I Got Some Lovely*

I realized this morning that my brain has been a week off…well, all week…simply because I forgot to cross off the days of the week on the paper calendar that hangs to the right of my computer. I kept thinking I have more of January…but in reality, January has slipped through my fingers. I’m such a visual person. As a teacher, I write and say the date multiple times a day and it just doesn’t stick until I SEE it. This is one of the reasons I started doing something like a bullet journal this year, although I dunno if it’ll stick. But it helps me to see the tasks and write them out or cross them off, even though I’m using online calendars and to-do lists as well. I have paper calendars on my wall at school and in my office, and a white board-type calendar on the fridge, but I often lose the little tasks, the tiny stuff, the transfers, the payments, the mailing of this or that. I think the weekly thing is helping with that. Maybe. I know for me that writing it down, not just typing it, helps me remember it.

Plus if I’m feeling a little unmotivated to do other stuff, I start drawing in it.

I don’t usually do a lot of color when I draw. Wait. I don’t do any color when I draw. But when I was a kid, the best Christmas present ever was the big pack of 50 different color pens…because all the ones from the year before had dried up, except for the really ugly colors. I find myself buying colored-pencil or pen kits, even though I don’t color. Yeah, maybe I should color. In my spare time.

I’m still sick. Not horrendously sick, but not feeling my best. Just want to lie around in my pajamas all day and read fiction while drinking tea. Can’t really justify doing that though, because I also want to finish my quilt and get some grading done, because it’s weighing on me. Last night was gaming, though…so I was working on this a little. Just the tree to go really.

Came home and sat on the couch until I realized I was really tired and should go to bed. The animals are smarter than I am.

I got up this morning and saw this…this is what I want to finish this morning. So I will.

Girlchild was silent for like 14 hours…and I realized she was flying to Northern Madagascar, done with orientation and starting her first home stay and classes. When there’s no wifi, I don’t hear from her. There’s going to be a lot of that. Really, 14 hours is nothing. When she’s in Boston, I sometimes go days without hearing from her, but I see her liking my photos on Instagram or whatever, so I know she’s there, I feel her presence. I paid her parking tickets from school, so hopefully they won’t tow her car while she’s gone. Hopefully her friend will move the car around too. We couldn’t find anywhere to store the car for the 4+ months she would be gone, so this was the solution.

When I was driving to gaming last night, a 20-minute trip I can do in my sleep, I had this idea for a series, but not just my own work…so I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever pull this off, but I like the idea. When reading all the negative stuff toward white women, with the Trump vote and white feminism overwhelming the feminism of others, it’s not enough to say “It’s not ME!” because really that’s irrelevant. The real question is what can I do to (not fix that, because that’s not a thing…I can’t fix it)…to open up the conversation with all women and those who identify as women and those who don’t fall within the two-gender system. I always think of my art as a conversation with the viewers…easier for me as an introvert to talk through my art than to talk in person, I think. So I had some ideas about having a real live conversation with someone who is not a bog-standard cis hetero white chick, like me, but who has a view of themselves that can be drawn…ideally they can draw, although maybe not necessary.

I have this one woman in mind who is engaged in her ethnicity, her color, her race, her culture, and her femininity (honestly, she’s way more feminine…I hate that word…than I ever am), and she draws. And we talk…we talk about our experiences…being a woman in the world (or however she thinks of herself as being in the world) and we draw. You’ve seen my work…I like figure drawings. I imagine she draws herself or a figure that is her, and I draw myself. We surround our drawings with the things we feel about the conversation, about how to find the intersection between our experiences. I listen a lot, because honestly, I know my experiences of being a white woman raised in a fairly affluent community and expected to go to college and following through with that…these are much easier than the experiences of say my female students, who didn’t go camping with the Girl Scouts or to summer camp or to art classes when they were in elementary school or freakin’ tennis lessons (I hated tennis. I sucked at it. But I did have lessons) or cotillion (oh holy crap, another thing I hated). Or knowing you were going to be able to go to college. It’s funny, because I don’t feel like those tennis and cotillion lessons are part of who I am now…but they probably pushed me into what I am. I don’t know. But I feel like if we can talk one on one, then maybe some connections can be solidified. Because it’s true that there is no equality for women unless there is equality for ALL women…and honestly, if we could figure out how to dump this either-or system of you are male or you are female, that would be cool too.

