Keep Calm and Hermit On

I often go into hermit mode on breaks from school. I’ll go days barely leaving the house. Yesterday I left twice, both for things that were already on my calendar. I don’t actually have anything for today, but I’m going to walk the dog. Next week is a swathe of unscheduled days. I know I need to grade stuff, clean stuff, trim stuff, but I also need to clear my head, make it possible to go back to school in a little over a week and survive the rest of the school year without totally losing it. I need some calm and patience. My counselor says I need to fill myself back up, and she’s right. More importantly, I need to do a better job of that on the weekends through the end of the school year. Problem is there are so many to-do’s and other things that get in the way of the filling-up.

Anyway, yesterday was hermit mode. I worked on art-related things for over 6 hours, about 4 of those hours on the small quilt I’m putting together, which just so you know is supposed to be 16 x 24″ finished. That’s way smaller than I usually work, and it’s been difficult ironing it together, because tiny pieces are fussy. But it’s a good place for my brain to be at the moment. Clearing shit out inside the head, even though I can’t seem to get it together on the outside the head part.

I had these ironed the other day, but they were in the bin, because a couple of them aren’t attached to anything, and I was waiting on the cloud until I got the legs in.

There were some other free-floating pieces I did yesterday…

And then I started on the legs of the central figure, so the clouds went back in. That damn tree is a pain in the butt…

It’s always in the way.

This is a tiny uterus with an even tinier eyeball in it.

The torso came together. The girl’s knife is because she cooks…not because she wants to hurt things, although at the moment, that’s probably a toss up.

I think that’s when I went to counseling…then the store, came back and went to my quilt class. More on that below. After class and cooking food, I started on the upper torso, which was a little fussy.

Overlapping shit…then on to the head and hair, which I did separate from the torso at first.

Then once I had all the main pieces in, I ironed it to the torso.

There’s a few more things to go on there, like the face for instance, and the missing hand. I was too tired to deal with them last night though. Faces are complicated and they hold the strength of the figure…the expression is important. And on something this small, I didn’t want to fuck it up. So I went to bed with my book instead. Today I’ll get the rest done, I’m hoping. I should be doing other things, but I can’t get my head there. Maybe tomorrow.

On Wednesday night, I was in a bar at a music thing, so I drew. Desert plants were definitely on my mind. Not sure about the rest.

Those big heads are still in my brain, percolating. And a new Earth Mother drew part of itself in my head last night. I guess I should put it on paper. I feel a need to just make some stuff for a while without a deadline attached to it. I didn’t have anything portable on the current quilt to take to class, but I had three drawings I’d copied, one of which I wanted to do next, so I numbered all three of them.

They each came out at about 400 pieces…

They’re all about 17 x 21″ inches, so smaller than what I normally do. I’m in the mood to just bang out some smaller pieces (not as complicated as the one I’m doing right now). So maybe that’s my pre-summer project. And I can draw another Earth Mother in between and aim to do her over the summer.

Although there are shows that are talking to me, and I should consider them. Their deadlines are later in the year, though, and right now my brain hurts. So I’ll deal with these, I think. At least the first one. I’ll see where I’m at once I finish it.

That one reminds me of one I gave away. Unfortunately.

OK, so I’m going to walk the dog this morning, even though it’s a later start than I wanted, because I need to clear my head. Cobwebs. Shitty crap in there. Then I’m going to come back and spend at least an hour on taxes. The taxes I should have done a month ago, maybe more. Then I can do art. Or maybe I should set a yard or house goal as well. Sheesh. Too much in one day. I really just want to iron the damn quilt down. And continue to Keep Calm and Hermit On.

Sustenance

Deep breaths. It’s only 5 days, 1 major project, 1 unit of study, 2 parent meetings, and 1 field trip away from Spring Break. You Can Do This. Seriously, though, Friday was a bitch. So was Friday night and most of Saturday. I didn’t get anything done at all except art, because that was all I could handle. So that’s what I did. Friday night I drew…

I have a few ideas rolling around in my head, so I messed with one of them…

The cats kept me company…they don’t really like each other, so this is as close as they get.

No, that heating pad is not on. I guess it’s possible it had residual heat on Friday night, because my neck was still a mess. It’s better now.

