Trying to Stabilize…

Struggled to sleep last night. School…the district…the dumbassery of nuclear weapons. Hey, let’s destroy the Earth so we WIN! I am disheartened this morning. I’ve had some good news lately; hopefully more on that in a little bit. I’ve also had a pile of disappointing news about school and some downright stressful news about Kitten. The latter is going to cost money…of course…the one thing I’m really stressing about at the moment. I am going to try to come home and walk tonight…and hike tomorrow, although the man has a show and I have a shit-ton of work on all sides to get through. I’m trying not to panic about that…one thing at a time. Go to school and do the things there first. Come home and walk somewhere.

I have been ironing more at night. Perhaps I should have done some of my taxes last night instead of ironing for 3+ hours, but I had a stitching meeting, so I can’t do taxes during that, and trying to do them after 9 PM seems dangerously close to making lots of mistakes. So I chose art.

The mule deer after the lizard…

Oh yeah, and that hare…

And a bobcat. Stitching will make them stand out.

Got the whole bottom put together on Wednesday night.

Then last night, I tried to do the sky. The plan was to just iron the whole thing, but ironing up both sides and trying to keep the bottom aligned when it’s wider than the ironing board was becoming a major (frustrating) issue). So I skipped half of the 400s and went into the 500s, figuring if I got the torso between the sides ironed, it would stabilize the two sides and let me continue up.

It’s still a bit wibbly wobbly though. I did all the 500s, which were mostly snake and spider details, plus rocky ribs…and now I’m thinking I should do the arms first and just get this section done, and then continue up. So that means putting the rest of the 400s back in a box so I have room to pull the 600s.

Meanwhile, I need to do my taxes…but here’s the whole chaotic thing right now.

Yup. That’s chaos. More tonight. More tomorrow. I don’t know if I can finish this before Spring Break, and I’m gone for most of that. Hopefully. If we can afford to even do the trip. Ugh. Sigh. I need to get out of here, but I also need to be able to pay the bills. And be sane. Whatever that is right now. Tenuous place. It is Friday, though.

And we have owl videos…

We moved the camera so we could see the entrance better. There must be eggs in there, possibly even babies, although it might be too soon for that. Mostly we see one owl, but occasionally both.

There’s lots of swooping we hear in the yard. Sorry bunnies. Not sorry rats.

I hope we get good baby pictures.

So I need to go to school. I know some of the news is gonna hit today. I will get an answer (probably not one I like) about one of the others probably today. I will get through the curriculum and try not to feel completely disheartened by all of it. I’ll try not to think about war and nukes for at least a few hours. I know I will get exercise and ironing tonight. And I will have some socializing tomorrow in between all the taxes and other stuff. I have a home. The bathrooms are mostly clean (thanks to the Man). I don’t have to cook tonight (also thanks to the Man). I can make art because no one is currently bombing my country. There are owls in my yard taking care of babies. These are good things.

Ironing Weeds…

I’m always sort of boggled to see that two days have passed and I have only taken three pictures of my progress and/or daily life. That’s why I borrowed the girlchild’s photos for the Inspired by Architecture class…I literally didn’t have time to go take photos of architecture, unless it was my house, school, or the grocery store. Maybe the gas station. It’s not that I couldn’t have made those work…I just wanted to feel inspired honestly, and that’s hard in my daily life at the moment.

I am ironing at night though. Last night was hard…everything ran much later than I thought it would (my fault), so I didn’t get home earlier and I was tired and so I only got 45 minutes in. The night before, though, was well over an hour, wait, almost 2 hours, so that’s a balance right there. I was hoping for more every night, though. That’s on me.

This is where we’re at in the year though. We had an assignment with post-its and I found this one on a table. My first instinct is to copyedit it, of course…probably in class.

All of us teachers are bitches at some point. At least they spelled that right. I also got one penis drawing, anatomically incorrect of course. Middle-schoolers are nothing if not incredibly predictable.

