The Shortest, But Longest Days…

Oh hey, it’s Wednesday. Weird week. State testing started yesterday, so we have the shortest, but longest, days with kids for a couple days. I keep my advisory for 3 hours and 15 minutes and they annoy me the whole time by being unable to follow directions, log in, keep their computers in good shape, did I say follow directions? Be quiet, don’t turn around and make faces at or talk to your friend, stop trying to contort your body into stupid positions. Just take the damn test and then chill out. None of this crew brought a book for after. They didn’t believe me when I said no computers, despite that being a school rule for the last million years. Then they leave around noon and we go get lunch and then try to work the rest of the day. I did actually grade for two hours. It was yucky. Whatever. We have one more day today and then we skip a week, then math and science will be the week after that. I just need all this to be done. I need the rest of the year planned…usually this is when we take a breath and relax a bit because sex ed is a known quantity and it’s all planned for the end of the year. But no. Not this year. Sigh. I’m frustrated. And tired. I know that. I might always be like that at the end of the year. I probably am.

I finished sewing the braids down last night…it took longer than you’d think it would.

I tacked each braid down every few inches or so.

That was after one night. And then last night, I did the rest.

Bowie slept through most of it. I was trying to fall asleep last night and was thinking about what else to do on this piece. I have an idea, so I’ll hopefully work on that tonight.

I finished the heart on Monday at the ceramics studio.

It goes on the fabric piece…not sure when that will happen, because I have stuff going for the rest of the week.

I got a quilt back from a show yesterday…like this…

Luckily, there was no damage inside. It does look like they ran it over with something though. And it was wet, so recently? It rained yesterday. It was packed well, luckily.

I keep thinking of this, how we are all human, despite the stupidity.

And this…

I didn’t get to the history of DNA this year. I usually teach it a bit and always the Rosalind Franklin part.

And I had just heard a new astounding set of numbers about this…

We just absolutely suck as a culture for causing and ignoring this.

So here’s the owls though…

Mom is out and about (probably because those babes are fucking annoying). And you can barely see the two baby heads in the hole of the box. Right now, WordPress is showing that the video is private. Not sure how to fix that. Hmmm. OK, I think I fixed it. Love it when they change how things work.

OK. Today. Second day of testing, usually harder and shorter. But the kids are still here for three hours plus. Then some lunch, some planning, maybe grading. Pilates, pack bug quilts up, book club? Busy. Long. Oh wait, meeting this morning too, ugh. So much adult drama yesterday. Could do without that. OK, though, gotta go now. Art tonight…at some point.

Gonna Get There…

Gotta write fast; got a meeting this morning. My team had five kid meetings this week and divided them out. We usually all go, but we’re all burnt out on them and so we tried to be organized about it. We’ve been to so many meetings this year for kids…and mostly for the same group of kids over and over. And nothing gets solved at a lot of them. Hopefully today’s will go well…it should.

So art is a struggle at the moment. I guess I got to do ceramics yesterday…

I worked on the hands a bit and then figured out how to add a neck that was removable. There’s still no room to put her on the drying racks, so I figure I’m going to have to start underglazing her and let her dry on my shelf? And then try to do the head? Not sure. Actually, I remembered some other things I was going to do, so now that the fabric has solidified a bit, I might do that. We’ll see.

I managed to paint these for the bugs the other night…

I was going to start attaching bugs to them last night, but started to book flights to see the girlchild and got sucked into an Expedia loop that ended with me on two different airline websites instead, telling Expedia to fuck off. That was 90 minutes I would have spent sewing bugs on. So I guess that’s tonight. It’s fine. Really. I do like a big project. These little fussy ones finish up easy and quickly (well, though, is it?), but I get more frustrated with them. Like, it’s small…why isn’t it done already? So yeah. Getting there.

I also started some embroidery on this dye painting…

Hello Scribble…but I need a specific yarn for the hair, I think. And the yarn store isn’t open until tomorrow. So it’s on my list for after school. I do want to do a big piece next. Like the one I planned to do back in January. It’s been waiting patiently. It deserves to be made. I don’t even remember what it looks like.