So she draws her figure and I draw mine, and we try to draw some intersection between the two. Then honestly, I want to make a quilt out of that. But I wonder if that is my taking over her image, and I don’t want to do that. I could teach the process and let her create her half…I could do the drudge work, the cutting, the ironing, the quilting. Or I could have her color a cartoon and then follow that when I iron her side to fabric. Or have her bring fabrics to the table. Some of this may be overwhelming to someone who doesn’t create similarly to me though…I don’t know. Maybe even just asking for the figure is too much…although I’d be totally OK with having this conversation and both of us drawing and then maybe coming back together and they have this painting or drawing or charcoal or sculpture that is their version and doesn’t even have a figure in it, but it sits/stands/hangs next to mine. I do want some sort of intersection though, some connection, some place where we come together. So that’s part of the conversation. Where do we intersect? Where do we have things in common? Where can we live and converse and support and create a better, more inclusive world?

Anyway. It’s in my head. Maybe it will become something real in the next year. I do know that even if all I had was a drawing and I did all the fabric choosing and ironing and quilting, it would still be a piece by both of us. Owned by both of us. Then maybe it can go out there in the world and speak to both sides. If there’s a lack of understanding, maybe the viewer connects with one side and can try to see the other side. If that’s a problem…and I think it is. It might even be worthwhile to try to find some white woman who voted for Trump and would be willing to have that conversation with me and draw with me. That might be the hardest conversation, because this is about empathy in many ways, and I have a hard time holding on to empathy for a group who seems to inhabit hate for others as part of their existence. But I realize some of that is my misunderstanding of why they voted the way they did. Change is hard. Change is scary. Some of us embrace it more than others. Some of us jump on its back and ride it into the sunset. Some hide in the closet.

Of course, there’s a strong possibility that my idea is just more white feminist trying to fix it all. Hence the need for conversations.

But today? Today I’m going to finish quilting this little piece. And hopefully the cold meds will kick in. And maybe I’ll draw some stuff. I’ve only got about 17 drawings in my head right now.

*XTC, My Brown Guitar

Mahna Mahna*

So the girlchild got stuck in Paris for about 5 more hours than she was planning, which sounds like an awesome thing, unless you’re stuck in the airport and haven’t slept in 24 hours or more. She just left for Madagascar, 11 hours long, but she has the whole row in the airplane to herself…I suspect as soon as they hit altitude, she’s stretching out and drooling sleepily for as much of that as possible. It’s a horrible feeling, not being able to lie down when you’re that tired. So sometime tonight, I’ll hopefully hear from her again.

Meanwhile, I’m sick. I guess your body holds off all the crazy sick around you (all my students are sick) until you release some of the stress by putting your kid on a plane…and then that’s it. Not true, actually…I must have been exposed Friday or Saturday. Oh well. It was gonna happen sometime. It’s not the crazy flu everyone’s been having…feels like a bog-standard cold. Woo hoo! While teaching! And setting chemicals on fire! I was so tired yesterday that I forgot to go to the chiropractor. Unfortunately, because I think I needed it.

Instead, I cleaned up all the girlchild’s leavings…we had boxes and plastic wrap and those stuffed-with-air bags that Amazon uses. I sorted it all and recycled most of it. And then went around finding her left-behind bags and water bottles and all the stuff she borrowed from my dad that she didn’t take with her (she did take a lot…just not the 20-year-old lotion…Dad, if you’re reading this…I threw it out. It smelled really awful. I’ll buy you a new one.). And I did some grading and some school tasks. I even made dinner from scratch, but it turned out weird. Dunno why. Probably did something wrong. I’m not an awesome cook like she is.

Then we watched Ghost in the Shell, which was OK…still don’t know why they cast white people in Asian characters…that shit is stupid.

It’s been a while since I worked on the SJSA blocks, and I’m almost done with the last one…

Gotta decide what to do with the gunshots…

It was really cold last night…

Simba is super cranky at the moment. All his favorite people left and he’s stuck with us. We don’t sit still enough for his liking.

Girlchild texting me from over the Atlantic Ocean…

No such texts on this flight…batteries are dying.

So there were a few small changes I needed to make to the commission drawing…I re-angled the “perfect”…it was bugging me…

The original poem was about a boy…but this quilt is about a girl…so one request was to change the two gendered words…

And then these screws are like what is used in scoliosis surgeries (and perhaps other back surgeries), but they weren’t exactly like what was used in hers, so I had photos of the screws to change them…

So I did…I just cut out the space and put new paper in and redrew…just a few things…

Easy fix…

Straightened out…

And then, I numbered…because I couldn’t stand it anymore, not knowing if I stayed within my own boundaries. I knew I tried, but I often suck at that.

