If I Kiss You Where It’s Sore*

Oh hallelujah dear Friday before Thanksgiving Break. Although today will be like managing wild and hungry chimpanzees while holding a chocolate birthday cake, I can see a big fat light at the end of the tunnel…at about 3:30 PM this afternoon, to be specific. Of course, I have 5 assignments to grade (not bad, actually), my author contacted me this morning and his manuscript is ready for copyediting (it’s OK…I asked for it over break…I need the money), and I just made a to-do list for all the shit around the house that needs doing, but hell…I just don’t care at the moment. I want to SLEEP…and most importantly…MAKE ART. Yes. That. With gay abandon. Throw confetti all over me. I wanna art myself into the ground.

Yes, I’m a little punchy and a lot exhausted.

Exhausted after doing this cool rock cycle lab all day, which started with teaching kids how to grate cheese (well, crayons) with a knife, in case they don’t have a cheese grater. Well, no, we were making sediment from a crayon rock.

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And then I missed photographing all the other steps in between because brain fart. Totally. But here it is after we compacted it and then melted it and then blended it and let it cool off.

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So lab days are always exhausting. But it was cool. I have no voice today, but that’s OK.

Then I went to the opening of California Fibers: Points of View at the Rose Gallery, Francis Parker School…there are my three pieces: Feeding Time, BirdWatch, and You Pollute Me. I look like I have a lot more energy than I really did.

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The show is really nice. I’ll post the whole thing sometime in the next few days. Not right now.

I came home after grabbing dinner and sat for a moment, trying to find the energy to do ANYTHING. I had Simba on one side of me and Satchemo on the other. My arms aren’t long enough to show both. No, I don’t need a selfie stick. It’s OK.

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And then, miracle of miracles, I came in the studio and put all the fabric away, cleaned up, and started ironing the new quilt. This thing is gonna be SO FUN.

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OK. Yeah. It’s huge. I get that. But I’m so excited about working on this. Really.

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I have my Nida Powers sign in here now. Although I really wanted it to be one word. I need to put it up on the wall, but I decided doing that on a rolling chair while tired would be a big fucking mistake.

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So I’ll wait. I will fully enjoy the 9 days off I have, even with all the shit I gotta do. It’s OK. I get to make lots of art in the middle of all that. Yay.

Regina Spektor, Better

At Night the Crickets Creepy*

Well. After a 10-hour day at work (ugh), I realize that although I wrote this well before I left for school, I never hit the final publish button. I do that now. Tired. Yup. But still gonna aim to draw. Even badly. Bad drawing is better than no drawing.

I’m sitting here trying to get enough tea in me to be functional (let’s be real…semi-functional)…the cold/viral thing is starting to wane, although I mostly collapsed after work yesterday for about an hour. And I’m texting my kids back and forth until they start having a discussion of how to write about torture (ah college…the things you have to write about)…and then I’m really out, because I don’t know that I could ever be pro torture. And honestly I don’t know much about it. Sure, there’s torturing pedophiles and crazy dictators and maybe even the current president (although you know he wouldn’t last long, the big baby)…and since the kids are obviously having this discussion because someone has an assignment due, I’m OK just watching them converse 3000 miles away. I miss them. Lots sometimes. Although I have nothing to add to this discussion but that torture is mean and we shouldn’t do it.

So where am I today? I finished ironing all the fabrics down for the little quilt last night. It’s really not THAT little, but compared to the last one…it’s small. I’m not going to keep going on it right now. I really really really need to start drawing the next one tonight. Somewhere I need to find the brain power for it. So expect a lot of bad starts and flailings on paper with Sharpie tonight. Woo! It’ll be great. Seriously. Maybe it will just spill out of me. Sometimes it does.

More stuff on the right, filling in spaces…

The parental dog is nervous about the new cat…

Satchemo is not scared of Katie.

I started ironing late…had paperwork, school stuff, other crap to deal with…but I didn’t have much left to iron, so I was pretty sure I could finish.

Here’s all the fabrics I used. I really did think it was gonna all be bright colors. It’s hard to know what it will actually look like from this though, because it doesn’t show the mix…there’s a lot of blue in this. The purples take up a lot of space. The browns are all in one section. Same with the yellows really.