I also finished this Critters block (Sue Spargo). The ants were fun.

Meanwhile, political shit is crazy. I mean, no matter what you think about what happened and how people reacted…

The difference between those reactions and those directed toward families who lose children in school shootings is boggling.

And those are the jokey ones. Here’s the real shit.

THAT. Is incredibly sad.

Followed by this crazy shit.

We’re already having issues getting treatments approved. We have an idiot in charge of HHS, increasing measles outbreaks, bad math when it comes to medical expenses (I would like a 600% decrease in my medicine costs please)…and now we’re trying to block new science. This will be why you won’t get new treatments for your cancer in the future.

Only the rich will be able to afford them, and they’ll have to fly out of the US to get them. The attack on science, women, people of color, the poor, LGTBQIA. And the billionaires get more billionairy. Vote, y’all. Vote loudly and often. Yell lots. You know what still hasn’t happened? Epstein files. Cheaper gas. Cheaper food. Nothing is great. We’re still at war. We’re still randomly killing people in the Atlantic Ocean. We’re doing so many illegal things.

Well. Cheery thought. Gotta get out of here. Giving a test on natural selection today. Then starting evolution tomorrow. Through state testing…in bits and pieces. Got lots of work to do. Got lots of planning to do for the summer. Deep breaths…gonna get there somehow.

There’s Always a Back…

It’s another Wednesday where my brain keeps skipping ahead to Thursday. Surely I’ve lived through three workdays by now. Only three more days of sex ed and then back to the normal shitshow. Which isn’t planned yet. Minor issue. I’d really like to be planned out more than a few days…more than a week would be nice. It’s a constant scramble and that’s part of the exhaustion. Plus grading on top of it. I’m going to have to start grading a test tonight that I gave yesterday. Not sure if it’s going into the progress report. I’m not that on top of things yet. Never am really. Don’t want to spend the whole weekend grading. So we’ll see where I get.

I finished the embroidery, for some definition of embroidery, on the quilt. I think.

You can barely tell in photos. Then I started adding beads last night…

You can barely tell…I mean, the larger ones are obvious. I’m not done. It’s more about catching the light with those.

Also adding to the texture. It’ll be way different in person than in a photograph I guess. I’ve been told my work is anyway, so there we are.

I added to the ceramic piece on Monday…

Pounded out a slabbish piece and kind of squished it up and laid it over her arms.

Hopefully it will hold up. This thing is getting heavy. Gonna do some arm decorating, fix up the fingers with some details, and cut a hole for the neck. There’s still no room on the drying racks. Might need another plan at some point.

My co-teacher gave the kids pipe cleaners for their nervous fingers during sex ed. I found this outside.

Not particularly accurate. To our credit, 7th grade teaches anatomy; we just teach what happens if you use it. Pretty iconic otherwise. The orange is disturbing though.

Melania does think AI can do my job.

This is the problem though. Melania needs to read more dystopian fiction.

I love this…it’s so true, and at some point, when I was answering a question about abortions, I mentioned that non-science people shouldn’t be making laws about science they don’t understand (ectopic pregnancies cannot be transplanted, you idiot politicians)…

Also the kid who wanted to know why he had to learn about pregnancy…HE. I congratulated him on his decision never to have sex with a woman. Yes, the boys are driving me a little bonkers at the moment. Today is STIs. Scary stuff, but less scary than when we taught it. It’s all less scary. Videos of childbirth are good because it scares them. The animation they make for pregnant moms, which is what we have to use instead, is very vanilla. This whole new curriculum is just a lot of teacher reading and not a lot of good interactions. I might have the energy to do something about that someday, but not today. The LONG email I sent with corrections still hasn’t been answered. Sigh. Whatever. Highlight the damn words that need to be written so my low readers can FIND them, you assholes. Sigh. REALLY SIGH this time.

