I Need a Demonologist

I needed to get outside and walk hard, hike fast yesterday. So I did. With the dog. I had to wait for temperatures to go down below 90 first though, but it’s a crapshoot, because some hikes I don’t want to finish after dark. I wanted to be out out out, nowhere near houses if I could pull it off, far away from people. We had to drive a little, but then it was three miles with only one old guy and his old dog, who wanted to beat us up but couldn’t move fast enough to pull it off (arthritis), and then an old guy on a bike. And a dead snake…in pieces. But otherwise, nothing but bugs and plants and birds and clearing your mind and breathing in the dust and walking it off. Cuz you can walk a whole day off, you know. Harder to walk a whole week off, but a day? No problem.

Wilderness refuge near my house. It was still warm out, 86 degrees at 6 PM, but there was a nice breeze. Good pace. Tired the dog out too.

Then I made dinner, spaced out for a bit with a book, graded some assignments I needed to get out of the way, and then communed a bit with animals. They all followed me into the living room. Mommy! Mommy!

Pet the dog and the cats. Kitten settles down into her favorite place. On the drawing.

And the brain just spilled. Oh yeah, you’ve seen the eye in the uterus thing before…in the last quilt. The REAL third eye, the all-seeing one. The one that rules the woman’s roost.

I pushed and pulled and the drawing ended up still being under Kitten. I started on trying to fit a crane around an elbow. I look at pictures and try to imagine how to move the wings and feathers around where I need them to be. Kitten starts flicking her tail in the middle of where I’m drawing and that’s it. I poke at her until she leaves. Petulant beast.

I made it work, turn the corner. Then drew the hand and some pine-tree-like things on there. You can see I don’t have much left…just the main torso and it already has a bunch of stuff on it.

Closeup of the arm.

So I need to connect the arm to the shoulder with something and then do the rest of the torso. It’s going well. Peaceful brain.

This is from last night’s grading, where a student suggested a demonologist to test lung function.

I laughed a lot. A LOT. Because you’ll take anything humorous at this time of the year. Anything. Calling a demonologist to take care of my class.

More drawing tonight, although there’s always grading and I think I have to write a test. Not sure what I’m drawing next anyway, so it’s OK to let the brain percolate for a while. Like all day. I didn’t start drawing last night until 10:30 or so. I’m about 8 1/2 hours into this drawing. It’s time-consuming, but good. I write about the hours because I want people to get that it takes a long time to make art and even if some of it is standing around, staring at the piece, it’s still part of the making. I know some people can just whip stuff out, but I’m not one of them. This is big and complicated. But I think it will be worth it.

Do It or Lose It

I’m getting there. I managed yesterday better, although I woke up to chaos this morning. About 6 emails that had to be dealt with right now. RIGHT NOW. Which is why I’m running late.

I meditated last night, although my brain was all over the place. And then I drew. I did financial aid stuff before that…almost done…woo hoo! Three more things to scan and submit on one kid, the other kid stuff finally came through this morning, so I’ll do it tonight. This stuff is so stressful, my brain wants to explode.

So meditation reined the brain in a little bit. Maybe. Because then I got up and I drew…I finished the earth on the bottom…

Hard to see, but I tried really hard to not make a bunch of tiny things on there. Really hard.

Then I went back up to the torso, staring at the other boob. I had been looking at leopards and jaguars and cheetahs, but the spots…holy moley, the spots. And I couldn’t find the picture I wanted. The pose. I don’t know. I just wasn’t sold. I’ve done lots of lions. Female lions are just gorgeous creatures, so strong and determined, although I hate when they watch a new male come in and kill their babies. Yes, I’ve watched every episode of Big Cat Diary…like 7 times. I miss that show.

Anyway. So I went to tigers…because the stripes can be kept simple, and in a piece like this, where there’s already a ton of detail, I don’t need to be making 100 spots on a leopard.

I added the other lung, decided to continue the grass just under the neckline instead of putting something different on the other side, and then put a prickly pear cactus above the tiger to fill in that space.

What you can’t see here is that I have one arm and then the rest of the torso, which will include a uterus this time around, because when I make things for myself instead of for shows, I don’t have to worry about the nudity. I even added a nipple on the tiger, to be done in fur colors.