So besides the daily commentary from kids on how school sucks and how each of us is the hardest teacher ever and gives us the most work…so far, we aren’t seeing any crazy outbreaks of COVID, despite the unmasking. Lots of kids still wear masks. A few teachers do. One went home sick yesterday, so I’m curious how this will all continue to play out. Personally, this bitch as hoe (sic) is just trying to survive the 13 days of teaching that are left before Spring Break.

The almost two hours of ironing ended up being the fussy rocks, the tortoise, and the owl…

Which will all look better when they are outlined appropriately with thread.

Then last night, I managed a coyote, a lizard, and some cactus…

There’s nothing fast about this process…although sometime tonight or tomorrow night, I’m gonna slap the sky together in about 100 really big pieces and it’s going to look much different. But for now, I’m still in the tiny little weeds (sometimes literally, I’m ironing weeds on there). I think there’s a hare and a bobcat in the future here.

I was gonna say something about not having to cook tonight, but I think I’m cooking tonight. Shit. OK. Well aim for the 45 minutes of ironing again, yeah? Actually, aim for an hour. It’s a good thing I thought about that. Meat was still in the freezer. Plus I’m sort of almost not really caught up with grading. I’m at least at a point where I’m not panicking about it any more. I’m sure that will change soon, but for right now, I’m breathing. OK, I also have a meeting this morning, but then my prep is for all the late work the panicked kids are turning in (oh wait, you GRADE the shit we do?). Hopefully I’ll get it all done and start grading unit packets. Then exercise, cook, and iron. Repeat.

Unfunded…

I’m at that stage of the school year where every morning is exhaustion. Friday was fun with microscopes, but a lot of running around and then trying to get kids focused, then some adult drama that I could do without. This week has some ups and downs for what we’re teaching…today and tomorrow will be a bit of a slog, no matter what I do to prepare them (and me). But I did everything I could this weekend to be ready for it.

I also did a lot of art, which was nice. I even took a class in something I never would have done if my guild weren’t doing it. So that was good. It’s always good to stretch a little to see if something new will work.

So the current quilt…Friday night, so close to done (not really…there are a lot of pieces left in there…they’re just small)…

Saturday night we went to an art opening and got freaked out by small space, lots of people, but then came home and watched a movie and I cut out the rest…

That’s 21 hours and 21 minutes of cutting. Very precise. You want to know how I price my quilts? By my time.

It wasn’t too late yet, so I sorted them too…

So many tiny pieces. You can see the 400s box has most of the big sky pieces in it. Everything else is small as fuck. I know, I know…I designed the thing. I’m the one who is also hoping it’s done in time, but who the hell knows.

And then last night, I started ironing it together…

Somehow I lost a bunch of tree parts already. They could be in the couch, they could never have been cut out (I found one in the pile of trash I save for just these reasons). Who the fuck knows. I don’t. Kept ironing though…

I’m 150 pieces (approximately) in. My goal this week is to get it ironed. Of course, my schedule and exhaustion levels might not help with that. Plus that grading thing. Whatever. Those tiny animals though…they are a time-consuming thing. I have a tortoise and an owl to do tonight. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all looks though…I never see it in full color until it’s ironed, except in my head.

The class I took was on Zoom with David Owen Hastings…Inspired by Architecture. I borrowed pictures from the girlchild’s travels, although she’ll be hard-pressed to tell what photo I used.

I could make all of those, but I probably won’t. I cut out the pieces for another one…not one of these…it’s somewhere else. In a pile.

David was a great teacher, lots of info, nicely timed, feel good about the process, although it is incredibly outside of my wheelhouse.

I couldn’t help but put some hand-stitching in there. I’m not sure modern is my thing, but it was an interesting class. Certainly this was faster than my normal process.