Then I went into the studio and tried to iron a bit…

Exhaustion took over at some point. I got up the next morning, made my post-it list for the weekend (this is becoming a disturbing habit), and stared at it for a while. Then I ironed fabric instead…these are the flesh fabrics…

I needed to cross something off the post-it, so I went and picked up the dog from my ex’s house (soccer tournament) and walked her about 3 miles. She was very excited to see me. I brought her back here and she lolled around on the floor for the rest of the day. And I kept picking fabrics…

Honestly, most of this piece is the three figures, so lots of fleshy bits. At the end of Saturday, I had this stuff left to iron…

Basically everything that wasn’t flesh. Notice I still have all those loose bits of fusible web on that blue lid over there. Honestly, it hasn’t been that bad finding the missing pieces. I’ve only had to redraw a few.

At the end of Saturday’s 5-hour ironing binge (yeah, you read that right…I only got two things crossed off the damn post-it list and one was walk the dog)…this is how much I had ironed down.

I went to watch a band play. The waitress really liked this one…

The sitting at the table part is a piece of another drawing in my head. I think I’m going to try that one in a bigger sketchbook.

And this one…

Three drawings in 25 hours…not bad.

Sunday was busy. I crossed two more things off the post-it list and did a bunch of stuff for school that wasn’t even on the post-it. Plus the grocery shopping and crap around the house and cooking for the week. And I graded. Shocking. But I tried to stay away from it most of the weekend. I want to be sort of caught up for vacation…which is actually impossible, because see above…one major assignment and one unit due this week. It will take a long time to grade those. Oh well.

But later Sunday night, I got started again…slowly. This is ironing a tea set. You know. Like you do.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far in a remarkably messy pile.

And here is the dog…still lolling around at my feet. She groans if I step over her.

Here’s what’s left to iron. Two sets of wings…I don’t know what color to make them. Should they be the same? Different? Bright? Dull? Earthy? I just don’t know. There’s a set of lungs and a uterus in there too. And her hair, which involves some seawater, a jellyfish, a starfish, and some other fish.

Here’s what’s in the box as of last night.

I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours. Almost all this weekend. Yeah. I wasn’t really in the mood to Real Life it this weekend. Art. It’s what’s for dinner. Actually, no, bacon/leek risotto was for dinner and it was quite good. But art is my late-night snack, my dessert, my sustenance.

With Age Comes…Late-Night Drawing…

So the plus is I worked on grading stuff and prepping lessons for about 6 hours yesterday, so I could go out to the living room and finish that tiny little drawing that is now going to kick my ass for the next (shit, count them) four and a half weeks. Damn. I thought I had 5 weeks. OK. I can do this. I think I did the last one in that amount of time, oh wait, no I didn’t. I started tracing Wonder Under on January 10 and finished February 21. OK. I see. Well this one is much smaller so hopefully everything will take less time. Or more. Plus Spring Break is in there. That should count for something.

I got interviewed yesterday for a local newspaper and he asked what I was looking forward to, a project or piece, and I said I was looking forward to working on a piece just for me, one that I wanted to work on that wasn’t for a particular show or theme. And that’s true. But if I want my work in shows, sometimes I have to work like this.

So Saturday, after grading, I had a couple of hours to work on the drawing. I did go in with pencil and do the main parts of the two figures. And that bird at the top? I ended up erasing it and moving it before I inked. Usually I just go for ink, but this one is small enough and fussy enough that I didn’t want to mess around with…well…messing it up.

I love the late afternoon blue tint there.

Saturday, I started inking the top figure, which is male, despite the long hair. These are my kids. Then I kept going on Sunday night. I moved the bird down and closer.

Then I turned the drawing upside down and did the other female, the girlchild. I’m still debating the empty space in front of her face.

That’s one of my problems…that the empty spaces kind of bug me. You might have noticed. She has a knife because she’s a damn good cook, not because she’s a serial killer.

Someone emailed me about one of my pieces that was in Florida this last weekend and her interpretation really threw me…not in a bad way, but she’d taken the title to mean something different than what I had, and it threw a new interpretation on the quilt…but it wasn’t an incorrect one. In fact, I quite liked it. So this is why I explain the knife. Although there’s also the meta-interpretation of daughter and knife with mom, because that relationship is often a dicey one, as mothers and daughters throughout the ages can attest. You love them but there is a struggle there.

