Happy Halloween y’all. Today I am a lemur. Tomorrow I will be a cranky old lady yelling at kids about their candy wrappers, but today I am a lemur.
I did blow off all school things yesterday after 3:40 PM and hiked…
Iron Mountain on Halloween was windy and chilly.
But beautiful. I almost fell twice, but a bush saved me. I don’t move well when I’m tired, and doing labs all day made me tired.
Also my classroom is a total disaster, but that’s what homeroom slaves er students are for.
I came home, cooked food and ate it, and sat around for a bit. Then I stood up, because I am crazy, and I kept tracing the new piece off the crappy photocopy.
I needed the old photocopy to help with some areas. You can see how much bigger (and BETTER) this one will be. I’m adding and changing a few things. Not a lot. My instinct is always to add more details, but this thing is already complicated enough.
There’s most of it…there’s the earth stuff in the background to finish…it was after midnight at that point. Ugh. I’m tired today. It will be fine. I’m giving a quiz and setting fire to things. It’ll be good. Tomorrow I’ll post pictures of the newest quilt.
The wind is doing freaky things. Hopefully it doesn’t do any of that near any of the California fires…and hopefully there are no new fires. What are the odds of that? Boychild and I are hiking tonight…hopefully there will be no fires there too. I’m exhausted already. Hiking 6 miles will help with that.
At least I’ll sleep well.
Lab day yesterday went pretty well. Some people didn’t read instructions. They had to sit down and watch others do the labs. Hopefully (damn, there’s a lot of that HOPEFULLY crap going around) today will be just as easy. Well…easy…because there was a lot of walking and thinking and trying to manage, but at least my aides showed up and helped out and nobody poured all the water into the sugar container. We’re good! I have low standards. It’s interesting…I don’t put out much of the materials any more because I figure some spacey kid will pour the wrong thing in the wrong place and it won’t work. There were a couple where I was like, um, so why isn’t the vinegar IN THE CUP WITH THE BAKING SODA? Like no reaction can happen if you miss the step where you pour the vinegar in the cup. Laughing my ass off on that one. Oh well. They can talk to someone else about what was supposed to happen there.
Anyway, survival day. They’re all survival days. My voice is shot, my body is tired, my brain can’t handle much. And yet I wrote a makeup quiz last night, so something is working. I create lessons on autopilot.
Today is Crazy Sock day. Again, every day is Crazy Sock day for me. I got this.
The official card for the show that opens Saturday. I’ll be at the opening, which starts at 6 PM.
I did tutoring after school. Then I went and picked up my quilt from the photographer. I did something very intelligent with the flash drive with the photos (can’t find it. I was tired. I’ll find it later.). Then I graded stuff, cooked dinner, graded some more. Kitten helped.
She so didn’t help. She’s totally in the way.
We argued about what was punk and what wasn’t. Good conversation.
Then I started drawing.
So I’m not changing much…but the lines after being enlarged to 500% are really thick and it’s hard to tell what’s happening in some places, so I am redrawing, adding and changing a few things (you can see I changed the umbilical cord where it hits the inside of the uterus, adding a placental area. I also gave that baby eyelashes.), but also clarifying where all the lines are. If you’re trying to trace pieces and the line is a 1/4″ thick, there can be a lot of variance in the overlap. I’d rather not have that.
I didn’t get super far.
And tonight I’ll be lucky to get off the couch after we hike. So there’s that. But it’s progress. It’s all progress.
School. Chiropractor. Hike. Collapse.
This sweet thang will guard the house while I’ll gone.
Today I’m supposed to dress like a nerd. I think I always do that. A discombobulated nerd who often wears blacks that clash with each other. I found my lab coat. That’ll have to do. Today we start two days of labs…where kids have to read instructions. I know this turns into a clusterfuck at some point, depending on my students…the ones who don’t read the part about 2 spoonfuls of sugar, and instead pour 50 ml of water into the entire sugar container. Nah. No need to kill anyone over that. I think. READ FIRST. We always say that. Like a million times. Anyway. Then there’s the kid who resubmitted her essay (which was late, but at least she turned it in, right?) about 5 minutes after I returned it to her with about 17 sentences of comments and a giant rubric, and I can guarantee she didn’t read all that. So they get a point here, a point there…instead of the big win. Ah well. ‘Tis slow progress we’re making this year.
It’s Red Ribbon Week. We start with moustaches (we moustache you not to do drugs). Most of my team…
I actually found it difficult to smile with the moustache on. IDK how they did that. Maybe it’s just me.