I was hoping an art reset would help with this week. Maybe it will. I know I came home Friday night incredibly stressed and overwhelmed. I finished grading one thing that might help with the mindset…although there are other things coming to take its place. One of the issues was my septic. The pumpout this year went fine, but my tank is old and there were some issues…the issues started at being around $1200, and now are a partial rebuild…so 5 times that.

I guess it’s a good thing I sold two quilts…I can pay for this and probably my taxes and maybe my property taxes, maybe? But the summer is now unfunded. That’s really how teachers look at summer sometimes…unfunded.

So there’s a bit of panic in my head. I’ll get through. Just unexpected.

Part of trying to reset my mind was cleaning my studio up for yesterday’s class. I had pieced three of these, so I did the other three.

This is from the Molli Sparkles Cut It Up Quilt-Along. I’m way behind, but that’s OK, because it’s just a fun thing I’m doing. When you make the corner pieces, there are leftover triangles. I hate to waste, so I pieced them all…

I’ll trim them up and put them in the quilt somewhere. You can see that mostly I was doing complementary colors: blue/orange, red/green, purple/yellow. Guess that art degree paid off.

Ah yes, well school starts soon. Back to the chaos. And it’s a hot week, so hopefully they can finally get my A/C really running, instead of ignoring actual class temperatures and going on after school is out. Somewhat frustrating. Three more weeks until Spring Break. It also means I think I only have three weeks to finish this quilt. That could be problematic. Ah well…if I don’t finish for one deadline, it will go to another show, won’t it? Yeah. It will. I am frustrated by my inability to get art done this year (and last year…see the pattern?). My day job is taking too much time. More than usual. Sigh. OK. Well. Tonight I dedicate time for art. Hopefully.

Barely Here…

Hey, February. WTF. You were barely here and now you’re almost gone? What is up with that? Pro: Spring Break is coming. Con: Grades are due again. Seriously short month though…will just make March seem vast and massive. So many things have to happen in March. I’m not ready. Like THAT matters!

Sigh. The Man spent a lot of time this weekend watching Ukraine/Russia coverage, and I feel for the people living there, I wish Putin would stop and/or keel over or run out of ammo, and I hope there is a peaceful and less destructive solution to stopping him (Go Ukraine!), but there’s some disturbing info coming out about African students not being allowed out of the country, because of their color…”Ukrainians first”…when OMG those kids must be fucking terrified, let them go the fuck home. Racism everywhere. Like that’s a surprise. Seriously, I get women and children first, but also those who are helping your economy by living there but don’t actually LIVE there long term…let them leave. There should be no race discrimination there. Although even the gender stuff…why do the men have to fight? Some men probably are not cut out for it and some women probably are, maybe are even staying to do that? The assumptions we make…they don’t help society.

It was too much for my brain. At one point, I told the Man that he had seen the same news stories repeat three times now, and I got a glare for that. So I did other things. I had a lot of grading to do though, and I’m missing one earbud, so finally put it in the ear closest to the television and blasted it so I couldn’t hear bombs and more explanation of details. I realize I have the privilege of doing that, living here, but also, I have a job to do and it’s hard enough to do without bombardment of really horribly anxious things in my brain. Small doses, a summary at night, I can handle that. Lots of donation programs popping up for Ukrainians, refugees and in country. Need a shortcut on that info too…donating via a quilt block pattern? I’d rather send what little money I have directly to an aid agency. Keeping my eyes open on that one.

I’m still ironing the quilt…it’s really slow and I’m so tired these days. I would have liked more time on Saturday, but chose a hike instead, plus a trip to Home Depot so I could prep quilts to ship them out for shows. So Friday night, I did absolutely nothing. I was so exhausted after the field trip…

I stayed at work until almost 5 to get stuff done, went to the chiropractor, got home, and then cooked dinner. Wasn’t much brain power left after grading for a while.

I did iron Saturday night for a short while…

The box is filling up…and then last night, I got into the arms. They’re all sand.

Lovely sand fabrics.