Here’s the whole thing…

I think it’s done. I may change my mind. I like to let them sit for at least a day before I start the next step, although with only 32 days, I don’t have time to sit for any days. Besides the first bit of drawing, the main part of the center female, the rest took me about 4 1/2 hours to draw. It’s always longer than I think it is. I think I can bang out a drawing in an hour, and sure, I can, but mostly it takes longer than that.

What I should have done at that point is go to bed, but if you’ve been reading here for more than a week, you know that’s one of my weak points…knowing when to stop.

So I numbered it.

I needed to know how bad it was…and it was. Bad. Over 800 pieces. Seriously. OK. I can do this. Yes I can. They’re small. They won’t take long.

And yeah, I went to bed too late. With age comes wisdom? Well, yes, in that I know that it’s numbered now and I can get on with tracing it tonight with very little brain power. Awesome. But maybe not so much feeling wise this morning with my brain in mush state as I go to work. Whatever. I always wanted to be one of those crazy old ladies.

The Goddess of Something…

So I have two quilts in Daytona Beach right now…with the AQS circuit. So enjoy Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

I keep forgetting about the pieces traveling with all the quilt shows. I have a real shortage of work in house at the moment. I know, it’s an elegant problem to have, unless you have shows to enter and nothing with which to enter. I have two coming up where I think I just can’t enter. That kind of sucks. Oh well. I made decisions about what to enter where, and this is what happens. It’s kind of a bloody miracle I’ve gotten the last two pieces done in time for the shows I figured they were made for. So there. Keep making work. I love the chaos of the Lifejacket piece. Should remember that for the next big one. Maybe blow off the themes that are coming up and just MAKE something.

You’ve got a few more days to see the exhibit at Grossmont…we’re pulling it down next Saturday. Hoping to get a little more press out of it.

And I got photos back from the photographer of the new piece…

Her name is still in my brain, working its way out, so just know it’s the Goddess of something, I’m not sure exactly what yet. Possibly everything. Just like me…I’m the Goddess of something…of cleaning up cat puke. Of coupons. Of paperwork. Of Google Classroom. Of the bougainvillea. Of multi-tasking. Of blueberry oat bars. That seems like enough.

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

Hard to see anything, because I’m still in pencil, because I don’t wanna fuck it up. I think the male figure is almost ready for ink. Then I’ll need to turn it upside down to do the other female…and figure out what’s going on with the hair. And the empty spots. Probably should figure out the main figure’s hair before I draw his wings. You know, like you do.

I’m really annoyed by empty spots. I like to fill everything in. I blame Richard Scarry. And Dr. Suess. OK, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

I saw this last night. There were two, but there was a guy in the way of the second one. Please sir, move so I can photograph the scary faces.

And Midnight is in her standard place.

I’m buried in grading. I have a ton of yardwork and housework. I still need to finish taxes and start financial aid. I can’t deal with any of it right this second. I’m too tired. Sad! That said, I got up at a reasonable hour, finished grading tests and another assignment, then did yardwork, drew, ate, and I think I showered in there. I think I’m going to spend an hour trying to draw some more and then give up for the day. Because. Because I have to hang out with humans for some period of time or I go a bit bonkers. More than I already am. There’s a fine line between the bonkers that keeps me going and making stuff and the bonkers that throws me down the hole. I’m staying above ground right now. Need to keep doing that.

Slow Percolation

First of all, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I’ve had something (probably animal) waking me up every night around 2 AM and sometimes I’m so hyped afterwards that falling back to sleep is just troubled. Last night it was the mockingbird…the one that visits every year. Last year I was lucky and he (she?) hung out at the neighbors’, just far enough away that I could hear him while I was falling asleep, but not like when they live in your yard. Last night, he was in my yard. Move on, you bastard!

