My Brain Needed Somewhere Else to Land…

Happy V Day to all! I want to say, well, except the assholes, but maybe they need a Happy V Day and that’s why they’re assholes. Now you see how I can teach middle school, although I already know (a) I didn’t get enough sleep because I got sidetracked by making things and (b) I’m missing one SECA today. So it’ll be a challenge, but I think I can do it. It’s not like I have a choice. But here are two examples of my day job. First, it’s the only place I can think of where the words “Then don’t smell the scissors” might come out of my mouth. Followed by this…

SIGH. I only have one period left of these to sit through. And there were some very good ones that restored my faith in humanity. And learning. And schools. And children. This was not one of them. This is what happens when you copy a bunch of shit off the internet that you don’t really understand and then you try to read it and instead of figuring out how to pronounce all the words you copied, you start each word nice and loud and then you are whispering at the end because you don’t have a clue how to say it. WIScon(si…).

I will hopefully be done with these tonight, and that will just leave a bunch of smaller things to grade and a pile of makeups, which will be even bigger by next Friday. Oh. Also an assessment they’re doing today. Shit. OK. Well. Hmmm. This weekend is a clusterfuck already. I guess it will be more of one.

This is why I stayed up way too late last night. My brain needed somewhere else to land or it would never fall asleep.

I did hang out with my stitching group last night, including one member who rarely shows up and another who had moved away for 13 years and came back. THIRTEEN YEARS. Wow. And we’re still meeting. That’s cool. I think I’ve been in this group since I was pregnant with the girlchild, and she’s 22 1/2 now. So that’s a thing. I got to work on Folk Tails, my Sue Spargo Block-of-the-Month from 2015 that might never ever get done…

The cheetah is almost done…but there’s some wiggy flowers that go in the block next. Then I might sew this to the larger bit? Or do I have to finish the other two October blocks to do that? I might. It’s not a fast quilt when you only work on it one night a month and then you didn’t do even that for most of 2019. It might travel to the National Parks with me in April…or it might be too big for that. Hmmm. Hard to say. We’ll see.

Then I came home and graded stuff, one more class of the projects. It was after 11 when I finished. But no way was I going to bed without something. The really lucky bit of going to my stitching meeting was my knowledgeable bookmaking friend, who gave me multiple solutions for how to connect the two pieces I’ve been working on. She was very helpful. So now I have to decide how to do it. Easy? Medium hard? Really hard? Sorta hard but kinda creative? We’ll see. I didn’t do that last night, though. More brain power than I had. Instead I meditatively stitched shit down…

Still working on just getting it all attached so I can take it off the cutting matt and do some more decorative stuff…although I guess I did a little on those leaves. Most of it is stitched down now, which is good, because something good should come of staying up too late. I just kept stitching, thinking “just one more” and then I looked at the time and went “oh shit, no more” and went to bed.

It’ll be fine. It’s Friday. It’s Valentine’s Day (makes middle-school kids crazy). It’s the day before another 3-day weekend. And we’re giving them an assessment that’s HARD. Well, unless you’ve been listening, in which case, it’s pretty damn easy. Gonna go buy a donut reward for the class that earned them, so at least one group of kids won’t totally hate me. Wait. The line at the donut store today might be hellacious. Sigh. We’ll see. I’ll do a driveby.

Most Definitely…

Sitting in meetings sucks my brain out of my head and spits it out on the floor. Especially meetings where I have to pay attention just in case important stuff is said and then someone is droning on and on about something totally irrelevant and my brain just shuts off anyway. I spend a lot of time in meetings…though not as much as I spend in the classroom. Yesterday was a frustrating day in the classroom. “Give us the answers so we can copy them.” “I’m not going to do that.” Well you can guess how that ended. It’s OK. I go back today after a night of semi-sleep (ugh) and I refigure how to make things happen and then they happen. Huge classes full of needy kids. Make it hard. And yet we still do it.

You’d think I’d come home and be done with all of it, but grades are coming up and I need to get stuff done. So I graded one assignment and input it into the gradebook, and then did another period of the longer assignment…and put it in the gradebook, and I’m seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, because I saw a few more A videos (oh hallelujah), which helps me think I didn’t totally flail (it wasn’t me!), and I’m more than halfway through the pile, so that is a good thing.