Because the piece needs to be under a certain price, I aimed for something the same size and complexity as one of the bathtub quilts, because they are under that price. I figure cost by keeping track of my hours. It’s the only way that makes sense to me. Some big quilts have fewer pieces (which affects the time) than some smaller quilts. So I can’t do it by the inch or foot, like some quilt artists do. This works for me. Plus keeping track of that shit for the last 15 years or so has made me better at estimating time.

Not perfect, just better…

I wanted to be under 800 pieces…and I was! A miracle.

Now just waiting for the final OK and partial payment, and then I’ll get started. I set up the contract so that they can refuse the quilt at the end if they don’t like it, but I still get a percentage, so I’m not working for nothing. I don’t think it will happen, but I want the new owner to be happy with it and I want to be protected in case they aren’t…so this was what I came up with. It’s hard for someone to look at my black and white drawings and get a good idea of what the quilt will look like. I have a better idea in my head, but I haven’t even colored it out or anything. That stuff kind of comes as I’m staring at the drawing and the drawers of fabric. It’s a very intuitive process.

Also just waiting to know the girlchild is safe on land again…that’ll be a longer wait. I’m excited for her but also nervous. I didn’t sleep much last night because I would wake up and see if she had texted that she had left…because I was worried she would fall asleep in the airport and get left behind. Mom worries, right? Because she’s a capable and amazing adult and she will be fine. Looking forward to seeing her pictures and hopefully reading her blog.

OK, taking my snotty self to school, where, I’m not kidding, I’ll be setting shit on fire. Stand back! I should take a hairband, huh.

*Cake, Mahna Mahna

To Take Away the You*

I was marching yesterday…hence no post. Up too early. Left early. All that stuff.

I made my sign Friday night…

Two sides. Last year, I knew it was going to rain and I left everything too late, so I just printed out a sign and taped it so it wouldn’t run too much…

This year, I even managed a stick.

The rest of Friday night was pretty laid back. I was exhausted by the end of the week. Apparently, so was the puppy. Girlchild was trying to read her textbook (supposed to be done by the time she arrives in Madagascar), but really was binge-watching SVU.

I did some grading…one whole assignment in two days. I know part of my lack of efficiency is because she’s leaving. It’s stressful to send your kid that far away. I am barely used to the 3000-mile distance. This is so far. And we know communication will be difficult. No daily texting. No FaceTiming whenever she’s stressed or wants to talk. It will be hard. For her…and me…

Simba also finds it stressful. He wants to sit on her (or someone) constantly.

But she came along for the march…

It was a pretty day, although pretty damn cold (for Southern California) in the beginning…

And we did actually get a tiny bit of rain…

And they always take too long to get us walking. This sweatshirt design was pretty awesome.

37,000 people marched (apparently) in San Diego…more than last year. The president seems confused by our purpose.

Honestly, sometimes I think we’re confused by our purpose. Well. I’m not. I want equal rights for everyone. I want those who are hurt by racist and sexist policies and behaviors to have a voice and rights. There’s a lot of things I want. Accessible and cheap healthcare for everyone. Consequences for discrimination. More support for the groups who need it…my students…the refugees, those stuck in poverty and affected by jailed family members and disability and familial deportations and the fear of deportation and drugs and gangs and all that shit. The threat of being sent back to where they came from…Yo! White folks who threaten this! YOU GO BACK. Seriously. How uneducated are you to think you were here first? SIGH. Oh my. Seriously.

Anyway…we marched. We yell. I make art. I write. I teach. I hope. Sometimes I laugh.

Oh yeah. I vote. Every damn time. All these women vote.

So two problems to solve: how to encourage people to vote, and to vote thinking about everyone on the planet and not just themselves. To vote with empathy. Then how to talk to the white women who voted for Trump…who thought that was a solution to whatever they are missing or whatever they need. I have a hard time with that…I just don’t understand. Especially those at my job who voted that way…because how can you work at my school and not have empathy for those you work with? I don’t know how to have a conversation about that. What are you trying to protect? Sigh. Big sigh.

