‘Cause You Don’t Have to Rush*

A reminder that working all day does suck up brain time and make art difficult. That said, I do it. I used to only really make art on breaks…so Winter, Spring, and Summer. I finished about one big quilt a year and a few smaller ones in between. I didn’t do nothing during the school year…I just didn’t do a lot. It didn’t help that I had little kids and they had homework and soccer and piano lessons and a whole host of other things that I graded through and sometimes embroidered or appliqued through, but that was mostly hobby stuff…not the real artwork. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got anything done. But I did.

Yesterday? Not so much. I mean I did get some stuff done, but it was a lot of tiredness mostly. Because when I got home, I made dinner and then walked the dogs…

No nature last night…because it was late and I didn’t want to deal with coyotes. I did want to get exercise, because sitting all day in a training feels exhausting as well. Although I did find a place that makes and sells (important!) tea. Oh hallelujah. So that got me through yesterday afternoon. One more day today and I’m done. I can honestly say that National Board Certification is a lot of work…but I think I will take it on…just not this year.

On the walk, there was a kid who was walking, but when he realized that the dogs and I might be walking faster than him, he took off at a run. Like he couldn’t get passed up by the old lady. He’s way up there in the picture…you can’t see him, but he’s walking again. Lame. Nice big old field though. Everything is dead and brown already…no rain for a while.

Calli appreciated the walk but was tired and hot afterwards…

Simba also appreciated it, although he appreciated less my picking the sticks and foxtails out of his fur later. And Satchemo didn’t get to go. He does go out on a leash, but I don’t deal with that crazy. Cats on leashes. Yeah no.

I realized I wouldn’t be able to stand to iron for an hour or more…too tired. Feet hurt. Even though I sat all day…the irony! I usually stand all day. And I didn’t feel like stitching on balls. I looked at them and rejected them. So much for three a night, eh?

Oh well, so I have to do these two small art quilts by late July for an exhibit in the fall, so I’ve been carrying around these 5×6″ pieces of paper I cut for that purpose. So I drew. And then as I drew, I realized the boxes are horizontal and I had drawn the first two vertical. Duh. So I redrew one of them (and changed it), but now horizontal…

And then I decided I like the one in the top left, so I scanned it and shrunk it and printed it out again. So it will be that one and the bottom right.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep these little pieces after the show…maybe toss them up on Etsy.

So that’s what I did instead of finishing the ironing on this quilt that needs to be done. I also thought about (but did nothing about) the big drawing…mostly because I think I decided I would need to be standing to do anything about it.

I can’t decide whether to start with a drawing in the big sketchbook and then enlarge and add to it, or whether I know what the parts are already…just cut a big piece of paper (I have a HUGE roll of paper I bought a while back and it lives in my living room and no, you can’t have any…ok that sounds mean, but you know how when people find out you have something or you can do something? And then they want it or they want you to do it and you’re like wait but get your own. Do it yourself. OK, I’m obviously in a mood. Never mind. Something about a comment…”is anyone an artist?” came up when we needed to make a poster.). Cut a big piece of paper and start drawing on that. That decision (and action) was more than I could deal with last night. So I didn’t. I’ll get to everything. I hope. I committed to a piece of art that goes with a poem…picked one of my old poems, the one that sucked the least (damn, some of my old poetry was really awful). So I need to draw that too. Maybe tonight? Ugh. Maybe. I want to draw. I’m just tired.

Too much thinking. Need more art, less thinking. Perhaps more sleep too.

*Kate Nash, Navy Taxi

I Like a Plan

A Sunday without planning for school. Again. So delightful. No school worries. Although I’m in teacher professional development for the next three days, so that’s not really no school. But they will feed me. And hopefully it will be informational and useful and not just annoying overachievers. We’ll see. I think I use up all my people skills (what few I have) on my students all year. I need to rebuild those reserves. Maybe hanging out with teachers I don’t know for three days is not the way to do that…but who knows? Maybe I’ll be totally reflective and motivated.

Right now, I think I need a nap. The mockingbird is back. He’s been all over the neighborhood, but last night was in the tree outside my bedroom again. It makes me crazy. I slept with the pillow over my head. Drowning out noise with fabric and feathers. Ironic that. Bird drowning out bird. Very philosophical this morning.

I have this drawing I’m contemplating. I started it years ago, 2012? And it grew, but I’m not sure it grew logically, and it means something different to me now. I was going to just go with it and maybe add to the bottom, but now that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought about just using half of it, but every time I look at it, I see pieces I like and pieces I don’t like, that don’t go with the story as it is now. So I think I’m going to redraw it but move pieces around…make it less horizontal too while I’m at it.