But there’s no way in hell I was going to get to sleep last night without some artmaking. I did put together my Patreon video for February first. Then I graded. Then I arted. I started at 10:30 at night. I had three to choose from, but one deadline is looming. So I decided I didn’t like one of the book ‘pages’ I’d made, the first one. It’s awkward, not well-thought-out. I could just use it, but I had a third page cut out that I hadn’t used, so I refined the first one into this…

I like it a lot more. I didn’t glue it together last night. First of all, it was late and sleep is a thing. Second of all, I’m not sure I’m done. So I’ll look at it again tonight and then decide, and then glue it together.

So the one on the right is probably a reject. Now I just need to figure out how to attach them together. And then photograph them without Game of Thrones in the background. Minor issue.

This morning is tiring already. But good news about a new show…that I can’t tell you about yet. But soon. I think.

Meanwhile…lots of furry love last night. This was while I was eating dinner and grading stuff.

They really do love each other. It’s sweet.

This one has been a barky asshole lately. Granted, it’s because of the coyote fest that’s going on every night, but sheesh.

He is probably the number 1 sleep disruptor, followed by my hot flashes and then maybe my bladder. No mockingbird at the moment…we can thank the owl for that, I think. I can sleep through the owl, who was in another backyard tree last night. I think he likes us. He? She? Don’t know. An owl box is on our list though.

These two old ladies…

Room for one human (maybe) on the couch. That is where I was sitting while I was grading. I was also playing fetch with Luna, who brought me the rattle mouse at least 10 times to throw for her. She’s a cat. Who fetches. Very cute.

OK, today I torture children by making them think again. I am pure evil. Then I meet up with friends…always a good thing, plus stitching will be involved. Then home to NOT grade another round? I think? Ugh. I think I need to do some of it today. I’ll figure it out. More art before bed though…most definitely.

Getting Loud in Here…

I have a lot of things in my head this morning. Too many things, probably. As usual. I’m having that issue artistically as well…too many projects going on at once. I do much better with just one at a time. Drawings are fine. They’re short and don’t usually require a ton of brain power outside of the actual drawing time. Right now, I have a bunch of projects talking to me and it’s getting loud in here.

So last night, I worked on two of them. It meant I didn’t grade anything. I input grades. I tutored earlier. I graded stuff in class. I just didn’t work on the projects at home. I wanted to art instead. It was late anyway…after tutoring, I had chiropractor and pilates, so by the time I was done with dinner, it was late.

So I did some of the stitch down on this…

Then I’ll do embellishment…

This is just for fun. For something different. I like the idea of it.

I wanted to make sure I did some of the other art stuff as well…and there was no way I was finishing all the stitch down last night, so I timed it off the show I was watching. When it was done, I moved into the other room to work on the current art quilt. I’ll come back to this tonight.

This is moving pretty slowly. It doesn’t help to be gone for three nights. This coming weekend isn’t any better. But it works to iron for an hour or so each night. I think last night I managed 38 minutes before midnight…but it’s 38 minutes of progress.

I ironed an asteroid and some missiles and a volcano. That’s it. Not much. More tonight. So many yellows!

I finished the 200s and did some of the 300s. Only 600 to go! No worries. I also have an artist book I’m working on, but my brain exploded over that last night, so I’ll wait to post on it later, after I’ve made some more decisions.

I resized a bunch of pictures of art we saw in Joshua Tree, but I don’t have time to post them this morning, because I have to find the artists’ names and possible links, and that takes more time than I have. I will get to them…but I did draw while I was there…this was after hiking…the rocks inspired the woman…

This was the night we got there…full moon coming, bunnies in the yard…

None of those cactus anywhere to be seen…and this one the following night…

Inspiration comes from many places.

OK, school, then union meeting, then make Patreon video, and grade stuff? And then artmaking. Full day. As always. Looking forward to the artmaking stuff, that’s for sure.

My Brain Is a Time Bomb*

Oh hello, Friday. Thank you for coming. Can I offer you some tea? Sure, we all want donuts, but they’re not good for us. How about a healthy snack instead? Fuck healthy? Well, we all feel that way sometimes, but in the long run, I think you need to be making better choices than…um…Friday? Hello? Those donuts are for my students. Could you…um…Friday… WOW. OK then. Kids, I’ll bring you something next week. Friday has gone off the rails.