There’s the pile…let’s see how long before I actually cut them out.

I did pick up my most recent quilt from the photographer…first one ever with a gun in it? I think? First one on a beige background, that’s for sure. If that’s important…

I’m glad she’s done.

It was difficult to draw it, to make it, to quilt it. Sigh.

Probably not picking this one for my profile picture any time soon.

Although those are my kids, my students. Even the annoying ones. We’d protect all of them.

Still gotta write a coherent statement on that one. Tonight. I’ll do that tonight. After teaching all day, meeting with admin, duty before and after school in 103-degree temperatures, tutorial, and protesting at a school board meeting. Yeah. It’ll be fine. Really. It will.

I guess it’s good I had another project that was at a good place for occupying my brain for a week or so. It didn’t seem ready to move on right away.

So this was my crew last night.

I told them it was bedtime. Some were more ready for it than others. I get it. I was ready. I’m ready again right now, but it’s morning again, so I can’t really go back to bed. Yet. (growth mindset…that’s a teacher joke.)

Art. Tonight we draw. We draw even if we don’t feel like it. We draw to get to the drawing we need to draw.

*Squeeze, Pulling Mussels from the Shell

I Recognize the Walls Inside*

Still sick…although functional. We’ll see how functional after I have to talk all day, right? And stand up for hours. Sick days are a joke. We had 3 teachers out on Friday and only one sub showed up. That’s our reality…and teaching science means even less of a chance they’ll show. I can let it be chaos in the classroom and have the kids get nothing done, or I can push on through. I think I’m better anyway…not well, just better. That’s a plus.

More stitching on the right side…realizing in two months, it will be done, so what shape do I want? I don’t think it will be square, filling the whole thing. That’s a consideration.

Sleepy tired puppy.

I made it into the studio for a little while yesterday, just over an hour. My parents’ dog Katie was in there too. Or is it Katey? I’m never sure. With dog names, you can never tell…my daughter’s dog is Calli, not Cali, because it’s short for Calliope, not California.

Too much information. Here’s the fabrics I’ve used so far…

Not as colorful as I originally planned…it will be lots of blue in the end. Blue on blue with a hint of blue.

Here’s the pile so far.

I’m actually almost done…could easily finish tonight…so I probably will, depending on how I feel. I did get the OK to change my focus for the next quilt, so drawing that is on my list for the week…gotta get going on that one. I have a fairly free week coming up, although grading is a priority. I did a lot of that over the weekend too, although never enough. Gotta get my focus on. It helps to be well, doesn’t it? I think it might. I think I’ll try that later this week…

*Natalie Merchant, I May Know the Word

It’s Too Late to Say You’re Sorry*

Ugh. Well I’m sick again. This school year is kicking my butt. Too much work, can’t stay well…I usually get sick like once a year. It’s only October and it’s my second viral incursion. Damn immune system needs to get in gear. Makes it hard to stay caught up. Or whatever that means.

The gun quilt is at the photographer’s…will be picked up later this week. I was trying to get fabrics ironed for a small climate change quilt I started in June, just for fun…

I’m not done. I did a little bit yesterday afternoon after grading shit, running errands, and trying to get other stuff done.

Friday night at gaming, I finished Block 15 (bottom right) on Folk Tales (I always call it Folk Tails because of all the animals).

Block 15 is part of May, but I haven’t done April yet…so I started on that.

There are three blocks for April, and I have a lot of embroidery to do on them. Expect to see them rolling around for a while.

Then I realized I hadn’t touched this in days. I did 4 day’s worth around the eyeball…a bunch of filler stitches.

However interesting and challenging it’s been to work on this, and whatever bullheadedness it takes to keep working on it every day for a year, I probably won’t sustain it beyond December 31. It was an interesting experiment. No idea what I’ll do with it…maybe make it the center of a small crazy quilt in all black backgrounds. Who knows? Because I need more projects.