After that, I graded some more and then went to the Visions opening…beautiful quilts by Jane Sassaman and Betty Busby…totally worth seeing those. Then dinner and a drawing in their receipt book.

Then came home, finished Stranger Things, and tried to go to bed. Unfortunately, my stomach rebelled. Food poisoning? Who knows. I’m OK this morning. Finally got a decent amount of sleep. Still have a million things to grade, to do, to clean. And up super early in the morning to drive the girlchild to the airport. Then I count the days until she’s back, even though I know it will be an awesome trip.

*Ingrid Michaelson, Sort Of

Wish You Were Here*

Well I’ve been up (awake) since 5 AM. Hot flashes, worry about the girlchild’s trip and forgetting something, money (of course)…timing’s all wrong on this trip. Usually I can pay college a little bit at a time. This is more like pay a lot right now and later you won’t have to. But you have to get to later. We’re not there yet. Boychild leaves tomorrow. Girlchild doesn’t leave until Monday, but we spent a good chunk of time yesterday shopping for her trip (and some for the boychild…he’s still in need of clothing). So I’ve been wide awake, hoping for sleep, for more than 2 hours. Guess that’s a done deal, eh?

Straight up, this weekend was a clusterfuck for getting stuff done for me. I guess that’s not surprising, considering we’re trying to get a kid outfitted for 4 months in Madagascar. It’s just a lot of details. I can’t even figure out the travel plugs. I think it requires a degree in physics. Or something more than what I have. Same with the phone. Oh well…it will all work out one way or another. It always does. I wish I could tell the part of my brain that was awake and worrying at 5 AM that. But it doesn’t listen.

Anyway, most of it isn’t crucial. I sent the drawing off for approval and have that, tentative for a few days on one piece of it. An easy piece. So that’s cool. It means I can do the fun stuff now. Well, I’ll start numbering and tracing Wonder Under with final approval, and until then, I have other things to work on…as always. Here she is…

About 34 x 41″ for the image…so it will be about 44 x 51″ final…maybe a little smaller. That’s exactly the size I was aiming for, so that’s good. Keeping track of quilt processes for years is sometimes useful.

Awww…doggies. Girlchild is the only one who lets them sleep all night with her. They will be sad when she leaves.

Yeah, well, this is the 2nd time in the last month that a tent has been set up in the living room. Just a normal day here. This is one of the weirdest, but easiest tents to set up, luckily…because it’s flying (HOLY FUCK) 11,000 miles away. And then being set up in a tropical rainforest. OK. I’m not sure I wanted to know that number. But now I do. Eleven-hour time difference too.

Girlchild is ready.

Here’s the disaster that was packing the backpack…and she’s not done. But I think she has enough bandaids. And we figure some stuff, even if she doesn’t use it, she can leave it with host families. Apparently things like tampons and bandaids are great gifts. Seriously, when they tell you to bring enough tampons for your entire trip? Yeah. Well.

I couldn’t handle much last night, but the last two nights, I’ve been stitching the last of the SJSA blocks down. I finished the first word with a backwards buttonhole stitch.

It just sort of accidentally happened.

This is Mr. Biteypants. He’s got an owie or two, and he keeps snarling and biting at anyone who tries to check the sores or scrapes or whatever they are. Even girlchild couldn’t get him to stop.

Yes, I have school all week. No, I am totally NOT in the right mindset for it. I will be fine, though…today and tomorrow are easy. I mostly know what I’m talking about. I think we have to make a bathtub full of Oobleck tomorrow, but otherwise, things are fine. FINE. No really. They are. It’s amazing how stressful being a parent of adults is. You thought you survived babyhood and then middle school and teenagers and sending them off to college. But no. There’s more. It will be an awesome trip, though. I think she’ll have a great time, in between being totally overwhelmed. It’s a great experience to go off to a foreign country like this. I totally think all kids should have to do it, just for the world perspective alone. Although it’s pretty easy to figure out what other countries think of America right now. We’re sorry! Well, most of us are. Seriously. I don’t know how much more sorry I can be.

*Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

But Here’s a Little Feedback*

Aargh. Some days are like running in oatmeal. Sludge days. I did eventually get all the makeup work graded and input. Yay! One thing done. Miraculous. I went to two openings…more on those tomorrow, because I don’t feel like writing about it now. Watched Wonder Woman and was not impressed…worse than that…irritated. Sigh. The portrayal of women in movies, books, TV shows. So annoying. I hope I don’t add to that. I hope I’m a different voice. Maybe not. Hard to say.