Oh yeah. I have a 3-day weekend. It’s cool. I’m even going somewhere and doing art and hiking and all the things I like. I’m not thinking about the 2- to 4-hour drive that might be facing me at the end of the day. It’ll be FINE. I’m not considering the shitload of grading I have to do in the next week or so. Also FINE. It will be. I’m sure. I’m also not thinking about the crazy I will have to deal with in class today…it’s OK, because by the end of the day, I’ll have like 10 kids absent in each period because their parents will have pulled them out of school early. I wish I could do requests on those. But no. Not appropriate apparently.

Yesterday, the boychild and I bought a couple of trees with a gift certificate I’ve had lying around since Christmas 2008. Yeah. I know. I’m slow. He’s going to plant them this weekend, so lemons and avocados finally. I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted a lemon and an avocado tree. This is cool. I’m excited. OK, so it’ll be 3 or 4 years before we get an avocado. No worries. Next a fence! Or a stream bed! These things are all good. No more grass in the front yard. No pictures yet either…after he gets them in the ground.

I graded for a while after that and then went to a late-night pilates class, which I think I will feel later today. Then ate dinner super late and did some art-related stuff…some really good news on the art front is coming. Sometimes the universe comes around and hugs you. Like a kitten…

Yes, that’s Luna’s leg under Nova’s chin. They rampaged before and after this. Luna is a real piece of work. She’s the most hyper and into-everything nonstop cat I’ve ever had. Nova is still a kitten, but way more chill…

Although she does beat the crap out of her sister on occasion.

After dinner, I tried to focus on art stuff. I tried to pack. I tried to resist sugar. I succeeded at that one. I sort of packed. I drew a little. Brain dump. I think I’m only doing two of these.

I might change my mind later and still do the third one, but it’s fine with two and I don’t need to kill myself for this show.

I didn’t iron. I didn’t do any handstitching. Both were things I wanted to do, but it was late and I was tired and I went to bed and slept and then couldn’t sleep because my brain started to worry about everything in the world. You know when that stops? When I’m making art and when I’m hiking. Both things I will be doing in a little over 12 hours. All good. So yeah, Friday. You’re a donut hog, but you lead into the good stuff.

*Robert DeLong w K. Flay, Favorite Color is Blue

I Ironed. On Purpose.

Have I talked about lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, enough times? Yeah that. It’s amazing the contortions my brain will go through to keep me awake. I don’t remember what it was last night, but it was stupid. Today my absent team members come back, luckily, because I think our kids were about to explode. Or maybe they already did. My science co-teacher is leaving for two days though, so I have a long to-do list of shit I gotta get done before she gets back. Which is fine. I have time…unless someone forces me to teach my prep period. Ugh. Not.

Sometimes my brain is just in overload. I entered a show last night and the printout I made months ago had one date on it and I was all irritated because I had a piece that was just a month over the deadline, and I hate not having enough work to enter for reals, but some part of me made me look it up online…sure enough, they’d revised the date and that piece slid in. Poor piece…it can’t get in anywhere, which I don’t get, because it’s a nice piece. Ah well. Now it has a chance, eh?

One more entry in next week, which I’m debating, because holy hell, they’re charging $25/entry. That’s expensive. We’ll see.

I finally got to the doctor yesterday for that weird blood sugar blip in January. Her conclusion? If it happens again, we’ll worry. If not, keep doing what you’re doing. My A1C is awesome (no idea why). I’ve lost weight (no idea why). And she got my blood tested for the tetanus titers, to see if they’ll have to try to give me a shot this year. Not looking forward to that. It’s been 20 years since the last one? I think? I had a temperature of 105 degrees 20 years ago, I couldn’t move my arm for about 3 days, and all the lymph nodes on my left side swelled up rock hard. That was a step up from 10 years previously, when I just had the fever and the achy arm. It gets worse every time. Anyway. Hopefully the titers will still be high and I won’t have to think about it for another 10 years.

I also finally finished grading all the makeup work I have, except for a few easy peasy ones. That feels better. Today I start the giant project grading, which scares me. My co-teacher and I talked about it yesterday a little bit, though, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. I only have 4 videos turned in from 2nd period though. Well. It’ll be fast? Maybe?

OK, so artwise last night, I only ironed. I thought about drawing, but I wasn’t in the mood. It’s all about my mood. I wanted to do some stitch down on that weird body I did, but that doesn’t need to be done as much as the other stuff at the moment, so I persuaded myself out of that.

See? Color! Lots of orange and yellow added in…plus those lovely purples.