Then I woke up with a start at about 4 AM…someone kept saying “low battery.” What the fuck? Oh yeah, the smoke alarm. Pillow over head again until it started that loud horrendous screeching that I will appreciate only if there ever is a fire or…well, my house is so leaky airwise that there will never be a carbon monoxide leak big enough for me to have an issue. So at 4 AM, I was switching out batteries. The dog was mightily confused by the timing of all of it. And falling back to sleep was not easy.

I actually took a nap yesterday evening. Just 20 minutes. Power mom nap. Yeah baby.

My counselor is trying to graduate me…I get it. I’m not clinically depressed any more. That’s a good thing. But I still want balance in my life and we went through and listed everything and work has to give. It’s the only healthy thing. Can’t sleep less or exercise less or art less. Work is the time suck. Like I didn’t know that.

Moving on to the art stuff. I did grade last night, so I didn’t start artmaking stuff until almost 11. I started with the easy stuff, the cutting and taping. It’s rhythmic, meditative. Cut. Measure. Tape. Cut again. Measure. Draw a line. Cut.

So the finished size on this needs to be 16×24″…I measured the paper at 15×23″ to give me some space for a binding, and then I’m going to try to stay about a 1/2 inch inside. Maybe. Maybe not.

Damn thing is tiny. Anyway. I then stared at it for a while, trying to have a vision. It is kinda like that. I stare at the paper until what needs to fill in the space appears in my head. There’s some little elf in there, or a gnome or something, that’s drawing on a white board while someone else erases, trying to find something I like, because sometimes I’ll get picture after picture and almost shake my head like an Etch a Sketch (you would laugh to see all the words I just typed into Google because I couldn’t remember the name of those things). And then one will stick and I’ll draw it. It’s a slow percolation process. Nothing fast and furious.

I gave up on the staring and started to tape the two larger drawings together. This is Bathtub 6, I think.

It’s the creepy one. Some part of me wants to draw more around it, but the minimalist in me (which rarely surfaces) says it should stay the way it is.

Then I taped this one…tentatively named Heart-Shaped Box. It needs a lot more drawing…more room on the bottom. I think. Anyway, it’s there for when I want to work on it. You can see how much bigger it is because the first drawing is up in the top right.

I have another huge one that will probably be a triptych just so it’s not overwhelming to quilt…maybe that’s something to draw during Spring Break, since I will have hours and hours of alone time. Huh. Not looking forward to that…except I am. Difficult. This will be the first school vacation where I’m not visiting someone else or having the kids come home. I need to do yardwork like every day. Ugh.

So I finally picked up a pencil! (Sion is happy now…) Because I didn’t want to fuck it up.

Good thing really because I had to redraw the lower figure about 5 times. Still not sure what to do with the heads. Gotta let the gnomes do their white board thang. Will have to get back to you on the heads. Even hers needs something. Hair? Who knows. Why keep it so simple? Oh yeah, because the pieces are gonna be freakin’ tiny. I’m not enlarging this one. Need to remember that so I don’t go crazy later.

Cut and Tape

Tired morning. Sleep is messy. Whatever woke me up at 2 AM didn’t bother the dog. The cat was as alert as I was, but she gets to sleep all day, curled up in my laundry. (Doesn’t that sound nice? I should have been a cat.) Me? I’m a little on the edge of irritable and crazy. Nothing new there.

I was so efficient yesterday afternoon. Walked the dog…three miles uphill. OK. The whole three miles is not uphill. But the hill was easier than it was on Saturday. This is good. Then I came home and ran errands and talked to girlchild, who was trying to figure out insurance crap.

After dinner, I finished grading one WHOLE assignment (OK, I had 2 out of 5 periods already done, but whatever) and then I worked on some fabric hobby stuff, something I’m not allowed to show you, but Sue Spargo wool embroidery stuff, which really just gives my head a place to rest sometimes when it’s all over the map, wanting to be creative and stitchy, but not able to focus on that for whatever reason. So I traced freezer paper for two blocks and cut out the freezer paper, and now I can move on to the next step. It was enough to calm the brain down and let it focus. Unfortunately it was then also really late.

Sigh. Yeah. I know why I’m always tired. I don’t sleep enough or well. Really, I never have. Even as a kid. Not sure about as a baby. But never a deep sleeper.

So I did get up off the couch and try to deal with the stuff I’d copied. At least some sense of artistic achievement most nights, right? That’s what keeps Kathy happy and sane?

