Read…

Big deep sigh. You know what I WANT to do today? Stay home and iron this quilt together…in between reading my book while curled up on the couch with a dog or cat or two. I am mentally exhausted. And today is LOOONG. Hate those days. Things before and after school. Ugh. 8 AM to 6 PM without stopping…the plus is that we are in literacy group this afternoon, so not full-on teaching, but also I know my kids in the last class of the day won’t do their work and may destroy the classroom. So that sucks. I warned them yesterday, but you know how that goes. Well, if you’re a teacher, you know how it goes. If you’re not, you probably think if you’ve built a relationship with them and gotten down at their level and shared some respect, that they will be perfect angels. Well, try a title I middle school three days before Winter Break and tell me how that goes. Yeah. I thought so. Stupid time for these meetings. They really didn’t think it through. I think one meeting is the day before Spring Break. A Friday. There will definitely be an assembly. Are they on crack? Possibly.

That said, I’m pretty proud of myself for getting mostly caught up on grading. I finished last week’s academic assignment last night. I have one batch of homework I’m hoping to do today and tomorrow. There’s a few easy things that need to go into the gradebook. Then on Friday, they hand in their packets, which I will need to take home, and one homework assignment. Plus warmups. I’m still debating an easy question on Friday. I should do it, but IDK if I’ll have time. Playing it all by ear. I hate that. I want to know exactly what I’m teaching when, at least 3 weeks in advance. But no. Not for the last four years. Not without a significant amount of replanning and juggling and rewriting and shit. This is why I set a retirement date. I’m just tired of that part of it. The actual teaching? I can handle that. The rest? Ugh.

So the current quilt…I finished cutting things out on Monday night.

It took a little over 7 hours to do that. Longer than usual, I think. Not sure why.

Then I sorted them last night…

Such an easy sort…

Just under 500 pieces. I do think I need to wash all my bins over break though. The pencil lead is transferring onto them. I never noticed that with older bins, but these seem to show it, and it’s probably transferring to fabric. Weird things on my to-do list.

Then I started ironing…

I didn’t get very far. These are tiny people. I should have put something in there for scale, but just trust me, they’re little. I had to set up the room a little, move stuff around, then sort out the first 100 pieces by 10s. I’ll get more done tonight. I’m hoping to be done ironing Sunday night, then stitchdown, quilt, bind next week. We’ll see. I have some other shit to do. That whole Xmas thing. And the next quilt is waiting…it’s been enlarged and numbered for a few years, so it’s my last quilt of the year, assuming I can finish it in time. Not huge, not complicated. Then I can get my head around the next one. I have a deadline where I need to work with a collaborator and I’m not sure what that will look like, since we don’t use the same media and we don’t live in the same city. Minor issue. We’ll figure it out in January. I’ll probably start something else at the same time.

I spent some time cleaning up the girlchild’s bedroom last night; she arrives late Thursday night. I still need to put some quilts away and figure out where to store all the ones I know need to ship out in the next few weeks. Then maybe persuade her brother to store his packs elsewhere. He has a lot of them. Then make her bed with everything I washed last night, which is probably where I got the weird ring of spider bites around my elbow/arm.

I finished a book yesterday that made me cry. And then went to school, still crying (not good), but since I often drive to school with the urge to sob and/or scream, it was nothing new. Just discombobulating. And it had an essentially sort of happy ending; it was just all the shit before it that threw me. Then I started right away to read another book, and that one is also seriously speaking to me about quitting and becoming a full-time reader (is that a thing? Please let it be a thing.)…

But no, I have a parent meeting this morning and a union meeting after school, so no books until 6 PM. WHICH SUCKS. Oh wait, I can read at lunch, but I’m also supposed to be reading this book for school and I haven’t gotten very far. Ugh. Yeah. It’s a pain. My responsible teacher self is NOT going to let me bring the other book I’d rather read. Although it’s on my phone. So there’s that.

OK. Do the 10-hour day. Come home and READ. Then do some work and hopefully the Man will let us finish the movie we’ve been trying to watch for days. I wanna know what happens! Dammit. And then ironing, which is fun and relaxing and I love seeing the image come to life in color. So that’s cool. Three more days of school and then more reading! Woo hoo! Don’t look at the to-do list. READ!