I’m enjoying drawing this. It’s soothing. I can’t say falling asleep or staying asleep are getting better for me, but I think that’s hormones and stress more than anything else. So exercise, meditation, drawing or making art in some way. Deep breathing when necessary. Get done with stupid stuff that stresses me out and that will help. Ignore all the people who are stressing me out (whoops, that’s half of my students right now and about 17 other adults) and hang out with those who don’t. Or hang out with the dog and the cats, because they’re demanding in their own way, but it’s pretty basic needs…pet me, feed me.

At least I’ve figured out where art fits in all that…do it or lose it.

I Need to Listen…

Really I should listen to myself. I flailed all Saturday morning, rightfully so, wrote the blogpost, and finally got a shower, but worked…on school stuff…for the rest of the day until about three, when I headed out for some openings…one art, one music…well…sound anyway. And then yesterday, I worked almost all day and then did financial aid documents for about 2 1/2 hours before I wanted to scream. I am missing three pieces of information that have to come from the boychild, I need two signatures from him and one from his dad, and then I need to upload a bunch of stuff. Then I’m done. DONE. I’m getting faster and more efficient at filling out this bullshit, but I still hate hate hate it.

So at 11:09 PM, I had been grinding my teeth for almost two days straight, and I was gonna explode. I didn’t sleep well Saturday, so I thought about going to bed, but I wasn’t anywhere near tired. I was wired instead. Close. One-letter difference. That letter is a biggie.

OK. Let’s draw.

I’d like to say the drawing slowed my brain down and calmed me, and maybe it did a bit, but I know I saw the other side of 1 AM and it was still wide-awake time. So I’m a bit rough this morning.

While I was showering Sunday, I had this great idea for how to do the bottom of the figure in the drawing…I even typed up a note to myself in the Notes app on my phone. A very useful beastie that phone app.

Speaking of non-useful beasties…

Kitten. You’re sitting on my drawing. Why do cats like to sit on your stuff? Is it a possessive thing? She’d spent all day lying on my clean bedsheets until I offended her by making the bed with them. All of a sudden, they are now not very interesting. But this drawing is…by god, mommy, I need to sit on your drawing…you can see the other cat in this picture as well.

Unfortunately, I needed to draw on the bottom, which meant slowly pulling the drawing along the light table until she realized she was unwanted, shot me a viciously nasty glare, and set off (apparently to find every hair scrunchy I own and strew them down the hallway, because that’s where they all were when I went to bed). People wonder why I have cats in all my quilts…I think I socialize with them more than other living things.

So I ended up adding another 8-10 inches of paper at the bottom, as I penciled in the torso to the part where I wanted to stop, then drew the Earth. Well, half the Earth. In this picture, I had a photo of the Earth from space on the Pacific Ocean side.

I find it really strange that the most-common view of Earth on the internet is the one with North and South America almost in the center. You rarely see the back end…maybe because it’s mostly water. Less common is Russia with Africa, Europe all tiny off to the side. I wanted Japan and Ecuador, reminders of the earthquakes there. I’m still drawing the stuff in the Earth. It took me about 45 minutes to pencil, tape more paper, and do the stuff on the sides…volcano and mountains on the left side…

Hills and waves on the right. I think that’s South America drawn underneath it. Needs some work.

And there’s the whole thing, so you can see what I drew last night and then way up at the top, the stuff I had already drawn. There’s a lot of space in between to get filled up with plants and animals.

I’ve spent about 6 hours on drawing this so far…4 documented on my task app and the 2 that it took me in the sketchbook. Some drawings are so easy, 30 minutes to an hour or two. And some are beasts…the one in Earth Stories took about 25 hours just to draw. A lot of that time is think time, stare time, but it’s still time I count. It’s part of the making.

There’s a little voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering that I need to look at the two shows coming up in fall, start thinking about them too, not just focus on this giant ass piece that might not get in anywhere. And then I tell it that it’s fine. It’s only April. That I will look at those and think about them, but not right now. Right now, I’m head-in on this piece and it’s talking to me and I need to listen.