OK. Like I said, teaching STIs today. Preventing them tomorrow. Then goal setting and we’re done. Hallelujah. Then back to natural selection and then state testing and I can’t believe we’re getting to the end of this shitty year. Only 40 days of school left and one of those is promotion. One is a field trip. Four are testing days, which are hell in their own way, but the kids leave at noon and then it’s quiet. I have pilates after school and then I will come home and weed or grade or both and then play with more beads. I did weed a lot yesterday too…hoping to get enough done to scatter the wildflowers (aka fancy weeds with flowers) the boychild gave me. May the planning and grading go well. May I be less tired than yesterday. May my voice last the entire day (questionable). Oh shit, I’m doing test corrections at lunch. May the kids remember to turn over to the back of the page. There’s always a back. Just sometimes it’s blank.

I’m a Big Girl…

Hey. It’s Friday. I say this once a week. I saw three squirrels cavorting on the slope this morning. I’ve only ever seen two at a time, mostly one. This was definitely three. Fun times. I definitely have the trees for it. And the one I’m watching right now? Definitely a young one. Not super tiny, but not an adult. Cool morning focus…on nature (even destructive nature) rather than the shitshow that is school right now. Behaviors have ramped up in all the classes, and I don’t think teaching sex ed early is helping. The baby squirrel went up one of the trees and is now coming down another one. Adorable little beast. Unlike boys during sex ed. I shouldn’t say ALL boys, because it’s not. But it’s a healthy number of them. Speaking of not all boys but way too many of them…

I mean, I guess I’m alternately shocked and not surprised at all that a ton of men checked into an online rape academy. Certainly I’m holding other men responsible for shutting that shit down if they ever get a hint of someone they know visiting that, but also, why is it allowed to exist? I’d love to have all those men outed. Names published. Fired from jobs. As we teach sex ed and little boys write on the question cards, “how many holes on a girl can I put my dick into?” Seriously disturbing sometimes. Also there has been a huge thing on consent, with parents monitoring kids’ phones and the kids saying they don’t have their consent, (and my laughing my ass off, because who pays for your damn phones and phone bills, you sweet dingbats), and then I explain how you can’t give consent under 18. And you know, it’s always the boys yelling, Bill touched me without my consent; can I hit him? Can I sue him? And the girls are sitting quietly in their chairs. I do mostly clump boys together on one side, girls on the other. Kids get to choose one person to sit with and there are some boy/girl combos. One set is dating and I warned him; usually I don’t let them sit together, but I think this pair is OK. The other pairs are friends and that is their support system. But one (annoying) boy noticed yesterday (on Day 4) and yelled out about it (because apparently we have to yell everything out), and one of the girls answered, “Maybe we just wanted to sit with our friends so we don’t have to listen to you,” and I’m with her on that. I’m kind of done with it, and we’re not even halfway through. My voice is shot; my patience is heading for the basement level. Deep breaths. It’s Friday. I can do it. I’m teaching pregnancy today. That should shut them up.

Artwise, I’m still embroidering. I have a lot done (it doesn’t look like a lot though)…

I finished that blue-green color and the lighter purple, and started the bright pink.

Then I need to find a proper purple; then sequins and beads. Another week? I may pause and do bug legs for a few days. I was too tired for them. They require thought and I’ve been doing yardwork every night and then grading and barely starting embroidery at 9:30 PM and hardly getting an hour in. Ugh.

I did go to ceramics last night because I have physical therapy for my knee after school today and then a show tonight (UGH).

She’s got two arms now and roughouts for hands. I’m trying to do hands differently…put something in them and then carve the fingers, because the fingers are always breaking. We’ll see how that goes. I have to make sure it doesn’t dry out too much so I can’t carve it, and my original plan for the arms changed mid-arm and then I still don’t have enough shelf space available to dry this or start the head and originally there was going to be a barn owl on the head/shoulders and I’m not sure how to pull that off. SO. Yeah. I’m rethinking.

She looks like she’s doing a low row in pilates. ANYWAY. I’ll get there. I don’t plan much in ceramics. That’s the point for me. Brain loosey goosey.

Speaking of loosey goosey, here’s Scribble.

She’s a sweetheart. But still kitteny.

Hey so I finished my taxes a week or so ago and I’m still pissed off that I’m paying for a war. And ICE. And those dumbass goons in the government who quote random shit and say even more random shit. Also my right eye started twitching today and I blame all of this: school and world.

