Hey. Weird week again. I don’t know what day it is. I think that starts in mid-December and continues until my first full week…which technically is next week. Maybe then I’ll feel less discombobulated. Or not. It’s not like this year has started out stable and balanced. I just had another art deadline moved up last night, by a month. I have nothing for that show at the moment, due to some subject restrictions. I might not enter. I might not be able to. I have a couple of ideas that could happen relatively quickly, but I need to finish this one first.
I’ll be trimming all week…here’s Monday’s progress…
And here’s what I had to deal with…
Every stage is new for her, so she has to explore it.
Which is sometimes problematic.
Last night’s progress started like this…
And eventually turned into this…
Which meant I could do this…
I see progress, but it’s slow. I was grading stuff last night and in an art zoom, on top of all of it, so trimming was only an hour. I also worked on this last night…
I’m going to add a bunch more colors around the spirals (or as spirals?). The black is like a base for it. Yes, this bowl already has 7 1/2 hours in it. Seriously unaffordable. I mean, I love working on it, so it’s OK, but seriously never making money at ceramics. It was nice to be there though, just glazing and carving. And I bought more clay for the next artsy piece, which has been in my head for a month now.
OK. Today. Teaching geese and canaries (sound waves). Bunch of kids will be in and out for high school meetings. Yesterday, there were probably 15 phone calls pulling kids in the last three periods of the day. While I’m trying to teach. Fucking irritating. They gave up on calling me at some point (I couldn’t hear the phone through the oscillators and piano keyboards) and sent a kid with a note. WAY BETTER Y’ALL. So many interruptions to the job. I finished my grades (mostly) last night, a week early, because the principals decided to change the dates and no one told the teachers. Fuckers. It’s fine. I can’t do them this weekend anyway. I have three art meetings. It was four, but I wasn’t going to that one anyway. Too far. Too much other stuff I need to do right now. I do have pilates after school though and then this is the one night this week when I don’t have something on Zoom or in person (thank goodness). So I will sit quietly, read my book (that goes back to the library on Saturday), consider Greenland as its own free country, send good strong independent thoughts to Minnesota, and hope for world peace. I’ve been watching Homeland lately and it’s really not the best for a sense of peace. I do realize it…but am also sort of OK with living in that discomfort at the moment. Because a huge chunk of our country is living in similar discomfort. Sigh. Why do we treat people like this? It’s all money and feeling safe and power, but there’s no empathy in it. And I can’t live in a world without empathy.
I know, I know, it’s late. I had stuff to do this morning. I made wontons. I took a shower. Really that’s it. Oh, I talked to the girlchild. That was nice. So no, I didn’t blog this morning. Honestly, I love a 3-day weekend, but I’m not sure what the hell I do with the extra time. The bathrooms and floors still aren’t clean, I didn’t finish grading stuff, I didn’t finish inputting grades, I certainly didn’t finish putting everything back on the deck. My to-do list is still a shitshow. My green pants still aren’t wearable. This is crucial. I hope to fix this tonight. And the grades inputting. Maybe…no, I’m not doing a floor…c’mon, it’s almost 5 PM and I have a 6:30 Zoom? OK, maybe a floor or a shower. We’ll see.
Meanwhile. MLK. I watched a couple of excerpts of his speeches…man that man could talk…so beautifully. Made me tear up…especially in light of Minnesota…and Greenland…and Norway…and Venezuela…and another ICE killing. So did I do right by MLK today? Probably not. But I did talk to the plants I was moving about how the new pot would support them better than the old one. More about that later.
In the quilt realm, I did OK though. Friday night, I managed over 2 hours of ironing (I stayed up late).
I got the fleshy bits ironed down. Scribble was still not helpful.
She’s a sweetheart actually. After ironing the fleshy bits, here’s all the stuff that goes ON the fleshy bits…eyes and hearts and veins and lungs and trees.
OK, trees is weird, I know, but there was also ivy and a snake.
Saturday was my deck/ironing day (no school!), so I ironed for over 4 hours and got most of it done…all of it except the sun and the owl.
Sunday, it took another hour and a half to finish the ironing…156 different fabrics.