It’s going to be my epic summer quilt. But first I have to tear this apart and redo the whole thing. No Biggie! It’s taken me a week of contemplating it and deadlines to finally make the decision. So redraw it I will.

But let’s go back…it’s been a busy two days. I had a voucher at the local ceramic painting place that was expiring, so me and a million moms and kids headed to the same place to use them up. No one would sit at my table…which was fine by me…but I got side-eyed by about a million people for painting nudes I guess…

These are before firing, of course…who knows what they will look like fired.

Well, we all will next week when I pick them up. I make about one mug a year…I tend to break them. Overuse them. All that.

I also made a uterus bowl…like you do…

With a lot of symbols on the outside.

And then I made a sign for Saturday’s march to keep families together. But that was once I came home and made dinner…I didn’t do that at the ceramics place.

San Diego had already scheduled a march for the 23rd and then the national one came through for the 30th. I already have stuff going on the 30th, so I’m just doing the one march…hope the second one pulls enough people to make a difference too.

I saw this cool sculpture walking to my meeting spot…

And then lots of speeches (too many speeches, honestly) and a short march to the federal building…

It’s frustrating to live in a time when we have to yell and stomp so much for our government to hear us…and they still blow us off. Sigh.

When I got back, my brother was texting me pictures of the boychild with his cousins…going tree climbing.

My kid is the biggest…so far. The others are getting taller every time I see them.

Mine is the long one in the middle…

Looks like fun. I wanna do that. I kinda miss those summers when I would drag the kids up to Seattle to hang out for a week.

Anyway, boychild will be leaving Monday apparently to head south. He should be here in a week or so. So that means cleaning his room. It’s not too bad. I piled the worst of it in the girlchild’s room last year when my guy moved in here and I hadn’t finished cleaning up stuff in my bedroom. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with stuff. I’m not sure if I need it or not and I hate throwing things away. I threw a lot away last summer with the garage clean out. I think I reached a limit at some point.

Anyway, that’s next week. And sometime in July, when I panic about the girlchild coming home.

Meanwhile, my office is always a disaster…but especially after I’ve picked all the fabrics and haven’t cleaned up yet…I leave everything out in case I lose a piece (I found a lost one last night)…there’s a cat in this photo…

There it is. Kitten on Mt. Batting.

She spends a lot of time there. It’s safe from the other kitty and it’s comfortable and in the room where mom spends a lot of time.

So at some point yesterday I felt awake enough to iron for a while, up into the thighs. The sun comes in here in the afternoon and makes it hard to see stuff.

And then I took a break for a while and went to dinner and then came back and worked on the lights and the squeegee and the uterus…not all of that is ironed down though, because stuff is supposed to go behind the top part of the pelvic girdle…

Kitten came down to visit (and watch Supernatural apparently)…she sat on the chair that is hidden there for a while, until the other cat came in and got territorial. Sigh. At this point, I had cleaned about half the papers that were piled on my desk…I still have the other side and then the desk to the left. School sucks up so much time that there are balls that just drop…and cleaning the paper crap up is part of that. So I lose shows sometimes in the paper piles. I forget about them. I try to be logical, but I’m not always good at it. I want to try a different organization plan in here, but I need a new stacking file thing…the two I have don’t fit into each other unfortunately. So that’s a trip somewhere. Organization has been my issue my entire life. I like it when it happens, but I keep changing how I do stuff to try to get MORE organized, and then I wait to see what sticks. I’ve reorganized in my office/studio about 3000 times. I have a plan for hopefully next summer (need money) to do a remodel of the whole room…but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, I was ironing the gingko leaves separately, because they had a lot of tiny pieces and I needed to see the pattern before I ironed them onto the belly fabric.

There they are…

And then I put them on the belly fabric, but folded the leaf itself down until the stuff above was done…first a stomach, liver, and intestines…

And then the ribs and abs…then I could iron the gingkos all the way down. I still need to add a bunch of detail bits in there, but it was just after midnight at that point. I took a break in the middle because the library emailed me that my book was due soon, so I finished it…plus my feet hurt from standing, so I gave them a break.

I’m officially more than halfway done now…lots of complicated stuff still to be ironed. You can see all the bottom bits are rolled up at the bottom. I decided to just keep going instead of ironing the parts separately and trying to fit them together at the end. Especially with the hand that will come down and hold the squeegee…I wanted to make sure everything meets up.

Oh yeah, I finished all the red balls on this quilt and started doing the embellishment of the fuschia balls, which are only a slightly different color than the blush pink balls (there’s one of those on the top for comparison). The stitch around the fuschia balls is fairly easy, but requires going around twice. I only did one…I took time Friday night to finish the 4 red ones that were left and start the fuschia, which is why I got no artmaking done. Plus tired.