Processing…

Some mornings…some days. I figure if I wake up in the morning and have zero motivation to do anything at all, I should listen to myself, because it’s rare that it happens. There must be a reason. I mean, obviously I don’t feel like working. I graded last night. I need to do more this weekend, but maybe not right this second. Now two hours-plus later, I got the laundry going, lots of bedding. It’s a start. And I cooked some food. Second cup of tea. Resized the photos from last night. But first I spent some time reading blogposts (yes, mine) from last April and May, so I could remind myself that it’s always like this and that’s OK. I mean, yes, it sucks, but there are only 43 days of school left and they never kill me and I always survive them, just as I will survive them this time around.

And not being able to really focus on one quilt-related thing at the moment? Oh well. No deadlines breathing down my neck. That’s OK. I can afford to wander around the artistic pile a bit. I’ll get that orange quilt done, do the body one as well. No rush. And I’ll start picking fabrics this week hopefully for the other one. Meanwhile, it’s the drawing that’s calling the loudest…the furthest thing from finishing…the one I probably won’t finish until the end of summer. It’s all good.

If you don’t draw or hike or do some other thing that puts your brain in that meditative place, that space in your head where all the crap is pushed aside, I don’t know how to explain the peace you get from it…whether it’s puzzling out how to finish the arm between a cat-boob and a snake-arm…or it’s setting out on a 17-mile hike (um, that’s the boychild…I stick to 3- to 10-mile hikes personally). It clears your head like a spring breeze. Like a wave.

So yeah, a bat. It made sense last night…still does today (but drawing too small!).

Then I did the hand. I was debating bird and butterfly, and one of those will probably still fill the space above it, but the egg made the most sense last night.

That snake head is pretty.

Then I finally drew the octopus. Had to think about the suckers…not too complicated at this size. I once did one with like 150 pieces in it. Crazy.

That’s how far I am right now…head and half an upper torso. It’s slow-going.

But ultimately peaceful and calming. So I don’t mind.

And maybe today should just BE a slow day. I’ll get stuff done…just not all of it or what I thought I would do. Maybe. I realize I’m pretty hard on myself, probably too demanding. Then again, I’ve seen so many friends just stop making art completely when they started families, and I’m not that person. And it’s hard to keep on top of the job and make art regularly and still venture out of the house occasionally.

The struggle! Yeah I know. I talk about it. I fight it. I get up off the couch. And some mornings, I veg out and read a bunch of stuff and refuse to take a shower or go to the gym. The world still turns on its axis. It’s not like I get nothing done. Cut me a break. (That’s me talking to myself)

So for the drawing, there’s another arm that comes down over the belly area, there’s obviously another breast. One of the reasons I wanted to do another one was because I wanted a uterus in this one, so that’s on…then maybe lower torso dissolves into landmasses and clouds like the other one. Definitely need a volcano. I swear, I can’t remember the other one, which is good, because although I want this one to talk to that one on the phone, maybe even be sisters, I don’t want them to be clones of each other. This is the less-restricted version…the one that still has animals and plants covering her, but not because they have to…because they want to. And the important stuff is still there. Nipples dammit. And a bird or butterfly or both. Still drawing itself in my brain. Holy crap…maybe she needs a vulva. But that puts her sitting. Hmmm. Processing…

Needy Dogs and Late-Night Drawings

I didn’t write yesterday because I had to be at school really early. And the night before, I went to bed about 2 hours early because I was so exhausted, and I got nothing done, and I was sitting there staring at the computer and thinking, DAMN. I got nothing to write about. So I didn’t. It happens.

Yesterday was eyeball dissection day at school…only one injury (only had 3 in 14 years). But it was a long day that was followed by chiropractor and picking up the girlchild’s dog from the vet because this was up her nose…

And then she was all drugged out and wobbly. This is what Calli looks like high.

And I had to watch her constantly, because she likes to swim in the pool and I was fairly sure she’d drown if she went in. Besides, when I got home, there was a dead male possum in the pool already (I hate when that happens). Huge beast. So I dealt with the body and then she whined at me all night and spent a lot of time staring at me like this…

So I would pet her and hug her but mostly I got this reproachful look, like I had done something very very wrong. Let’s clarify. I did not take you to the vet. I’m the one who RESCUED you from the vet. Nope. Still mad at me.