All in a bin…
So I can spend the next few days (few???) cutting all the pieces out. Usually that’s faster than picking fabrics…less brain power, less thinking. So now I’m hoping to be done with the cutting out by Saturday? That might be ambitious. The Man has a show Friday night that I’ll be at, and I have a meeting Saturday afternoon, and two meetings Sunday. But maybe if I hope to be ironing it all together by next week…because I need an ironed-together quilt top by February 15, but if I could get closer to done before that, it would be awesome. I will not be done by February 15, just to be clear, but I will definitely be ironed together by then. Total ironing to fabric time? 15 hours and 17 minutes. Longer than normal. Lots of little decisions to make.
I also did some underglazing on the bowl on Friday after school.
Clay is SLOW. I mean, I guess my version of quiltmaking is too. So there’s that.
I hiked Saturday afternoon…3 miles.
It was delightful.
The weather has been strangely warm. But nice. Spring is in the air…yes, it’s January, but it’s also Southern California, so the weeds are proliferating and the yard is a jungle and I could do yardwork every day for 8 hours and never catch up.
Speaking of yardwork, so the boychild and I replaced the deck railings, which were disintegrating. We replaced one of the railing posts too. So I had to move all the plants away from the railings. It’s been on my list for over a year to go through all the plants and repot things that were falling over or out of control, and to just generally clean up the space. But as I do that, I find more things to do. That space under the window…there used to be a planter that hung from the wall, and I don’t remember if we installed it or if it was here when we moved, and I don’t know why two of the slats are missing. I do know it all needs painting. So I pulled everything away and washed it down, and tomorrow, when it’s dry, I’m going to paint it.
Before I move the plants up against it. If I were really good, I’d replace those slats, but IDK what wood that is and it sounds more like hard work, considering the planter is going right up in front of it. So that’s a delay.
Here’s the long view toward that area…
All those planters were up against the railing before, but a lot of them need help. That plant in the front is leggy as hell. I’ve trimmed it before and it does well, so I’m going to do that again.
So basically, in two days. all I got done and set up was this small section of the deck…
Which is all the Man and the dog care about, so that’s fine. I’ll do the rest as I can. Or I’ll get tired of it and move it all back without cleaning it all up. We’ll see which Kathy wins out. I do like plants, but I run out of time.
This was funny…this is Instagram.
Almost 12 years, y’all…I didn’t know Insta had been around that long, but I guess it makes sense. They suggested I add a reel a week. A reel of what? Me talking to my plants? Scribble biting my hand? Yeah. Maybe.
Now for the screenshots that talked to me in the last three days…this one, for sure.
Although maybe I am a very hungry caterpillar. Hard to say.
W.T.F. I am boggled. Fuck the EPA.
Sigh. Why do people think this is OK? How do you live in this world and be OK with this? I guess it’s OK when it’s not you and your family being affected by it? Except they all are. Now we all are.
I could totally get behind this (I am actually part Danish)…
But this thing worries me…
I just looked up my insulin and it’s from Malaysia/India…which explains the emails when I had an issue with one of the pens. But I don’t wish death on the other insulin users, and I don’t want to worry about shortages for insulin users. Plus didn’t that orange fuckup tell us the meds would be 150% cheaper? Waiting on that too.
More people need to think about how this works…
Ecosystems include humans, even when we’re stupid and think science doesn’t matter.
I love this too…
I hope it goes away before it destroys the environment…although it may already be too late.
OK, well I go back to school tomorrow…teaching geese and canaries (sound waves and wave energy), then digital and analog signals. Spent some time with that today. Wrote a rubric that I remembered about at 2 AM. Thank you, school brain. Spent some time today finding a bunch of analog and digital things to show students (records, old video cameras, old cameras, cassette tapes in big wooden boxes). Fun times. Tonight, my local guild has a Zoom with Jane Sassaman, which sounds lovely. My book is due to the library Saturday and it’s for book club on Monday (a week from now). I’ll finish it; it’s good too. I have three Zooms this week (it’s a lot) and who-knows-what-else for school that hasn’t come to the light of day yet. Deep breaths. My neighbor above me still has their drippy icicle Christmas lights up and I’m not mad about it. It’s very relaxing to watch.