Whatevering…

Five days. I can do that. Right? Sure. The fact that I was rewriting (only in my head, not in real life yet) the entire week’s lesson plans while trying to fall asleep last night is not a problem, right? Why do that? Because the lesson progression doesn’t make sense. I sort of saw that last week, but thought I could get away with it, because I wanted something that would keep them engaged through Friday, but the reality is that they can’t do that thing WELL without doing the other thing first, so I’m just going to have to figure out how to make it work. I haven’t entirely figured TODAY’s lesson out either. I need another brain. I start planning and then I lose sight of the big picture, and then my brain worries out all the details, but I need to go back to the big picture and not let the short-sightedness of some people stop me. Man, this year is just…it’s just like last year…but worse. I can’t get my head around this stuff. It’s better than last year (the planning/organization), but it’s not great yet. I remember it took my co-teacher and I a good 6 years to make the lessons good. I don’t have 6 years. I go back to 7th grade not next year but the year after. And while I appreciate all the lessons the new teacher has provided, I need the logical backstory. And I don’t quite have it yet. I keep asking and not getting a story. So then I have to try to make one by myself, and myself is not doing great. I’m not even halfway through the year and I feel done. Like dried-out Thanksgiving turkey done. So much as I am looking forward to Winter Break (and getting a break), I know I will need to hash out the next unit. By myself. And it doesn’t make sense to me yet.

All that aside, I survived the weekend. I even thought I was getting sick, but overdosing on Vitamin C and getting two decent nights of sleep helped. Still overdosing though.

I met with some of the SAQA So Cal/NV members at Visions on Saturday.

I’m looking thrilled. Really. We did get a tour through the exhibit, which was nice. I talked a little bit about my quilt…

Which is still there, if you haven’t seen it. They had some pop-up artists’ shops, which was cool. A friend I hadn’t seen for years was running one of them, so it was nice to catch up. We had lunch after…

It’s almost normal! Like going to see art and hanging out afterward. I was going to go to another fiber art thing afterward, but I had too much schoolwork to do…so I came home and worked for about 3 hours. Then the Man and I went to see the Dresden Dolls with Amanda Palmer…

I’d never seen the band before…

I enjoy me some Amanda though…

It was a good show. That said, we are old and standing for 3+ hours on concrete is not ideal. And yet, we keep doing it. We must like it, even if our feet and backs don’t.

We got home too late to make art! I was hoping to get some done before we went, but the assignments were more insistent.

Sunday, I graded a lot more. And that’s when the lesson plan issue came up. I’m hoping to have a prep period today and time after school to figure it out. I had 1 prep period last week that wasn’t meetings or subbing my prep, so it would be nice to have another this week. We’ll see.

Last night, I did stop grading/planning at about 9:15 and cut stuff out for a little over an hour…

It’s hard not to just stay up and finish, but that would have been at least another hour, I think. We’ll see, because I’ll be finishing tonight hopefully. That’s the plan anyway. Then sorting and ironing by midweek.

Meanwhile, I’m nursing a nasty scrape on my arm that wants to be infected, but I’m trying to persuade it not to be with lots of neosporin and care. I don’t have time for a trip to urgent care to get meds. It just needs to behave. It’s better today than it was Saturday, when it was swollen and hot and yuck. Swelling has gone down. It’s still itchy, but I think that’s healing itchies. It’s not hot anymore. Good times. Can’t have a holiday season without some bizarre reason why you SHOULD go to urgent care. Even if you don’t.

In other news…

Gonna add reading books to this list, but that probably wasn’t as much of a thing in the dark ages.

Here’s Kitten about to whack me for being in her space. You know, the space in front of the computer where I’m trying to type.

And Simba trying to cuddle…

It’s been cold at night.

I love random measurements.

OK. Today. Teaching some stuff, but I’m not exactly sure how, and I didn’t put all the materials out on Friday like I normally do, because I had to be at the sex-ed curriculum meeting right after school and duty at the light. So I really should get my ass to school to figure all that out. I’ll figure part of it out on the 12-minute drive over there. Then redo the lesson plan for the whole week, copy some stuff, rewrite the lesson plan for Wednesday’s half-day sub so I can do literacy planning with my team on the book I was supposed to start reading this weekend and DID NOT. Whoops. I have read it before. But I remember very little. Teach all day, whatever that looks like (wish I knew). Finish planning/copying/whatevering after school, come home, do things, very specific things I haven’t figured out yet (probably involving reading a book I’ve already read). I’m cooking dinner. I’m also going to finish cutting stuff out. Hopefully. It’s a very mentally chaotic day I think. Ugh. Hate those. May tomorrow be less so.