She’s fine this morning.

I drew after that. Well, after dinner and grading, which took forever because of the needy dog, so really late.

I started by adding paper above the head so I could draw the sun out…

Which I did, but didn’t photograph. Of course.

I had penciled in an arm, hand, and a snake, but was debating what else should be in there. Apparently I figured that out…

See, sometimes I use pencil.

Then I filled a boob with a cat. Like you do. There’s a lung in there as well, although pretty damn simple, and a flower nipple. Of course.

I stared a lot at the space between the snake and the boob, and googled a lot of different things, but still didn’t make a decision.

Must let the brain ruminate some more…

So I adjusted the arm to the appropriate angle and did some snakey details. You can sort of see the sun in this one.

This thing is gonna be huge. But I’m trying to keep the tiny little pieces to a minimum. We’ll see how that goes. (Laughs maniacally to herself)

So those things, the sun, the arm, the snake, the cat boob, took about 2 hours. There’s a lot of staring time in there honestly. I tried to visualize what could fit there. I made a tentative list of things I think should be somewhere on her…a bat, an octopus, a giraffe. Something else. Bees. I’ve done a bee before. Anyway. This isn’t for a show. It isn’t for anything. I just wanted to do an Earth Mother that didn’t have the no-nudity constraints from last year. I like the idea of filling the body with living organisms. So I am.

In art news, Lisa Kijak (who makes very cool quilts of neon signs) was nice enough to send me photos of my piece in the Art Quilt Elements exhibit that is at the Wayne Art Center right now. In all the photos I saw posted, I only saw mine in one. I like to see what’s around it, so I really appreciate her doing that…

They look pretty happy there in the corner…

Hope they’re having a nice time.

I would like to thank the Goddess of Science Teachers and Divorced Moms for helping me to survive until Friday. Any assistance on today would be mightily appreciated, because I’m gonna make those kids read and figure stuff out and write again. Because I’m mean that way. I was supposed to write a study guide last night, but that didn’t even come close to happening. So there we are. I have homework for tonight. Or maybe I can do it during prep, if everyone leaves me alone. We’ll see.

More drawing tonight? I hope.

My Brain Is Like a Rampant Bunny

I have two mornings this week when I have to be at school early for meetings, which just throws me off. It makes it harder for me to fall asleep, and then my overactive workaholic brain wakes me up a full hour early to make sure I don’t sleep through the alarm (silly brain, I never sleep through alarms), and then I can’t go back to sleep. I’ve tried telling my brain how counterproductive that is, but then it blames the early wakeup call on the local birds outside my window. Also under your control, I argue…with my brain…which doesn’t ever freakin’ listen to me.

I will pay for this lack of sleep later, for sure, on the busiest day of the week. Unfortunate really, but whatever. We bully through it. We soldier on. Both good words for how I get my brain to keep going when it doesn’t want to. Years of practice with middle-schoolers? Maybe. I spent two days fighting to get them to do what I needed them to do, and then I gave them a similar assignment yesterday, and I must have broken through some wall, because they were dead silent and working. Still had to repeat instructions about 70 times for the kids that didn’t pay attention AND can’t read them (proof that I could write poetry about boogers and ear wax in my instructions, and only 5 kids would ever see it).

My brain is still like a rampant bunny, bounding through tall grass, sometimes moving uber-fast to get away from predators, and sometimes stopping to smell the daisies. I can’t get it to focus at all, but at least I have plenty of projects lying around to distract it. Although then it just gets over-interested and I can’t get it to mellow out and go to sleep.

I started with cleaning…I put all that stuff in the boychild’s room because it would force me to clean it all up before he came home. So I filled that trashbag hanging off the door and piled up some other stuff in logical piles.

Not that you can see logical piles from here. You’ll just have to trust me. That yellow bin is empty though and can now go away. It’s circa 1985 I think…and not in great shape. It certainly held a variety of crap, most of which was just that…crap. Like samples from a flower-pounding session I did with the kids. Man those were ugly. Tossed them. And a ton of quilt patterns pulled from magazines that I will never do. That goes way back. Recycled those puppies.