I’m pretty sure I’m more than halfway. I still have more than half of the 600s left to iron, but I’ve done a bunch of 800s, 900s, 1000s, and 1100s, as well as half the 1300s, so I’m getting there. It’s just not fast. Grading all this week (grades due next Tuesday), slogging through the last project unfortunately, and then copyediting a final run through the book I worked on over Winter Break. No pressure! Stressful though.

I finished all the unit packets Saturday morning with help from this doofus.

And this one kept rubbing her head all over the papers…they must smell good.

They smell like middle-school backpacks. Yuck.

I packed up one quilt, the smaller easier one, and then we walked the dog…

He was quite happy to get out. Too much war for him too.

I came back to my ex and the boychild installing a camera on my tree…

A year ago, they installed an owl box (it was my Christmas present). We’d heard owls and disturbed a barn owl the other day, so I guess they wanted proof there was one in there.

There are two actually. Very cool.

I’m excited.

We went out to dinner and I managed to finish a drawing I started in Phoenix…the food came really quickly so I didn’t get it done.

Lots of chomping on things.

Well there’s this…

Same goes for being a teacher, I think. Today is pretty chill…notes and demos. Tomorrow is a bit more chaotic and we’re not quite ready for it. Hopefully between a teacher’s aide and two of our prep periods, we can get it ready. Can’t grade anything though. Never time for that. Too much prepping labs and panicked copying of papers and dealing with kid stuff. I’ll be glad for the end of the trimester this week…getting rid of a group of kids that are mostly fine, but a small group is driving me bonkers. Will not miss those kids. Nope. I might get them again next year, but for now, let’s hope they grow the fuck up by then. Ugh. Focus on the kids who are awesome. Focus on the kids who are awesome.

Staff meeting though. Lots of crazy shit happened last Friday. Stupid shit. Dumb adults and dumb kids. It’s done though. It’s 6 weeks until the next field trip. I can do that, because I get Spring Break after it. This job. It’s hard right now, really hard. That said, it’s not as hard as having a foreign country invading you in a dick move. So there’s that.

Sustaining the Unsustainable…

OK, I obviously made it back from Phoenix and QuiltCon, and there are more quilt pictures, but I don’t have time to mentally (or digitally) process them yet. I came home and went right into school/house mode, which is why I wanted to leave in the first place. We had a good time hanging out, which is nice. It’s been a long couple of years without much of that, and we definitely need more of it. Spring Break! Yeah that’s 44 days away. So is seeing my daughter again! Woo hoo! And hopefully some quilt stuff…then camping and hiking with the man. I think I planned all but two days of my Spring Break, so nothing else will get done…at all. Not a bad plan until I get there and the grading is not done.

Which is part of what I’m panicking about now (again)…grading and an upcoming field trip. Once we get there, everything will be fine, but right now, it’s just crazy.

So what’s been going on? Well here’s my QuiltCon guild in front of that same donation quilt…

A few were photoshopped in…I made it to Phoenix just in time for this photo, but some did not.

The man drove for a bit on the way back, so I got to work on those damn flowers.

Apparently a year ago I was cutting them out of wool, so that’s a year working on this. I am not fast.

That said, I am almost done with the 4th type of flower…then just 2 more types to go.

I’m also still doing Molli Sparkles’ Cut-It-Up quiltalong. This is block 4, can’t remember what it is…hang on…

X Plus…well that bottom one sure is busy. I like it. I cut out 6. They’re not hard to piece, just don’t have a lot of time at the moment.

They’ve already posted Block 5, so shockingly, I am behind. It’s OK. I will survive. As my copyeditor is emailing me about the next readthrough and school is imploding into a mushroom cloud of to-dos. Yeah.

I did come back to my own quilt, which has a deadline, that honestly, I may not meet. I took a picture of these fabrics to remind me what I used for this plant, because there’s another one that’s more complicated further up the body, and I didn’t want to find those pieces now.