100 Bullet Points…

So I didn’t write yesterday because it was our 9th anniversary of hanging out together, which we do a lot of, but is really hard to buy a card for because (a) we’re not married and (b) we’re not happy-go-lucky young people who have stars in our eyes (not a bad thing)…we are grumpy old people who sometimes barely tolerate other life in the house. ANYWAY, the Man made me breakfast before work and that seemed nicer than sitting here and writing, so I put it off a day. To today, which will be incredibly stressful until it’s not. Good times.

The continuing story of weird shit I do for school…

Note for next year: get solid core copper wire, although I’m not sure how I could have figured that out from the cryptic codes at Home Depot, let alone from the cryptic codes from my co-teacher. Also, when she says 3″ nails, she means 5″ nails. (HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT…IT’S FINE. IT WORKED. It was just a pain in the ass, which might be the way all of this year goes.)

I finished ironed to fabrics on Monday night…I haven’t counted these yet, but there they are anyway.

Turned out to be a lot of gray, but I think it’s mostly clouds and smoke and concrete. I think the blue and purple end up being a heftier part of the quilt. But we’ll see.

Here’s the box of stuff that now needs to be cut out.

And all together now! If you haven’t noticed, I like to document.

Then Tuesday night, I started cutting things out. Straight up, I have a nasty assignment I’m trying to grade each night as well, which sucks, because I’d rather be cutting things up or stitching them or drawing or honestly ANYTHING but grading this thing, but nope. That’s a big fat no.

I didn’t get far on Tuesday. Less than an hour. I went to the gym, so dinner was late, and then grading that thing. So yeah. Went to bed too late too.

Then last night, I got a little more done…

Doesn’t look like much. Never does. I think I spent about 10 hours ironing stuff down; I suspect I can cut it all out in 5 hours. Maybe. Tonight I need to grade TWO classes’ worth of that heinous assignment (it’s not really bad; it’s the kids’ answers that are bad), so although I have nothing going on tonight (oh thank goodness), I might not get more than an hour to cut.

I got this in email yesterday…

Um. Well. I’m doing whatever my brother and/or dad told me to do, so I guess I need to carve out some time to figure that shit out. (writes on to-do list, which has stuff that has been on it for over a year)

Also, when thinking about retirement…

Probably on the couch and not in bed, but otherwise, yes, that would be nice. Unlikely maybe, but certainly I’ll be doing something different. Which is an interesting thing to think about.

Today and honestly the next 9 days are gonna kick my ass first. Today I have a meeting before school with the principal and other union reps, then need to deal with some sort of counseling thing in my room instead of the door decorating I’d planned (love that last-minute shit). By the way, because I know you love the door-decorating sagas over the years, we’re doing Fortnite Winterfest. Not my choice. Obviously. Then an official observation of my teaching skills, which the boss accidentally tried to do yesterday (wrong day) in Period 2 (wrong class), which was exciting for me! I’m like, whatever, and then he gets up 10 minutes into it and leaves, saying, whoops, wrong class. Good times. Today’s lesson is not what I would have chosen for an observation, but whatever. Something I’ve never ever taught before that I didn’t pick, during the 1st period of class, which means they’re the guinea pigs I test stuff out on and then modify during the day. I have sent a wish list to the gods for who I need to be absent this morning.

At some point, some of the stressful job things need to go away or lessen or something. I laid awake last night with about 100 bullet points bouncing against my forehead: do this! don’t forget that! What about this? Fuck me. At some point, the stressful job things will be PUT away and I will cut out nice pieces of nonstressful fabric again. Around 9:30 PM tonight, to be precise.

And the Next Day…

I’m trying very hard to eat my breakfast, type this, and babysit a rambunctious puppy before I go to school today. I’m not ready for school…mentally. Physically, I can do today. And then I’ll think about the next day. And the next day. Which makes it hard when your boss wants a lesson plan for some Thursday and he probably wants it earlier than the morning of. Or the night before. Which is where I’m at right now. I have stuff planned out in order, but no clue how long most of it will take, so who the fuck knows what I’ll be teaching on the day he wants to observe. I mean, I’ll know on the day. I hate not being planned better, but it’s physically impossible right now to get there. Again. For the fourth year in a row. So completely done, y’all. PRO! I finished grading things, so I have a few days of leeway before I have to get back on that. I really wanted to be fully planned out for the next three weeks, but it didn’t happen. I have a rough plan for two of them…some decisions need to be made, and otherwise, I just need to let it play out to get the timing right. Absolutely no help on that from anywhere. Sigh.

