Incognito Year…

I’m running on crazy time now, y’all. I was going to write on Monday, but oops, stomach flu or food poisoning…and then this morning, the rescheduled appointment from early Monday morning, and now it’s almost 10 PM. But hell, it’s still Wednesday. When I get off schedule, I get really off apparently. So yeah, how are things going? Ha! Can’t get the bees out of the owl box…all the bee peeps are on Winter Break. Can’t get the house or yard done because I spent Monday completely out of it with the remains of the whatever-the-hell-it-was, Tuesday much of the same. Today I’ve been better (food helped), but felt like I had to do EVERYTHING and that everything took FOREVER to get done. Not really of course, but days seem to go much faster over break than they do in real life. Which starts Monday. With a vengeance. A possibility of an 11-hour day. Fun times, y’all…fun times.

So Friday night, I ironed…I think that was the first leg. Nah. I straight up have no idea what I ironed, but my app says I did? No photos either. I also did a little clay, underglazing mostly. And put this this together with all the requisite borders.

No, it’s not done. There’s 16 big embellished flowers for the borders. Bowie thinks he might climb it. This is Sue Spargo’s Homegrown, a block of the month I started in March 2020. No joke. Last night, I pinned some things down to it, also with Bowie interest.

Back to the other quilt. Who the fuck knows what I did on it Friday night. On Saturday, I did nothing on it, because the Man’s band played the House of Blues and I was there from 7-11 PM.

Sunday night, I ironed the lower half of the other leg…

Monday night, I was half dead, and last night, I did the other half of the leg…

It remains to be seen whether I’ll get any of it done tonight. I’m knackered. Not sleeping well, worried about the bees and the world and fires and going back to school. Not halfway yet. And I start three days of Zoomie art classes tomorrow, so that’ll fuck with my ability to get art done. Plus my bro is in town again. So family stuff. It’s all good. It’ll get done eventually.

I did finish the binding and sleeves on the bird wool quilt today. I’ll have to take a better photo sometime and post it. That’s the 12-year finish.

Clay stuff…been glazing some small things, then working on the second level of the crazy sculpture I’m making…

I made boobs today. Although they need some forming. I needed them to solidify slightly before I started banging on them.

Also, just like in real life, they are top-heavy. So it does fine here with 12-15 pounds of clay holding it up, but on its own, that piece just falls over. Right now, it has a roll of paper towels holding it up. Hoping to get back to this on Friday or Saturday. Need to pack up four quilts first, plus take classes each day.

Here’s the day I was sick. I got up, thinking I could make it to the doc appointment, even took a shower. Crazy. Not going anywhere. Slept until noon, when I tried to drink Gatorade…

Not sure it went uphill from there. I think I managed 3 bites of rice at dinner. Anyway. I’m mostly recovered now, but my stomach still wants me to remember. So small bites and not very much of anything. But better.

These two enjoyed three weeks together, but now she is gone again and he is bereft.

Oh wait, no he’s not. He has the boychild.

This old lady has had a hard week. No one medicated her when I was sick, and her body doesn’t do well without her meds unfortunately.

She seems better today.

She does like a sunny chair. Might be a fight for it tomorrow.

Woke up after Monday with questions, lots of questions.

I don’t think that’s changing all year. In fact, I’d like to set up an incognito window for me for the entire year. Maybe I can just watch from the sidelines and pretend I don’t have a horse in the game? I realize that’s totally and completely not possible. I have thousands of horses in the game, dammit.

The current book I’m reading briefly mentions the town I lived in for a year…

Found that amusing. It was in the boonies, that’s for sure.

OK. So. I’m tired. I have lots going on tomorrow…and the next day and the next day. I do want to iron, though. Tough call. Also classes will be in here, in my studio, so stuff has to be cleared up enough for that to happen. Hmmm. There’s also some chance class will be rescheduled. Our teacher is not in a fire zone, but the wind has caused internet and electrical outages. The fires in Los Angeles, by the way…my goodness holy crapitude. I remember seeing fires up in the hills above where we lived when I grew up south of Pasadena. I know Eaton Canyon, hiked it and other areas up there. It’s hard to watch all of it burn. Damn wind. Climate change. WTF is Trump saying about letting the clean water run? Man is on crack. Maybe he needs the incognito window more than I do.