Speaking of slow progress, I was sitting there looking at my most recent rejection (it’s OK. I’m good.) and wondering what I was going to work on next. The drawing I did Sunday night is still a good start for a deadline in January, but I also know it’s a stretch, that whoever the juror is, they might not go for this. I’ll do it anyway, but I also realized that I have another deadline where I usually just pull from what I have, but what I have that fits the size and time restrictions is pretty limited. Huh. Well. So there’s a drawing I did back in 2016 for a coloring book my art group did. Well, I don’t know if I originally did it for the coloring book or it just ended up working for that, but I really want it to be a quilt. I enlarged it earlier this year, or even last year, and even numbered it, but then spilled wine on it or something and decided the pieces were too small…it started as a drawing in a 9×12″ sketchbook. Most of my big quilts start in the bigger sketchbook. So the lines get really thick when you enlarge. I had done it up to 300%, but didn’t think that was big enough. So yesterday, I recopied it.
The crazy story of my driving to FedEx Office twice after 9 PM (and WHY) will be my first November video on the Patreon. It’s pretty funny. Or crazy. Not sure which. Just know I fucked up a few times there. As per usual. So the bottom copy is at 250% and the top is at 500% total (the copier only goes to 400%, so I had to do complicated math. Well. For me anyway.).
Yeah, I know I can pay a bunch to have them copy it full size, but I like to mess with it. It’s also way cheaper this way. It actually taped together really well, until I got to one section.
The thing is, I want to redraw it anyway, because it was so small and fussy, and I want to fix some things. Like I said before, some of the lines are really thick.
But I think this is a better size. So I made a big piece to redraw it onto as well and got it on the light box…
That’s tonight’s project. I’m going to add some things in the sky around as well.
Kitten cleaning action…
She loves big pieces of paper. And string.
Calli sleeps hard.
Poor old lady.
Kitten was all over the place.
Anyway, slowly slogging through the grading still. Plus I’m picking up the newest quilt from the photographer today. Entering another show. That’s what I do when rejected…make/enter something new y’all. Now I’m gonna go meditate so I can handle the Not Reading Instructions part. While being a nerd. (Nerds read instructions.)
I’ve had three nights now with jumbled sleep…due to my brain in overdrive, the dog barking, just teeth-grinding discombobulation in general. I need to get control of that. It was a busy working weekend…not a lot of time to sit and relax. I took about an hour at the end of Sunday and drew, but otherwise, I worked for almost 6 hours on grading stuff, trying to get caught up (I’m not), plus I had a bunch of art stuff that had to be delivered here and there, and then an art group meeting, which took a good chunk of Sunday. I still have a huge pile of crap to deal with this week, in terms of prepping for labs, getting supplies, dealing with parents and other adults, and who knows what else. I won’t know until it’s here.
I finished the quilt in time. That’s a plus.
Here’s Saturday, for example…I had a Patreon video that was processing, then I was downloading more files for grading on the essay assignment, plus eating my lunch (late) and reading the book that will automatically go back to the library today, even though I didn’t finish it.
I don’t like to sit there doing nothing. Ever.
At some point while grading, I realized I’d left my computer charger at school…on the way there, a friend’s husband called about the spider plants they were trying to get rid of…so these came home with me.
To my boyfriend’s credit, when I started walking in the house with these, he didn’t even question it…that might have been the cold medicine though. He’s been pretty sick. (She went to get her charger and returned with plants. Totally logical.)
Kitten was my trusty grading companion, mostly not lying on the papers I was looking at, and only whacking me with her tail occasionally.
Fourth from the left is my quilt in the A Better World exhibit at Houston IQF…Bill! Bill! Bill! is about Bill Nye arguing with politicians about climate change.
I may be one of the few art quilters still using a binding, it seems. I like how it gives the piece a border…like a frame would.
More sleepy Kitten…now on my bag.
Eventually she got off it, and I piled a bunch of papers in there. I finished some things, didn’t touch others. Gave up on essay reading when I realized I was super tired and ineffective. I’m only doing the makeup essays now. Some are better. Some aren’t.
I spent about an hour, probably less, drawing this. I have a list of deadlines I’m looking at and trying to decide what I want to do next.
It’s a start. I don’t know how I feel about it for real. I do know I’m still tired. I also know making art makes the stress less annoying. Being stressed for art is one thing. My day job? I’m kinda over it right now. I mean I’m still doing my job and showing up and doing the work…I’m just mentally stepping back from some of the people shit. We’ll see how that really flies.