Moving on. So I finished tracing the quilt on Friday night…

It’s been really fast compared to the last one. Then Saturday night, I cut all the pieces out.

Luckily Annie slept through all that, although she did just about knock an entire box over when she woke up to Simba’s barking.

Yeah. All of them. It was about 4 1/2 hours. Delightful. Last night, I sorted them all…

It took a whopping 18 minutes. So funny. The last one was over 2 hours. I do love a big complicated quilt, but sometimes this is a relief, to do a smaller, less complicated one.

Then I started trying to clean up the studio, putting fabric away so I can start ironing to fabric tonight. I’m not done cleaning, but I’m not cooking tonight and I have no grading (just planning) to do, so hopefully I can spend a little more time in here tonight and actually start ironing to fabric. We’ll see.

Friday was also our Thanksgiving dinner, with my family…just the parents and the Man. The kids are still in the UK…actually, I think the girlchild is back now.

Mom is not fazed by dogs…even very in-your-face dogs.

She’s ripping borders off a quilt duvet she made so she can turn it into a king-sized duvet instead of a queen. Pain in the ass…

Dad also had a dog…

They were very patient with my turkey issues…it turned out fine, but took an hour longer than I had planned. As usual.

Kept it pretty simple. Yes, the dressing turned out great. Second time.

Small group. Lots of cooking and cleanup, but nice to see them otherwise.

This is a first…Nova and Simba on the bed together.

It didn’t last long. It’s like the bed is neutral territory and anyone (but Annie) can be up there together. Weird.

Also weird that we still have caterpillars on milkweed that is still blooming.

We’ll see if any of it survives to next year.

OK. Three weeks of school until the next break. That’s 15 days. Fifteen days with 1 assembly, 1 observation, 1 literacy meeting, possibly 4 sex ed curriculum meetings, 3 staff meetings, 1 union/principal meeting, at least 3 parent-teacher meetings, at least 4 labs, and who knows what else that I just don’t know about yet. I think I can do that. Maybe. Also a quilt to finish, hopefully sooner rather than later. We’ll see how that goes.

It’s a Simple Life…

Body hurts. Head…doesn’t hurt. Good. Parents are home from Ireland. Girlchild is on a plane down here. Boychild is presumably driving home from fire duty right now. I just need to survive a Friday and a 2-hour sex-ed curriculum meeting. Yesterday the only conflict was between the words ‘birth control’ and ‘contraception’. Fun talk. More today. Then takeout with the fam (I hope) and probably some school stuff, plus I have to pack a quilt up to be delivered tomorrow. And deal with school at some point. I have reached the point of ‘buried in grading’. It did not take long. I was doing OK. Now I’m not. Sigh.

Anyway, Back-to-School Night was last night and I talked until 6:20 PM. My throat hurts this morning and my body feels like a Mack truck hit it. Fun stuff. Today is a slightly longer lunch so parents can come eat with their kids (IDK if they will). So we also get a slightly longer lunch. One of my favorite teachers offered to order lunch out for us…not sure if it’s being delivered or what, but I’m in. Something different. Something that makes it easier.

I have managed to cut stuff out each night, despite arriving home feeling exhausted. I have almost made it through what looked like the week from hell on the calendar. All good. I think I’m at the halfway mark. Certainly last night, I was cutting out a lot of things in the 1000s, although some of the higher-numbered pieces are still showing up. Cutting out the robes is coming up. I did those all at once. Anyway, I can see progress, although slow.

And then last night, after all the things.

One box fills as the other empties. Maybe another week? Or just under? Although we are camping next weekend, so there’s that. But hopefully I’ll be ironing this together starting around the 25th? We’ll see. That’s my goal.

Here’s a couple of pictures from Saturday’s opening…

I love this one, where only Polly is smiling at the camera with her eyes open.

IDK what I’m looking at. The outdoors. Escape :-). Not really. I love these people. I just get weirded out at openings.

In other news, here’s my barely colored cover page for the next science unit.

I have too much to grade to color. Maybe I should have my TA do it? It’s a possibility. She’s a coloring force.

This is a local high-school district.