It’s been a long week…and a short week. I will have gone to work all 5 days, but only 4 with kids. It has felt like a million though. How is my right eye already twitching again? Some of the stuff we get asked to do is boggling. In general, the kids are OK, they’re mostly listening and doing the things…but like we had grades due next Tuesday and someone higher up changed it and never told us it changed? I’m still doing grades this weekend, because I don’t have time to do them next weekend. I made plans, I have multiple meetings, I have things I’m doing. I have what might be considered ‘a life’. Mostly that’s cleaning things and trying to make art and finishing books, but that’s OK. Trying to find recalcitrant cats at 11 PM (he’s fine; he was hiding and wouldn’t come out when called…because he’s a cat…and either he’s sick or sulking, not sure which).
Speaking of 11 PM, I’m supposed to go to bed at 10:30, and I do try, but I’m also trying to finish grading everything and iron for more than an hour a night, and at some point, you run out of time. I finished grading the second academic assignment from December last night, and I didn’t run over my allotted grading time, but it was close. I think yesterday was a 10-11-hour day. Ugh. Just for school. Ironing was another 80 minutes. So apparently I was hallucinating the other day about being 300 pieces in…I wasn’t. I am NOW…a little over. The ironing of all the tiny things that all need to be a slightly different shade of gray? It’s taking a while. Here’s Wednesday night’s progress…
So slow…so many little pieces. I did a Chevron sign and a BP gas sign…some other stuff too.
And here’s last night…
I mean, I think I added 8 gray fabrics to the pile, but it doesn’t look like much more…I did the Exxon sign and some smokestacks, and a bunch of smoke clouds, but that’s about it, and it doesn’t sound like much, but I made it into the 320s I think. Lots of smoke. NO. I’m still not halfway. BUT I have a 3-day weekend (during which I have to finish progress report grades, finish the deck railings, replant some stuff, and move everything back) to finish ironing everything to fabric. I’m getting close to the large goddess figure, and I haven’t entirely decided how to color her. I have ideas. I don’t know which one will work. It requires more brain power than I have right this minute. Hopefully I’ll have it tonight or tomorrow.
Or not. OK, today, I’m teaching sound. I didn’t have the energy last night after 5 parents contacts and a bunch of other stuff to set up my classroom for today, so I need to go in and place the cup/string telephones and find cheap rulers for sound boinging and who knows what else I forgot. I remembered the packets. It’s been a very ON week, lots of me talking and doing. Eventually there will be more of them doing things, but we didn’t really get there this week. So that’s part of the exhaustion. I’m hoping to have the energy to go to ceramics after school so I can start glazing that bowl, because I have a cool artsy idea for what I want to work on next so I want the bowl done and fired. Then home, read, eat, iron. Pet a dog and some cats. Chill out for three days. Well, I need at least one hike in there. Maybe two. And some sleep…that’s been problematic all week. Need more of that. Always.
I’ve officially survived one day with kids; it was notionally a chill day but felt like a lot, which isn’t surprising. I had to put back a lot of things I put away so the Winter Academy could be in our classrooms (I’m not done with that yet), plus deal with a lot of kid stuff (they were pretty chilled out except for that one…there’s always that one). It’s just a lot…going full on for the whole day, so much stimulation, so much talking, so much ON. It’s exhausting. We have a 3-day weekend coming up, which is nice, but grades are also due, so double-edged sword there. I came home after running errands and graded and had an art Zoom meeting and graded some more. So this ALL ON thing doesn’t stop when I get in the car and go home. I realize it COULD? But then I’d have to be at school even longer, and I had to really force myself to stay the extra 10 minutes last night to finish one class of late turn-ins. I have three more classes of those to go; it’s not a lot…it’s just details. I should be able to finish them today. And yes, I came home and read my book with a kitten for a while because I needed that.
Monday, after 17 thousand meeting things (I got nothing done that I needed to get done on Monday…seriously, I left after 4 PM with a half-assed table of contents copied and not much else accomplished), I went to ceramics for the first time since before Christmas. I always think, oh, it’s a break, Imma get SO MUCH clay done. And then I don’t. It’s frustrating. And with this quilt deadline hanging over me, I’m hard-pressed to spend a huge chunk of time there at the moment anyway. I did pick up my frames…
I like them, although one of the greens burned out a lot on both frames…and it looks like they shrunk a lot more than I thought they would. A 4×6 photo fits in the top one if you trim the corners…you’d have to trim it a lot for the bottom frame. I should be better about measuring things. But I’m not. The final satin glaze was definitely more successful than the last few I’ve done. I’d consider reglazing some if I didn’t think it would be an exorbitant cost. But now I know.