I emailed the woman in charge of the project I’m supposed to be working on next to see if I could change my focus. Much as climate change worries me and however many ideas about it are clamoring for my artistic attention, women’s rights are weighing much more heavily on me right now…and a new drawing for this project popped into my head last night on the way back from the Visions Art Museum opening for Interpretations. It had absolutely nothing to do with the art I saw there…but it’s in my head now. I wanted to start drawing last night, but after about 9:30, I felt like absolute crap and was in bed before 10:30. See, that’s how you know I’m sick. I can’t do anything.

Today is a fiber-related meeting…long drive and interactions with humans. I’m not always up for that. Right now I’m tired and not feeling at my best, stressed about the grading that needs to get done, worried about getting this quilt started so I can get going on it. Probably need to go take more meds. Drink more tea. Maybe nap. Who knows. No time for napping. Shit needs to get done.

*Malcolm McLaren, About Her

It’s Not a Miracle We Needed*

Better. A little more focus. I appreciate that. My brain allowing some space for artmaking, even if it isn’t the most challenging part of the process.

First I made time to hang out with friends…I took this to keep sewing down wool for the next month…

My parents’ dog is visiting, so when I got home, I hadn’t seen one of the cats for a while. They don’t like the dog, because she’s a little too interested in them. I finally found her in a cubbyhole in my office…

I didn’t get far on the wool piece…but the hyena(?) just needs eyeballs. I think I might need to sew something together to do the sun…

It’s not a priority at the moment.

The next part of the quilt I was ironing down, after some fish and stuff, was the tree that makes up the majority of her lower torso. It’s intertwining roots, and it was fun to draw, but not as fun to trace, and pretty mind-boggling to pick fabrics for…

But I did it. That puts me at about piece 175. Super slow on this…but just trying to give myself the space to draw sometime soon. I will finish picking fabrics…but I could draw at the same time. If I had the mental space. It really is too much school stress weighing on me.

I’ll get there. Here’s everything ironed so far…lots of tree parts…

Funny, I really think of this quilt as bright, but brown is never really bright.

Anyway. It’s progress. It’s something.

*Phoenix, 1901

I Can Do No More

Well. So. Some days you just write off. I did get some of this…

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And honestly, that’s a good thing. I tried grading (almost fell asleep doing it), I tried reading the book I’m supposed to be reading for school (more almost falling asleep), I hung out, I went to book club, but mostly just to hang out. I’m tired and stressed and cranky and overwhelmed and worried about getting the next drawing done and a whole bunch of other shit.

So today is going to be better. I’m going to hang out and do some hobby sewing and then come back and maybe grade a little and then work on the ironing of this small quilt to fabric so I can start drawing on Saturday or Sunday. Don’t look at the calendar for the next week, because it’s ugly. I’m gonna do what I can do. I can do no more.

You Paid Me Well in Memories*

Everything takes too long. Everything you don’t feel like doing or don’t want to do, it takes forever. It actively gets in the way of the stuff you wanna do. It’s like a large man in a smelly suit standing in front of the dessert menu. Seriously. Move it, dude.

I worked last night…grading stuff. I have to. It needs to get done.

But I couldn’t do it forever. I still don’t have the mental space to draw. I don’t know when I will. Soon I hope. Time is dribbling away in days. Watching the countdown on my phone. Crap! Holding onto 17 daily tasks that pop up on the phone and then I still forget to do them, slot them into the calendar for the next day. Hope I remember them eventually. I start ignoring the reminders. Not good.

So I guess my yearbook alter ego for this year isn’t quite right. Oh well.

This is blurry. It’s not your eyes. I did some stitching under (on top of?) the eyeball.

This is the only exercise this thing is getting right now. Me too. It doesn’t help when it’s 100 degrees out.

So I gave up and started ironing this at 10:30 last night. I couldn’t do anything else. I figure I can iron it to fabric and then it can sit around for a while again.

Hopefully when I get done with ironing, I’ll have a drawing brain.

I didn’t get a lot done…remembered I had to put all the other fabrics away, and then got lost in trying to make the blues work.

It’s something though…and that’s good.

It’s where my brain goes when school is too stressful. I’m not even sure why it’s so bad at the moment…too much stuff to do? Pressure of being observed by someone you don’t even know (that part sucks)? Who knows.

Midnight doesn’t. But she’s inhabiting the blue drawer.