There’s a definite anti-LGTBQIA force wandering through our school boards and community members at the moment. School board voted in. By idiots. Parents of those students. I think my whole team is buying rainbow shirts at the moment.

Realized the other day that my stove drip pan was semi-nonfunctional.

Yeah. That’s impressive, Nida. Obviously paying attention. Yes, I replaced them.

This is EXACTLY how I felt last night.

and this…

Me today. Not just right after I wake up. For about an hour after.

OK. Get to work, set up demo/lab stuff, get some stuff done for next week, prep labs for the long-term sub, enjoy a longer lunch (10 whole minutes), stand at the light on the corner for 15 minutes after school (making sure kids don’t do stupid stuff like last week), go to 2-hour sex-ed meeting, come home and enjoy the kids, hopefully. Work. Cut things out. It’s a simple life. Ha!

Cutting of the Tiny Things…

Hey. This week. Yeah. I am in pajamas today for pajama day, but it’s a bit warm and I have a meeting after school and 17 errands to run, so if I’m smart, I’ll pack a pair of pants that isn’t flannel for later. Am I smart? Sometimes. I feel like this is a practical thing though, and I’m OK with those.

I’m not sure when I will get home tonight, but I do know I will be cutting things out tonight. Late. And tired.

I got the good news this morning that my newest quilt will be going to the SAQA Fierce Planets exhibit. Good news, since I made it for that one. Two for two! I make them and they leave.

OK. So this was Monday night’s cutting of the tiny things.

Top box, to do. Middle box, done. Bottom box, trash.

Then last night’s…

Flipped top and bottom. I still have a few 1300s to cut out, but mostly I see 1200s and 1100s. So maybe 700-800 pieces done? I’m definitely into Amy Coney-Barrett (her pieces, not the person…definitely not into the person), but I still have some of Ketanji Brown Jackson to go. I ironed pieces going from bottom to top; I’m cutting pieces from top to bottom. I’ve been cutting for 7 hours and 44 minutes. So yeah, it’s going to be at least 15 hours. That’s half the ironing time though.

Boychild left, Simba does not understand. He just barks and barks for the first night, every time.

The girlchild is coming this weekend, and he doesn’t understand that either. To his credit, he slept through most of the night, although I think everyone was awake at 3 AM for some inexplicable reason. I could do without that shit.

This is too true.

OK. Teaching, meeting, teaching some more, another longer meeting, then cat meds, watering the parents (they come home tomorrow, hallelujah), Home Depot for slats, trash out, cook dinner. Sounds like a lot. It is a lot. I could do with less. Then more cutting. I graded last night, a lot. I feel like today it’s not happening. I mean, maybe in class, but not at home. Not after all that.

Must Be September.

Apparently I woke up to the alarm this morning, exclaiming OH MY GOD. It didn’t feel like long enough. Also I didn’t sleep well, which often happens on a Sunday night. Pre-school Oh-Shits. Although I’m still adjusting to just one thing that I’m teaching, I need to often prep for two things. Like all last week. And this week. This week is meeting hellacious. Two hours today…thought it might run shorter, but no…literacy in the second half. It’ll go until the end of the 2-hour mark. Then union meeting on Wednesday (2 hours), sex-ed curriculum on Thursday AND Friday, plus Back-to-School Night on Thursday (many hours total). Not sure why this week has to be hell. And the girlchild is coming to visit this weekend, which is awesome, but her room is a disaster and it’s all my fault. And the parentals are coming home. It’s just chaos. Today after the two hours of meetings, I have three places I have to go to pick up mail, buy slats, etc. Art to deliver over the weekend, need to get it ready. And it feels like nothing got done this weekend.

Must be September. My brain knows that by the end of this month, routines will be better, all the extras that school likes to throw at you will have adjusted, and the weather will probably have calmed the fuck down. It was hot yesterday. However, the end of this month is quite a ways away and I’m not sure I will get there unscathed.

Did I mention I drove to LA on Saturday? Yeah, it was our California Fibers’ Influences/Influencers exhibit at Craft in America. I had one piece in the show and all everybody could say was, “That’s the smallest piece I’ve ever seen of yours.” Well, yeah, it’s 16×20″. But it has over 800 pieces in it.

Obligatory selfie…

Wall of pieces: Doshi on the left, Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, then Charlotte Bird, then me.

So you can see it really is small. I gave her two or three other choices that were bigger. It’s OK…it’s a cool piece.