And then I worked on the bowl some more…luckily it’s been pretty humid and wet, so it didn’t dry out too much.
I know I had some specific plans at some point, but I don’t remember what they were.
It’s not perfectly round; it’s definitely handbuilt…and even though I used a mold, it’s still not really even symmetrical.
I’m OK with that. I think I’m just going to start underglazing it. I have an idea for the next big art piece and I want to start it.
The quilt is progressing slowly.
I mean, I’m getting lots ironed at night, but it doesn’t look like much because it’s all tiny things mostly. Except for the ground and the water. So it doesn’t feel like much progress. I am trying to iron more than an hour a day. My goal is to be done ironing to fabric this weekend.
Scribble follows me at night (when she wakes up), so she’s in the studio now, checking out progress.
This is after last night’s 90-minute session. I did iron a tiny Scribble-like cat, but then looked at her more closely. Her coloring is complicated. I need a bigger cat to iron to get her facial details to work. A 1″ drawing is not a good place to start with her.
I finished the first 300 pieces plus a few out of the 300 box. So not halfway, but I probably will be tonight. Lots of fussy details in the next 100 pieces too though, so maybe not. Lots of buildings and logos. Sure enough, our school district is pushing teachers using AI in planning, and I’m pushing back. I do use it occasionally, but it’s not as useful as they’d like it to be.
Scribble sometimes comes to bed with me…
But she’s not always ready for actual bedtime. Unlike me. She’s a pretty gentle kitten though. She looks evil and vicious, but is not even breaking the skin. Just gently holding my hand in her mouth and paws. Sweet baby.
I appreciate the cuddles.
This is my medieval animal, apparently.
Seems appropriate.
OK, meeting this morning (ugh), then teaching about waves (ocean first, then sound…sort of? Not entirely sure what I’m doing today…will figure it out as I go). Hopefully my voice holds up…it was shaky yesterday. I’m still holding mucus from the flu…can’t shake it completely, so that doesn’t help. Lots of tea and throat-clearing. I may give in and take cold meds. Then pilates after school (I’m already tired) and I’m cooking dinner tonight (leftover lasagne I was smart enough to cook and freeze over break). Plus grading and then ironing. LONG day. This is what being back to work is though. LONG days. Fabric at the end of it. Good thing.
OK, officially a school Monday, but no kids today, just 3+ hours of listening to people talk about stuff that doesn’t help me get my classroom ready for tomorrow. It is an easier start than going right back to teaching, though, so I appreciate the afternoon, where I can make sense of shit, especially all the shit I didn’t finish. I actually did OK. I didn’t grade two assignments. Everything else is in the gradebook. Considering the number of days I was out of it with the flu, I did well. I didn’t really get a break from school entirely though, because I graded almost every day…just a little, but I did grade. I’m sure there’s a way to avoid all of it, but I mostly suck at that, so I’m glad I had time to get some art done…definitely spent more time than usual on that over break, although I only made it to ceramics once. Which sucks. Not sure what the status of my bowl will be when I get there after school today. Ah well. And I never saw my frames come out of the kiln. Hopefully they’re OK. It would suck if they weren’t.
So I spent a goodly chunk of time Friday night and Saturday cleaning up the office, moving stuff around, trying to make space. I did pretty well, although I distracted myself with culling through the two orange drawers and one of the three red drawers. I go through the fabrics I’ve been collecting since 1990 and if it’s something I haven’t used much of, I chop a fat quarter off of it (I usually buy 1/2 yards) and put it in the donate bag. Then when I have enough (whatever that means), I box it up and ship it to a couple of charity organizations. Gives me room for more fabric and more choices. Plus I get to see everything I have in the stash, which is sometimes surprising. Then I tried to put away all the fabric from the last quilt.
So everything gets messier for a bit and then I can see straight and can start ironing fabrics for the next quilt…which I started Saturday night.
I hung the drawing and started setting out the Wonder Under in numerical order by 10s.
And then I start ironing to fabrics.