I often reuse fabrics in a quilt for continuity. That’s why I keep them all together until the quilt is finished.

I also started working on the sky, which has a sunset in it. Or a sunrise. Nah, it’s a sunset.

Because why keep it simple?

Sunday night’s progress…

And Monday night’s…

I got all of the sky done except for those two and the things zooming around the sky…which I finished last night…

Well, almost. I need to do the actual meteor and the rocket. I did the clouds and flames behind them. Then I get to start on the body and all the plants.

Kitten has taken to climbing the mountain of batting to survey me from up above. She’s trying to get up into the shelves (I’m not sure why)…

She usually hangs out behind that crazy pile. I need to remodel this room: new carpet, pull out the wallpaper, get rid of the popcorn ceiling, new lighting, maybe new slider doors and a bigger, nicer window, plus STORAGE. It’s on my list. Lots of things are on my list, but apparently my septic system needs a new baffle wall, which is probably expensive and will mean I don’t remodel anything.

School is all labs this week. Exhausting but good for the kids. Not as good for us…

But if they are paying attention, this helps them learn.

This is true.

Hey! My owl box has an actual OWL…a Barn Owl. We were going to pull it down to see if it needed cleaning, but then an owl swooped out. I’m hoping it has babies. And the bunnies in our yard are annoying me by eating all the new green leaves so they will have to run fast. Sigh. Predator/prey relationships disturb me, but I also recognize their necessity. It does make me worry about trimming the trees though. It’s not like I can afford to do that right now anyway…not until the baffle wall is solved.

Anyway, the owl part is exciting. School today is an exhausting mess of move this, clean this, move that, listen to instructions (them, not me), then a meeting I really didn’t want but let myself get bullied into. Fun stuff! Do everything for your students! And then more! Yeah, it’s not sustainable…we keep saying that and then we keep on sustaining it. But more ironing tonight (after grading)…that’s a good thing.

Let the Day Surprise Me…

Oh my. Yesterday felt like a Friday without the relief of it. I’m a little frightened of today, but am willing to let the day surprise me. I’m lucky to have a 3-day weekend here, especially since I still haven’t caught up with all the work from two weeks ago. I’ve found out that the way you tame boisterous and loud 6th graders is by handing them a glue bottle (it’s weirdly fascinating how quiet they get…before they start doing other stupid things…unfortunately it does not last long). I’m mostly done with adults at the moment…I have some I like, and some can just fuck off. I need some quiet time with my plants, my book, my fabric, on a trail, eating ice cream. OK that last one is in response to our almost-summer temperatures this week. Dry hot windy dry yeah. Hair loves it. Eyes love it. Head loves it. That’s sarcasm.

So I finished sorting all the Wonder Under…usually takes about an hour…sometimes more, sometimes less.

Basically I lay out one box for every 100 pieces and then stand there and sort all the little fuckers. It’s not fun but it makes the next part easier. From here, I will sort each box of 100s one at a time and iron them down. The drawing helps me figure out what’s what…unless I forget to number one…

It’s OK. I know it’s a lizard leg. I just have to figure out which lizard. I think this quilt has two or three of them. It should be obvious when I start ironing.

To iron, I need to clean up my studio. Sometimes this is quick and easy. Sometimes I have made a huge mess of it. Guess which time it is? Ah yes. The mess. Mostly because I’m doing some weirdo quilt-along thing where I use up stash on blocks I normally wouldn’t make. I had some half cut out but then didn’t get any further (hello Day Job), so on Wednesday night, I picked some fabrics for the third part of the blocks, and then rejected them last night, but I did get the rest of the chaos cut out.

It’s highly possible that this is too much chaos for one block, but there’s only one way to find out. That’s 6 blocks laid out by the way, in case you’re having a small heart attack. Well, continue to have it because they will all be in the same quilt top. Need something for the bed. Want to see it from a distance. It’ll be fine.