So I copied the one from Tuesday night. I stood there debating for a while if the part I cut off (on the left) would make a cool small art quilt all by itself.

Yeah. The composition is kinda cool. But I don’t want to make one that looks like the other one. So I recycled it. Now I need to add paper to this, measure the final size, and decide how I’m going to do the rest.

Then I had my smaller sketchbook, the one that travels with me. There were three drawings in there that I thought would make interesting smaller quilts. I enlarged them 200%. Honestly, with all the detail, I could have gone to 300%, but then I wouldn’t be in the smaller quilt range. I taped together all the pieces to get the one I was going to do next…

Sort of a reminder of Earth Mother for Ventura in some ways. No boobs! Technically no nudity. I couldn’t enter my local SAQA show this year because I had nothing small enough with no nudity from recent years. Guess that says something about me…and my local SAQA show. Oh well.

These all started in a sketchbook that’s about 9×12″, so these are about 18×24″ or so. Here’s the second one…

She looks like she’s related to the one above. One was done on the plane home from dropping the girlchild at college in Boston. The other was done either on the way to or from Seattle for Thanksgiving. I guess planes are my new sketching arena. Too bad I don’t spend much time on them?

This last one was drawn while watching Mockingjay. So there goes the plane theory!

It’s a reminder of another older one, although it doesn’t look like it at all…just a vague reminder. These spiral-shaped women often show up in my drawings.

So that’s three smaller ones plus the other one that needs to be done by the end of March (should get my butt going on that one).

I also copied two larger ones, out of the 14×17″ sketchbook. They’re both older…

One is the most recent of the bathtub series, a kind of creepy one…I can’t find it at the moment, although I know it’s filed somewhere. Oh well. And the other one is something I started drawing a long time ago but it wouldn’t fit on the paper. So I enlarged it to be able to draw the rest. No rush. Maybe it’s the next big one. Maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s a start anyway. I have some directions to go once the next have-to is finished. It would be good to have some smaller art pieces around this year I think. Don’t worry. There will be a big one. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Or whether I’ll draw a new one.

So tired still. Work calls. It’s kind of a whiny bitch, but I can’t ignore it.

White-Out Is My Friend

I have this crazy-ass dog (it’s my daughter’s dog) who likes to go in the pool. She just wades in up to her belly and wiggles around a bit, but then wants to come straight back in the house, which means a 5-minute struggle with a dripping Golden Retriever and a towel. Most days she just goes in once, but some days, it’s 3 or 4 times and all the towels are wet and I’m going a bit bonkers, because she’s like a big smelly 2-year-old.

I have this wacky cat who started out by finding all my hair scrunchies (yeah criticize all you like…I’m not and never will be a fashion maven) and dropping them all over the house. Once every couple of days, I find all of them, pick them up, and deposit them in the bathroom so she can start over. She’s recently started doing the same thing with pairs of socks and apparently with one flipflop (would have liked to see that in action).

The other cat, also the girlchild’s, has recently become overly needy, wanting to knead your belly into submission, which would be fine if the claws were not part of the process. She’s very pushy about her needs, biting you if you don’t continue the never-ending petting. She’s also a fat beast of a cat, so that doesn’t help.

Some nights I come home and feel like I am needed more here than at school…and after a long day of whiny stuff at school (from the parents, no less), it’s nice to sometimes have a break from the three furry creatures. Last night was not one of those nights. It’s OK. They love me (most of the time) and need me (way too much). Right now, I only have two of them in here with me, so I’m doing OK.