Hi. Long weekend. Not long enough. The dichotomy of my existence. I spent about 3 1/2 hours at school, trying to get caught up on grading. Well, and I set up the classroom for today. I need to remember to do that every Friday, although I had a good excuse last week. I got through one full class, one of my big ones (OK, three of them are big and the other two aren’t really small) and then about 2/3rds of the way through another one. Tomorrow, there’s a presentation in my classes that means I’m not teaching, but I have to be present, so I’ll be grading through that…think I can get through two more periods, if I’m lucky. That leaves one more…not sure when that will happen. I also graded warmups, finished the previous week’s homework, and did all the makeup work from last week. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.
I do feel really tired this morning. Not a good start. Oh well.
I posted last at the morning opening of Metamorphosis. From there, we had a meeting for that art group, then I came home, headed for school, came back, and then went off to the dive bar where the man’s band was playing Saturday night.
There’s usually nowhere to sit, which was fine. I had to wait 30 minutes in line for the bar, because one of the bar staff hadn’t shown up, so I got two. It was easier…
I drew for a while before they started playing and at the very beginning of their set…
Then I danced. I needed exercise. Too much sitting. I can’t explain the drawing. I just did it.
We were home reasonably early, in bed reasonably early, slept in a bit, still tired though.
Satch is still with us, but it’s not looking good. There was some hope if we could get him to eat, but that hasn’t happened. Although he came out to see me this morning…
And he still purrs when you pet him. Unless he’s mad that you made him take meds. I think it’s time, sweet boy. Funny to call him that. He’s kinda been an asshole. But sweet in his own way.
Calli sat with me on the couch for a while. I had given up on grading and was finally doing art stuff…
I did that for a couple of hours after packing up the box with the two sold quilts.
There’s still a lot left to do…so another couple of nights, I’m thinking. It’s relaxing, meditative, I guess. First I have to go to work and grade a lot more shit.
I wrote a post yesterday and then WordPress ate it or the title or both. Just temporarily. I renamed it because I couldn’t remember what I named it before. I just don’t know what happened to it, but it’s there. It’s all about grades and what I did all weekend. Wait. That was grades. I came home last night after work and did more of that. I stayed at school late first and did a bunch of that, but eventually slogged through the last of the essays (they’re really only 7 sentences, so calling them an essay is a joke, but if you have to write an essay BACK to them making suggestions on how they could do it better, then it feels longer). The stuff at home was trying to finish up the posting of the grades, which meant a million comments and citizenship grades and trying to figure out why the kid in Period 2 is now in Period 4. That shit was weird. But it’s done. I think. I hope. For now…because it’s just a progress report, and that means I’m still grading all the late stuff. And the stuff from last week. And then another one of these claim, evidence, reasoning essays will come in on Friday. But then I won’t see one for a while. At the moment, October is not feeling better or more manageable than September, but it’s the first day, so I’ll give it a break.
Meanwhile, Satchemo is having health issues. He’s currently hiding under the bed and refuses to come out for food, which is so incredibly unlike him…he has these events that look like (but aren’t) seizures, and he had three last night, different than before, no purring and with big wide staring eyes. He did just come out and vomit for me. Hmmm. Signs of love. He did it on the tile, so that is nice of him. We’ve talked to the vet and all the next steps are heinously expensive like brain scans. It’s hard to watch, but we don’t think he’s in pain. He’s not actually my cat, so I’m texting the man in charge of him…but it’s not looking good.
Poor kitty.
I have to admit to not having the mental ability to iron last night. I was just done. But I cut stuff out while watching a not-great movie. I mean, it was OK, but so obviously tailored to the under-13 crowd…
So this is another hour or so of cutting things out.
At least I’m working on this quilt, right?
Then I remembered I needed to draw for my Patreon (hey, it was a night)…this is the one from Sunday night that I didn’t like.
So I sat there and watched some TV and then drew this…
It’s a little different from what I normally do. If you’re on my Patreon, I’ll scan it tonight and clean it up and then send it to y’all. Well, the levels that get it anyway. Can’t remember what those are. It’s a good thing Patreon reminds me. Thanks to all the Patreon supporters who keep me in pens and paper. It’s much appreciated. Feel free to check out my Patreon (there’s a few public things) at the link over there on the right. Or here. I guess I could put one here.
OK, on to school. Not sure how today is gonna roll, but it’s gonna roll.