Top left is the background fabric for this quilt. I’ve mostly been doing dirt and some water so far. A volcano. Some oil spills. I’m still in the 0-99 box, but I’ve pulled from the 100s too. It’s been a slow start, but it often is. There are lots of little details that all need to be different colors. But I’m doing it now…just hope I can be done with the ironing to fabrics sometime next weekend. Tight deadline for this one.
In other news, my 6 quilts made it to Virginia to the quilt museum in Dayton. That show opens later this month and I’ll be there for the closing activities in March. Put it on your calendar!
In other awesome news, despite having to paint in the rain, the cold, the humidity, and the wind, the boychild and I finally got the new railings on the deck.
I need to do some touchup, and then all those plants go back up against the railing (so I don’t have to look into my neighbors’ yards. I started this plant bonanza during COVID to block the view (and sounds) of my neighbors…at the moment, it’s a little out of control, so I need to do some more work in the next couple weeks to replant and move stuff around a bit to make it more organized. But the railings are done! Ish. Mostly. You know how that goes.
This lasted about 2 minutes.
Scribble wants to cuddle, but the big cats are hesitant. It’s cold here at the moment (well, it’ll be 79 degrees later, but it’s in the 40s at night), so they are more conducive to cuddling, but mostly with humans and not each other.
Yeah this.
My ICE quilt will be in Virginia. It’s not the first quilt that I’ve put ICE in…it probably won’t be the last. It also probably won’t be the last quilt with a tattered American flag and a body bag in it. Unfortunately.
This is also too real…
My district today is pushing us to use more AI for planning. Wasting more water and electricity…plus dumbing us down. Don’t get me wrong; it can be helpful. It’s just problematic in more ways than it’s helpful.
OK. 3+ hours listening to the things. Then working with my co-teacher to get the next two weeks planned out (hopefully, because I need to copy a table of contents for tomorrow) and making sure our classrooms are put back and functional after Winter Academy co-opted our rooms. Then run some errands…my store had no yogurt and no deodorant for me (ah, allergies), and I need more paint. Then ceramics! I’m hoping I have the energy…last year, I took a nap after this first work day. I’m cooking tonight and I should probably grade some of the two assignments I didn’t get to…and then I’m ironing, hopefully into the 100s and further. The nice part about the next 6 weeks is that we get three 3-day weekends…and then March is a vast expanse of hard work until Spring Break. Progress report grades are due next week too, so that’s a little stressful. But the extra Mondays off do help. I’m hoping they help me get this quilt done. And keep my head on straight. Ha! Well, I can hope.
Friday. Last Friday of Winter Break. I’ve been really out of it this break…not sure why, although I can blame some of it on being sick for the middle third and then feeling like I never caught up. I’m never ready to go back, so it’s a moot point to say it again, but here I am. In terms of classwork, I have one class of packets left to grade, one whole academic assignment, and two smaller one-class assignments. Plus I need a worksheet done by Thursday and my notes from December make no sense. So there’s that. Fun times. I might figure that out this weekend. Or not. I’m not really motivated to get ‘er done in terms of school, except to finish the grading because progress report grades are coming up. Soon. And I have this quilt to finish, plus the deck railings, which are taking forever to paint. It’s been wet and cold and nothing is drying until today, when it’s still cold, but there’s a breeze and that’s helping. So I have three coats plus primer on 3/4s of the sides and I need to do the other side. I was hoping this project would be done by this weekend, and that’s not happening. It never does. Seriously. DIY is torture. School feels the same way sometimes, and so does housecleaning.
I did manage to finish trimming all the Wonder Under; honestly, I finished the first large chunk of it in the first day, then the last little bit last night.
Scribble slept through most of it.
Then after I finished trimming last night, I sorted them all…
At this point, Scribble was less than helpful…she kept seeing shadows under the bins and shoving them apart to get to them.
Fun times. I managed to get it all sorted despite all that.
I also bought background fabric, so I’m hopefully ironing down to fabric starting tonight. The office is a bit of a mess, and I need to fix a pair of pants first, plus put away fabric from the last quilt and move some stuff out of the way so I can get to the fabric bins. But it’s not a lot to do. Hopefully I’ll finish ironing to fabric in the next week and start trimming. We’ll see how that goes with going back to school.
I went out to meet stitching friends last night…this one is almost done.
It’s the 9th tree in Sue Spargo’s Rooted, so the last of them. Plenty left to do on it.