I graded for a while last night…I’m trying to do a bit every night so I don’t get too frustrated, but last night, about halfway through one minor assignment with only one period, I was about to chuck the computer through the wall. I’ve taught what organ systems are…multiple times. I even showed a short reminder video before we started the assignment, so they would know what the systems were…again…because I’ve taught them multiple times, but I realized I was having to repeat my instructions over and over. “Organs work together in a system. Name one of the systems? Yes. Cardiovascular is a system. Digestive is a system.” And this is my highest-level class, so it should be fine, right? Oh holy heaven, some teacher goddess must be out there for us, because I needed support. There were multiple kids that were so far off that I wanted to bang my head on the desk…so far off, I don’t even know how they found the answers they did (because they will say, that’s what the internet SAID! And I will scream at the top of my lungs and run flailing out of the classroom into the street some day when a kid tells me that…because I’m not allowed to simply say…”Bullshit. Show me where you found that.”). I bullied through though, because honestly, if a kid can’t figure out (after I modeled the first one even) what I’m asking for, and doesn’t have the guts to ask me (OK, I might have gone off if he had, because like I said, already TAUGHT you this multiple times, why aren’t you freakin’ listening, is it because you have a hearing problem or I’m not speaking clearly or what the fuck?), then they deserve the F they just earned for not doing what I asked them to do.

This year has been so frustrating so far…we are almost 2/3s of the through and I don’t know how I am going to survive the last trimester.

This is why I stop the working part at some point in the night and move on to less crazy-making shit, although last night, even that was an issue. So I had an idea for what I wanted for the next piece, which isn’t very big, so I have to watch how crazy I draw…nothing too tiny (I think I’ve already blown that). But I started…the main figure was fine, but then I tried to decide how to add the secondary figures, and that’s where it went all to hell…

That is so not working.

It happens…especially when I haven’t been drawing regularly for a while. And yeah, people are like, look you crazy woman…you’re drawing with Sharpie, not pencil…what do you expect? I get this flow with the Sharpie that I never get with a pencil. I like it. And my drawings aren’t the final product, so I don’t care if I mess up and have to use white-out. And I rarely DO have to use white-out.

The bottom arm on the left was fixed…but the rest of the body just wasn’t working. At all. So I got rid of the whole body.

And then I drew a face.

Now you can see the body under her arms is gone (but that one boob is giant-looking in this photo)…I’m actually going to go copy this to size and try to draw the rest. I might even use pencil to start. It happens. But I’m much closer than where I was before, so that’s a good thing, because this whole coming home and NOT having a project in progress, where I can just pick it up and do the next step or continue what I was doing…well, I’m not liking that. I’ve been pretty much booked solid on projects for months now. And it’s not like I don’t still have a deadline. I do. I just don’t have the next step ready to go yet. When school is this frustrating, I need a nice outlet in the evenings. Really. I do. Every night.

So I’ll copy this one and another one that I think will make a good quilt if I enlarge it and draw the rest. And another smaller one, so I should find that sketchbook too. Letting my art brain lie fallow is not a good plan. Especially if the only other thing I have is incredibly frustrating student work that makes me want to throw my computer into the pool. After the dog. Yeah. Bad plan.

Pen on Paper…

I’ve had this idea in my head for days and finally last night after school and the gym and dinner and then grading stuff, where my mood slid from acceptable into dark and grim (actually, that might have been after completing the FAFSA), I drew. Finally. But I don’t like it. And that’s OK. I mean, it has its moments and it was something to do with the pen last night so hopefully I can get my head where it needs to be for the drawing of the next quilt.

I have this book I’ve owned since before I was divorced (so officially a million years ago) of mastectomy nudes. I can’t even remember where I got it or why, but the scar has been in my head. It’s visible maybe. So many scars aren’t. The drawing isn’t done, but I’m not sure I will finish it, because the next one is niggling at me and that’s the one I need right now. Plus another one is tickling at my amygdala. Man, that’s a hard word to spell. Maybe I should just draw every night this week. Don’t worry about fabric right now, although damn, there was a quilt top that was squealing at me last night, like a teenaged girl who just got asked out for the first time.

I think my moods are full-on hormone-related, because my body is confused as heck about what it should be doing and they hit like a random summer storm…no warning, just BAAM. And you’re out. And down. And wow. Seriously? I did not deserve that.

In response, I made a Starbucks fake of their blueberry oat bars and they are so damn good that I had to freeze 3/4’s of them so I wouldn’t eat them all in a week. Seriously. These things are good. Now I just need to rework them so the calories aren’t so heinous. It’s fine if you just eat one. I want it to be fine if I eat two.

More pinups below…then I have a parent meeting. Ugh. I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t fall asleep. Stupid brain.