The Year Changed…

I somehow have lost a week. The year has changed. I have not posted my memories of 2024 nor my goals and hopes for 2025. I missed the boat completely. What happens to me if I do not consider everything that 2024 brought and 2025 might bring? I dunno, but I don’t seem to have the brainpower for it. Although I redid my big long huge CV/resume/whatever the hell it is yesterday and I know that I was in 12 exhibits last year and I made 6 quilts and 10 bug things that aren’t really quilts. I read that an art quilter I follow made over 60 quilts and I can’t fathom that, but probably she’s not working full time as a middle-school teacher. So that’s another reason I have a hard time with the review/gratitude part of the year ending. It makes me feel inadequate until I have some interior brain argument about what people are capable of and that’s why I picked a fucking retirement date last summer. Oh yeah. I remember now. So in 2025, I hope to make another 6 or so quilts and get into another 12 or so shows and keep messing around with clay and trying to keep my day job from inserting itself into my recharge time more than it already does. No change. I actually usually do resolutions in August, right when I’m about to go back to school. It makes more sense as a teacher to think about those things then rather than in the middle of a school year. I am glad I have next week off, because I have to get 6 quilts out of here in the next week or so for delivery to shows. So some of that will happen today.

I’m quite happily ironing the first big quilt of 2025 together now…

I forgot how fun and relaxing it is to iron stuff together. I had been putting it off because it seemed hard, but it isn’t. Time-consuming? Yes. Fussy as shit sometimes? Yes. Absolutely relaxing? Oh yes.

I’ve got the dirt done, with its furry beasts, body bags, bullets, and skull.

And I’ve done one leg. That’s it. Well, it has a snake on it. So there’s a lot to come. I’m well into the 200s…I’ll be here for a while.

Then I finally quilted this beast, which I started in January 2013.

No joke. Those bird blocks went to almost every soccer game in the girlchild’s last two years of high school. Two years ago I started quilting it, and then it sat. So here it is…

Just need to do the handstitching of the binding and sleeves, and it’s done. Twelve years. Impressive. Can’t say I don’t finish shit. I do eventually. This is Sue Spargo’s Bird Dance, by the way. I called it Bird Crazy for years.

I also needed to get to the next step on this one…trimming all the houses…

To the same size. A few are a bit short, as always. Wool stretches. But the center piece is definitely too small, so I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that. I have ideas.

That’s the layout. This is Sue Spargo’s Homegrown, which might have been started in…hell, IDK…wait! OMG. Started March 16, 2020. The day they sent us home for two weeks because of COVID. Little did we know. Oh my. I’m laughing. So this one is just two months’ short of being 5 years old. I did Folk Tales in between the bird one and this one. And there’s another bird one I did too, Chirp…both Folk Tales and Chirp are ready to be sandwiched and quilted, but this one needs to be put together so I can do borders, so it’s a good year out from being finished, if I’m lucky. Anyway, I have a Zoom tonight and I will sew things together and try to figure out how to solve the problem of the center being too small. It’ll be fine.

Right now, I’m going to pause in the writing (you won’t even notice) because I need to pick up a quilt and then head to ceramics and pick up meds because my online pharmacy ran out of insulin again (they did last year too). But I’ll be back and you won’t even notice I was gone for three hours. Like I said, here I am. Sigh. But in a fairly rancid mood…thanks to health insurance and pharmacies and ugh. It’s fine. I just lost an hour to whatever stupid shit happened yesterday that I didn’t do. I’ll have meds on Monday. The only medication I really freak out about is insulin. And that’s the one with the biggest issues. Ah well. Done now. I ate lunch and read for a bit, and that helped.

I found my SIL’s heart…she had asked for it back in November and then I ‘lost’ it (read, hung it up and put this drawing over it and completely forgot it was behind there…

In fact, I didn’t even see it when I first pulled the drawing down so I could iron on it. I saw it last night, because the Man came in and was talking to me, so I was actually facing that direction. Sad but true. So I need to finish that and mail it to her.

New Year’s Eve was a little low key. Nice fire in the fireplace. Tried to draw and watch a movie. The movie was horrible. The drawing wasn’t entertaining enough…

So eventually I went in and put the binding on that bird quilt instead. I did make it to midnight, no worries. Unless I’m sick or exhausted, I stay up that late on the regular…unless I’m working. Then I have to be up between 6 and 6:30 AM, so I need to start heading for bed at 10:30…although I haven’t been good about that lately. Huh.

I think he’s smiling.

But he’d had a 4-mile walk and a bath because he pooped on himself and then vomited on himself. I wasn’t there. He was certainly tired out.

I’m actually finally kicking this thing.

KNOCK ON WOOD. My sinuses aren’t completely clear, but mostly. I’m not coughing stuff up any more. Time to go back to school and get sick again, right? Sigh.