You’d think when it’s this cold that all the cats would be curled up. This was only because Bowie wanted the blue blanket and me.
And Scribble was already there.
Babies sleep a lot.
Anyway. Next step in the quilt. Scribble tends to follow me, so presumably she’ll be in the office while I iron. She’s set herself up before in the sleep spot Kitten used to frequent.
I wish I had something insightful to say about the ICE shootings in the last few days, but it’s beyond me. I just finished an ICE-related quilt with a body bag in it, not because I can see the future, but because people had already died in ICE custody. This is heinous. It’s not law enforcement, it’s not making my world safer. My world is not safe at all, and I’m an old white lady. I can’t imagine the fear and anxiety being a person of color or someone in the middle of the immigration process must feel…I just know it’s wrong.
There are a lot of wrong things in the world right now…some of them have always been there, but we’ve made some attempt to make them better. And now that’s not even happening.
This one applies to so many things…
Back to vaccinations and health recommendations. So many idiots. So much not learning happening.
Anyway. If you like my work, odds are your brain is going through the same confused contortions mine is. With no solution in sight. So many lies. So much bad information. So disheartening.
It’s late in the day…I need to go buy some cat food and figure out where to get one skein of DMC floss. Then grade some stuff and clean some stuff so I can iron later. Read a bit. Eat something healthy…or not. Resign myself to going back to work in a few days. Fight for the time to have a life outside of my job. Go back to ceramics…it’s been two weeks since I’ve been there. Sucks. Work on getting the gym back into my selfcare regime. HAVE a selfcare regime that isn’t just about cocooning in the house with sweats or pajamas on. OK, maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Hey there. I’m convinced Nature doesn’t want me to finish the DIY project I started Monday with the boychild. It poured this morning. I’m not sure it’s done pouring. I painted this morning. Fun times. It was lovely and sunny as I painted and then it was pouring. And then WordPress wants to charge me a million bucks for more storage. Did you know I’ve had a blog since 2004? And been on WordPress since I think 2014? Or something. There are things I can do, but they require time and brainpower. I’m debating things. Also, the last two months have been really expensive…nah, the last 6 months or so. I’m not ready to drop a shit ton of money this month. Or next month, to be honest. So it must be January…when all these things are in my head, plus grades are due in a couple of weeks (no, I haven’t finished grades) and I need to get this quilt done and I was sick for a week and now I stabbed my finger with a cactus spine and it hurts to type. It’s fine. Really. All of it. It will all get done. I don’t think I’ll finish painting today though. That’s a reality check.
OK, so I finished tracing Wonder Under pieces last night…
It took about 11 1/2 hours to trace it all.
Last night, Scribble woke up when I had about 30 pieces left and was quite insistent…at one point, putting her foot/claw through the Wonder Under as she realized it was not solid and she was over the edge of the light table. She caught herself on my hand.
In general, she’s not super bitey and scratchy, so that’s fine. And the hole is manageable…I’ve dealt with worse. So there’s the 4 1/2 yards of Wonder Under I now need to trim. Which I guess I have time to do with the wood needing to dry out again. Plus I’m not entirely sure it’s not going to rain again. Sigh. It’s progress at least.
My piece is still hanging at MOCA in Connecticut…
They posted this yesterday…
Which was cool.
This is not cool.
Whole milk and red meat. I guess it’s too much to hope that certain key politicians follow these guidelines as well as the vaccination schedules and succumb to the reality of that. Yeah. I thought so. I guess more people will have heart attacks. I do worry about the kids…I can’t understand why we wouldn’t want kids to have everything they need to survive. Mind-boggling.
Yes, I got my measles update. I have Hep A and B (I’m a teacher). I have all of them except the updated TDAP (sensitivity to the T part means I can’t get the DAP part). OK. Well. I’m going to get some painting done today…I got the first three sides of the primer on. Was about to flip it for the fourth side. Then I need probably three coats of actual paint. Looks like we’re installing Friday…so much for a quick job. Ha! I have some grading to do. And I can start trimming Wonder Under. I’m sure there are 78 other things I can do as well…I just don’t want to. Not shocking that. I go back to school on Monday and I will never ever be ready. It’s nothing new…happens every year. Get your shots, all. Eat healthy. Don’t let the brain worm take over. Read a book! Did you see the data that the majority of Americans didn’t even read one book last year? I read 120. I shouldn’t be making up for the rest of you. Go read a damn book (I know; my readership is probably not the problem).