I feel out of sorts with the whole world today. Hard to feel that way as I’m looking out at trees that have decided Spring is coming. I really should go walk something today…even if it’s just myself and my headphones. If I’m irritated by blue skies and trees, there’s something wrong there.

Girlchild finally got a backpack…that’s not really the rain shield…it’s a pocket.

Now to figure out how to fit everything she needs to take in that thing. Ha! Yeah right.

Makeup grading included this. If only I knew what he meant…

Either he was in Israel or he wasn’t real or I really just don’t know what he was trying to tell me.

I finished the second SJSA block. The last one is back to clumpy glue…

But I’m on time, I think, so that’s good.

This morning, Satchemo would claw at my toes every time I stopped petting him…

Sheesh.

So I cut the head off. It bugged me.

There it is. Still bugging me.

Better. It’s not much different, but different enough to make me happy.

I’ve put more time into the drawing…I’m going to be done today. Which is good. And then hopefully approval or minor changes? And then into the doing part…which is where I like to be.

All day yesterday, nuclear bomb drawings in my head after Hawaii’s oops. Terrifying oops. This is the world we live in. It’s not a very pretty one at the moment. OK. So I’m trying to get consensus right now on a grocery list, and even that is too hard for everyone. I’m considering handing everyone a $20 bill and walking away. Deal with yo’selves now. When you’re the mom, you’re the one in charge all the time. I would love to NOT be in charge. Sure, we can blow off grocery shopping until 8 PM, but then you said you’d cook for your grandparents, and when is that going to happen? I don’t know either. My eyelids are both twitching.

Gonna go draw some more…draw some space and stars and a happy sun and an alien craft, because you can’t draw space without aliens. Damn. Maybe I’ll put an alien in too. OK, that’s probably too much. But a happy alien? Might be OK.

I might eat some ice cream for lunch too. Because.

*Patrick Sweany, Them Shoes

I Know You Better Than You Fake It to See*

It’s Friday. Maybe you’ve noticed. Short weeks aren’t necessarily easier weeks (and the only short part was the part with the kids in it). And I’ve been blowing off schoolwork all week, so I’ll actually have to grade something this weekend. It’s three days. I guess I can do that.

My students are trying to figure out the difference between solids, liquids, and gases. Yesterday, I sat and listened to one class argue about whether liquids were wet or not…I like to just let them go sometimes. And this is where they went.

I love that stuff. Chemistry is not my favorite subject to teach…I’m a life science person. But the new standards mean I don’t teach much of that. Chemistry is good for labs though and for making them question everything they know. Today we’ll continue with that. Fun stuff.

Still doing herringbone. Closer to done.

So I enlarged the drawing I’ve been working on…I did it at 200% and 250%, because I wasn’t sure how big to make it. I generally do the larger, but I need to stay within a cost constraint on this one, so bigger becomes a time and cost issue. So I taped the 200% enlargement together, because it looked doable. Sometimes the pieces are way too small. I added space on the top and will need to add a little on the left side to center it…but even with that, I’m still looking at an image size of about 35″ x 43″…which is right where I want to be. So that’s good. Lots of water in the bottom of the piece…

I still think I’m replacing that head. We’ll see. It’s not quite right.

I have cut off and replaced heads more than once in the past.

I have to admit that I didn’t get much done last night. I was tired and did some cleaning, put the wrapping paper away, which meant reorganizing the whole damn closet (not a 5-minute project). And I tried to go to bed a little earlier. So I could have done more drawing, but more standing? Probably not. Long day. Another bunch of errands after school. Too much.

So when I went to bed, Kitten was on Calli’s bed. And Calli is too scared to lie down with her.

Mommy. That thing has sharp points. So Calli lies down on the floor. Now I know Kitten will end up curled in bed next to me, so I tell Calli that. Sad face Calli.

Kitten looks over at her even. She wouldn’t mind sharing the bed, but Calli won’t do it.

Big Golden Retriever scared of a chubby little cat. Funny stuff.

So weekend plans: art openings and maybe the Star Wars movie and some gaming tonight and some sewing stuff down and finishing the drawing and maybe getting started on that quilt and hanging out with the kids and probably desperate crazy shopping for the girlchild’s trip. And grading. It’s a good thing I have three days, eh?