This the bookshelf that has been blocked for years. I have bags of tie remnants to sell too. Back to eBay. I hang a lot of stuff off of there that probably doesn’t need to be there…quilt tops I may never finish. Blocks for quilts I’m not even working on.

Kitten had a rousing game of find the lizard on the window. Really. You can’t see it? Because the only reason I knew it was there was because she was batting at its foot…it’s hiding behind the center bit. You can just see its fingers/toes on the left side where she’s looking.

Or not. Then I quilted. I found it rather frustrating. I really just wanted to be done, but thread breakages abounded. No fun.

I got about halfway around. I still need to do the hill as well.

Then it was 11:30 and normal people would have gone to bed, but I knew my brain wasn’t ready, so I drew instead.

Cried all the way through the episode of Call the Midwife where Jenny…oh geez, don’t wanna ruin it for you. It was sad. Well and hormones. Because it probably wasn’t THAT sad. Notice that damn lizard is in my drawing. Can you see where? I don’t know what to say about that. Except that’s how I draw. Brain wanders, plops on paper.

Damn, I even graded last night and wrote an extra blogpost on here and another blogpost for someone else. Maybe that’s why my brain was in overdrive. Too much stimulation, getting stuff done. Plus I need to get some exercise in this week, but it won’t be today…dual meetings and then book club. Hopefully I’ll be able to come home and just go to bed. With my book. For next month’s book club.

By the way, I saw Deadpool over the weekend, and yeah, it was violent, but hysterically funny, except when it was being sad, but more importantly…Wade is a stitcher! He made his own costume…over and over again…and the character Blind Al, played by Uhuru from Star Trek, is my favorite.

I get a little irritated with the goody-goody attitudes of some of the superheroes, like Thor and Captain America, and it drives me nuts how much the movies blow off good female characters who aren’t wearing slinky bras to kill bad guys with, but this guy is kinda fun. And he sews. Can’t be all bad.

Tentacles Don’t Have to Be Complicated

You’ll be glad to know I did actual artmaking activities last night. I know y’all were concerned. Certainly I was too. It’s not that I don’t want to…it’s that it’s the last trimester of school and that is just plain hard. Most teachers are in burnout mode right now, even with Spring Break packed in our brains. By the time we get through testing in a month, the jokes about margarita machines in the teacher’s lounge will be very very serious-sounding. If there’s a teacher in your life, make them a care package or something. Send them to a spa or get them a massage. An evening with friends might be what they need to get through the next 5 days. Rinse. Repeat.

I did grade stuff first, which is where I learned that apparently chewing gum causes heart attacks. Yup. Seriously. OK. Moving on to the next assignment, where answers might be more clearly thought out. And all that was after driving downtown to brainstorm on a new exhibit for 2017 with my women’s art group about sexism in the art world. Should be interesting. And I made the boychild’s flight arrangements home. I know he was trying to find a job out there for the summer, but I’m glad he’s coming home, even though it means I can’t rent his room out to Airbnb…to people who don’t mind my sewing at midnight…with music on…loud. Yeah. I’m never gonna be a good roommate.

So I taped together the head of the drawing I’d done…and then I added more paper for the rest of the drawing…

Apparently I think this drawing will be quite large.

It’s kind of a pain to deal with it like this, but I’m doing it anyway. I want to do another Earth Mother, so I am. You Can’t Stop Me! So there.

I don’t like the arm on the right at all, so I’ve redrawn it, although you can’t see that here because I’m still debating what will be ON it…there’s a snake already, but there will be something else. I’m leaning towards cheetah or leopard, but I need to deal with some other stuff on here first…like a better heart than what I had.

It needed to be smaller and better. And now it is. So now I just need to keep reminding myself not to make it too complicated. Because this is full size. And I don’t remember how many pieces the last Earth Mother had, but it was tiny pieces in the bottom section, and that was a bit crazy. I can look that up…it was only 891 pieces…so not a lot more than what was in the little piece I just finished. Interesting. It seemed more complicated than that.