By Marea Korea…

Jacki Geary…

Lauren Grant…

Chelsea Wilde…

I can’t explain why I pick the ones I do. But there they are. There’s more…but I have to go do my job.

Sleep Is Not My Superpower

I have a sleep app on my phone that tells me how long I slept (notionally…because I can be pretty still when I’m not sleeping) and how well…more movement meaning I wasn’t sleeping deeply. It also has an alarm on it, which is useful. I started using it years ago to try to figure out why I was so tired in the morning…and here’s where all the people who know me personally start cracking up, because they think I don’t sleep. I DO sleep. For about 6 hours a night…I don’t go to sleep early because I can’t fall asleep early, and there is no damn point in lying in bed, flopping around, praying for sleep. In fact, the insomnia specialists advise against it. Go to bed when you’re tired. So I do. Well, sometimes I go to bed earlier than tired because I know it will get ugly the next day. I think I had a whole year there of 4-hour nights, but that’s depression for you. But now I’m back to 6-hour nights, which works OK for me. And yes, I do exactly what I’m NOT supposed to do on the weekends…I sleep in. I like that lie in. I look forward to it, especially after 13+ years of soccer games early on Saturday or Sunday mornings, or sometimes both days. I like waking up slowly that morning, hearing the world around me but not getting up yet, reading a bit, or rolling around with a kitten cleaning herself by my head. Well, as long as it’s not at 6 AM. Sometimes she starts then, and that is not a good thing.

My sleep app last night, on a night where I went to bed early (for me…before midnight) and had a chance for a lie-in…says I slept at 50% efficiency. Now I’m normally a pretty efficient sleeper. I spend the right amount of time in light and REM sleeps. But last night was a flopping clusterfuck. And I’m glad the app backs me up on that. I am sick. That doesn’t help. But I’m not THAT sick. I wasn’t coughing or moaning or anything. So what the hell? Weirdness. I don’t usually have that bad a night ever. Oh well. Moving on. I’m used to functioning somewhat like the walking dead. No change there.

But really, even when I was a kid, I wasn’t a great sleeper. I read under my blanket with a flashlight until well after midnight when I was in elementary school. My boy is the same way. But we both know as adults that we have to sleep at some point. So we do.

I worked last night. I’m incredibly behind on grading. I finished two assignments. I figured that was enough for one night. Then I cut out little pieces of fabric…

I’ve got about 5 hours in. I’m probably not going to finish today. I have too much else to do. Because there’s probably another 4 hours in there. And I need to do other stuff.

I folded fabric and reunited the binding fabric (now clean, no chemical sizings) with the quilt. That’s on my plate for today…put the binding on.

I also have a pile of work to get through…school and other job. I got an email yesterday from a company I applied with back in early November. They apologized for the amount of time that had passed, but had me upload info on their database. I honestly don’t know if that means they’ll use me or what, but I did it. It’s science education materials…so I’m highly qualified. But I think a million other people probably are too. I don’t need a lot of extra work…there are only so many hours in the days…but I do need some. I’m short a good chunk of money for the kids’ college in the next three months. More than a month’s salary short. It is what it is. I will figure it out. Somehow.

Someone said yesterday that I’d be done with my tasks (ironing or cutting or whatever) if I didn’t write this blog. Except this blog is what keeps me doing everything at the pace I’ve adopted. It’s motivating knowing that every day I’ll be telling myself (and apparently you, but know that I rarely think about you when I write) what I got done and reviewing how that made me feel. I felt pretty good last night. I was bloody efficient and I was able to check a bunch of things off the list. I needed to be able to do that this week. The writing also clears my brain…I can dump all the shit I don’t want to think about here and then walk away from it. Also, you have to understand that I write really fast. And I don’t think very hard about it. It was painful to watch a former boyfriend edit his Facebook status over and over again, torturing himself with whether that one sentence was the best possible combination of words, editing it over and over…I don’t roll that way. There’s no time for that constipated verbal shit. It’s here in my head and I vomit it out on the screen. There. Done. Now I can move on.

I will do some art thing today. I know I’m at a show tonight for quite a long time, and my sketchbook will be my trusty companion. So expect drawings posted in the next few days. I LOVE to draw. I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping I feel better by then too, but if not, there’s cold meds for that.