After that, I went after the piles on the floor from the last quilt and from winning my guild’s fat quarter game…

Sorted them all by colors and then started putting them away. I didn’t finish. It got late fast. Well, I did go hang out with friends and do some stitching in the evening. Finally got the pekinese stitch done on the fourth set of flowers.

The dark blue ones are what I’m on…so there’s three more stitches on each of those, and then two more sets of flowers to finish. I will never finish. That’s what it feels like anyway. I’m sure it will happen sometime in 2022.

I did rescue a stuck cat at one point last night…

She randomly gets her claws stuck fairly often…the other one does too occasionally, but she was more in sleep mode.

So tonight, hopefully I will finish clean up and then start ironing for this quilt. I might piece a few of those crazy blocks first, but I suspect it’s better to do that NOT at the end of a long school week. I’m already exhausted from all the meetings (literally ALL the meetings were this week and I still have one more) and not enough sleep. Plus frustrating students and more frustrating adults. I could do without all that.

Luckily the house (and TV) are mine this weekend. Although honestly I will probably be in here, in the stash zone, for most of the free time. I do still need to grade three thousand things and plan for another thousand, but the book calls, exercise calls (it’s been a shitty week for that too), and hopefully the weather will calm the fuck down so hiking isn’t horrendous. Ironically, as everyone else in my household is hiking this weekend without me. Ah well. Alone time with the cats. And the fabric.

Not Exciting. Didn’t Explode.

My morning self wishes my night self would fall asleep earlier. My night self feels less tired than my morning self, but does try by going to bed earlier and meditating and doing all those good things, but my brain is the culprit…overthinking like a bomb about to go off. Ah brains. So necessary to our existence and so problematic. Today’s brain is surveying what will need to happen and wondering if today’s body is up for it. Hard to say. I’m sure we’ll rise to the occasion, but I’m not currently feeling it.

Besides grading and cooking and finishing a book, I just trace things…

Lots of things. Last night, I just traced cacti.

It took me about an hours to basically trace what you see to the right, minus the lizard, because I’d already traced him. I started with the agave and then did all the cactus behind it. It’s a little over 100 pieces there, so I’m back to my 100 in 1 hour.

I’m sticking to my estimate of three more nights…so now it’s two more nights of this. About 200 pieces left. Then I can start cutting them out, which looks just about as boring as this on social media. Ah well. We can’t always be exciting…in fact, I rarely am. Ask my students. Even when I have them rust steel wool and dissolve magnesium. Not exciting. Didn’t explode.

Ah well. It is what it is. And today it is more rusting and dissolving, plus some hammering and bending and conducting of electricity (damn, someone probably should have checked the batteries), plus some oil pasteling and doing the pilates…ending up the day with guess what? Oh yes, tracing of the Wonder Unders.

Lost in the Weeds…

I spent about 5 hours yesterday afternoon dealing with the day job. I posted things, filled in pandemic contracts, calculated percentages on finished contracts, graded things, organized some calendar stuff, graded some more things, input some grades, and created one assignment. Unpaid hours, yes, but my prep period today is a whopping 45 minutes, so you can guess how much of that I would have gotten done today. Today I’m sure there are about 4 contracts that will close, so they will need percentages, plus who thinks I graded everything?! Anyone? Anyone? Yeah. That. I got lost in the weeds on the assignment I was doing. I had this issue last year with this assignment. I need to write down what I expect to get and save it somewhere so I can read it next year before I start.

I’m also rocking a stuffed-up nose, but have tested negative multiple times. My team says “take a day off,” and science would be OK (they wouldn’t finish the assignment, but whatever), but art would be a clusterfuck. And the next three days are labs and demos, so no guest teacher can do that. I’d have to either have them watch the video of it from last year’s Zoom or make up some completely different lame filler assignment. So I keep testing and stay masked and take meds for the cloggage.