OK. Well I have a bunch of stuff I need to get done, mostly in the quilt realm. I added to my CV last night, but still need to finish and submit the application by Monday. Lots to do, lots to do. Looking forward to three art classes next week though. Fun times. I appreciate the time off, but it’s too bad the job is so hard that the time off feels so absolutely necessary. I don’t have a solution to that.

Under Control…

OK. So my butt is wet. The cat did something on my chair. This is not a nice way to start Monday. Actually, I started with randomly low blood sugar. Always fun. The cat is old. I’m hoping it’s not…fuck…I’m pretty sure it’s pee. Sigh. She’s looking pretty irritated right now. Maybe because I’m accusing her of peeing herself. I guess I need to call the vet. Sigh. She’s old, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for her to be gone. She has been getting worse…unfortunately.

So artwise, I finished all the bugs. Except I need to repaint one for like the fourth time. I delivered 4 to Visions Museum on Saturday. The rest will hold for a bit (maybe?) and go on Etsy (maybe?). I took official photos of them; I’ll put them on the website later too. Here’s the last one though…

With the one that needs repainting in the background.

I finally started drawing the next big one…it’s been in my head for well over a month.

Not that you can see much, and the boobs might need redrawing based on this. I just get the general shapes with the pencil on something this big. I don’t usually use pencil on the smaller drawings. Here’s a pre-drawing for it…done in two restaurants before dinner came…

Not quite all there. But a vague idea of it. I drew this too, with no purpose…

On Friday, I did some underglazing…

This stuff takes forever…

But it’s relaxing…

Apparently two of my pieces came out of the glaze fire, but I couldn’t find them on Friday. Ugh. Maybe today.

I also finished the center panel of Homegrown…

So now I can piece all the houses around it and spend another year making the borders. It’s also relaxing, but in a different way.

My piece Stop the Murder Madness made it to Miami for the opening…

A fellow artist took a picture of it for me…

Her name is Eden Quispe and you should go look at her work because it’s amazing. And I appreciate her recommending this show to me in the first place and sending me photos as well.

I managed NOT to work most of the weekend (on school stuff), which I think is pretty healthy. We walked the dog on Saturday.

I also blew leaves off half the roof, terrified of being up there, trimmed a bunch of stuff, dumped plant matter in greenery trashcans, finally rehung the art in the hallway…

Drove to a sketch location and bought a recliner for my kid, who may or may not actually want it because he was in Pinnacles with no cell service. Long weekend. I finished a book! That was good. Wait, I actually finished two. So even better.

For some reason, all the animals were giving me judgy looks this weekend. Here’s Nova.

Bowie…

You already saw Kitten up at the top…and Simba…

Luna avoided me mostly, so I guess I didn’t wrong her too badly.

I’ll finish up with two new skull finds…

The one on the right is a new type…I don’t think I’ve seen it before? I’ll wait for nature to clean it up a bit. We get a lot of rats and mice…this is not the right shape for that. Wait and see.

OK, today is teaching speed and velocity…pretty easy stuff. Then a 2-hour staff meeting about literacy. I’ve been prewarned that the scientific content is factually incorrect (oh good), so I’m prepared to be irritated. Then to clay, to hopefully underglaze some more and find my two glazed pieces. Then back here to pack up three quilts for shipping. Fun times. And more drawing, hopefully…get those boobs under control. On the drawing. Those are the only ones I can control.

Check for Zombies

Well hey. I wish I had slept more last night, but the little dog made me get up once to check for zombies and there were definitely other barky moments when I was like, “it wasn’t zombies LAST time, so no, I’m not getting out of bed”. He’s definitely in need of something these days. A long walk…a cuddle with his boy (who still has 10 days of training to go). He is a grumpy old man (the dog, to clarify…although there are other grumpy old men in my vicinity, for sure). What it means is that my brain is a little fuzzy (when is it not?) and my eyes a little crusty, and maybe I’m drinking this whole cup of tea quickly so I can get another one down? Ugh. When my doctor tells me to improve my sleep, for health reasons, I want to explain to her that I’ve always been a bad sleeper and that has not improved with age and there are many factors affecting my sleep, most of which (zombies) are out of my control. Oh well. Doing my best. Mostly. Nah, I could do better. If I had more sleep. Maybe.

So I’m still slogging along on bugs. I stitched the edges of the last two on Monday night…

And last night, I painted all five canvases…

Last time, some of them needed a second coat, but hopefully there’ll be a couple ready to stitch down tonight. I also need to make labels for the back.

I did some carving on Monday as well…

Just for fun planter…

In video…

I’m just gonna work on this here for a while. I need to buy more clay for the next batch of projects. Not there yet.