She waited until I found all the blues I needed before she plopped her fat butt in there. Good thing.

OK…meeting before school…maybe too many meetings is the problem? Could be.

*A Fine Frenzy, Think of You

Now the Party’s Over*

OK. Last night was the night. It’s when I finally saw the whole thing ironed out. We’re good. I really should trust my instincts after all these years, but there’s often that moment of uncertainty when I’m not sure it’s gonna work.

Before I ever started ironing last night, though, I packed a quilt up for Quilts=Art=Quilts so I could ship it this morning. And then I went to my quilt meeting…although I should probably stop labeling it with the word ‘quilt’ because half the people knit. Let’s call it a String Meeting. A friend I used to work with always asked me how my string things were going, because another friend at work knitted and I quilted and he could never remember which was which, but he knew they all used strings.

Because this quilt was at a stage that is not transportable, I took my handwork with me. I needed to get the wool pieces sewn down for April (yes, I’m working on May…I’m a little wombly sometimes). These are two of the three blocks, but there’s a bunch of pinky-red flower dots that have to be sewn on, plus I had to find the eyeball fabric when I got home. So luckily I’m still working on the May elephant block, because these aren’t ready. But soon.

Then I headed into the studio and pieced a backing, shoved the ironing board and chairs out of the way (I should have kicked them out of the studio), and threw the whole thing down on the floor.

Sometimes it’s a mistake to try to iron a big quilt down on the floor in there, so I do it in the entryway, but it was almost 11 and I didn’t want to mop the floor, because it was pretty dirty. Luckily it worked…I managed to line up the male’s head and gun with the hole in the chalkboard (note to self…no need for a hole there…if I’d drawn it all behind the gun, I wouldn’t have had to worry about it). I also managed to get everything else flat. Miraculous really.

Midnight was no help.

And then I spent about 40 minutes with a spray bottle and a hot iron, trying to make sure it would stick long enough for me to stitch it down…which I could start tonight, if it wasn’t gaming night. Surely I will start tomorrow.

It’s hanging up there and it’s too big for the space, so that’s a seriously wonky picture. But it’s gonna work. Outlining in the quilting for sure. No way do I have a thread that color…so this weekend, check batting and backing, and buy thread.

I’m sort of amazed by how hard this has been to make. I started teaching at age 35, recently divorced, with two little kids. The school where I started had very little support for new teachers. I had another science teacher I connected with who helped me a lot, but she has since quit. Nine days after I started my first job, two students brought a gun on campus to kill a teacher who “gave” one of them an F. Another kid snitched. I hate that word. I love that she told someone responsible. But those were the days before lockdowns. I remember at lunch, alone in my room, seeing kids running for the back part of the school in a huge bunch, but no one told us what was happening. I went home clueless…until I was watching the news last night and they broke the story.

There was no shooting. As far as I know, the teacher never came back. The gun never made it into the classroom…it was hidden on campus. That was a Friday. Eventually they called an emergency meeting for Monday morning. And that’s when lockdown drills started here in San Diego…or soon after. It was 3 years after the Santana High School shooting, back when these things were not so commonplace. I had a hard time dealing with the situation. It was hard for me to think that I might not make it home to my own very small (at that time) children because of something like that. And I have to say, that feeling has never gone away. I do still go back to school every day. Why? Because of the kids.

I’ll write later about a conversation I had last year with my students…which is also what this is about.

Deep stuff. Stitch down this weekend. Then sandwich and quilting.

*Roxy Music, Avalon

And I Will Try to Fix You*

Silly me, thinking I was gonna finish last night…because it bugged me most of the day, way back in the way back of my brain, but I was fairly sure I could make it better. So once I got home and got past the paralyzing exhaustion I apparently caught on the way here, I grabbed a blank piece of paper and traced over the part of the drawing that I wanted to change…

I was trying to keep the original drawing simple, so I only added one target, but then it ended up being on one of the lighter-colored heads, which was silly (but random) and said something I didn’t want it to say. It’s not that one kid is a target in a school shooting…in reality, a lot of the time, I think some kids might be because of bullying (them being the perceived bullies, and perhaps even in real life) or teachers or other staff might be, but sometimes it’s just anger at the whole world and a school has a lot of concentrated human beings so maybe it’s easier to go in there if you need to shoot a bunch of living creatures? Humans, to be specific…you don’t hear about zoo shootings or pet store shootings. I’m not being facetious…I’m serious here. Why does any sane (and that might be the issue) adult walk onto a school campus and shoot unless they feel the campus is part of their problem? I don’t pretend to understand anyone who uses a gun to solve their problems.