Well. I just realized I haven’t written since 2025. OK, it’s only the 5th of January, but normally, I would have written on Friday…Friday was a shitshow. It’s fine. It was also the boychild’s 30th birthday, so in true son fashion, he disappeared and did his own thing. I love that for him…considering it for my birthday this year too. It was actually a health insurance issue, which in the end, worked out (well, apparently), which is better than all those sweet people trying to find affordable health insurance at the moment. It is one of the things our district does right…provide good insurance…although they keep threatening to make it cost more (it costs more every year almost, so it’s an empty threat). In general, though, the coverage is good. Except when they fuck it up…which is what happened on the 1st. Anyway, it made the day stressful for me, but eventually I got my meds and went to the knee doctor (good news…it’s not weak, it’s not ligaments…it’s just old. Still.). Back to physical therapy for me. Whoo. I’d rather do that than surgery, so there’s that. Anyway, I’ll blame all that and the remainder of this damn virus for making me forget to write. Saturday and Sunday were all about packing quilts up for the Virginia show, and then shipping them today.
In between all that, I’ve finished grading one whole assignment (only two to go…but both are big) and more importantly, finished the next drawing and started tracing. That’s been fun…tracing with a kitten in the house? Between Luna (attacker of paper) and Nova (eater of paper) a few years back and then Bowie (PARKOUR!), it’s been a bunch of kitten incursion into my artmaking over the last 5 years. Scribble is no different in her love of the process. So I wait for her to fall asleep…and then she wakes up anyway.
Here’s sometime last week, when I was still drawing…some cat (probably Nova) took a bit out of the drawing.
Scribble denied it. I have a system in which I cover the drawing when I’m not actually working on it so no cats can attack, tear, or eat it. Because they’ve done all those things.
Still drawing…this is last Wednesday night…so the same day as my last post. New Year’s Eve!
Everyone in the house but me went to bed early. I didn’t even make it to midnight, because flu. Thursday night, I finished drawing…
I have a size limit…and a time limit. It looks complicated (and it’s not NOT complicated), but not huge, so only about 760 pieces. I numbered it that night too…
About 6 1/2 hours to draw it, then another hour to number it. I think that night went past midnight…finally starting to feel well…ish.
I started tracing it on Friday night.
In this photo, Scribble is under the drawing. Makes it hard to trace.
That said, she’s not scratching, attacking, or eating it, like the other three did, so win-win situation here. Bowie is definitely tempted here.
He also knows now that it’s not allowed. I say that like it matters to him.
She’s cute. That might be what saves her. There’s Bowie, thinking about it again.
He definitely argues for equitable treatment. Sigh. Scribble is easier to pick up and move than the chonk Bowie though.
And she wanders off and plays with feathers in between.
Anyway, I’m more than halfway through the tracing. This one is on a super-tight deadline. I’d really like it traced in the next couple of nights. But also, I can’t just do this. The boychild and I are replacing the deck railing. We bought wood today and I spent a couple hours this afternoon trying to move planters for access. During COVID, I put up all these shelves and planters on the deck so I wouldn’t have to listen to/see my neighbors’ kids all the time. It’s gotten pretty overgrown. I accidentally broke two pots today; one was an Xmas gift, so I feel shitty about that. I still need to go back out there and deal with one shelf, a couple of pots, and an entire planter. I needed a break though.
Other stuff: we had a bunch of rain again and Simba doesn’t like to get wet. He has a raincoat. I’m not sure it helps, but he looks cute in it.
Scribble sleeps like a kitten.
Plays hard, zonks hard.
Then again, there’s been a lot of cat snarliness over that blue blanket.
Bowie covets it. Nova doesn’t care. I don’t know why none of them curl up with each other when it’s cold…except for the two sisters.
The boychild found a baby bird.
It’s a bushtit. We panicked a little and left it for mom…
It unfortunately did not make it and is now buried in the backyard.
I tried using Google Translate live to translate a video I was watching…not so effective sometimes.
Although maybe that is what she was saying (seems unlikely).
I find this amusing.
I tell it to fuck off constantly; same with Gemini. Like just go away. I’m using my brain now. Make Copilot clean the ceiling fan blades. I did that and wished I didn’t have to.