And I just remembered I wanted a sun up top that was more complicated than what’s there, so I’ll need to add a piece of paper up there to extend it as well. Last I checked, it was 50-some inches high. So that’s not too bad. Only minorly crazy.

It’s taking a lot of brain time to draw though…a lot of staring at it and visualizing what could be there. I have pictures of snakes, octopuses, and leopards pulled up on my iPad at the moment. Think the octopus will go on the left shoulder, up in the hair but tentacles curling down onto her arm. Octopuses are weird-looking beasts…their…um…heads? are such strange shapes. I have to remember from previous quilts that drawing all the tiny suckers means crazy when it comes to tracing and ironing them. Tentacles don’t have to be complicated.

Anyway, it’s a start. It’s peaceful to draw. It calms my mind, lets all the stress dribble out and wander off, so I can do the next day. I have been meditating more for real, using my app, but honestly, sometimes this is all I need to do. Stare at the paper and draw.

Attempting Wake-Up Maneuvers

So the not-sleeping catches up and whacks you in the face. OK. It whacks me anyway. I napped after work yesterday. That’s it…I’m officially an old person. What I love is the cats climb up on the couch with me, flanking me. I set an alarm, because I didn’t want it to be like last time, when I lost 2 hours to nappiness and then couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’m already having issues with that. So 40 minutes later, I was all groggy (hey, I set it for 25 minutes and then it went off, scaring all the creatures on the couch, so I went for another 15…then the girlchild was texting me and I attempted wake-up maneuvers). And I didn’t really feel like doing anything, which is too bad, because I always have stuff to do. And I didn’t feel like figuring dinner out either. I probably had enough leftovers for lunches and dinner last night, but the potatoes were MEH and I had eaten that for lunch and hell, what I really wanted was to be physically transported, no WAIT, I wanted the waiter at Himalayan to be able to walk through some sort of transport thing that put him in my living room to take my order and then to bring it to me. But not to wait around and stare at me, wondering why I can’t get my butt off the couch.

That’s when I got up and ordered more tea, because I’m running out. It took me a good two hours and some fakeout of a dinner menu (it’s always OK to have salad and Brussels sprouts), plus staring at my phone and the telly for a good long time before I could function. Part of that is what I taught yesterday, which was kind of a performance art, relay race of neurons and action potentials. I spent a lot of time running around the room yelling “DO IT! DO IT!” and “SEND IT BACK!”. So if you’re thinking teachers just sit at a desk (I don’t really have a desk for such activities), imagine the yelling and the running instead. Today will be a nice quiet video viewing of brain structure and function to counteract the running and screaming of yesterday. The one day you could have the superintendent walk in and you’d be totally OK with him seeing the real live crazy of Nida teaching science? Yeah. He didn’t show.

So when I remember that and the not-falling-asleep of the night before, I guess a nap is warranted.

After that, I finally got my brain to function and finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is temporarily called Fishface, just because I had three drawings out at the same time, and I needed something that would tell them all apart. The other two are Totemwoman and Spiralwoman. I already have a quilt called FishWife, so it could get confusing. She’ll have a different name at the end.

There’s all the pieces…about 2 1/2 hours of trimming Wonder Under.

Then I sorted them. This quilt is gonna go fast, I think.

Compared to the last one anyway. And I still wasn’t tired. Because I’d had a nap. So I sat down with the drawing from the weekend and tried to finish up the torso a bit so I can copy it. And I think I’ll toss it in the car today and go enlarge it and start drawing stuff for real.

Like real size. This is already big. And I’m not sure that heart is gonna stay. There’ll be a heart, but the chest/upper torso is off. So maybe I’ll cut it off a couple of inches up into the drawing and then redo the chest and heart full size. Usually I enlarge 200-300%, though, and this head is already considerably bigger than the last Earth Mother, so maybe I won’t? Or I’ll rethink the rest of the body? I’m not sure.

I got good news last night that two of my quilts will be in the Feminism Now show at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. The opening is May 14 from 6-10 PM. If you haven’t been, it’s part of the Barrio Art Crawl, so there are a few studios in the area of Gallery D, plus other studios, like La Bodega Gallery and the Bread and Salt Gallery, in the area. I’ll post a link closer to the time.