After dinner, I’ve been working on the centerpiece for Homegrown.

I think I just have that last flower on top to do and then I can piece the whole quilt together and start the borders. I’m ahead of schedule! I thought I wouldn’t finish the center until next year. I figured 5 flowers, 5 months? But I’ve been faster than that for once. Mostly because I’m trying to get work done before I leave school and then leave it there. Much as I can. I did last night, anyway.

This is the face of a cat spying a gecko on the window.

I was reading a book the other day and they used the term ‘sanguivore’ for vampires, and turns out, it’s a real word (I love learning new words) for things like vampire bats and mosquitos (bloodsuckers), so my co-teacher and I thought it would be cool to add this word learning to our 7th-grade curriculum when we do trophic levels (carnivores, herbivores, etc), adding this one to the mix and then having kids make some up…I came up with ‘cerebrevore’ for zombies…

Makes sense? Right? We are supposed to be teaching literacy.

This is relevant as I get closer to the Quilt Visions opening, where I will have to explain my work in front of people…

Sometimes it’s a challenge. This quilt is actually easy to explain and way too relevant these days.

This is another word I like.

Unfortunately, I think if I do that today, kids aren’t going to try to learn…they’re just going to copy each other and then Friday’s test will be painful. So I will have to interact with them. And I have a union meeting after school, so that’s more people and talking. When I just want to read my book in silence. Not happening. Tonight, I’ll be sewing little bug quilts on canvases and/or repainting some of them. All good. I will read my book at some point though. It’s required.

Buggy

Whoo! Finally made it to Friday. And the tea is cold. Back in a minute. OK, so lots going on. Trying to finish some small bug quilts I started back in July. I originally made these for the Oceanside Museum of Art street thing, where I demoed for an hour or so. I had one premade, some in different states of existence, and some I could do in front of people. And then they languished, as things do when they have no priority in the to-do list. They’ve been in the bullet journal list since then, but always at like number 4 or 5. So now there’s a place that wants to sell them for me (always a plus), so I need to finish them…but the original hand-sewn binding takes too long and makes it too expensive (yes, I actually charge for my time. I think it’s important that artists consider their time when pricing things). So I’ve done a satin-stitch binding in the past. I’ve also done some canvas wraps…so I thought I’d do a combo of that. Actually, the combo part came to me at around 10:45 PM last night. There’s a heft to putting these on a canvas that is helpful for people NOT thinking they are coasters. Which they’re not.

So process…find all the things I made back in July…figure out what step they’re at. I embroidered some legs Tuesday night and some more legs and antennae Wednesday night…

More legs…

These were quilted in July…just waiting on the embroidery and finishing.

I have some that are still pieces in bags. Not dealing with those right now. Also I have some that I ironed down at the event…

They need to be stitched down, sandwiched, quilted, embroidered, and finished. Probably not starting with those three.

And this is the one I finished that will be too expensive for this venue.

So last night, I did the satin stitch on one of the other ones…

Much less time. And I ordered canvases that are just a little bigger than these. They come Saturday. I’ll paint them and then attach these.

I’ve been keeping track of the time on the original drawings, but also a spreadsheet, because one side of the brain likes chaotic lists of things jotted on paper in whatever pen color I could find, and the other side likes rainbow-highlighted, organized columns of data. I’ll try to get the other three trimmed and satin stitched tonight with all the animals here and the Man at a wedding (I’m not crashing that party). Or I’ll grade things tonight…we’ll see. I should be allowed to do some art stuff though, although there will be an extra dog and you know how that goes.

I stitched on Zoom with friends yesterday…got this flower done (dog in background, fast asleep)…

And did a goodly chunk of this one (only because it is very simple).

Saw this online…

I agree. Just trying not to fuck up too much of my own shit.

This is from the book I just finished reading.

Yesterday I gave a lecture on what evidence actually is and also asked kids, after taking a test where people are in a moving car, where exactly the things were at rest…because they all were telling me that ‘objects at rest stay at rest’. So to have this show up in a book, and then the mitochondria thing, because that is the only thing everyone remembers…although mitochondria is plural, so it should be ‘are’. Pedantic, right? I know. Ask the history teacher how she feels about my correcting her spelling of ‘longitude’. Yeah.