Less Molasses and More Lightning…

Oh My Lord the molassesness of it all. I have this to-do list that is miles long and I’m trying to get through all the things on it, one at a time, and then other crap inserts itself into that, like writing teacher recommendations with 6 essay questions that I can’t answer without interviewing the child sometimes and that means I have to find time during teaching to do that and THEN write the rec as well and administrative crap is burying me and everything takes so LOOONNNGGG. Girlchild’s phone has worked fine for months and now that she’s back in Boston, NOW it’s acting up again. Not even sure if I can handle that thing, because she might have to take the phone in (it’s an AT&T insurance thing now). Plus grades and college money and writing a new genetics test because the other one won’t work and managing science stuff in general and don’t even throw my family into that mix or the boychild who will probably have his flight cancelled tomorrow morning. Hopefully before we have to get up at an ungodly hour. And taxes and FAFSA and financial aid are all hanging over me as well, because it’s almost the end of the month.

I will get through. I went to the gym yesterday and worked out and it was glorious. Plus I got to read my book. Which was also glorious. More of that please.

Girlchild owes me $20 for making me sign her back up for the gym for a month and then never going. But the guy there saved me an additional $5 a month by changing my membership from family to single until she gets back. How am I going to spent that $5 a month? Oh joy, I do not know. Who can I hire to help me at $5/month?

I graded last night. I also spent time on the phone dealing with family stuff. So I didn’t get as much ironing done as I wanted, but honestly, I would have had to stop there anyway…I did all the stuff on the rug…a mug, a cat, and a book…

I had done the rug the night before. So at this point, I think I was up into the 50s. Pitiful amount of time for that many pieces really. I’m moving like molasses. Too tired? I don’t know. Too stressed maybe.

There’s the not-very impressive pile.

The reason I had to stop there is because the next batch of pieces is the human figure itself, which honestly is most of the quilt. I need to pick all the flesh colors at the same time so I don’t forget what I’m doing…which basically means picking about a run of 10 fabrics on this quilt from light to dark and then going through each bin and pulling all the flesh pieces, because they’re spread out from piece 60-something to 900-something. Yeah. That’s gonna be a bitch. I’m going to start tonight and finish who-the-fuck-knows-when. If I knew I didn’t have to deal with grades or flights or baby quilts or other shit in the next few days, that would be awesome, but I know none of that. Or I could come home tonight and grade for hours and be done with it (I’m never actually done with it) and then pick fabrics tomorrow. I may decide to do that. Sunday is already a goner, so I’m wiping it off the list of available days. I don’t think I can get all the fabric ironed this week. Realistically it’s not gonna happen. Not even this weekend.

Sigh. I’m aiming for Monday night done now. If I can get all the fleshy bits picked and ironed by the end of Saturday, then maybe I can pull it off. There’s a lot of non-flesh bits in there (hearts, hair, rockets and the like), but I don’t think they’ll take me long if the flesh is done. I just need to be moving faster than I am. Less molasses and more lightning.

So I was looking at this mug that’s on the quilt and thinking to myself, I drew a pizza slice on the mug. I often draw things on the mugs, although usually rainbows…very 80s. I don’t actually own a rainbow mug. I mostly use mugs I painted myself, although I’m down to one. Which sucks. I have others people have given me that fill in, although I usually drink milk out of them instead of tea (don’t ask…it’s just what I prefer). But there’s a pizza slice on that mug.

Pepperoni. I drew this on New Year’s Eve while watching sci fi. I was thinking (yet again) about being a woman, a mom, a teacher, trying to do everything and be everything to everyone because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and then I remembered last Friday, after my first week back to school, and I tell the boychild I’m ordering pizza because I can’t handle dinner and he says “I figured.” Because I’ve been his mom forever and a teacher for as long as he can remember (he was maybe 7 when I started teaching…or 6? Can’t remember.) and the first Friday back to school after a break is almost always pizza delivery. So it makes total sense that the pizza slice is on the mug. Sign of a busy mom.

It’s all gonna work out. Some things won’t get done or will get done late. And that’s how it always is. I should probably find time for meditation though. Because not doing that is kicking my butt. Gonna calendar it now.