I made up for it by doing no ball stitching last night…but I figure if I finish embellishing 3 balls a night on average and there are 80 (79) left to go, then that’s 26 nights. So sometime in July. Plus I should be quilting the other wool quilt, but I have to finish the cotton one that’s under the machine, and ain’t none of that happening in the next three days. So there.

So there’s finishing ironing, maybe quilting, getting prepped for tomorrow’s teacher PD, groceries, maybe a dog walk…if it cools down enough. Maybe some cleaning or organization. We’ll see. Yardwork that’s never done. EVER. One week of summer break gone. I hate that feeling. Then I have to persuade myself that there’s a ton left, everything will be fine, don’t panic. DRAWING. I need to draw. That’s a plan…I like having a plan…

At Some Point, You Run Out of Hours

I slept. I went to bed well before midnight. I slept. And the dog barked. And I slept some more. And the cat bit me. That pretty much got me up and moving, but obviously I needed like 10 hours of sleep. Like don’t bug me sleep. Like let me just lie here and grow roots into the bed sleep. It was a rough week. I had to be up early every morning and then I wasn’t going to bed early, because my brain doesn’t work that way. Until it hits exhaustion. Hoping to repeat again tonight into tomorrow morning, so I can make it through all of next week. There are nine days of school left. Grades are due in a little more than a week. I can do it.

Really, what helped yesterday? I found out the deadline for the show I’m trying to get this quilt finished for got moved. To September. Oh holy hallelujah, what a weight is gone. I can do that. In fact, all of a sudden, I can do everything. Well. The grading part is still a load of work, but I was able last night to sit down with all the art deadlines I’m looking at for the next 6 months (well, I forgot one, but that’s OK)…and kind of start to get my head around my summer and fall. Artwise that is. It felt a lot more relaxed and sane. I needed that. For some reason, for about 2 years, I’ve been going like crazy and I needed to chill out a bit.

I need to add the other one here and do measurements for the one I just wrote down, but now I can get my head around what next. What order? How?

So that’s good.

Yesterday was our awards breakfast…here’s our amazing English teacher making pancakes. I was on the other griddle doing the same.

Well I had to move to another plug after we blew that fuse, but whatever. Why the library doesn’t have more robust fuses, I don’t know.

Taught about birth control all day…then a walk with just the one little dog…

This walk is one I really like, but I no longer like doing it alone…

We didn’t do the whole three miles…puppy was tired, but here he is pulling, wanting to keep going.

Here’s why it makes me nervous to walk here…there’s two adult coyotes and then two kits out there. The trail we come out on is right next to the green belt…the kits saw us and ran back to their den, but it still makes me nervous to come by myself with the dogs. I can carry one small dog, but it’s hard to protect both if needed. Especially if there’s an overprotective momma coyote around…

Came back and had dinner…Satchemo likes to sit right underfoot. The pattern of the rug with his fur seemed really interesting…

Here’s the drawing I did on the plane on Monday. Not too exciting. I was pretty tired.

So part of the art I have to do this summer is two tiny pieces to go in these boxes…for a show that will open in September…

The next step on this quilt is to iron the Wonder Under to fabric…before I can do that, I need to clean up in here…I need to put all the pulled fabric from the last quilt away, plus I really should try to fix the one green drawer.

It’s broken and I can’t find a correctly sized replacement. My long-term plan is to replace all this section with shelving, but that’s expensive and not happening this year. So the drawer is a pain in the butt, and I need to put a brace in or something to keep everything from falling out.

A little bit of clean up here, mostly getting stuff neatly back in drawers and off the place where I lay out all the Wonder Under.

The sewing machine table is doing OK…just some paperwork on the right that needs managing…

I’m not buying a new background…I need to use one of these. I often buy more than one background when I’m not sure what will work…

Although as I’m thinking about the size…I may not be able to get away with not buying more. Huh. Thinking. Mathing in my head is a mistake. I’ll do it later, after a shower to clear the cobwebs from my brain. Anyway, I’m going to grade some and then clean up some today…then we’re going to an artwalk for the rest of the day. Seriously need a break, so that will be a good one. Depending on how I feel tonight, I might get some work done on the ironing. We’ll see. I’m OK now if I don’t. I was seriously looking at having to do about 4 1/2 hours a day and I couldn’t see how that was going to work…because that’s on top of maybe 9 or 10 hours of schoolwork as well. At some point, you run out of hours.

Anyway. It’s moot now. Moving on with my much-more-relaxed weekend. Also trying to ignore the sore throat…hoping it’s from overuse yesterday…and not some viral crap that some sneezer kid gave me.