*Smashing Pumpkins, 1979

She’s Got a Carburetor Tied to the Moon*

Ah patience…I have so little of it at the moment. Probably related to sleep too. Each night it’s easier to fall asleep and stay there…mostly from exhaustion, I think. Better than the insomnia of earlier this week…or the crazy nightmares. Although watching Stranger Things and Fortitude before bed might not be the best choices. They definitely show up in the night.

Yesterday’s professional development could have been done on our own…seriously. Did not need help with that. Annoying. Plus I spent 20 minutes on our spy program (we can watch what the kids are doing on their computers) trying to get one class back on task. The class that had a guest teacher in there. A teacher who was supposed to be keeping them on task, off games and YouTube videos. So we’re gonna have a discussion today of job skills. How is what you did yesterday with the guest teacher in here gonna look on your resume? How will you explain your behavior to your boss? We’ll see how that goes. Sigh. Double sigh. Don’t pull me out of my class for stuff I can do on my own. I’m still irritated by the conversations we were having. I think people who aren’t in the classroom have no idea what some of us talk about all the time to our students.

ANYWAY. It’s not a shocker that certain parts of my job annoy me. I loved Tuesday when kids were first googling things like plasma and chemical reaction. I had interest then. Hopefully that will continue through all the labs etc. Enough for them to question what’s happening and try to figure out answers to problems.

I’m back in a routine of coming home, petting all the furry things, reading for a bit if there’s time (I’m trying to make time. I like to read.) or racing to exercise. Then dinner, whether I’m the cook or recipient…a bit of stitching after eating…and then art of some sort. I realize I will soon have to do some actual schoolwork during that time. I’m avoiding it this week. Seriously avoiding it. For as long as possible.

Routines are good for some things…they’re how I get art made almost every night. My brain is trained for that after-dinner thought…what am I gonna work on tonight? Now because I’m getting a little more tired every night, that gets harder as the week goes on. Last night, I was zoning out way too much…I didn’t start art until pretty late. But I started.

I did work on this after dinner…finished Want and started that giant J.

More subtle herringbone. This one is so much easier to sew. I wish I’d started with it…I wouldn’t have procrastinated so much.

I had couch companions…

That kept changing…that one really wanted to be ON me, but 20 minutes of gentle persuasion put him over there. After he scared off all the dogs. Smallest animal in the house. Mostly benign, unless you’re prepping food in the kitchen. Then he’s like a food-seeking missile. Annoying.

More slow drawing. I’m at the need-to-enlarge stage. Guess I’ll toss it in the car and see if I can find time for that after school.

I’m having fun with the background I think. The non-human parts. There will be more…not a lot more…but a bit on either side, I think, and more up top. Enough to fit in a quote and some space stuff. Have you seen the new pictures of Jupiter? Pretty awesome stuff. Maybe this needs a Jupiter. A new discovery of something that’s been there all along. Definitely a sun and some stars. Yes, it’s a quilt about a kid who had scoliosis surgery, about all the metal in her spine now…but it’s also just about being in the world, being a part of it. The mom made a comment to me early on about how 100 years ago, her daughter would probably have been in a wheelchair…and this surgery allows her to do more of what she wants. Plus she got taller! I should figure out how to add that. I would love to get taller all of a sudden. I’d probably bump into things even more than I already do. Anyway…I wanted there to be a lot of joy in existence in this piece. Not heavy…but joy. Trying to get there. I’m actually considering redoing the head on the right. We’ll see. It’s bugging me, so I will probably have to do that.

Anyway, I can’t do that until I go to school for an early meeting today and then get through all the discovery stuff in classes and who knows what else is on my to-do list. I’m back to 4 or 5 reminder lists and calendars to make sure everything gets done daily. I just typed “enlarge dwg” on my calendar and it autocorrected to “enlarge dog”. I don’t need to enlarge the freakin’ dog. Then the kids come back tonight, although I won’t see them until tomorrow. Hopefully they had fun. One leaves next week and one the following week. I do miss them this week, even though the stress levels go up and at least one is cranky on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s me!

OK, early meeting. Prep for lab. School brain in place. Art brain go sit in a corner and ruminate for a while. You can come out later.