It was a busy opening eventually. It’s a pain driving to LA though. I left at 10:30 AM, sat in a cafe and graded for a bit, then after the opening, got home at 8 PM. Lost day, really. Felt exhausted by the end of it. I know the LA members of our group love shows up there and I can see why: all their friends and family can come. Ah well. It’ll be up for a while…through December 2. You should check it out!

Around all that, I cut stuff out. Not a ton, but an hour and a bit a night.

Friday night…doesn’t look like much.

Saturday night looks like more…

Two episodes of something instead of one. I’m rewatching the Sherlock series Elementary, because I don’t think I saw them all. I was watching Madam Secretary, but the real politics are too close and I needed a break after the first season. In the middle box are all the pieces I’ve cut out. The bottom is what still needs cutting. Because I put them in there in the order I ironed them down, they are pretty much in backwards numerical order. So I can kind of keep track of how far I’ve gotten. That’s the Supreme Court building I see there.

I got all of that cut out last night, along with most of Roberts. Not his robes…all the robes are further down. But that’s Sotomayor’s hair right there. So I’m somewhere in the 1400-1500s, but the robes aren’t done yet. So maybe 500 pieces cut out. Cutting out is usually faster than ironing. I don’t have to think deeply about cutting out…I just do it. Ironing requires thought. Well ironing to fabrics does…ironing it together, you just follow the pattern and the numbers.

I spent about 6 hours working for school yesterday. So yeah, things aren’t settled or pretty yet. Not sure when they will be. It’s my fault, because I could just copy shit the way it’s handed to me, but I know how my kids learn, and so I’m editing from that perspective. Which sometimes means retyping stuff. I did (not) have help…

Thanks Nova. I think she knocked down my very important post-it too.

Sigh. Feed me dinner, lady.

OK. I will. Get up off the couch and do the things (this was Friday night. I napped when I got home.).

Today. Long. Cutting things out sits at the end.

Fingernails and Eyeballs

Friday is here. It feels like it’s early and yet…not. I have earned this Friday as much as the others. Next week’s Friday will be incredibly well-earned. Sigh. I’m waiting for a call back from my insulin pen manufacturer, because I have a defective one and the pharmacy won’t replace it blah blah comes in a box of 5 blah blah can’t give you just one blah blah looks like a defect blah blah. So I’ve been on hold with one place last night that never answered (24/7 my ass) and one place this morning that gave me another number and I waited and finally left a voice mail, so they will inevitably call during school hours and I will never get this solved. I do have more insulin coming today, luckily. Otherwise this would be a bigger deal. Worst case, I’ll have the doc do a new prescription in time for the next batch that should mail. Such a pain how they regulate meds. I had one batch of meds get lost in the mail and it took 4 hours and 2 pharmacies to sort it out. My mom made some text comment about socialized medicine and I wanted to say, YAH, let’s do that, because what we have is idiotic.

Anyway. I’m OK. My blood sugar wasn’t too high this morning, considering no insulin. I’m pretty active during the day and tonight’s dose will arrive today. We’ll be good.

For school, we finally finished the longest 6 (7?) days of labs I’ve ever done…well, since last year…and things are almost under control for next week. Maybe. I’m staying after school today to try to put away this whole lab. I have most of the next 7th-grade lab gathered for delivery to the other building. My co-teacher pulled through a shopping save last night after I had searched the entire world for the rest of the aquarium rocks. I still need to buy stuff for 8th grade, but I need a point clarified first. Well. I think 4 points clarified. Today the kids take a test (assessment?), so hopefully they’re quiet and on task. Ha. Yeah. I know. This 8th-grade group is more challenging than last year’s, which makes sense, because it includes some of our kids from last year. I did see one kid who apparently wanted to be on our team again, but I think I said I’d quit if I had him for another year. Good times.

I have a cold, which complicates all this. It’s not COVID…I’m up standing (not upstanding) and just full of phlegm and my voice is a mess. I have an opening in LA tomorrow and have to drive up and back…I’ll just be drinking lots of tea and not talking much. Also this is day 5? or maybe 6?

I think I already talked about the opening. Welcome to my brain on the lesser coronavirus.

So Wednesday night, I finished ironing. Finally. Well, there are three little pieces of Wonder Under that I found that don’t match anything and/or I might have already recut.