Unfortunately, the monkeys are mine. Every day. In class.

Another photo of my piece at the No Boundaries exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum.

And my Stitchpunk piece at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. I always forget that they’re traveling around, although hopefully I’ll see this one in Oregon this summer. Or is that Fierce Planets? I can’t remember.

Woman 3.0. Hopefully dealing with fewer stupid men online.

Leaving you with Simba AFTER I stopped rubbing his belly.

No judgement in that face. I did rub his belly for a long time (not long enough, lady).

OK. Teaching pregnancy today. No videos of women giving birth, unfortunately. The school board thinks that’s too much. I think it scares them and it’s useful. Plus it gives me a break from talking. I talk NONSTOP for this unit with the new curriculum. Yesterday a boy yelled out, “Pregnancy, Why the fuck do we need to learn about that?!”. I calmly said, “well, I guess you never want to have sex with a woman then.” Fun times, y’all, fun times. After teaching that all day (it’s OK, the one class that got to the anatomy review yesterday shut up SO FAST…it was joyful), I will get my knee poked and prodded again, then remember to pick up my insulin (if I forget, it’s OK; I’ll be back tomorrow for the boob squeeze, version 1). Then the Man said I should NAP for the show tonight. Four hours long. But there’s a taco truck. But the three songs he’s in are the last of 43? So holy crap, bring my book and go read in a corner? We’ll see how I feel. Currently I feel like crawling into a pillow fort, but that’s not an option. I’m a big girl and I need to do all the things.

Art Will Be at the End of It…

It seems to be Monday again. Some cruel joke. We start sex ed today, a full 6 weeks early, and I am so not ready. I have 32 kids opted out (I think…something like that)…I have one class that only has 6 girls left (girls opt out more than boys). I clustered them in a little pod, like wagons circled together for protection. Occasionally a girl wants to sit with a boy. Some make total sense, and one this year is a couple…I don’t think they realize how awkward it will get when we start talking about how pregnancy happens and STIs present. I don’t usually let the couples sit together, but we’ll see how this works. Big class. Not a lot of places to put him.

So there’s that. I’m totally behind in grading because I did not have any time this weekend for it (or motivation; let’s be real). I’ll need to be a little more on top of it this week. Somehow. Ugh. I’m too tired for all this shit.

So what did I do this weekend? I picked up quilts and went to an art group meeting and went to dinner at my parents because my brother is here visiting and that’s really it. I was out of it for most of Saturday, even though I did things. Stitching-wise, I worked on everything. I finished the edges of the 5 bugs…

Now they all need legs…well, except the ladybug. She’s got them already.

Pink or green legs? I’m thinking lime green.

This one looks really weird without the rest of its leg parts.

Some of them also need antennae. Maybe that’s tonight’s project.

Then Saturday, at the artist meeting, where I saw an artist’s studio that would be lovely, yes thank you, I would like that much room…I worked on this…

I took an improv quilt class last January? Or the year before? Finished the top and went, eh, I’m not really an improv quilter, what am I going to do with this? So I started stitching on it last summer, put it down after that residency, but picked it up for this meeting and did some more stitching. Because my brain is all over the map at the moment. Proof of that: last night, I was working on the pink head again…

Scribble is not so helpful. But I did pull out all the beads and found the sequins. I’m still doing thread stuff right now though. It takes forever.

The ceramic piece got more stuff on the front…

As I watched this…

Which was awesome and awe-inspiring and all that good stuff. Unlike the rest of everything.

Ok. I am really tired still. Blood sugar has been crashing at night, so I’m reducing my insulin to see if that helps. It’s exhausting to deal with. I didn’t get any yard work done this weekend, so hopefully I will later this week. I’ve got some ceramics time built in. I’m going to need to grade stuff. I need legs for the bugs and more embroidery all over the place. This week is less busy than last week…well, at least at the moment, so that should help. Today is just the intro to sex ed, so it’s mostly my telling them how all the things work and how not to piss me off while I’m teaching it (fun times, y’all…some of the boys lose their freakin’ minds). There are a couple of kids I won’t mind not seeing for two weeks, honestly, so that’s a plus. Anyway…art will be at the end of it and that’s always a good thing, even if I’m jumping all over the place with projects. There’s a reason for the jumping and I’ll get all these little projects done eventually and get onto a big quilt…hopefully by June. Which is a long way away unfortunately. Sigh.