*Beck, The New Pollution

Well, You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You*

I think the puppy must be about to burst. He’s been refusing to pee since the rain started. On Monday. I carry him out and even put him under a tree, but no. He’s wide-eyed, trying to escape back to dry parts (aka the house). I think he must be voiding himself somewhere unknown, like while I wasn’t watching, he’s learned how to use the toilet and is just badmouthing me in his head as I put on his leash and try to persuade him out into the bushes. Luckily, the rain is supposed to stop today. It’s not like we didn’t need it…we just didn’t need it in such large amounts in a short period of time, as the mudslides north of here attest. Timing is everything.

So really, Simba’s problems are minor in the bigger picture. He’ll poop somewhere, sometime. That part is guaranteed.

Yesterday was the first day back with students. They were pretty zoned out by the end of the day. So were the teachers. We started a new unit, so I got to draw and color with them. It was probably all any of us could handle.

I had tutorial after school, so I had exactly zero brain by the time I fought the weather home. I read for a bit even…the book club book for February is kinda big, so I started early for once. I don’t always make it to book club, but I always read the book.

Then I made dinner and did the stitching I usually do afterwards…just a little a night. This is a closeup of what I finished the night before…

And last night. Not sure I have the right variegated thread for the last word. Maybe I’ll go balls out with a teal or pink. Who knows.

Then I really wanted to finish ironing this smaller piece that’s been rolling around my art spaces for months now.

It only took another hour or so…ironed everything down…

Pulled a leftover piece of background I had lying around (that’s the plus with doing smaller pieces)…and ironed the whole thing down. Easy peasy.

Now she’s ready to be stitched down…sometime later this week? Maybe.

Then back to the drawing board. A little slower last night…brainpower reduced by day job.

Land…water…there’s going to be space above, but I need to enlarge the whole thing to do that…or maybe just copy the top and tape it to the next page? But with this one, I think I need to see the whole thing. We’ll see. More tonight. The work day will be shorter…so that should help. We have to sit through some professional development (again), so that’s annoying.

Anyway. I see progress, even if it’s small.

All the animals are missing my kids…who are visiting cousins in Seattle. They are so in my face this morning too, because they had company yesterday, but today, will be left again all day. I feel bad for them…wish I could take them to school, but that can’t happen…too many kids with allergies. Plus Calli would pee on them in her excitement. And Simba might bite someone, because he’s an antisocial dick sometimes. And the cats are pretty unpredictable with humans.

OK. This headache and I need to go to school now.

*Laurie Anderson, O Superman

Be My Very Own Constellation*

Well. I tried sleeping with the pillow over my head to shut the rain up (seriously, it’s not white noise to some of us) and then the wind picked up at 3 AM, so I’m not sure how much sleep I actually got around all that natural shit that we need to fall from the sky because drought. Always the drought. We’ve only had an inch of rain total (including last night) since July, so it really is a dry year…or a normal year, with last year as the crazy outlier. Half our students won’t show up today because of the weather, although a few little guys showed up yesterday…this is the first year we’ve started with kids on Tuesday instead of Monday. The district just wants us to have more and more professional development, and this is one of the ways they try to make it happen. It was good, because we got a lot of choice time instead of enforced crap…my coteacher and I did some planning and hopefully will get caught up. By June. Maybe.

And remember how I told you that school makes me more artistically efficient? I wonder if it’s because the non-art part of my brain is exhausted and dead when I get home, so the art part can run rampant. It really is about shutting that part up sometimes (just like I have to shut the art part up at school)…so I do think that is a factor. It’s OK…I’ll never be able to afford to retire, so I won’t have to worry about how I will make art when I’m old without the work distraction.

It was already starting to rain when I got home, but I knew the dogs needed exercise, so I leashed them up and literally dragged them out there. Well, the little one needed some significant persuasion. He kept looking back where he thought the dry car might be, and broke into a run at the end. The old lady does what she’s told. She gives me a look when it starts raining really hard, but otherwise, she’s just happy to be out there…

It wasn’t too bad most of the way, but they were pretty wet when I got back…

We did a short version, because it was raining pretty hard on the back end.

Puppy needed comfort from someone besides me when we got back.

Mean old lady makes me go outside in this weather.

After that, I did a little ironing on this piece…there’s really no excuse for not getting it done. It’s small and easy. Nice filler when my brain isn’t quite ready for drawing.

We’re watching one episode of Stranger Things a night with dinner…so when I finish eating, I’m working on the SJSA blocks until the episode finishes…this herringbone is going much faster than the buttonhole was…honestly, it’s not the stitch; this glue isn’t as hard to stitch through.