Nobody’s Right If Everybody’s Wrong*

As far as I know, the girlchild is currently on her way to Kenya…she should make it back to Boston by sometime tomorrow morning, our time. What is that, 29 hours? Something like that. She has one friend flying the whole way with her, which is good…better to have them with buddies than on their own. If you are Facebook friends with me, you can see the 250 pictures (or so) that she posted yesterday…well, assuming you know her name. The cat just put her belly in my morning tea. Gross. Anyway, I think girlchild had an awesome and appropriately difficult time and she’s coming back to classes, a job (or three), no real home for at least a week, a car that needs service, a computer that needs service, and toilet paper. Those are all manageable. Really.

Meanwhile, I tried to make art, lots of it, yesterday. I’m feeling the deadlines breathing down my neck. I’ve had this drawing lying around for a while…the last time I worked on it was April 15…then I switched over to the one I’m working on now, because it has an earlier deadline. Plus I had these empty spaces and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I wanted this to be a comprehensive history of what Kathy is as an artist, and I’m not even sure I can remember all that.

So yesterday, I felt like drawing and I added a bird…

And the sun and a cloud up top…because most of my quilts seem to have those things. I forgot to put an alien ship in…maybe I’ll add that.

Long and skinny…

And then I numbered it, but sort of randomly at times…I decided to add fingernails here because all the other hands had fingernails and probably no one but me will ever notice this one hand without fingernails, but it would’ve bugged the crap out of me, so I added them. And had to use letters to number them, because I was already in the 200s somewhere else.

Oh well. It wasn’t the only place I messed up. It’s 904 pieces plus about 5 or 6 lettered pieces. The little dots on the film are going to be embroidered or painted or something more sane than cutting them out of fabric.

After I numbered, I kept cutting out on this one. I have almost 10 hours into the cutting since Thursday. And I’m not done. I’m not really even close to done. So much for my estimating. You just never know. There’s not a ton remaining in the lefthand box, but there’s more than an hour’s worth.

So maybe I’ll finish tonight? Maybe? Who knows. I should be ironing sometime this week though.

When I was getting ready to go to bed, I realized I had 3 out of 4 animals in the living room with me…

The other one was on Calli’s bed when I got to the bedroom…in the dark…

Calli wouldn’t get on her bed until Kitten moved…apparently cats are scary.

I need to drive a ways this afternoon to pick up a piece from a show. Then hopefully walk the small hyper dog. Then cook and consider my options for the night…I think I will continue cutting, but maybe I’ll start tracing too. We’ll see.

*Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth

Tomorrow Gets Me Higher*

I’m very much in my head these days, with one quilt in progress and another drawing that reappeared on the light table so I could finish drawing. My brain is trying to schedule everything else around the artmaking so I can get two quilts done in the time it takes to make one. I still don’t know for sure that I can do it, but I can try. The drawing is rolling around in my head, because I know it’s not done, but I don’t know exactly what it needs. Something came to me the other day, but I was driving, so that’s not the best time to record ideas, and though I thought I could totally hold onto that idea (and in reality, it’s stored in my head somewhere), I lost it in the moment. It happens. It will probably come back. I do a lot of drawing and coloring in my head. It’s like art brain is at an easel in one of the cleaner corners of my brain, pushing the to-do lists aside, ignoring the demands of my job, and it draws…colors…stares at the paper for huge chunks of time until something is decided.

So somehow my art brain thinks it can work on both of them…and I’m not sure it’s wrong. I know at some point last night, it hurt to stand any more (a lot of standing happens in my job), so I sat…if I had the second project at a sitting stage, I could have gotten another hour of artmaking in last night.

After grading and making dinner and then more grading, then into the disaster area that is my studio. I have a plan for fixing this corner, but it requires a chunk of money and time that I don’t have at the moment. There is a cat in that photo though…can you see her on Batting Mountain?

I think the other cat was in there too…he tends to stalk Kitten a bit. He has a few places he likes to be in here.

I picked the first of two flesh runs. The two old people will hopefully be more beige or gray. This is the younger figure, the one on the rug.

I ironed for a couple of hours…and got about 200 pieces done. Way more efficient than the night before…

I didn’t add much to the pile…just flesh tones and the rug…which ended up being dark green.

I have about half the 200s to iron down, but that was the next figure, so I quit. That’s a big chunk of time to do the next figure. My feet hurt, I was tired, and I need to finish my book before the library ends my digital loan again. Without even asking me. How rude. So I read for a short bit and then gave up and went to bed.

I have to cover the pieces I’ve laid out when I’m not ironing, or I will come back to a cat lying on them, with Wonder Under stuck to their fur and chaos everywhere. The top right box is what I’ve ironed down. Not enough…

Gotta keep going. So much standing today in my future…

It’s a crazy week. But this is progress, and I like progress. I like to report on progress. Really, this blog is just to make me do stuff every night. It’s my motivation.