I’ve ironed most of the 200s at this point, and I’m still not in the Earth. I did some birds rolling around and the sky around the Earth. I need to do a few rockets and a volcano, I think, and then I’m in the Earth itself. It’s so weird to do the figure last, but it makes sense if you look at how to construct this piece in the end.

Sigh. See here’s why I couldn’t sleep. First of all, Australia is still burning. Second of all, I live in a very scary and incredibly stupid and increasingly damaging country. The environment, human rights, my future in terms of health insurance and jobs, plus being able to leave a decent world for my kids or their kids or other people’s kids dammit, because I teach other people’s kids all the time. My head was in circles over this. Plus I got my ballot in the mail yesterday and now I have to decide something. (I’m actually one of those Decline to State…wait, I think they call me Nonpartisan now…but I got a Democratic ballot, because that party will let me. I would have gotten a Republican ballot if they would have allowed it. Strategic voting. Sigh. DOUBLE SIGH. Because it all sucks. Every damn bit of it.). And we use too much plastic and drive too much and then my co-teacher and I were looking at this trip to Costa Rica, all ecotourist and stuff, but you have to FLY there and there’s so much waste and I was at the doctor and they use these weirdo brushes for Pap smears now and it’s just more plastic that has to be trashed.

So that. That’s why I don’t sleep. It’s not the artmaking. The artmaking helps some of that slip away.

Ironing more tonight, I think…although I have to pack for our trip and do laundry and IDK what else. Buy trees and pick vegetables (Imperfect Produce, not actual vegetables in my yard…I’m not that talented) and go to pilates.

Have a sleepy, cold kitten.

Luna is sweet as hell sometimes. Mostly asleep.

Nova hasn’t figured out how this is supposed to work…

Oh well. It’s soft.

Finally remembered to post this…

This is Connected at the Hips…it’s 52″ wide by 53″ high.

I like it. That’s all I really have to say about it right now. It should have been finished in November and I didn’t finish it until January. That’s a whole ‘nother issue, but I think I’ve beat that crazy.

OK, off to school, where kids are supposed to be hard at work and focused all period (ha!) and I will walk around and help people and hopefully get some grading/prep done while that happens, when in reality, you know that a bunch of sweet children (I was going to write idiots, but I know this is brain development and society and parenting and learned helplessness and a whole host of other crazy educational shit that I’m supposed to be able to fix all by myself) are going to choose to be off task and driving me bonkers. Or it could be really awesome. We’ll see.

A Wednesday Miracle…

I’m going somewhere this weekend, to Joshua Tree. It’s a 3-day weekend for me, so we’re leaving Friday and coming back Monday. Boychild will hold down the animal fort. All of them are staying behind. We’re going to hike and hang out and go see some art and eat some food. I’m bringing my sketchbook, although it might be more important to bring the artist book pages I’m working on…depends on if I can get another one done before Friday. I think I can. I’m also bringing tiny little fabric pieces to cut out and my work computer…because the reality is that when the man takes a nap, I need to work.

Last night, I came home from work and I worked some more. I finished grading packets and input all of those. Tonight I’ll try to grade the last bit of makeup work that’s floating around, and then I’ll start on the projects. It looks like less than half the kids have turned them in…always the problem with these things. We alternate between things that have to be handed back to me during THIS PERIOD and things that take more time and require a kid to hit Turn In on the computer. Apparently that’s hard. I also need to enter some shows and submit some stuff for a new website tonight, so it’ll be busy. That’ll be after I go to the doctor so she can make some attempt to figure out what happened to my blood sugar a month ago. Apparently you need to be seen in person for that. It’s some sort of doctoring magic.

Busy day. Too busy. Looking forward to hiking through a desert landscape to clear some of these cobwebs.

Oh yeah, I forgot…I finished the current unit cover page…

Fun stuff. The kids only have to do 3 vocab words…I try to do as many as I can. It’s a challenge.

I did tutoring yesterday. It’s always exhausting, although there were fewer kids than normal. Because basketball started? Hard to say.

After eating, the speech from our orange dictator was still on, so I worked on the artist book…you can see that Luna is still trying to sit in or on everything.

I’m not really sure what I’m doing with these. I’m just doing them. Sometimes I think too hard.

But I finished one and then glued it together. Went through three glues before I found one that worked.

I can’t have nudity or challenging subjects. I’m not entirely sure what that means, so I just drew.