So I’m just saving them until the end, in case I need them. I know one is the Swamp Thing’s chin hairs and I don’t know if I redrew it (I circled it on the drawing…who the fuck knows what I meant by that in mid-August?) or just ignored it. And I’m not searching through that box for the 100s, which is where it would be. I’ll just keep cutting until I get there.

The ironing took 33 1/2 hours. That is a record for me. It also used 212 fabrics…another record. I think.

It’s not like I keep a spreadsheet of quilt facts. Lots of black, gray, and white. Plus all the fleshtones in that box in the top left.

It doesn’t look like much in the box because so many of the pieces are minute.

Last night, I started cutting…late, because I sorted the fabrics first. It’s really pleasing to me to see the colors sorted like that. It also makes it easier to put them away. Which won’t happen until I start the next one. At the rate I’m going, it might be October or November before that happens. This isn’t even that big a quilt. I’ve made bigger. It’s just detail heavy. So is the one that is showing at Craft in America, starting tomorrow…a small piece at 16×20″, but over 800 pieces in it.

This is And Then There Was One…about the kids leaving for college. Survived that.

Anyway, I did start cutting the Supreme Court piece out last night…

That’s about 40 minutes worth. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a bunch of tiny letters down there and they are a pain in the ass. Don’t ask how many of those there are in this thing. It’s OK, I have 5 more seasons of Madam Secretary to get through. I’m hoping it doesn’t take that long to cut this out though. Cutting is generally faster than ironing. Some of the smallest pieces I don’t cut out until I’m ironing so I don’t lose them. I suspect there will be lots of those in this quilt. Fingernails and eyeballs.

OK. My cold meds aren’t great. I need to clean up a huge mess at school. I need to make sure the sub knows how to use Google Forms (she needs to make a copy…and I know I said that, but I probably also said I’d help her). I need to deliver lab stuff and go talk to a staff member again about something she reacted badly to yesterday (why is this my job?). I need to give a test to 135 kids and hope they do well. I have duty at the light. I might need to go to Home Depot…AGAIN. And tomorrow, I’ll spend 6 or 7 hours driving. Podcasts! Tea! No hike tomorrow…probably I don’t feel up to it anyway. I hate these first few weeks of September. School really drags on you sometimes. But I am glad to not be standing over an iron for a while. I’ll be back there in 3-4 weeks, sure, and that’s the most exciting part, putting it all together, but the thought of just sitting and meditatively cutting for a few weeks sounds nice.

As One Should…

We’re Baa-aack. With emphasis on the AACK. Today is not the first official day of school…that’s tomorrow, when I have to trolley to SDSU, sit through the 150 minutes of rah rah, then trolley or get a ride back to my car, drive to my school, and sit through an hourlong meeting there. Taking a book and probably some stitching. Considering driving to SDSU instead, but they claim there’s limited free parking and I’m trying to be a good citizen. Not sure why, since they didn’t really consider us in their design process. As usual.

Am I ready for a new school year? Well. No. But I never am. Curriculum-wise, I’m OK, although I’m still tweaking the first few days and I have no clue what will be going on with the rest of 8th grade. Not entirely my problem. Probably some of my problem. We’ll see. I am entirely one grade level this year, though, which is nice. I think. There were pros to only having to grade 2 or 3 classes of an assignment. The con was there were twice as many assignments and very little help with one grade level. So there’s that. It can’t be worse, right? I’ve got a fairly zen attitude at the moment. We’ll see how that goes. I’m not really known for being zen. My grandma’s name was Genevieve Zenobia, Zenobia being a family name. I always wished I’d been named Zenobia (although if I actually HAD been, I probably would have hated it…why couldn’t you name me something NORMAL, like KATHY). Then I could be Zen for short. And I am short. Ha ha ha.

OK. So I’ve been cutting out Wonder Under. It never looks like much at this stage. I see progress. You probably don’t. So here’s Monday night, when I got 1/3 done…

And then last night, when I was halfway done…

The piles are bigger. That’s it. I’ve got three more yards to do. I’ve been getting one done a night. At this rate, I’ll be done and ready to sort by Friday night. I say that, but I have meetings tonight and tomorrow night, and Friday I have an art opening. So who the fuck knows what I can actually get done. Today, I have two official school meetings and one unofficial one, plus pilates and book club. I’m not even sure WHICH book club and WHICH book. Let’s hope I read it. And I have been hugely unsuccessful in retraining myself on a 10:30 PM bedtime. Let’s face it, my natural sleep cycle can’t be changed, despite what my doctor says. I will suffer, exhausted, this week, and eventually my body will be like, FIIIINE. I won’t go to bed after midnight. You’re such a wimp. Stomps off into the distance.