This is what I finished the night before on whatever this is. Some bovine. I worked on it at my parents’…briefly.

Then I went back to ironing after dinner.

That’s where I quit…because I wanted to work on the drawing too…

A totally different direction…there’s a world under them. I think I’m going to have to expand it a little at the top. But I think this is going to work. It was much easier to draw this…I don’t know why. Anyway.

I’m hoping this one works out. I’ll finish drawing tonight, or as much as I can without extending it. I have a lot more stuff to put in it…of course! I like to fill space. You may have noticed that.

Anyway, let’s hope parents get their kids to school today, plus I survive it, so I can come home and iron a bit and draw a lot and sleep better than last night. I can do one shitty night, but two might hurt.

*Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication

Wear Your Insides Out*

So yeah, I’m a teacher. I have to go back to school today, albeit without the students (here’s where I admit that I often like the students more than some of the other people I work with, although I do have an awesome team)…I had weird-ass nightmares all night, just freaky unrealistic stuff where I was running away, always trying to escape and save all the others (oh hey, like my job? Where saving is something we never CAN do, but always wish were in our toolbox…). All the nightmares were in this weird army green color and smelled strange and everything was damp and the car was never where you’d left it. I know there was a middle-of-the-night panic attack in there somewhere, and I finally got up and took something for the headache I developed in the middle of the crazy nightmare phase. It’s no wonder I feel a little beat up and out of it this morning. Plus I haven’t been up this early on purpose for the last three weeks. Ah, night owls…how the normal job world kicks your ass.

Yesterday was like all the Sundays from here until summer, honestly…get up, start doing shit, do shit until the end of the day, maybe collapse on the couch at some point after 9 PM, and then go to bed way too late, feeling like you got nothing done. Maybe it’s good to have this buffer day before we have the kids come back to school? I’m kinda cranky about it, but maybe it’s best.

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to get like an inch and a half of rain in the next two days…I turned the sprinklers off, but it could get bad…that’s more rain than I think we’ve had all season. Since July. Weird weather. (I looked it up. Since July 1, we’ve had 0.37″ of rain. So yeah…we’re supposed to get 4 or 5 times that before Wednesday.)

Anyway, the dyed fabric is still being washed out, so I can’t show you any of that yet, although I’m pretty excited about the two pieces of clothing I just tossed in there…I dyed the bottoms with blues and greens and then put the whole thing in a black bath, hoping the color would strike first and then the black would fill in…and it seems to have worked! Very cool looking. Plus I had some old linens that I dyed for stitching backgrounds. Or something. My hand is still a bit speckled…certainly my fingernails look like I’ve been dipping them in blood…always a nice look.

We made it to the parentals for dinner finally…first time since Christmas. Their dog loves all of us, but especially my kids…

After I got everything put away when we got home (we bring all the foods), I sat down to draw…took what I did the other night and just let my brain go. This isn’t what I want, but it’s getting closer. At some point, I was just filling space, and I need to be a little more mindful. I have some stuff to go read and review before I try again. But it’s going where I need it to go now, more so than it was all last week. See? That’s what school stress does…allows me to focus.

Sad but true. I had my trusty drawing companions…Satchemo on the left, where I put him, because he kept trying to sit on Calli’s face, and she’s kind of a grumpy old lady.

Calli with her nose tucked behind my back…guess it was cold.

I did some stitching, but no photos…I mostly helped cook at my parents, so a whole lot of standing yesterday. Practice for school, I guess.

My kids are taking a short trip to Seattle this week to see their cousins, so the dogs will go back to their boring existence of waiting for someone to come home to pet them and walk them. I’m hoping the rain holds off enough for that to happen today, because I suspect I’m gonna need it (the walk, not the rain) as much as they will.

Kudos to Oprah for her Golden Globes speech last night. She is such a good speaker…it brings tears to my eyes to think about what women have had to go through, especially those with no voice in a culture that often can’t even see that it’s being racist or sexist. Or both. Compounded isms. There is no excuse for some of the things humans have done to each other in the name of those isms, or religion, or whatever excuse we use to make one group better than another.

Anyway. With all that in my head, I’m going to go to work and attempt to be sociable (as much as I ever am) and get some shit ready for the kids who show up tomorrow. I’m going to walk the dogs, unless it’s pouring and there’s lightning. I’m going to draw again…this time getting it right? I hope. I’m ready to get it right.

*Peter Gabriel, Mercy Street