Covered nudity up with nature. I need to do at least one more of these…the original plan was for three, though, so we’ll see how I feel about that.

The man as a cat couch. They are lovey beasts.

But then you have to get up and do the dishes.

We had all three of them on the couch for a while…

There is still a bunch of play going on…

Apparently it is safer to do this between my feet than out in the open.

I made it in to iron around 9:30 PM. Early! Kitten curled up in here (it’s cold right now) and I worked for a couple of hours.

There’s not much color yet. That will change soon. This is mostly clouds and buildings and roads and tornadoes and nuclear power plants. Lots of gray. I’m 200 pieces in, almost. Tonight there should be more of this…moving into the Earth, I think. Or maybe space comes first. Can’t remember what order I numbered. I always try to be logical and mostly fail. Mostly because my logic changes from day to day.

OK, today is the third and last day of teaching these stations, where I’ve taught the same lesson 10 times now and am heading into 15 turns today. Woo hoo! Ugh. It’s necessary, but the groups are still too large. To do it well, I would need groups of 5 sometimes, and that means 7 days per class. Not happening, unless we get way more efficient. Or two groups during a period. If the rest could work independently and bring their computers charged or at least the charger itself, well that…that would be a miracle. Let’s hope for a Wednesday miracle. Miracle or not, tonight will find me making art like…well, like an artist. Looking forward to it.

An Every Night Thing

We’ve doing a lot of moving and covering of things around here. Kittens are playful but also in everything…from knocking stuff off bookshelves to crawling under paper drawings (UNDER, because that’s fun) to trying to sit in boxes of Wonder Under (I had a cat who would do that, and then I didn’t), to trying to eat fabric and pins and thread. I’ve been zipping things, piling things, heavy things so they can’t move them, picking up and saying no…gotta get them trained to NOT walk on the Wonder Under/fabric stuff. One cat used to knock the ironing board down by leaping off of it (it’s not a great ironing board in terms of balance…I haven’t been able to find a good one, so I’m using my grandmother’s…vintage and ancient, but not the most stable thing in the world.).

Here’s Luna after I moved my drawing (folded up), but I’m still trying to keep the pinned piece from Sunday night so she can’t get at the pins…this is right before she tried to whack the phone.

IN the box that is ON the paper that is covering the pinned piece. I don’t really have a studio where I can close the door, since it’s Kitten’s hiding spot and she needs access. They will get trained. Certainly it takes patience.

I kamikazed home yesterday after the staff meeting so we’d have most of an hour before sunset.

We were the only ones out there for a while, until three bikers showed up.

It was chilly out…weird cold front here in San Diego.

It was 85 degrees two days ago…today is 20 degrees colder.

The pro of hiking so close to coyote hour is the sky…

And the light. Anyway. Good to have exercise. They’re putting in a new parking lot in the next few months…should hopefully solve some of the issues we have parking here, although honestly, when the lot is full, it means there are a lot of stupid people out there doing stupid shit, so avoidance seems appropriate. We’ll see.

Last night, I spent some time working with art entries…I have some work that’s being considered for a show here in San Diego, although it will be open during times I can’t go, I think. Then two entries coming up that I need to figure out. I did get photos back from the most recent quilt. I’ll post them later, maybe tomorrow. They need resizing. The name of it just popped into my head after months of calling it something lame. Love that.

As always, I graded for a while…insert cute picture of kittens…

NOT rampaging through my shit. And a tired Simba after a walk.

His short little legs did 3.26 miles. Pretty exhausting. We like to tire him out because he’s a barky asshole otherwise.

Kitten’s catnip toy has seen better days…

They use a loose weave fabric so the catnip smell comes out, but then they don’t last. This one has done better than some. She loves this toy. She throws it up in the air and bats it around and rubs her head all over it.

Around 10, I made it into the now clean (ish) office, ready to start ironing the new quilt. We’re going to Joshua Tree this weekend, and I want stuff to cut out.

Plus now that I have all these looming deadlines, I need to get some work done.

I didn’t get very far…in the 70s?

But it’s a start. This part is fun. It’s the creative bit where I get to touch all the fabric. I can’t ignore the appeal of the tactile quality of fabric. Plus all the colors and patterns. Anyway. This is a good thing. An every night thing.