Another long day. I’m hoping for a normal-shaped day today with a trip to the gym at the end of it. Luckily, I have nothing to grade yet…that’ll be this weekend. A bunch of videos to watch…that’s about it. School. It’s always a struggle in September. I’m really feeling overwhelmed. It’ll get better. It always does. But not today. Not right now anyway. I was so prepared when I left school yesterday, until I realized I’d left behind the two things I needed for the meeting I was going to next. Ah well. So be it. It’s fine. It’ll get done.
Deep breaths. Maybe a run around the block.
I got home late. Another 2-hour meeting. I was tired. I laid down. I stared at things. Someone fed me (best part of the day, maybe).
I revived. It happens. I stitched after dinner…I’m not sure why I keep stitching on this. I’m still not sure I like it. It may not matter.
I did email them yesterday and haven’t heard back. We’ll see. I’m not totally invested in this venture. This one is less cluttered.
I have one other I haven’t stitched on. Then maybe I’ll do something else after dinner. Something I actually want to work on. Sigh.
Oh yeah, so school. I can’t get anything done. I drew the cover page like two weeks ago…
No time to color it. Usually I can sit down with the kids in each class, moving around the room, and get it done. Not so in these classes. So it’s not done. At all. Sigh. I should do that. I should mail it to my daughter and have HER do it. Or my niece. Could happen.
Anyway. I started tracing early last night. I managed to find energy to stand, from where, I do not know.
I traced for about 2 1/2 hours or so. I’m a little over 5 hours in with about a 1/3 traced. So I guess I have 10 more hours to go. That’s gonna take a little longer than I thought. The plus is that I lost one event on Saturday, so I can trace for a while…maybe even while listening to the videos I have to grade? Maybe? But gym tonight and plans tomorrow night…so maybe I won’t be done until Monday. Yikes. Time is always tight. I work best with a hellacious deadline apparently.
Cool things about the weekend: had an art opening, shipped a quilt that will get me a check in the mail, finished all my grading for last week, finished the drawing for the new quilt, and numbered it. All good. Today is Monday…the first day of three where I have 2-hour meetings/stuff after school. I will survive.
The quilt I shipped had to be washed to remove traces of cat dander. My parents have no cats, so I wash it there, and then iron it and pack it up there as well. I managed NOT to destroy their house while I was there, although I might have used their air conditioning. Briefly. (This is my mom’s studio…much bigger than mine, but similarly messy.)
Got that done Saturday, which is good. I need the money to pay off part of my portion of the boychild’s college loans.
Came back to this sweetheart asleep in the green fabrics. Again. Perhaps still.
I did go to the gym in the morning too…graded stuff…wrote Saturday’s blog there too.
Saturday night was off to the opening of The Big Story…my piece, You Pollute Me, is on the right, with work by Anna Zappoli on the left and Dan Adams between us.
This was at the end of the night, when they were closing up. It was hard to get a picture before that…although my friend Hannah Johansen was at the show (she had work in it too) and snapped this one…
of me explaining something to Julie. It’s a nice little show. Sophie’s Gallery in Kensington…come for the art, stay for dinner or a glass of wine. It has many options very close by.
This is Sunday morning. I swear she moved in between…
But that’s a look, isn’t it?
One of the things I did Sunday was prep two more small block samples…a house…
And a face…
I like variety…I finished working on this one…
Totally normal and acceptable. And started embroidering this one…
I should send them something tonight. Yup.
After that, I finished the drawing with all the things I’d thought of on Saturday while I was doing something else: monarch, bee, poppy.
She’s wide. But not high.
Then I spent an hour numbering her parts. Hopefully better than the last time I numbered something.
I mean, it would be hard to do a worse job than I did last time.
I’m sure it’s possible, but I’m hoping not.
890 pieces…if I numbered correctly. OK then…tracing tonight, one hopes. I have some other stuff I’m supposed to be doing and haven’t done yet. That’s always the case though. Right now, I need to go to school and fill 10 cups with water and 10 balloons with air. And then try to persuade kids that all solids are NOT hard. Like you do.
I came to this realization last night…from early May until the end of July, I was fighting massive horrible hot flashes. I’ve had them pretty consistently since I was 35. They’re genetic. They’re not going away. But these were significantly worse: hotter, more frequent, hell on my head. During that time, my blood sugar was also crazy. It was too high for no understandable reason. I tried everything. I was just constantly frustrated by trying to control the apparently uncontrollable.