Juggling

So we’ve been back at school for two whole days. It hasn’t been particularly difficult (well, staff meetings hurt my brain…)…actually, here’s a legit commentary on staff meetings.

I’m still obsessing over the word ‘justify’ and what it really means and how it doesn’t mean what people say it means and this is why when you tell a word person that they have to use a particular word, said person will obsess over that word for the next 48 hours and then refuse to use it. It’s OK…it’s mostly an inner conversation that makes me just refuse to do a lot of things (or care sometimes, which is really hard). We start sex ed next week and we’re not ready and maybe it will all just magically get organized, but I find that rarely happens. I’m bringing home piles of work every night, trying to get caught up with all the assignments kids didn’t turn in before break because they left early for Eid or just because their parents don’t think two weeks is enough time to have off…they need two weeks and two days. More work for us, of course, or we could just not teach anything two days before any break, which seems stupid. Anyway, my frustrations with the system aside, hoping the next few weeks of teaching are fairly low-key. We should probably plan the stuff for after sex ed though, and I’m not sure what that looks like.

I made it to ceramics on Monday and did some things on the front of the torso…

It wasn’t what I was originally planning on doing, but it’s what happened. Which is pretty much how ceramics works for me.

I also quilting bugs over two nights…stitch down, pinbasting, and outlining the first night, then quilting the backgrounds last night.

Tonight will be legs…or trimming and then legs? Not sure. Might be easier if I trim first.

One of my students drew me.

Side part not captured. Nice though. She’s super quiet and never asks questions, but draws really well, so I put little comments on her drawings.

Last night after dinner, while watching weird German time travel…

Scribble kept reaching out toward Nova with her paw, suspect not in a gentle, loving way, but it a ‘get off my mom’ way.

This is one of the hardest parts of going back to school…wearing a bra all day again.

I don’t want to be buried as a body anyway, but don’t cremate me with a bra on either. I don’t want that shit anywhere near me.

OK. Today is long. Meeting this morning. I actually have a mental bet on whether admin actually shows up. Hope they surprise me. Then teaching natural selection all day, not bad, I enjoy it. Peppered moths today, maybe giraffes. Yesterday was dogs and pigeons (had to explain what a pigeon was to a large portion of the classes). Then I have pilates and book club. Don’t think I’ll get much grading done unfortunately. Ah well. I do my best. Then I’ll have to decide whether to trim the quilts and maybe put the edge on them before legs? I think it will be easier to see the available leg space if I do it that way. Also have to see if I have the canvases I put these on. Enough of them. I feel like I won’t have enough and will have to solve that problem. Plus pay property taxes. Gotta remember to do that. I finished my taxes last weekend, but not early enough to pay the property taxes, so I’m waiting for some money to move. Fun stuff. Juggling money, time, to-do list items…it’s what I do.

Completely Unprepared

Late start to writing; so much to do. Brain explodes and is replaced with AI…which doesn’t know where to start, how to prioritize. Still laughing about Melania’s AI in the classroom. Obviously the woman and her people have never stepped foot into a middle-school classroom. I wouldn’t mind a little robot assistance just for the stupid questions: “What are we doing?” “Do we have to read the whole thing?” “There’s a back?”. They could also do the copying for me and maybe input grades (can I trust it for that?) and answer parent emails…oh wait, no…I had to tell Chatty to be less kiss ass on one response to a parent because she was bending over backwards for one kid in a class of 33 with 7 SPED. Like IDK what drugs she’s on, but it needs to be possible for humans to do the things…I for sure know SHE couldn’t do it. It would take 7 or 8 robots to do all the things she suggested. I only tried Chat for a response to a parent email because I was fairly sure the parent had also used it to write their email and I wanted to see what the response was.