Calli has hurt her foot…she’s limpy. I don’t get home early enough from school this week to take her to the vet. I’m hoping her grandpa figures out his work schedule and takes her, or it will be Saturday. She’s sad about it.

She did this last year around this time too. Foxtail? Arthritis? Sprained not-ankle because dogs don’t have ankles? I just don’t know. Poor puppy.

OK, off to school for an early meeting that will inevitably be frustrating because of a certain staff member who’s definitely not in it to help kids, and then teaching website stuff and plastics all day…we moved the tables in both science classes yesterday to try to deal with some behavior issues. My 8th period pretty much freaked out about it. So the rest of the classes today should probably do the same. Exciting stuff.

Then home to ironing…

*Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure

Move Through the Room Like Ambulance Drivers*

It has been pointed out to me that I am in a crappy mood. I agree. I am. It’s true. I do my best to counteract such moods: spending time reading my really interesting book, trying to draw every night, exercising on occasion (I’d like to do more of that), and messing with student brains. I had a kid write “Nida your a bitch” on one of the desks. OOOHH…that’s original sweetie. I have to agree as well. And right back at ya. So I erased it and then started a conversation, although I’m fairly sure this is a different kid…

I’m pretty sure I know which kid this is and which kid thinks I’m a bitch (the one I called out the other day for constantly trying to copy the people at her table, which is why I moved her to a different group this week. HA!). Can you see me rolling my eyes from here? Yesterday had a lot of fun components (not really) that ended in a load of stressful crap that better not show up in my class today…or tomorrow. All I can say is that at least they have bad aim, so I didn’t get hit.

Then I drove down to a show I’m in that I haven’t been able to see yet, because the gallery was supposed to be open late, but it wasn’t. So that was annoying, but I took it in stride. Because what else are you gonna do? Pitch a fit? Nah. Drive home, make a cup of tea, read a chapter. I graded a little bit. I’ve been unfocused on that shit lately…hard when you have to babysit in class after you’ve assigned something, stand over them until they make a start, stand over them so they don’t hurl epithets about Your Mom. Your Mom wants you to get to work, you sweet little dear child, not pick a fight with some other 12-year-old.

My patience is worn thin.

Dark dog…

After dinner, I finished the drawing…eventually I started numbering it…

I knew it was not going to be just a few pieces. They never are.

There’s the thing I put in the bottom corner…the backpack.

There’s the 1000th piece. I’ve never ended exactly on 1000. Yes, odds are I missed a number or didn’t number some piece. I find myself transposing numbers as I write them. I think 783 and write 738. I hope that’s not some form of advancing dementia.

It’s not huge, but it’s not small. Maybe 36″ wide? I’m not actually sure I can finish it in time. But you know me…I’m gonna try.

Besides, it’ll give me something else to think about…because I’m finding school very frustrating right now. And I’m still low-key fighting this illness. And I ate jellybeans at school all day yesterday because I was that stressed. The right eye is twitching, but not constantly yet, so I have plenty of stress levels left. By the way, if you live with a teacher, and this is the first year you’ve experienced the End of the Year Syndrome, have patience. They give us the summer off for a reason.

Here’s Simba in one of his favorite sleeping spots. He really likes that pillow.

He’s cute. That’s another thing you can do when you’re stressed: Pet the animals. Or try to comb out all their winter fur blobs. It’s satisfying.

*Beck, Where It’s At

Relief

So I moved the jury duty to July. No plans for July, I guess. Day by day. Sucks. I guess I will hope I don’t get called on the days I already have stuff planned. I’m still really irritated that the one single month a year that is usually NOT stressful will be stressful on a daily basis. I will have to set up some sort of prayer circle each night before I call to see if I have to go in. Burn some sage over the phone, sing to the goddess of teachers on summer vacation, trying to replenish the patience that gets us through the year (I don’t have much of it left right now).

Meanwhile, I think my body is trying to fight off the nasty-ass cold from hell that permeated my house last week. I have been fighting the scratchy cough, which I thought was from having to talk too loud in class, but last night it was more than that, and this morning I have the baby beginnings of a migraine. I don’t get migraines. Seriously, I’ve had two in my whole life. I know, bless me, but this is way back behind the bones and it’s vibrating like a mofo.

So stay away, weird illness. I don’t need you. I got shit to do. Yesterday, we didn’t even sit down to dinner until almost 9 PM (see notes from yesterday, this week is not working well)…and then, while letting Dirk Gently make me giggle (I really do love that guy. And Farrah. And Amanda. And maybe even Todd.), I was working on BALLS. Still with the balls. With Satchemo’s help…

OK, dude. Not really helping. “I want to touch the quilt.” “I know. I don’t want you to touch the quilt.” “I’m going to touch the quilt anyway.”