Then the hot flashes mostly stopped. I could sleep again. My head wasn’t constantly on fire. And guess what else now seems to be under control? Yup. Blood sugar. And so many articles and medical people are like, if YOU do more, you can control it. My ass I can. I can’t control the hormonal fluctuations that caused that endocrinological natural disaster. I’m becoming more and more irritated with how the medical profession doesn’t support women my age.
So the positive is control and less fire. Here’s Calli demolishing a stick after a cooling dip in the pool yesterday…a much better choice than trying to walk her when the temps are in the high 90s…
I actually took a nap last night when I got home. I stayed late at work to make sure I was mostly prepped for Monday. We have a lab. I still need to blow up 10 balloons and fill 10 cups of water, but everything else is ready. This is a habit I should cultivate.
So a short nap, then stitching after dinner…another easy sample.
My couch companion turned 4 yesterday. He still has a baby face.
I finally found the mental and physical energy to draw…a great blue heron surveying the ocean…then a mule deer further out, by a stream.
I just need to fill the legs…I’m thinking desert. Then number it and start tracing. Bones? Yeah we need some leg bones…appropriate for the desert bits. School will need some attention this weekend also. Plus some down time with art stuff. And it’ll be cooler than it has been. That’s a good thing…because next week is gonna be hard enough. I’m writing this at the gym, by the way. Another good thing. If the animals are going to wake you up early, might as well take advantage of it.
It’s so quiet this morning. I can hear some bug or bird outside, and the pool motor is relatively quiet today, for whatever random reason. Sometimes I enjoy the quiet. I used to always need noise. I think I’ve spent enough years listening to kid noise that quiet is sometimes a blessing of sorts. It’s still hot here. It’s not unbearable, but it’s not pleasant. Have you seen the Bahamas? I guess nobody hasn’t seen the destruction there. I have to admit to not knowing much about the Bahamas besides the trip destination part. I had no idea there were so many islands. I hope we help. Can I force my government to help countries in need? Well, no, no I can’t. It makes me sad, how stupid we are right now. Ignorant. That was part of the conversation at my stitching meeting last night: ignorant vs stupid. Willfully ignorant in some cases. Ask me how many of my students still think the Earth is flat due to some dumbass Youtuber. The world. Is disturbing. I’m sure it always has been, but it seems worse right now.
So yeah, I had my monthly stitching meeting last night…I’ve been meeting with these women (and more; over the years, we’ve shrunk) for over 20 years.
We were taking a group picture for a member who now lives many miles away and whose birthday it was yesterday. We drink caffeine and stitch or crochet or knit or sit and talk because getting anything out of the bag is too much hard work. We bring stuff to share, like patterns and magazines and books we’ve made (OK, that’s just one of us…the rest of us marvel at the bookmaking but don’t do it ourselves.). It’s a good thing, these meetings of the minds.
I worked on hand-stitching this…
I’ve got to send some info to the Mingei this weekend, I think. So I should get some stuff ready for that.
I came home and finished up the last of the copyediting, marrying the Bibliography, and making sure all the stupid formatting worked. One of the last tasks was to make the table of contents fix itself (the page numbering), and after 20 minutes or so of searching the internet, the answer appeared. Just hit the damn Update TOC button. Sure. It took a while to figure out how to get that button, but once I did, it was like magic.
She’s done. I read all those words. About 5 or 6 times each one. And now I’ll get paid and I’ll be able to get the big trees trimmed before one of them drops a big branch on my roof.
I came home and actually exercised while reading my next book. I was exhausted. I’m still exhausted. It took a lot of energy and willpower to not just go to bed. I thought about it. But once I was up, off the couch, I wanted to do something on the drawing. At our stitching meeting of the minds, while I was answering the question of what the hell is coming out the nipples of the woman I’m drawing (she’s an earth mother…that’s a stream going out to the ocean…it’ll make more sense in color), they were suggesting other things I could draw, so there’s a grey whale…
Or a penis, since that was also a suggestion, and honestly, whales are hard to depict like this. Hopefully it will read better in color. Less penisy.
I also did a sun on the opposite side from the moon…
I’ve got some desert plants that need to go in somewhere…legs? land? And a decision about how to finish it up. Getting closer. I might finish tonight. It’s possible. Then number it and start tracing. And SLEEP. Oh yeah, I have an opening tomorrow night…for The Big Story at Sophie’s Art Gallery in Kensington. It’s 5-8 PM…stop by. I’ll be there closer to 5:30…and probably gone before the end, just because I’ll need to eat. But it’s still a cool little show.
Kathy Nida 