It’s Not Always Awesome…

For a good 45 minutes last night, lying in bed, trying to persuade my brain to shut up about the tables in my room. We’re doing 3 days of stations, one of which is working directly with me, hoping some small-group instruction will help with what we’re doing next, but also my school thinks this is magical (I think we need smaller groups, but we don’t have time to fix that issue) so my brain sits and worries over moving tables here or there or how to make sure this group is on Station 2 and that group is on Station 3. Fuck my brain. My classes of 36 are going to be fun…let’s just hope they’re still asleep from the weekend and don’t use this as a chance to completely lose it. We have Oreos as bribes.

It was a mentally busy weekend. I did a lot of different things…a whole huge pile of grading, although there is always more. And you never finish.

Saturday, I went to a stitch-in with a new group. I didn’t have any art quilts in a state to travel, so I took some applique I started about a year ago to use these moon-dyed pieces I got from Jude at Spirit Cloth.

This is the Modern Quilt Guild and my work is so NOT modern, but I went anyway. They seem pretty accepting. Swear words were used fairly early on. They are politically in my realm. I think it’ll work. Of course, it’s a Saturday, so I can’t go the next two months. Ah well.

I did finish two of these guys. That’s almost 4 hours of applique. I had one done already.

More embroidery to follow on these.

The rest of Saturday was grading stuff, watching these guys cavort…

(There’s birds out there. Maybe even bugs.)

A relatively quiet dinner with the man (the restaurant was not quiet)…

More cats sleeping.

It is what they do best. Ah yes, I forgot…here are the two drawings (one unfinished) from Friday night at the dive bar, waiting for the band to go on…

I just draw. I don’t think. It’s not always awesome.

Definitely needs more.

Can you see the gigantic moth in this picture? The cats can…

It’s an exciting Saturday night here. I did finally work on the artist’s book. I don’t know where I’m going with it.

I’m just going. Around a corner apparently.

Sunday morning had exercise, more grading, and then an art meeting in the afternoon. Nova looks a little cross-eyed at times.

She has all the dog toys.

Funky flower pods on the way to the meeting. Fuzzy is fascinating.

Honestly there were so many people at the meeting that my introvert self almost left. But I stayed. More art opportunities. I’m feeling overwhelmed at the moment.

At the grocery store, great lenticular clouds.

Weird weather heading our way.

And more floof sleeping.

I got a package of Anna Maria Horner fabrics as part of her Applique Story shipment. I was intrigued by her videos of creating these vignettes using really high color and crazy graphic fabrics. So I used them last night to do this…based on a drawing I started Saturday at dinner.

So yeah, now all that needs to be sewn down. It’s a little crazy. I like it. My brain was all over the place this weekend, I tell you. When that happens, you just have to go with the flow.

Then I sorted all the fabrics that were used in the last quilt, and put them all away.

That means I can start picking fabrics for the next quilt. Hopefully tonight. I’m trying to balance all the things. At once.

Another sleeping animal who doesn’t care about all that.

OK, well now I can go to school and actually figure out what I’m doing with the damn tables. Thanks brain for all that worry. Appreciate it. Hopefully I’ll make it back from school early enough to walk dogs…still chasing the sunlight on that endeavor. Winter sucks for that.

That Lonely Hawk

Well we were all up too late last night, although for good reasons. Makes the morning a bit ragged though. Nice spring-like breeze coming in through the window, beautiful sky peeking through the tree branches, quiet except for the screech of that lonely hawk who’s been out there for the last month, looking for a lady hawk. At night, we get the owl hoots for the same thing…we saw him/her the other night, up in the tree. It was smaller than it sounded. I was expecting a huge bird and not so much.

The man had a show last night. Those are pretty common. It was relatively short, because they were opening for Sonic Moonshine, who asked him to do backup on a song…so we stayed an extra hour and a half or so for that…

It was all good. Then came home and woke up all the animals the boychild had put to bed. Everyone eventually settled back down and went back to bed. But everyone (except the kittens) is moving pretty slowly this morning.

I’m supposed to be going to a stitch-in today, a new one, with total strangers. I’m not sure what to bring…I don’t have anything at a good stage to carry. And my stuff is a little out there. I kinda want to see if this group will be a fit before I haul out the boobs and uteri, yeah? When I started in my old quilt group, it was a class, an applique class, and we did lighthouses and Victorian houses and then the Southwest and I don’t remember what else. And then I started making my own stuff and bringing it and everyone had known me for a few years and it was OK. I’m sure some people were like “eh. her stuff is weird.” but they liked me well enough and tolerated the quilts. I don’t really want to make modern quilts…and what I make is so incredibly NOT a modern quilt…but I want a group I can stitch with once a month. So I’m trying it.