Sigh. Yup, he’s still there. Touching the quilt.

You realize that after I get all these bastards sewn down (which has taken me over a year, because I didn’t really do it for a long long while), I will have to embellish every goddamn one of them? Yeah. Me too. It’s OK. I got this.

After I did that, I considered grading, but I did tutoring after school yesterday, which was work, hard work, it’s so exhausting, so I didn’t FEEL like working. I get to a point where I just fight it. Too many hours already. So I didn’t. It was after 10 PM.

I stood up, went back to the light table (biggest piece of furniture in my living room), assessed my day, wrote a to-do list for the evening (evening! Ha! It’s night now, baby.) and the next day, and then started to draw. Fireplace done…and then the figure in front. So what’s interesting about this drawing is that I started it July of 2014. I did the two main figures and then realized there wasn’t room in my sketchbook for the rest of the vision in my head. So I enlarged it 250-300% (don’t remember which…it was a while ago), taped it together, and then put it on top of the piano to wait. Or percolate. Or something. Because honestly, what came out last night (and the few days before) was almost line for line exactly what has been sitting in my head for the last 3 years and 9 months, minus 8 days.

I can’t remember my phone number sometimes. I can’t remember what month it is. I don’t know if I made my lunch or where I left my damn keys, but I remember that picture in my head. That’s crazy. It was a relief to draw it…seriously, a like-Ima-gonna-cry relief. Weird. I still need to do something in that space around his feet, because the empty is bugging me (that’s really what my drawings are about…the empty space bugging me until I fill it)…but as I was trying to fall asleep last night (at 12:18 AM, way too late), things were popping into my head and trying themselves out in that space.

Anyway. That’s cool. I have a ton of stuff to do today, but hopefully I’ll get the last bits of this drawn tonight and maybe have time to number it. It’s a relief to get it done. I keep saying that word. Relief. That’s not the name of the quilt. Yet. It does have a name…it has from the beginning.

Like I Have a Choice…

Well I came home yesterday and had a minor nervous breakdown…not because of school. That went OK. Not perfect, not amazing, just OK. Sat through another hour of how to deal with a shooter on campus (doesn’t make me feel more prepared, trust me, although as science teachers, we have a more useful arsenal than most for the FIGHT section of Run Hide Fight. Yes. That’s what we learn in staff meetings. Fun stuff. Actually kind of upsetting stuff. I really don’t like it. But then again, there’s a lot of things I don’t like…fish, chocolate…allergic to both. Staff meetings, grading stuff, trying to explain to middle-school boys why they need to shower every single fucking day. Nope. Don’t like those things.

But no, that wasn’t it. I even stayed for about 45 minutes and reworked all the groups for the project they’re doing this week, because I realized how many kids would be out of my classes on Friday because an elementary school is coming to visit, and that means those kids will be helping with that, and it just wasn’t going to work in a group of 5 kids if 4 of them were gone on the day the project is due. Plus there were some groups that were dysfunctional. It’s not fair to put one hardworking high-level kid in a group when you know they’re going to end up doing everything. So I redid all those.

And then I came home. And got the damn mail. US District Court jury summons for the entire month of June. You know, the month when I teach sex ed. At the school where we either get no subs or we get subs who are incompetent and discuss bitcoin with the kids when they should be working on ecosystems. Or the sub who…well, I probably can’t talk about that one, because it’s an ongoing investigation. So every night, I’m supposed to call and get my status for the next day, and then if I have to go in, I’ll have to write sub plans right then for a sex ed unit that has no script for a teacher who doesn’t know my kids and probably really doesn’t want to talk to them about puberty or penises or HIV, and may actually be completely ignorant (I swear, when I did the training, there was a male science teacher…SCIENCE TEACHER…old enough to know better, who said he thought you couldn’t get pregnant the first time you had sex. Fucking A.). You’ve gotta be kidding me.

I was pissed. I still am. I do my civic duty every damn day. I don’t need more of it. So I walked the dogs, and I was still pissed. I tried going online to figure out how to postpone it to my vacation, to my break from my school year, to the one month a year when I can do all my doctors’ appointments, do my yardwork, run errands that take more time than 20 minutes…the one month a year I don’t get PAID. Yup. This is how I want to spend that month. The website is faulty. The website lies. I’m going to have to call in between 9 and 4…interesting, since those are my teaching hours…and sit on hold for at least 10 minutes, they say. Well then maybe you should make the website functional so I can do it there. Downtown too. So parking. I’m so annoyed. If I can’t postpone it, June will be a very difficult stressful month. Wait. June is always a difficult stressful month. Fun stuff.