This is also too true. Damn US, the political bullshit in the last week has been nuts.
I’m not ignoring it. I’m just still processing the damn Epstein files. And the ACA. And Jack Smith. And now bombs? And kidnapping? I’m boggled. Also someone please tell Erika Kirk that we don’t need to do another round of Phyllis Schlafly. She was an idiot the first time around. Anyone who can’t see the parallels in this bullshit with Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale? Either you want to stay home and be a freakin’ trad wife, or you want to have rights…you can’t have it both ways. Unless you want to be a feminist? I highly recommend it personally, but if you want the trad wife life, do it. Just don’t make the rest of us come along. We have brains that work too…and we want to do different things. Right now? I want to curl up on the couch and finish my book with a cat or two and a fire in the fireplace and a nice cup of tea. But no, I need to go finish hauling shit around on the deck and then probably stand and trace for a few hours after grading some shit. So there’s that.
Anyway. I’m thankful for a week that has mostly no plans (except the to-do list) and time to recover fully from the flu (I’m still coughing up a lungful of mucus) before I have to go back to the crazy. Although if the rest of the country could ramp the crazy down a bit, I’d appreciate that too.
Well hello, last day of the year. I am alive. Although still shaky on that front. Not really. Just not feeling 100% yet. Although I managed a pilates class today, plus two whole stores! And a shower! That was fucking amazing. I should do that more often. No really, I (and the girlchild) came down with some coughing feverish extravaganza on Friday night that downed us…well, like I said, I’m mostly functional today, but felt exhausted by having to break the meat up for the lasagne sauce. Yesterday, it was the walk down the driveway to the mailbox. I’m mostly upright today, but still need a rest…past the napping and fever though, but some coughing still pops up occasionally, mostly in the middle of the night, when I’m trying to sleep. Fun times. Got the old guy sick too, but mom, boychild, and ex seem unscathed. Trying to take it easy seems the best plan. Then Man overextended himself into another day on the couch earlier this week. It does seem like lost days, not getting anything done (because it is)…but I read three books? So that’s something? And slept a lot. And communed with cats and dogs.
Good Scribble, keeping mommy warm. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
I did start drawing a little on Sunday…or maybe Friday. I’m not sure. The days are a bit blurry.
Oh yeah, that was Friday. Then there was a massive blur of time on the couch in pajamas and some crazy stuff like going to get my labs done (shocker, my white blood cell count is low). You know, I had a damn flu shot. Fucking RFK and his minions.
Monday night, I inked a little and then had to lie down again.
This was in two batches on Tuesday. More standing, but then got nauseous. Nauseated. Yup. That.
Gonna do more tonight. Don’t know if I’ll finish, but it’s raining here and we don’t go out on NYE unless we have to (and we don’t), so the lasagna sauce is simmering, my drawing is waiting for me, and the Man might let us watch something that’s not just his choice (hard to say; he’s definitely still recovering but went to work yesterday for a half day).
Look, it’s Scribble on my lap again!
I always feel so bad when I have to stand up to do whatever. I mean, nothing is as important as being a cat couch, right?
Poor dinos get their extinction blamed on everything, don’t they? The poster in my room blames their not reading.
Seems fair.
Trying not to think about this…because I haven’t done much of it. I was doing OK and then the plague happened.
Fun times. I had to redo my year in books for Goodreads…they calculated it 5 days ago, before the plague forced me to finish four more books.
Forced me. Ha. I don’t think I’ll be finishing one tonight, so that’s it. Not bad. The most pages I’ve ever read while documenting on Goodreads. Not that it means much…when I was a kid, I read a lot. It does make you wonder though…I read to escape. Maybe too much escaping this year? I managed to make 6 full-size quilts too though, which is one of the other things I look at for sanity. So yeah, 2026…ugh. Please make us healthier, let us read and make art as needed, cut back on the day-job crazies, make the home life smooth and lacking major repairs (I already know that’s fucked). And all the best to y’all as well. May you have the equivalent for you of a good book and a warm kitten (oh wait, here’s where I admit that three of those four books weren’t that great). Ha! Happy New Year…if that works for you. If not, I suggest tucking into bed early with a nice meditation recording and hopeful thoughts.
Kathy Nida 