When I retire, I will not get up early and I will stay up late.

Here’s the official Team Science at Art photo from Monday…

Look! We are out in the world! Hey, I tend to hermit during the summer. As one should.

This is so true…

I don’t try to be a bit much. It just happens.

So I have this piece that was at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, UK, last weekend. I made it in 2019 and it was accepted into the SAQA Opposites Attract show. It was sent off to Australia for its opening exhibit in, well, May 2020. So you know what happened there. And I think it’s been shown in Australia, but I’m not exactly sure where and when at this point. This is the first time I’ve seen it exhibited, and Quilter on Fire made a video. Mine is the last one in the video, which is actually kind of cool, considering how she ended it.

Interestingly, I think it’s hung upside down. Which for this quilt, might not matter, but usually I put a label on them and so if I did, the label is also upside down. This is Each Piece Belongs…

Man, it’s been so long since I’ve seen this quilt. I must have shipped it off at the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020. I know I’ve mentally lost it a few times, mostly due to a lack of communication, honestly. But I do know it is supposed to be at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio, opening October 13 through December 3. So go see it. Unless you saw it in Australia or the UK. Now I’m wondering why it was upside down. Sigh. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. I’m just glad it finally got shown.

OK. School meeting with team. School meeting with coteacher. School meeting with literacy team. School school school. We know how all that goes. Simba is not thrilled about his week at all…no boychild, nobody. Oh yeah! And it’s the girlchild’s birthday. She’s ancient. OK, not really. But here’s where I find an old picture of her when she was an adorable (loud, door-banging, delightful) child. WAIT! Even better…oh look at all those red eyes. The boychild behind the chair, girlchild on the chair, holding the nephew that just graduated high school and is going to COLLEGE, and the niece on the left who is just starting her senior year in college.

LOOK AT THOSE PANTS. And the sweatshirt matches. I’m losing my mind. Also the nephew’s face may be skinnier, but he totally looks the same. Miss all those people.

Quiet Unfocusing

Slowly banging my way through this to-do list. One of the things on it is “weed whack” though and that’s a few hours of crap. The stupid battery on the weed whacker lasts a whopping 15 minutes, so that limits the time I can whack…pros and cons? The yard will never be done, but I can hopefully get two trash cans filled by tomorrow’s pickup. Last night, I was trimming in the backyard and kept hearing this weird mechanical sound. Finally looked up in the sky and saw a drone hovering over me. Flipped it off…continued flipping it off…it finally flew off, probably with its 10-year-old owner laughing his ass off at the old lady brandishing clippers.

I started cutting pieces out on Sunday, did a bunch Monday…

That puppy is totally unhelpful most of the time. Keeps trying to put her nose in everything.

But when she’s out, it’s fine. Last night, I cut for three hours because I just wanted to be done…

Annie still was so helpful. At one point, she got her nose under the tray where I was collecting the trash and tipped it over. But then zonked out.

Just under 8 hours to cut it all out. I am ahead of my original plan…which is good. I leave for Seattle on Monday. I’m thinking maybe I can get it ironed down to a background before I go? Maybe? I can get a good chunk of it done anyway.

Girlchild is in Nevada, hopefully getting to San Francisco tonight, since she has to be at work physically tomorrow. Crazy trip.

So today we need to walk the dogs, I need to fill another trash can with weeds, I need to sort the pieces I just cut out and start ironing this quilt together, I need to pick up cat meds, do the rest of my laundry (which means reattaching the vent because the Man fixed the dryer but pulled the vent partially off in the process), and read more…maybe eat food. Certainly I’m not sleeping enough because the puppy is not good at mornings. Anyway…it’s break. And I can tell that some people are irritated that I get time off and they don’t. Well yeah, I worked 12 months (probably much more) of hours in just 10 months…so it’s like when I did 10-hour days for 4 days a week so we could have a 3-day weekend (pre-teaching years). But I get that it feels unfair in the moment. Just remember all the nights and weekends I was working and you weren’t and maybe it will seem more equitable. Sigh. There’s a lot of unfair shit in the world…I’m just trying to appreciate the quiet unfocusing of a teacher summer.