TODAY! Is Friday. I’m giving another test. Sigh. It’s easy. Then they can read quietly (ha!). It’s been a weird week. We lost 11 students, transferred to a new section on another team. Which is good in the long run but was very traumatic for them and us in the short term. We’re still only planned a week ahead, if that. It’s fine; there’s stuff in there. It just needs tweaking. I’m too tired some nights to work at home…yesterday, I meant to grade things, but I left them at school (is that Freudian? Maybe?). Actually, there was something I could have graded, but I just remembered it, so too late. I have yet another early meeting today. I hate these. But tomorrow is no school. I’m going to go to ceramics in the morning, I think. And we’ll need to grocery shop later because of family stuff on Sunday. And next week is a short week due to a random school-board-mandated, 3-day weekend. Not gonna complain.

They All Change…

OK. So this week has gone from 109 degrees to a delightful 77 or so. The Man replaced the ceiling fan. School has been…interesting. It’s fine. Lots of chaos. Like give us a bunch of kids and have us get to know them and then keep adding new ones and taking away some of them as all their school attendances adjust, and then about 4 weeks in, upend the whole mess and create a new section, which unbalances every single classload in that grade level, and then, probably, y’all will do it again with the Newcomer kids who are coming into general education classes because they have graduated out of that program…but wait another two weeks before you do that, so we have chaos all over again.

Every year. So you figure your classes out and how they work and then they all change. And you’ve done rules and expectations and how things work in this class and then it all changes again. It’s frustrating. It makes the first 6 weeks difficult. But do grades! And independent study contracts! And do them now and fast. Because the kids won’t actually do the work, and they’ll lie about it, because they’re kids. Fun times.

I have not figured out the balance yet.

That said, I finished the little quilt, which will get photographed and get a name. I had it on a post-it note somewhere, and probably a cat ate it. Or a dog. We have both.

I just had a tiny binding and tiny sleeves to sew on.

Simba is entirely unhelpful. So were Nova and Bowie, who tried to climb either on the quilt or on my lap or both last night.

Until Simba won the position.

Cute little thing. About war. So many not so cute. And possibly already maybe sold? I don’t have a price yet and I can’t remember if it has to be for sale for the show I’m sending it to (I don’t think so…I think that’s the other show I shipped to recently). So photographer tomorrow, just in time.

What’s next? A giant drawing of my own choice plus finishing up quilting on two other quilts, one for me, one for a friend, and then some clay stuff that needs fabric. Coolio.

I got to stitch with friends last night…this is the second flower of five…

And no, I’m still not done with it. It takes forever. It’s cool when it’s done. And I like the process. But forever.

Bowie in low-energy mode.

Unlike at 6 AM this morning. Woke up everyone except the Man.

OK. Gotta go to school. It’s Friday the 13th. Can’t be worse than last Friday with its multitude of fights? Right? It probably can. But it’s cooler, so maybe it won’t be. Clay this afternoon. Shit ton of grading to do. Art thing tonight. The Man has a show tomorrow night at the Music Box (sort of; it’s on the street outside). I need a ride to the trolley station in the afternoon, because I’m not trying to park down there. I am tired. I want to read my book. Instead, I will go teach football with regard to Newton’s Laws. Or Newton’s Laws with regard to football? Not sure. One of those.

Heat

Feels like Hades here…and yes, I know Arizona is hotter and so are parts of the Middle East, but I choose not to live there. And yes, this happens every freakin’ September, sometimes August, sometimes October, but it never feels good when it happens. I am glad to be working because there is A/C at work, so at least I get a little respite from the heat, but then it’s crazy there, so there’s that. Actually, mostly the labs and kids have been doing OK…there’s just been some outbursts (like literally sound coming out of mouths in ways I did not need to deal with)…although my co-teacher had broken glass. Oh wait, I had that too. We’re down a radiometer. Again. Every year. I need a plastic one. Or a sturdy childproof one. Yes, these are 13-year-olds. No, they are not gentle with things. Or people. Plus it’s hot. Did I mention that? I haven’t been able to get a lot of schoolwork done at home with the heat. I suspect I will need to just take my computer somewhere airconditioned tomorrow to grade. The library? Somewhere that serves caffeine…good caffeine. Will have to think that through.

I finished ironing the piece down to the background…a light one for once.

I do like me a dark background, but there were enough dark things in this that I didn’t think it would work. Last night, I stitched the whole thing down…

Yes, I stayed up a little too late to do it.

Now she’s ready to sandwich, pinbaste, and quilt. Which I could also probably do in a night, except I need to do some embroidery too. I might do that before I sandwich it. I don’t know. I’ll decide sometime today.