And then we didn’t plan well for cooking this week. Well, there’s meals planned, but they’re all meals I know how to cook and it’s just easier (especially when you’re pissed off) to just do it yourself than to have the presence of mind to explain in detail to someone else what you need them to do. You can push the recipe over toward them (that didn’t work), but I really don’t want to be in charge all the time. I’m in charge all the time every day at school. I would like to come home a couple times a week and not have to deal with cooking. So I guess that’s my rule for next week, eh? Yeah. It is.

Stress. Need to find time to make the phone call (I have 3 other phone calls I need to make that have been on the to-do list for a long time). Need to grade stuff (did none of that last night due to mood from hell). Grades are due in a week. Again. Never-ending.

So eventually, I was able to push most of that shit over to the side, a big pile of festering fucking crap of when am I going to get everything done, so it’s still there, smelling up the place, but art brain is a pushy broad and gets her shit done. Holds her nose when she has to, breathes through her mouth.

I had that drawing of the two figures, which is from 2014, one of the ones from when I was broken, but the image in my head never made it completely onto paper. Which is interesting, because it’s all still in there, the drawing. I pulled it right up. Can’t remember what that thing with the three legs and the pump-like structure is called, but I still have a drawing in my head from more than 3 1/2 years ago…and I taped more paper around the edges. This is Calli probably getting offended because I’m bopping her in the head with the paper…or maybe she’s just giving me a loving look because I walked her.

And I started adding the fireplace behind them that’s been in my head this whole time.

It still needs fire and stones, and I gave him feet…but I still need to draw the third figure in the bottom section. Tonight hopefully. This deadline is before the other one…so let’s see if I can get going on that. Sigh. Trying to put all that angst into this piece instead of letting it sit inside me. Hate this shit. I really look forward to 8 weeks (it’s not even 8 weeks) of not thinking about or worrying about my job, so having something else I have to worry about instead, every single fucking day? I really can’t. Sigh. Like I have a choice. Plus how am I going to take any copyediting jobs over the summer if I can’t be sure I’ll be able to work on it every day? I can’t. That’s what it means.

Meanwhile the boychild is like…whoa! Jury duty! That would be so exciting! Um. Can I transfer it to my unemployed college graduate? Nope. No ma’am. We’ll torture him later. You? Now.

For a Minute There I Lost Myself*

Most common nights that teachers don’t sleep: (1) The day before school starts in August (or September, if you’re on that track). (2) Sunday nights. I don’t even know why. I totally tried to shut my brain down. It just didn’t work. I was talking to the girlchild right before, but I also was just glad to hear from her (earlier that day)…the no-internet week was difficult. Meanwhile, boychild is sending me pictures of lost weather balloons (REAL ones, not the Roswell kind of weather balloons).

Some weekends just aren’t long enough.

Yes, I spent most of Saturday in a car. Then talked about my work and all the other quilters’ work (because I was the token quilter there). Then we took all the work down and shoved a bunch of it in my car and drove back. Woo hoo! Ugh. Sunday was like it always is…do some work, clean up, do some yard work, grocery store, prep some food, hopefully get to some art. And the art started early, because I had graded all the makeup work and couldn’t handle anything else. There have to be days of the week when you don’t work. And I already had.

I have my post-dinner routine that will get this quilt done…we finish watching whatever not-quite-an-hour-long show it is and then I sew more balls on until the show is done. I’m on the last thread color…I think. I missed one pink one and some of the red ones seem darker, but let’s just say I’m close to done with sewing them down. Then I need to embellish them.

I was actually looking up how to quilt wool last night, because the quilt BEFORE the birds has been pinbasted for a million years. I feel like it needs a heavier thread than what I usually use, but the woman I watched on YouTube used a thinner thread. So now I don’t know.

Anyway, so I am trying to get the other one done too…I guess this is number 3. I have all the wool cut out for September and October, but nowhere to put it. So I pieced September to one of the first blocks I embellished…

And then pinned down the beginnings of stuff.

I think the whole thing gets sewn together after that, which is a little scary. Don’t worry…it’ll be a while. I have a ton of embellishment left to do on the other piece that traveled with us throughout the Southwest. I didn’t get much done.

This was because the boychild needs to come home after college and may well be driving.

I was just curious. It’s about how far we drove over Spring Break. But with no help. Long way.

Then I started drawing…it was easier last night. I added an octopus and a jellyfish. So much for keeping it simple.

Then Christmas lights, of course…and the requisite bones.

Stardard fare…some ribs, a uterus, the inevitable iPhone, some stuff from the past, and gingko leaves.

Her hair on the right side…haven’t decided the left side yet. There’s more to add in there.