So there’s that. Today, so far, I wrote one warmup, I checked the weekly email doc and contacted my team to make sure everyone had written their paragraph by Sunday, I ate breakfast, took my meds, calculated the Man’s grocery costs for the week, went through my to-do list and transferred the things I hadn’t done to today and Saturday (and next week, honestly, because let’s be real), considered an email I got and wondered if it was passively aggressively suggesting I needed to do something and decided I would make them actually ask, read some of my book, drank two cups of tea, marinated the meat for dinner, put all the extra dishes away, started some eggs hardboiling for lunch, tried to write another warmup question but there was a feisty cat in the way, remembered the blog, oh wait, I also went to pilates and considered gas costs. So yeah. And showered and changed clothes and opened windows. Doing well. Not great…just getting little things done. Considered cleaning floors, but I have to eat before I go to yet another dentist to see if I lost a filling? I don’t have a filling there but something happened and IDK what and maybe I hallucinated it. I don’t think I’m finishing this post before I have to go eat and then leave. You won’t know the difference. I will.

I made it to ceramics yesterday. Picked up my new bowl, which I love, wonkiness and all…

Here’s a video of it…

Complicated to hold and film. It’s fun. I meant to make like a soup/pasta bowl, but it’s too big. It’s serving bowl size. Which is fine.

Then I finished the ribcage on the back of this one.

Also pretty cool. Lots of work left on this though.

I started the embroidery on the second dye painting…which is almost invisible in this picture.

But I’ll keep going. I want the texture. I’m adding beads and sequins at some point too.

I had Scribble on my lap for most of it.

She also hung out when I was grading things…

She might have missed me.

I didn’t have much free luggage space in my bag, but I bought a few fabrics (and napkins I will be using as fabrics).

Not a lot. And two t-shirts. And a bag and a cross stitch pattern. Which looks really hard to read. Fun times.

I saw this…related to my most recent quilt that will be at the New England Quilt Museum, opening in a couple of weeks.

There’s been a lot going on, as always. Go Christina Koch!

I’ve been in this space a lot the last three days…

As it should be.

Ready for this. I have a cat ready to go. Maybe four of them.

And I’m now following Amanda Oleander just for this, because I thought I was the only one doing this.

Mostly I swirl them up and make little galaxies (and then throw them in the trash), but sometimes make faces. Maybe I should worry about my hair falling out more, but eh. Seems real.

OK. So I ate, I have 17 minutes until I need to leave to find out about the tooth. I might go to Costco to figure out why my card won’t work and the app won’t verify me. It keeps asking me which street is near mine and none of them are, which is just really weird. So I have to go in person, which sucks, but I also need gas, so maybe I kill both those things. I don’t really want to waste time on either task, but whatever. I’ve got taxes to work on (STILL) and stuff to grade (FOREVER) and cleaning and yardwork (UNENDING), but will end the day with stitching. Need to find the sequins…not something I say often, but it happens. And this is the last official day of Spring Break…I don’t really count the weekend, because it’s the ramp-up to going back (so incredibly not-never ready). I got almost nothing done over break, so there’s that. Going into the last piece of the school year completely unprepared with my hair on fire. Nothing new.

Supposed to Do…

Hello all. It’s Wednesday, although my brain is convinced it has survived more than two work days this week. It’s wrong…well, unless you count the weekend, when I also worked. As always. I finally finished all the bindings on the dye paintings…with everyone’s help. Here’s Nova…

Who headbutts things and then drools on you.

I started embroidery (finally!) on this one last night…

Probably take forever. I was going to do more applique on it, but that would have meant getting off the couch and I was well past that. I will still DO the applique, but I need to prep for it earlier in the evening. Probably not tonight. Today is a mess. We’re going on a field trip to the Midway (big military boat; my favorite thing really…ha), then we’re back in our rooms for two periods and I still don’t have air conditioning (it was 97 degrees outside yesterday). Then pilates and cooking dinner. Ugh. I’ll be half dead by the end of it. And I’m grading like crazy to hopefully limit what I have to get done over break.