Sleep has been problematic the last few nights as well, so I’m not feeling it. The whole get up and go. Nope. Drinking tea now to counteract the nope.

I did trace a lot of Wonder Under this weekend, more on Saturday than Sunday, due to my plan to never do the day job on Saturdays. Also, I was listening to the Surface Design Association conference stuff on Saturday morning, so I pieced the next block in Molli Sparkles QAL…

Piecing is not my forte. Directional stuff too…although I’m OK with both those things.

Here they are with the other parts…

Quilt of Chaos! I’m not even trying to make things match…just using lots of black and white prints. Things I can control. Sort of. Because piecing.

There was still another SDA thing, so I pulled the pieces I had cut for the scarf I didn’t start in last year’s QuiltCon…I watched the videos and took notes and bought the materials, but never started. So I pinned them down in a gradient of sorts…

Basted them all down half-assed and started stitching.

Well that’s fun. My official ‘listening to meetings on Zoom again’ scarf.

After SDA was done, we headed to Visions Art Museum to see A Better World, with my quilt Bill! Bill! Bill!.

It’s a nice exhibit to see in person, and looks great on museum walls…

The exhibit is up through early April…check it out!

I did some stitching on Chirp…this is the second of four of the fourth type of flower, with a pain-in-the-ass stitch going around it…

I’ll be good at it by the time I get to the fourth flower of it.

I traced a little on Friday night, then about 3 hours on Saturday night (the man had a show and I didn’t go)…

And another hour last night…

I’ve got 6 different yards of giant sky pieces that I’m trying to fill in with the smaller pieces of the body and plants and all. I hate waste…

This is taking a really long time to trace. I’m at 15 1/2 hours and I’m only in the 900s. It will go over 20 hours, I think. Usually it’s about 100 pieces an hour, but those big swoopy pieces were time-consuming…some in the time to trace them and some in how to fit them best on the yard of Wonder Under. I should finish some time this week though…

Great sentiment.

So survival day. Just get through it. Come home and nap? Not sure. Staff meeting about suicide today…annual notification of what suicidal kids look like. Yeah. We know, unfortunately. Let’s talk, though, about banning books that might help some of these kids, but not banning guns. Oh…you don’t want to talk about that? I’m shocked. Sigh. This country is so fucked up sometimes. With that, I’m going to go teach the next generation to think…maybe.

Cannot Verify Identity

It’s morning and Apple cannot confirm who I am. Same, Apple, same. I know I am exhausted after a 4-day week (and I haven’t lived through the 4th day yet). I have 78 thousand things happening in the next 4 days, including grades. I need to get tested today. I need to catch my kids up with my co-worker’s classes…IDK how we got so far behind. IDK a lot of things honestly. I can’t decide how to paint my house numbers on my newly painted mailbox. This seems crucial. I used regular acrylic paint last time and it was not a good thing. Honestly, of all the things I need to do in the next 4 days, that is the least of my worries.

Is COVID over yet? I have 3 more contracts to do this morning, and then IDK what’s going on with who’s come back and who hasn’t, but it looks like none of them have done any of their work. At all. So there’s that. Well, 2 of the girls did work. Everyone else thinks it’s a vacation.

I think I need a nap. I feel like if you live in a house with people, you should check your phone late at night to see if your partner texted you from the other room about how loud the television is. I had no energy to get out of bed and complain. It’s OK. I put the pillow over my head, and woke up 2 hours later with a cat half ON that pillow. Hence the feeling of suffocating.

Weekend. I see it. It’s full, but I see it. I won’t have to get up at 6:30 and be competent enough to teach about the kinetic energy of atoms. Unfortunately, today I DO have to do those things.

I finished the drawing. And I started numbering on Wednesday night…I also realized I didn’t take a picture of the whole thing. Whoops.

I only numbered the first 135 pieces Wednesday night…I had to go to bed. So I could get up at 6:30 and explain states of matter. That turtle is three states of matter…solid, liquid, and gas.