The plan is to (1) survive labs today (no outbursts or demands to be reseated or to go to the bathroom when you haven’t done any work). (2) Set up classroom for next week. (3) Go to ceramics. It’s OK…it was supposed to be 105 degrees and now it will only be 102. It’ll probably be 90-something in the studio, but if no one else is there (and why the fuck would they be on such a hot day), I can find all the fans and point them at me. Then the Man and I are going out to dinner, because he has a wedding to play at tomorrow (no fucking way am I going to a wedding), so he’ll be gone from 10:30 AM to probably 1 in the morning, maybe later. I, however, have to pick up some art from Liberty Station, get my brain and neck scanned (2nd brain scan in 6 months…fun times), and go to two art openings…that part is cool except they are miles away. It’ll be fine. It will ALL be fine. I’m hoping to have an hour or two between the MRIs and the art openings to grade stuff. Because I didn’t do it yesterday or today or the day before because it was too hot and I mentally couldn’t. But realistically, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull that off. I’m also keeping an eyeball on my old kitty and this heat. She’s not a fan. She also HAS a fan…in my office, that I am keeping on at this point to try to cool this room off. She’s cranky as shit, keeps trying to bite me, but doesn’t have it in her. Because old. And hot. Poor thing. So we’ll see.

Wednesday night’s book club, I did a little stitching.

Still doing the inner borders of Homegrown. It’s not difficult, but it’s not fast. And I haven’t been doing a lot of it because school. Sucks up time.

OK. So yeah. Hot today but mostly gonna be inside. With kids who wear sweatshirts and sweatpants when it’s over 100 degrees out. Some of these kids are funny and kind and amusing and a little weird. As always. I feel like we have more of those this year, and I appreciate that. Some of them are not those things. And some suck up a lot of my energy. That was yesterday. So hopefully today is better. One can only hope. And then be pleased or disappointed. Or accepting. Because it’s like this every year, right? I also have to do some fluency/literacy thing. I recorded the kids reading, but I’m supposed to mark this form in some weird archaic way that makes sense if you were trained to teach kids to read, which I wasn’t. So it’s just more work for me. And kind of silly, really. But whatever. Looking forward to some art time and reading time (I wish I could read during an MRI…I wonder if they can put in my audiobook?). And just not being at school for a few days…although it is airconditioned. Hmmm.

NOW It’s Friday…

OK. NOW it’s Friday. Yesterday was NOT Friday, despite my brain repeatedly trying to make it so. It’s fine. I’m tired. We’re all tired. We’re all already behind on school stuff. Very little that is supposed to be done by today is actually done. I stayed an hour at work yesterday to finally type my rosters up. Sure, I could use the school ones, but they drive me bonkers, and I add stuff like nicknames and tutorial teachers for the special ed kids so I know who to bug about missing work. Makes MY life easier. Once it’s done. I have to start grading things today. Fun times. I also need to find the demo stuff for today when I get to school, plus lock everything up because the district is doing this mock Williams Act thing where they inspect our classrooms and make sure every kid is assigned a book, except science doesn’t have books, so we have to show them digitally, but not every kid had a computer until yesterday afternoon (and some STILL don’t), so there was no point in going through the process until everyone had one. So they come today and we are explaining today. PLUS, we get a school board member touring today…stay the fuck out of my classroom. Yay!

Anyway, we’ll get to a routine. The kids are starting to test the boundaries with gum, food, games, phones, airpods, and dress code…fun times. Oh yeah, and throwing things. I might need to stay after school more than an hour today to get seating charts done.

So I’ve been short on art time most nights. I cooked late Wednesday because of pilates and getting all the trash ready for pickup and IDK what else I did. So I finished cleaning up the studio finally and picked the fabric for the background of this one, and laid out the first 100 pieces.

Not much…cleaning took a long time…a few hours. I swept the floor even…didn’t mop though.

Last night, I started late because I ate late because I had my stitching Zoom…but I got a few pieces ironed.

Honestly this piece isn’t very big…hopefully it’ll be done sometime in the next few days.

At my stitching Zoom (during the Zoom? At the couch?), I worked on embellishing the flowers around the edges.

Not quick. But I finished one…that I started during dinner TV hour sometime this week…

They’re not hard, unless you’re tired, and then reading instructions is hard. Stitching is not hard. Progress.

Nova has taken to hiding in the hammock because the kitten can’t reach her.

His neutering is maybe scheduled. He was sleeping with me last night, and then he wasn’t (he bit my knee at some point), and then he was again, and then he wasn’t. I get it, Nova. I’d sleep in a hammock too if I could.

Bowie trying to figure out how to attack Luna from below. Luna contemplating landing on Bowie.