This is the smaller piece that will be in the show (currently out for professional photography)…

And the larger piece it connects to will be there too. The smaller one will travel to Sweden (date/location TBA) with the exhibit, and then hopefully there’ll be another exhibit in Los Angeles or down here in San Diego, once the Swedish exhibit closes.

Yeah. I really need to go to school. I had to meditate to fall asleep again last night, so caffeine will be a necessary part of the day today (it’s what’s for breakfast! and lunch! and dinner!). At least I’m making progress, even if I have to nap in between the job and my real life.

A Sketchbook on the Deck

Oh my lord. Morning. Not my superpower. I’m pretty sure I have to go to school today, but it’s so quiet here, I have to check the calendar and the clock to make sure that’s true. Is it really Sunday? (it’s not) I keep expecting the trash trucks, but in truth, they don’ t show up until it’s time for me to leave for school. My phone still has the golden hue of nighttime…which is funny, because it’s not THAT early. It just feels early. I really should have a job that allows me to be a night owl and an introvert, instead of what I have. Oh well.

So I managed to get some stuff done yesterday: quilt made it to the photographer, bookshelf that had broken and been fixed made it back into my office, all the crap that belonged in it made it out of the bathroom (yes, that’s where I put it), a pile of school stuff made it to school (after I took a turn too fast and threw it all over the back of my car). Yeah. I rocked it. Funny. It didn’t feel like I rocked it. I remember getting to a certain point in the to-do list and looking at a clock and thinking SHIT. The day is almost gone.

I worked on the drawing some more on Saturday…I like the feeling of sitting out on the deck in the semi-shade, even though the dog keeps chewing up the pinecones she brings me, and then I have to step on all the pieces, which is kinda like walking through a field of Legos. I swept the deck yesterday too. I had some eye starts on the drawings…it’s interesting that all I have to draw are the two eyes to know something is wrong…

Nope. Way too far apart.

These were better. Good distance. Similar size. I’m onto something here.

I think this was another fail. The face. The eyes. Aargh.

Insert picture of cute baby. I made the quilt under her. I love that her feet are blurry.

Maybe I should just stick to baby quilts…

No. I can do this! There we go…

That’s what I needed. This is working. Except the fish in the net are smiling and they shouldn’t be. That’s as far as I got. I’ll finish up the head mostly and then go enlarge it and do the rest to size. I think. Like I’m going to have any brainpower for drawing this week. I’m already exhausted. I honestly don’t feel like I slept at all last night. That’s really common for teachers, by the way…to not sleep well on a Sunday before school starts, especially after a break. You’re convinced you’ve forgotten something major and you won’t remember it until the kids are sitting in front of you.

So yeah. Sleep.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tracing the Wonder Under for this other quilt…

And it has so few pieces (399…except I realized at the end when I was tracing the cactus spines that I totally misnumbered all of them and there’s really probably 415 pieces in this)…that I finished it last night. It took 3 hours and 40 minutes and one yard (approximately) of Wonder Under. At 11:43 PM, I was going to quit, and then I realized I had hardly anything left, so I just finished it.

That’s it. And no teensy weensy pieces like on the last one. It’s almost sane to make this quilt. There must be something wrong with me. It’s like I’m attempting to do something that won’t completely challenge me while I try to finish out the school year (which will challenge me). Actually, I would hope this would be done well before the school year is out and I’m working on another one. But I’m not that bothered at the moment. I will be later. Just not now. Now I’m trying to figure out how to survive the next 11 weeks. What do I fill my weekends and my evenings with to make the Kathy World a better place? People and art and hiking and books. Obviously not a clean house, because I didn’t achieve that or an amazing yard over break.

Although last night, girlchild and I made a plan to spend ALL the money we both had in savings to just hop onto planes and meet in Jamaica. We figured we could afford a round-trip flight and maybe a cheap hotel. Food would be a stretch, but we didn’t care. Probably doesn’t help that it snowed in Boston over the weekend. I have less of an excuse with 80-degree temperatures here, but it was a nice fantasy.