This might be a little crazy.

Found the other drawing I was considering for the time theme. This is good. It’s almost done, as far as the two figures are concerned…

There’s a third figure I need to draw…but I need to add paper to do that. I think I’ll try to do that tonight, because this deadline is earlier than the other. Honestly, I’m not sure I can finish both. So there’s that. Never let that stop me yet though.

Wow. This is a tired way to start a week. Ugh. Oh well. Must go on.

*Radiohead, Karma Police

Grading and Weeds…

I got a good night’s sleep last night after an hour of drawing (yes, only an hour…you can thank my day job for that). It was delightful. Except when one of my neighbors was slamming car doors at 1 AM and the puppy decided he needed to protect us from that.

Seriously, this dog is the biggest (sweetest) asshole there is. I finally got up and sprayed him with the water bottle (No BARK) and he grumbled for a while, let out a few rebellious yips to show I’m not the boss of him, and then went to sleep. Until 3 AM or so when he did it again. Yup. I’ve got control of that beast.

Yeah, I graded last night. I came home and finished the other big assignment that I was supposed to finish over break. I still have more to do, and progress report grades have to be done in about a week, so I’m trying to be on top of it all. LAST PROGRESS REPORT OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. Yeah. That’s good. I like that. I had to really force myself to grade the last period. I wanted to put it off so bad. But no.

So while we were driving around last week, in the middle of the night (well, no, at 3:11 AM when someone in the hotel room next to us was banging on the door and yelling LET ME IN over and over again), I got this amazing idea for a drawing that related to time (one of the topics I need to hit in an upcoming quilt…I have two dueling deadlines of course). I sketched it briefly and described it (the picture is still indelibly inscribed on my brain, so that’s enough), but now I need to get it out of the head and onto the paper. I tried earlier this week and failed, but I will try again. But when I started trying to draw it, I realized it was going to be huge and massive and I like to do at least one really big quilt a year, usually in the summer, but the deadline for what I was trying to do is early June. So then I thought about this other drawing that I started ages ago and needs finishing and would also work (and would be much smaller and doable in the next two months), so I had sort of decided to pull that one out and finish it for that show, and then draw the other one for summer (although there are two other deadlines I’m interested in for early fall, so there’s that as well. Aaugh.). All that decisionmaking, though, made me give up on trying to do that drawing first, so I started this one.

This one is kind of about me as an artist, starting way back, although not TOO way back, because I don’t remember everything, but just thinking back to what influenced me, what kinds of art I’ve made, what’s made me the artist I am…so that’s this. There is, of course, no guarantee ever that it will get into the show for which I make it…that doesn’t bother me at all. It’s an idea that spoke to me and I’m drawing it. All good.

So when I finished grading, I did some more stuff on the one arm in the air, worked on her hair, added lungs and then worked on the other arm, which lead to upper thighs and a uterus (you knew that was coming, yeah?).

Obviously there’s some stuff that needs to happen in the middle. That’s still whirling around in my head, although a gingko tree is in there somewhere. I used to be a screenprinter; hence the squeegee.

I did photography when I was younger…but also sewed. I learned to sew when I was 8. I might have embroidered before that. Thread, fabric…all part of me forever. Art also a part of me forever.

I’m driving to LA today and talking and taking down a show, so I’m not only missing the March for Science (dammit), but also not getting a lot done today in the art world. The show was supposed to be up for another 3 weeks, so I’m more than a little irritated that we have to do takedown today, but whatever. Some people in the art world are flakes…we all know that.

This popped up in my email as being from 9 years ago (I think actually the book I made from these is 9 years old…some of the pictures may be older). It’s my kids and my brother’s kids…all so tiny and cute.

And smiling! Mostly. Kinda weird. And no, I still haven’t heard from the girlchild. She’s either walking back from that village tomorrow or Monday, so hopefully she’ll reappear. I know she has to check in with her local advisor every two days, and if there were a problem, he would have contacted us, so that’s what keeps me from freaking out. Mostly. Mom brains. They’re so annoying.

Other annoying things: Apple’s new update to iCloud now does not allow me to select multiple pictures. Their solution says to use iCloud on my PC, except it still thinks I have a corrupt database and wants me to sign out of it. That bug has been around for months with no solution. Buggy as hell. iMessage is also still buggy as hell, and that’s on an Apple device. And then one of my local school board members (one I did NOT vote for) is pro arming teachers…unfortunately, I think it’s another two years before we can vote him out. Sigh. Stupid stuff.

So driving to LA…gonna pray to the traffic goddess for no accidents or stupidity (ha!)…hoping for good attendance at the talk and an easy takedown. Tomorrow? Not much to look forward to…grading and weeds. That’s about it.