I don’t think I fell asleep until 1 AM because of the cats and dog moving around and making noise (barking at whatever was on the roof…nice, Simba). Not a lot of sleep all week.

Apparently the Man’s car resembles enough of a naturescape that this praying mantis was hanging out.

OK. Go to school, lock up all the cabinets so they think we don’t have chemicals in a science classroom, then find the demo stuff. Wait. Find the demo stuff, THEN lock everything up. Teach kids how to access a digital curriculum we never wanted and will probably never use, then teach about energy…while we have none…ironically. Get through the whole day, work some more after school, and then go to ceramics and try to figure out what I’m doing next. All good. It’s Friday.

What Good Are Notebooks?

Yo Ho Yo Ho, a pirate’s life for me. I wake up in the morning sometimes and wonder what my brain has been doing while I slept. Apparently piratey things, because that’s the song I’m hearing in my head. There was a quick rehash of some stupidity from last year (I know what triggered that). Love that. Thanks brain. Also, it’s hard to sleep well on Sunday nights during school…my brain is figuring the whole week out (and often worrying about it). I really pushed this weekend to NOT open the school computer. I did make a list for today (and the next three days). I cleaned out my notebook…I love that my notebooks last for years now instead of dying after one (heavy duty notebooks…what good are notebooks? OK, there’s the Talking Heads…that’s a better song than the pirate one). I didn’t have to buy folders this summer…there was extra money last year and I spent it on that. Hopefully I got enough…I should figure that out quickly, because I think they need them Friday.

So I finished the big quilt last night…I spent the last three nights (or more?) sewing binding and sleeves. Friday night…

Saturday night…I actually sewed for almost three hours (Saturday was very braindead)…got all the binding done and part of one sleeve.

And Sunday night…

Bowie assist…

We’re trying to get him to sleep at night instead of only during the day, so after this, I woke him up and played with him for a while. Didn’t work. He was up and down all night. Like me!

I stitched some on this on Friday at the back-to-school event. They had us go to the local mall and fed us breakfast (it was SO loud…so loud), then put us in the movie theaters by school and we watched videos and played games. It was shorter than usual, so that was a plus. It was also dark a lot.

Made it harder to stitch. Pros and cons. Then we went back to our schools and did the district-mandated meetings where we write on big poster paper and then never see this stuff again.

There’s my science team! Yes, we are dorks. Well, most of us anyway. You probably don’t wanna know why the science department is pointing at a math rubric. We had to send this to the principal who will send it to the district. Sigh. Anyway, at some point, the district will make something of all this and push it back to us in some format. Proving something. Yes, I’m cynical about all that.

Today, we have four hours of all-staff meetings, then about 30 minutes with our partner team-in-crime (which is finally wholly back with us), then who-knows-how-long with the core team. Then making a list of what to copy tomorrow AM, because I have to be up at 4 AM to make sure I am tired enough for the EEG at noon. Don’t ask. I’m not looking forward to it.

In between all this, I’m halfheartedly trying to finish painting the hallway.

It’s hot, I’m tired, my wrist starts to hurt after a while. All of the cutting in is done with one coat, about a third has two coats. Obviously need to roll two coats as well. I’m not highly motivated, but maybe I will be this week. It would be nice if it were done.

I also finally got everything appliqued down to this. I finally watched the video about the hexie papers and how to make that damn flower in the bottom left…

And then I made it Saturday and sewed it down, and sewed down the last velvet circle (those things are a pain in the ass) last night. So now I can do embellishment.

Little man plays with his tail a lot.

OK. School. Need to leave in about 5 minutes with more tea and my meds in me. Pack a lunch! Fuck. I forgot how to do all this. I’ll be exhausted later. It might not even be that long from now. Then hopefully starting something new.

Getting Through…

Oh my. So today is carpet installation day 1. It is also the Man’s birthday (unfortunate that he had to get up early and the next two days are pretty stressful for the animals). Also we were hoping the boychild would be home from work to take the dog away for two days to his dad’s house. Nope. Haven’t seen him since the 28th of June, and now he’s at the Lake Fire in Santa Barbara County, so we probably won’t see him for a week. It’s OK. I’m in the office with the dog, who is stressed but has finally stopped barking. He got pets from the owner of the installation company, so that seemed to calm him down. He’s now listening to them pull up all the carpet stripping nail things, which I’m sure have an official name, but I don’t have the brain power right now to figure that out. I got up early to strip beds and pull servers (of course) and I have only half a cup of tea in me and my head hurts. Also we saw one cat take off down the hallway and we’re not sure where she is (she might be in the office with me for all I know). ANYWAY. And after all this, when I have new carpet FINALLY, it will be lovely. This carpet was put in by the previous owners and needed replacing when we moved in, but we figured waiting until the kids were older made sense (ha ha ha!!!), so it’s probably 30 years old? Maybe more? I’m guessing 1980s. It’s gross…but the work involved to move all the furniture and crap out of three bedrooms and three closets was why I never did it. That and not being able to afford it, although I think my parents were willing to pay for it. I just couldn’t visualize how to do it. And honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to move all this shit back by myself…although the Man can lift up to 10 pounds, so drawers :-). And bedding. Sigh. As long as there’s a bed at the end of the day today, we’ll be fine. We do have air mattresses galore. And a tent. So we really will be fine. Probably not the nicest way to spend your birthday though. Although he could be teaching in a middle-school classroom…that’s how I usually spend mine.