I don’t know what to bring though. I have some hand applique I started last year (as part of the Great Finish Everything plan I had for 2019 that completely failed), which fits about as well as anything else I have. It’s portable and that may have to do.

I really do want to spend the whole weekend with fabric. I have an idea for the Anna Maria Horner fabrics that came. This new quilt is ready to be ironed to fabric. I have stuff all OVER the place. Ironically. I also have a huge pile of grading that got turned in yesterday. Gonna slog through part of that this morning. Then shower. Then make decisions.

I did get to draw at school yesterday for the new unit…

It’s almost all colored in. I’ll photograph it when it is.

At last night’s show, I drew. Dive bar. I needed cleavage and thigh-high boots to fit in.

I was wearing Skechers. Oh well. I really like the fish and the table with the beer being knocked off. I like drawing in bars because there’s no need for it to be a logical finished project. I just draw what pops into my head at the moment.

With all the groups I’m in throwing shows up all over the place, I’m feeling overwhelmed with what I’m supposed to be working on again. So thinking that through. A little.

Plus politics. Wondering what the fuck this country is thinking. I’ve spent many years thinking that, and it just seems to get worse. Makes me sick to my stomach some days. This is not my America. And yet it is.

This sweet baby slept with me for a bit on the couch…

Nova has more dark. Luna has less. And Kitten is big.

Plus making bad decisions about thread again. I have most of my thread locked down so we don’t have a repeat of the surgery of 4 or 5 years ago. Because I don’t have 3K lying around, cat. But she always finds the one I missed. It’s OK. I caught her.

OK. Focus. Get clean, eat, pack some stuff, grade some shit. Leave the house (do I have to?). Hello introvert brain. You need this. Just do it.

That’s Always Crazy

Did you notice January is flying by? Well, almost flown by? I spent some time the other day explaining coronavirus to my students. We used to teach infectious diseases…I remember when SARS came through and we added it to the curriculum to try to calm down some of the crazy shit the kids kept saying. Although I often say a virus is what’s going to take us down, the human race…or at least drastically cull our species. They’re saying it’ll be at least 10 days before this virus hits its peak…so probably 10 days before we’re really sure about the death rate and impact. Scary stuff though. Just like the normal flu that hits here every year for now…but with the potential to be much worse.

Today I have overlapping meetings, an opening to go to, and possibly an online meeting, although that hasn’t been confirmed. Plus it’s the last day of kids trying to figure out how to actually finish what they start. In that realm, I finally finished cutting out the Wonder Under for the newest quilt…

It was only 6 hours to cut it out, but it was spread out over more than a week. I had other stuff shoved in there, some even artistic. I have noticed that I’ve been doing less art this school year…I keep track of my hours, and I’m averaging about 35 hours a month, down from last year, at about 60 hours a month. I’m not sure why…this year has been harder on grading, ironically, since I joined a group to try to reduce those hours. So far have not been successful. The assessments we’re doing are pretty time consuming. Thinking of ways to deal with that. Also thinking of ways to up the artmaking time.

Anyway, I did exercise yesterday. Even better, when I got there early, I graded the last of an assignment in the parking lot before I went in and did my class. All good. There’s never enough hours in the day to get everything done. Some days it feels like I don’t get anything at all done. Yesterday was OK for that.

Ah, that’s what else I did last night…see, it was art-related. I scanned and cleaned up the Patreon drawing and posted it…detail here.

I want to try a larger Bird Daughter. Not sure when that’s happening, though, honestly. Tomorrow is crazy. Saturday is a little crazy. Sunday’s pretty crazy. Then I start a new week at school, and that’s always crazy. Plus a new science unit that we’re not done planning, and it starts tomorrow (NO PANICKING). Yeah. I’m good.

(Look at the big dog asleep. Pet the sleeping dog. It calms you. Do it again.)

I’m not grading tonight. I am sorting Wonder Under and then cleaning up my art space so I can start ironing. Unless the online meeting gets canceled, and then I’ll probably go to the gym, and then do those things. We’ll see. But first all the other things.

These guys keep me sane.

Well. In a crazy way. It’s better than without them, that’s for sure. (notice claws in couch. This is why we can’t have nice things.)