Last night, I had a quilt meeting on Zoom, so I finished numbering.

So it has 1329 pieces (assuming I didn’t miss any, which I probably did)…which isn’t too bad. I figured more than 1200 and less than 1500, so that was right on. It took a long time to number though…it’s complicated to figure out where pieces are going and where to number next.

Two and a half hours of numbering to be exact. That’s long. Also I was on Zoom, so that didn’t help. Probably that means I misnumbered somewhere and I’ll be screwed later. Also, it does not bode well for how fast tracing those same crazy pieces will go. Ah well. Luckily I don’t really care how long it takes as long as it ends at some point.

I had about 21 minutes before bedtime when I finished. OK, 21 minutes is pretty exact. So I started one of the applique stories pieces that’s been sitting on the light table for about a year.

Needs work. I’ll get there.

Ah at least it is Friday, yeah? Start tracing tonight? Also grades are due in 4 days. That. Ugh. Surface Design Association conference this weekend, though. Hopefully I’ll be able to attend some of it online and not just watch it all recorded (hopeful, ever hopeful). Anyway. Yeah. Probably first need to get this whole cup of tea in me and then another. Then maybe my eyes will open.

New Bird…

There’s a new bird in my yard. I haven’t seen it; just heard it. Sounds like a violin being played by a half-competent child. I’ve never heard it before…every morning, I sit in here or at the table and it screeches happily for a while. Is it Spring? Is that why we have a new bird? I don’t know. I wish I knew more about the birds who live here. We focus on the big beautiful owls and hawks, and I truly despise the mockingbird, but all the little gray brown birds…I don’t know what they all are. My neighbor above has added a bird feeder I can see from this window, and there are tons of birds hanging out around there. It makes me wonder why we never did that. Oh wait. We did. It was hard to remember to refill it and eventually it got gross and the metal corroded and we may have thrown it out. Yeah. I have too many things to do already. When the man leaves on his hike again, I have to remember the hummingbird feeders…at least they tell you. They buzz around your head angrily to remind you to fill them.

So that’s in my head this morning. The birds.

Monday night, I decided to leave the belly area and work on the sky. I did a few versions of “where do I put the sun” or “is there a sun?” or whatever, and then filled in the rest.

So the belly area is still undone…I still can’t remember what I was supposed to do in there. Last night, I went to the gym (to finish a book that really pissed me off about halfway through, but also to exercise), so I was late back, late for dinner, and then we watched a bizarre movie and I was stitching through it, nothing complicated, just the Sue Spargo Chirp quilt from a couple years ago, and I couldn’t get inspired to draw the belly.

Every flower is so freakin’ complicated. And there are four of each type. And I may never finish. Very positive thoughts about this quilt right now. So I got to here, looked at the clock, and it was bedtime. Aargh. OK. Well. Tonight is book club, so maybe I’ll finish the drawing? I don’t know. I still don’t know what’s going in that space.

I finished the flying geese…

Although I say that, and I just randomly laid these out, and obviously, I need one more? Except who knows what else will be added to this and I don’t need to decide anything right now.

I also went through the next drawer of black fabrics and made donation piles and then cut pieces for the boro-type scarf I’m making.

Sorted them a little. I’ll go through the white fabrics for the other half of the spectrum too.

Meditating last night with the little beast.

Have to focus on my breathing and not her butt cleaning. Difficult task.

OK, I have two meetings this morning. Sent notes to one. Can’t do both. Plus I teach 4 things today…advisory, science block 1, art, science block 2. I graded all the art projects yesterday. There are a lot of Fs because this group just doesn’t turn work in. Unfortunate. But I’m not waiting for them any more. We’re starting the next project. Onward! Hopefully my brain will figure out the drawing by the time I get to 9 PM, yeah? It would be nice. The new bird has gone quiet…must be naptime.