So there’s been a lot of moving shit going on and prepping. A lot of doors to sand. I didn’t finish all of them. Didn’t even get close. Oh well. There were a lot of things I wanted done before the carpet went in, but I prioritized art over 8 hours a day of sanding and painting. As always.

After writing on Saturday, I made it to my quilt guild meeting. I was pretty out of it, but I did manage to stitch some hair.

I’m not sleeping well…it’s warm, I have a million itchy mosquito bites, and the puppy is fussy at night…mostly animal sounds and stuff. Raccoons, skunks, coyotes. The Man comes to bed late (he’s stressed about his back and lack of work)…so then I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. It’s fun. Really. Saturday was mostly a lost day…there were things I was going to do that just didn’t happen. I was really efficient Friday and then Sunday, I got more done in the morning before pilates than I did all day Saturday. Ah well. It is summer break, so I can get away with that. I read my book! That’s progress.

I did finish quilting the second piece on Saturday…and trimmed it for binding.

I had to clean the floor first, because…sanding. Dust everywhere. I trimmed the other one as well.

One of the plans for today involves getting the binding sewn on these two so I can handsew at night. I also packed up an older quilt that my SIL (and brother, whether he likes it or not) is going to hang in her dining room and hopefully sell…or if not, she can just stare at it until she’s sick of it and picks another one. So hopefully I’ll make it to UPS today. I needed to get that quilt and these other two out of the way so I could have room to start ironing the big one together. Hopefully tomorrow? We’ll see. I sense furniture moving in my future.

Claywise, I’ve been trying to go into the studio every couple of days. I tried fitting top to bottom…had to do some carving to get it to sit down.

The hands work OK though…that was the other worry. The upper hand is touching the torso, but helps it balance.

Then I got the heart attached…

I also built a hollow thing for a totem-type pole/garden stake series they’re doing at the studio…

I’m not sure the holes are big enough, but I can carve them larger if need be. I formed it over two bowls and filled it with newspaper…it was leather hard by the time I left. It’s been so hot. I underglazed one side for sgraffito. I figured that was the easiest/fastest thing I could make. I can carve fast if I need to…especially during the summer.

The dog is finally just lying on the floor, even though there’s banging going on outside the office door. Good boy.

I’ve also been working on the central panel for Homegrown…getting all those bits sewn down for embroidery.

I’m not looking forward to appliqueing all the velvet bits. Pain in the ass, velvet. Looks lovely afterwards though. But there’s like 25 circles in velvet. Ugh.

So we don’t know where Nova is hiding right now…but last night, she was in my drawers…luckily I thought to cover them with a towel. These drawers are at my head height. The cats sort of love our current hoarder household.

I can’t stand it. This is partly why I keep leaving for the studio! The Man lived in a tiny house for a while and his place was kind of like this…drove me crazy, but he tolerated it. I need more open space apparently. I did realize I need my work bag and keys tomorrow, and they’re on the fireplace hearth…about two feet into this chaos. So that’ll be fun to figure out tonight. I think I can reach it if I move about 8 bins and an old sewing machine. Hopefully. Should have thought of that before now, but oh well.

A friend posted this…

I kind of want to draw this. Somehow. My sketchbook is buried somewhere too. I need more tea but there is a guy banging stuff right outside this door…suspect the metal strip that is between the old carpet and the tile of the kitchen is challenging them. NEED TEA Y’ALL.

OK, today’s plan…binding on two quilts, finish packing the other quilt and ship it, take the Man out to his birthday dinner, write that other blogpost for the art group I’m in. Hopefully move some stuff back into the master bedroom. READ MY BOOK. If I’m ever allowed out of this room. Dog is chill…trying to keep him that way. Some days are just about getting through them to the quiet, organized, newly carpeted future.