I went to the ceramics studio last night and took this half-assed photo of the bowl ready for glaze fire.

It took me almost an hour to do the glazing. I’m hoping it turns out well.

The Forbidden Words Project quilt is done…I have three words/phrases in it.

Let’s see if I can find them…

The girlchild might make it to the opening where this will debut up in San Francisco. It’ll travel…hopefully I’ll see it at some point.

Yesterday was crazy hat day AND tattoo a teacher (fundraiser)…

What’s funny is that I went to the ceramics studio after and forgot I had the tattoos and got some weird looks until I remembered.

Good times. Getting them off was a bit more challenging, but I think we’re good.

This is where we’re headed. Again.

I’d like to bring up the guy who said my comments about the Repugs/MAGA need to throw women back to the 1900s were a conspiracy theory. After I bring him up, I’d like him to explain what’s happening now and how I was wrong. (not happening; it’s fine. It’s not like I wanted to be right.)

And this. Sigh.

Keep voting y’all. And caring about all the people. It’s what we’re supposed to do.

What Happened to Your Face?!

Hey yo. I’m not sure I can feel this tired in the morning forever. I feel like my body should be adjusting. I’m going to bed at the appropriate time for the time shift, so I’m getting the ‘right’ amount of sleep (or the amount of sleep I normally get anyway, which is probably nowhere near enough)…but I feel like a truck hit me every time I get up. I’m sure this happens every year and I feel like shit like this every year, and every year, I mentally block it out and think it will never happen again. And then it does. Good times.

Quilt progress…I finally got binding and sleeves on all four quilts…OK, this isn’t a picture of that. I think I finished quilting this one? I don’t even know.

I just pick up the next one on the pile and figure out what to do with it next.

I used the same purple binding on two of them because the fabric store I was at is apparently phasing out the fabric parts and there were very few fabrics that would work and I didn’t have time to drive to the next fabric store, the better one, before it closed. So I got what worked.

They have different sleeve fabrics, which doesn’t matter at all. To me anyway. Don’t look at my backs. They’re not meant to be pretty. Some people do that; I don’t.

So tonight, I’ll start all the handsewing of the bindings…I think I’ll leave at least some of the sleeves loose so they don’t get in the way of any embroidery I might be doing.

Monday, I cut a hole in her chest.

I needed it to be sturdy enough for that. And then I started adding things…

That took a long time…and it’s not done. Fun though.

My bowl made it through the bisque fire.

It has one tiny crack on the edge that will either fade away or turn into something horrible in the glaze fire. That’s how it goes. I have no room on my shelf for it and I didn’t bring my glazes on Monday, so I’ll have to remember on Friday to do that. Clear glaze on the outside, something on the inside. I don’t have a lot of choices for the inside.

I have two pieces in this show that opens this weekend. I should be at the opening in the first hour.

It’s usually a pretty cool venue/gathering of quilts.

I finished a book yesterday. This is a quote…I used to know how to screenshot stuff with my iPad, but apparently I forgot and resorted to taking a blurry picture with my phone.

I agree.

And this too.

OK. My mouth is still sore. My face is still bruised but better. I’ve had a billion students yell, “What happened to your face?!” at me in the last two days, even though I explained it. Shows you how much they listen. I’m exhausted. I still have six stitches in my gum, which will come out Friday. I’m running out of pain meds, but will be fine…really…I think some of the pain is the weather seesawing between chilly and rain to Santa Ana winds and hot weather. They fixed my air conditioning at school before it hits 93 degrees tomorrow. I’m behind on EVERYTHING. In case you were wondering. Today, I am continuing to teach Punnett squares and then going to a union meeting. Then coming home and grading and handstitching. And OMG sleep. Ugh. So I can be up even earlier tomorrow morning. There’s 8 days of school before Spring Break. And one assembly. And a field trip. And and and. Ugh.

It’s All Rainbows?

