates, set it off again, used the internet to find another place to buy a battery (double nope), set it off again, and then a third place (triple nope, the internet is a big bad fucking liar), set it off again. The Man says I can take his car today, which is good, because otherwise I would set it off at least four times that I can think of. Good times. I was so exhausted by the time I got home that I just sat on the couch for about an hour (reading and drinking tea and petting the dog) until I could deal with dinner. I had to deal with the trash and compost crap first when I got home. Not good times. At least I got to read. Always pro that.

It didn’t give me enough energy to work on the baby quilt, unfortunately. I got an email that I needed to meet today with the boss, losing another prep period, and I’ve already lost the other three this week, so I spent about an hour last night trying to make sense of (and find) all the assignments for the next unit. Trying to get my head around the logical story of it. Because the other (mostly newbie) teacher was like, oh yeah, I’m all over the place, and I’m like, hey how are your kids dealing with that? Hmmm. So yeah. Please ask me again why I don’t have time to do all the extras at school. So hopefully today and tomorrow’s prep-sucking meetings won’t take ALL my prep, so I can actually copy stuff and create stuff and make sure next week isn’t a clusterfuck. I mean, it might be ANYWAY. Yesterday’s assignment certainly threw them. Shouldn’t have. I blame Trimester 2 lazy ass didn’t do any of the work last week (so many blank papers). So I gave them more time (not a ton), and today we move on. Lots of blank stares. Lots of my reminding them that they have stuff in their folders that will help them. One kid is like, “so where do I find the answer?” and I gently touched his head. And nodded. Figure it out.

The next academic assignment will be easier.

ANYWAY. School. Fuck me.

Art though. Also maybe fuck me. All over the map. The kids and my ex gave me a ceramics class series for Christmas and I had my first class on Tuesday night. We started with pinch pots. I made a lot of random things. I didn’t have a plan (obviously).

I think I decided four of them were plant pots. That one on the right is too heavy on one side. It might fall over.

I can’t really explain any of it. I was just messing around. It was very meditative.

That’s definitely some sort of figure on the right. Anyway. Next week is coiling, which is my favorite, but they have an extruder, which I’ve never used before and am totally looking forward to messing around with. Woo! And I have to think about what larger project I’m going to do in Week 4. I might become a member. I don’t know. Maybe for the summer? It’s open 24/7 to members. I could go in there for three hours and build random garden ornaments.

I worked on this a little on Tuesday night when I got home. It’s cool. They need feet. Also they need to be a lot older for what I really want to do next.

But it’s a place to start. I tend to draw indeterminate/young age. I will need to practice old age. More wrinkles? Not sure.

And then I finished this one. Not sure about it.

But I numbered it. It’s small, but there’s 313 pieces (because I never know when to stop).

So blurry. Amazing photography. Really. I can start tracing tonight. No, I haven’t finished the baby quilt or the other art quilt, but this one is for a deadline, so I should do it first. Wah. Whatever.

I’m really proud of this. We have a certain publisher/author we use for all our homework assignments. They’re called thinking probes. But there aren’t many for the genetics unit. I made some other stuff, cobbled together from quizzes that were part of assignments I was giving (I don’t do a lot of quizzes), but I needed something for GMOs, and I’m sitting there staring at one of our thinking probes…I can do that. So I used AI to answer a question that AI created about GMOs, and then I used the names of the other science teachers as the friends…

Although one of them wants to change their answer to something about bringing dinosaurs back. Which I might change for next year, but I’d already copied them for this year. I’m so proud of this one thing. I was trying to use AI for a lot of things yesterday, because I don’t have anyone really helping with this grade level. AI is like a sort of competent and sort of knowledgeable friend. Not a great one. Either friend or competent or knowledgeable. Although it gave me a good BAD answer. ANYWAY. I did this one good thing yesterday.

Simba is stuck with just us this week with the boychild gone. We couldn’t find his lion toy when Katie was visiting…we hide all the toys because she eats them. But he found it and brought it to me the other night…

Wanted to make sure I saw it again last night…

DON’T TOUCH IT THOUGH. Yeah. I did.

I just don’t send it at that point. Really. Fuck that.

OK. Today. Is a lot. We have the district coming by to see what we are doing with literacy, which means a lot of outside during advisory with our kids, trying to get them to mingle and talk about the book so we can give them cookies. Sounds hard? You’d be surprised. Then I need to remember to do literacy in science (it’s been a rough month y’all…I’ve been slacking) so they can see it when they tour through, although if they don’t come in the first ten minutes, they won’t see it. So there. Then teach about pedigrees…next part of genetics. I revised a lot for this so they would have to do big chunks on their own. It’s my new thing. Less direct teaching, more putting them on the spot to do their own work. We’ll see how it goes. It helps me get the grading done, for sure. I just sit at the table with the kids who won’t get on task and grade…they are remarkably compliant then. Although some birdwalk like crazy. Whatever. So yeah. I need to make more tea and go to the place that exhausts me. Run errands after school. Hope my battery shows up so I can drive my own car tomorrow (my jellybean stash is in there). Zoom with stitching friends. On the couch. Stitching. Nice. SLEEP for fucks sake. Really need that. Start tracing that quilt and try to get my head behind it. Goalz.

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.