For today, though, I’m gonna be doing pretty good if I make it through school and a walk with the dog. Then I’ll reevaluate. But really, right now, I’d rather be sitting on the deck with my sketchbook…see, I don’t even need to go to Jamaica.

Drawing in the Sun…

OK. Work poking its head in. It’s been doing it all week. How do I know? Work dream (nightmare) last night). Stress teeth grinding. Better today, because I only have one period left of the project to grade, although I have two assignments I haven’t even touched. It’s OK. One is extra credit and only about 15 kids did it. The other one…sheesh…I’ll get to it eventually. Just not today. Today I will finish the one period and hopefully it will be easy. Less than 3 hours. And then planning for next week. The other science teacher and I did plan the week…it’s just that some of it was kinda vague. And I don’t remember what we did. Plus I have to write warmups and send the parent email and update my website. Teachers of the computer age. Except when we lose teams next year, I won’t be able to send a team email to parents any more. Sigh. That’s gonna suck. Because I’ll still do it, but if I can persuade the other teachers to do it too, parents will then get four emails instead of one. And they barely read the one. Oh well. This is not a problem I made and it’s also not one I can solve. I’ve spent the last month telling myself not to worry about next year until it happens. Maybe fairies will descend upon us and make everything sparkly and nice and I won’t need to deal with the shit I think will happen.

It’s not really denial. It’s just hope…I think. It’s certainly protective.

So yesterday I was having a crisis of mental attitude. I made lunch and I went and sat on my deck in the sun and I threw the ball and pinecones (because she lost two balls) for the dog. I used to have a view of the mountains, but I think I would have to climb into my neighbor’s yard and prune his trees to get that back. Might do that someday.

Calli knows that if she wants me to throw it, she has to put it in my lap. This is her pretending she doesn’t know that. Eventually she follows the rules.

So I wanted to try drawing a revision of last year’s Earth Mother, but without the no-nudity clause. So I started with the face, and this one was too angry. Or petulant. Or irritated. Hard to say. Too much chin.

A plane flew by. Apparently yesterday was the Assyrian New Year. Kind of interesting. I wouldn’t have known that without the plane.

I made another false start with a shitty pair of eyes before I got to this one…which WAS going somewhere, but…

I didn’t want both arms down and that damn jellyfish is way too huge. So I stopped on that one and made two more lame starts, before I gave up and went and graded things. I’m not done trying…I will try again. Maybe today. But it wasn’t working for me yesterday. That happens…especially if I’m aiming for something in my head that’s still a little unfocused and vague.

But drawing in the sun is probably something I should try to do more regularly. Because that was nice…birdsong and blue skies. Except for the tree shredding that was happening in the neighborhood somewhere (woke me up this morning too).

After grading, I did some straightening up on the light table, which has a plywood cover on it when I’m not using it, so I pile stuff up there that needs to be put away to trace stuff. And then I started tracing the next quilt, which isn’t huge…

She’s about 17 x 21″, so a little different than the one I just finished…plus only half the pieces. That should be a plus. I drew this while flying back from Boston after dropping my daughter off for college. Rough flight. But another version of the Earth Mother. I guess it’s on my mind. Constantly apparently.

OK, so I am going to finish grading this morning. Well…probably early afternoon, based on previous attempts. And then maybe draw. We’ll see. I do have to move a bookshelf back in here that dad fixed so I can refill it with all the books etc., which are currently living in the kids’ bathroom. And rumor has it at least one kid is coming home, although not for 7 weeks. Not sure about the other kid. I’m sure he’ll let me know if he needs a flight, right? Sigh.

My positive attitude for the rest of the school year depends entirely on what I can fill the afterhours with to make up for the crazy. And my ability to just write off certain kids, because they haven’t changed their behavior and contacting parents has no effect. So yeah. Whatever. Let the politicians go wild with that shit. I am not a magician. And then try not to react to whatever crazy admin throws at me. I’m done, people. I’m still teaching, I’m still helping the kids who are there and present and asking, but I can’t parent 155 kids. Someone else has to help. Such a frustrating year. For all of us.

Remember. Drawing in the sun. Panacea.