I’m working on some new pieces that are supposed to be for a show in a conservative part of Southern California. I figured these dye paintings would be quicker than trying to draw and make a whole new quilt that fits their ‘no nudity’ rules, plus it gets me to finally start thinking about these pieces and what I can do with them. I’m in the brainless, just-quilt-it phase, which is probably a good thing, because my brain keeps trying to figure out how to make these more political…I mean, we’re in a stupid war, spending crazy stupid money, probably illegally, and I’m trying to make art that won’t offend anyone…I don’t really set out to offend people, but I don’t usually regulate what I do either, so it’s a challenge. I’ve made a few pieces for places that didn’t allow nudity before…it just seems harder to control the need to put the word ‘fuck’ all over everything at the moment.

So yes, I’m quilting rainbow batiks at the moment…

I had to pack a quilt Monday night, so I had limited quilting time. I have another I have to pack sometime soon…same deal. But I finished quilting. I think. I might do more in the background? Or maybe just hand stitch. I don’t know yet.

Definitely doing something all up in her hair, and maybe her skin. Not sure.

I didn’t have actual rainbow thread. I have limited thread sources locally. Well, I was going to go to one place and they aren’t apparently open on Sundays, so I didn’t. But I had a thread from quilting a friend’s baby quilt that was light green through blue and purple and that was close enough.

Although maybe rainbow thread is something I will keep an eye out for, in my vast thread-shopping trips (ha. not happening).

So then I moved on to the next one…

I mostly only did the black outline around the head…need to figure out what I’m doing in the face area. Odds of my having pink thread anywhere is pretty low. I’m heavy on the dark blues. But more of that tonight. At some point, I’ll have to make real decisions on these pieces, but low-key is where I’m at right now. I’m panicking about grades being due Monday or Tuesday and not wanting to grade all weekend and also shipping stuff out and getting taxes done and school is overwhelming and adults are annoying and sometimes kids are too, but at least they have an excuse of still growing and developing.

I did some clay on Monday…adding the second arm and tried to make it fit where I wanted it.

Learning from my mistakes on the last one hopefully. I’m going to cut a big hole in the chest soon. But I want to add a bunch of stuff too. So that’s my brain for you. My brain that last night got totally sidetracked by a long email chain that a parent kept going and I kept having to answer and all I’m really thinking about is how much work I have to do and burying my brain in this…

It’s like they’re doing everything they can to distract from how crazy all the rest of their decisions are. Wars are good for the economy, right? Isn’t that what they say? I feel like this one is gonna tank the economy. Gas prices sky high? Children dying? And this…

That’s why my brain keeps leaning toward making stuff political. Because it is.

This was the weekend.

That thing is still continuing though.

Gemma’s got my anxiety mapped out. Oh yeah, and dental surgery tomorrow. Fun times. Sub plans PLUS possibly yanking a tooth (hopefully not).

I do like this concept though.

The whole caterpillar to butterfly thing is so weird and fascinating.

I actually get frustrated even with kids’ books these days, but I do agree.

That’s why I read fantasy and science fiction probably. And murder mysteries to satisfy my need to stab people.

This is absolutely true. That and Dr. Suess. The world is a disappointment against those two exemplars.

Monday, I drove the ex’s dog to doggy daycare.

She was really confused. So was I, because I had to drive past work to do it. And then drive back. She was a good girl.

OK. Whoa. Today. Meeting this morning (ugh). Then fire drill, and we’re not sure where we’re evacuating to, because last time, they moved our room numbers and then left my coteacher’s room number off and we’re not sure why they moved the numbers and why they didn’t even TELL us, so we’re wandering around the quad with our kids trying to find the numbers and I’m thinking, this is what this school year is like…wandering aimlessly because no one in charge thought it through or told us anything. My coteacher is gonna go find our numbers before school because I’m in a meeting, and then I’m teaching genetic traits, which is kinda fun…the kids get into it. Then pilates and book club (haven’t finished the book) and grading and quilting. SLEEP. Maybe. That’s an issue some days. GRADING. And setting up Friday’s activity, which required 250 pages of laminating and then cutting them all apart. So Much Work and I’m still not done. The two boys who helped yesterday were way more efficient than our TA, who is getting fired…second one this year we’ve gotten rid of. Never done that before. So weird. But art at the end. Be thankful for that.