I did trace Wonder Under before dinner and a movie (it was one of those nights)…and caught up on three night’s worth of this. I’m behind because I’m doing other art stuff. I did stuff in the bottom left again…filling space…leaves and parts of that vine…

And after the movie (where I was sewing wool bits together)…I ironed. First I finished the thought cloud…but I had lost (misplaced) one of the Es…so this is why I keep my trash pile. It was in there. Duh.

And ironed it together…

Again, making a guess about what’s going through their heads. It’s hard…bullying is a real thing in middle and high school. Kids can be vicious assholes. But it would be nice to live somewhere that the solution was NOT to bring a bunch of guns to school and spray bullets everywhere.

So this was all ironed down already. I was hoping it wasn’t ironed down super hot, so it would still release and allow me to push stuff underneath. Otherwise, this would have been a pain in the ass.

I was still gonna do it though. Luckily, it did release pretty easily.

So I ironed and cut out and then ironed down all these little tiny target pieces…so it wasn’t about one kid with a target that was supposed to stand for all of them. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding about the target. Mostly the kids that get killed or shot (and hell, I go back to Sandy Hook Elementary every time…) just happen to be there. Because who shoots kindergarten kids? Because he had access to guns…otherwise maybe he would have done something else, something less deadly.

Such a dark place I go to when I work on this. Because as a teacher, I always have in my head what I will do if a shooter arrives on campus…how I will protect a classroom full of 12-year-olds? And if your response is to arm ME? Yeah. No. That’s not a solution. More guns. You want a gun to shoot? To protect yourself? To hunt? Is that more important than a 6-year-old’s life? Tell me that. Truthfully.

No. I didn’t finish.

*Coldplay, Fix You

Stray from the Straight Line on This Short Run*

Rough morning…puppy seems to think if he howls, he is somehow scaring the coyotes away. Or he’s communicating with them in coyote talk. Or he’s just scared. It’s really hard to say. I just wish he’d stop. The Golden Retriever feels no need to communicate with the pack that runs by my house at 4 AM. And I greatly appreciate that. Maybe size does matter. Simba, the part-Pomeranian, drives a mad sports car with tinted windows and tails you down the road because you’re only doing 5 miles above the speed limit. Calli, the Golden, drives an old Subaru going 5 miles below the speed limit, oblivious to everyone around her, quite happy to be toolin’ along. Certainly she perks up when balls are being thrown or there’s a walk to be had, but otherwise? She’s mostly lying around relaxing. There’s something to be said for living with each of them.

I had hoped to be done with the ironing yesterday, and I think I would have if (a) I hadn’t gone to the gym, (b) my book weren’t so good so I kept reading when I should have gotten up and started ironing, and (c) I weren’t worried about how the pieces would fit together. Usually on a big quilt, I iron sections together and then don’t put the whole thing together until I’m putting it on the background. I have an ironing board extension (well, I have a board on top covered with a towel), but it’s still not big enough for this thing, to try to get everything positioned correctly. The pieces ironed on Teflon get really heavy and slip off the board at some point.

But I needed to know all the fingers and tentacles were going to fit right, so I did it anyway…

There were a couple places where I had to put a small piece of fabric behind to fill in a hole, but nothing major.

Then I ironed the head to the body on the other side…

But I couldn’t figure out how to get the arm in the middle positioned on the ironing board. It just wasn’t big enough. So I dropped to the floor.

I had to fuss with it a bit to get it all to go where it should, but it eventually worked. I often do the final iron on the floor for a big piece. That’s probably why my floor looks like crap…because I iron on it. I have to keep that in mind for when I eventually replace the flooring. I’m sure the Home Depot person will be able to help me find a flat, solid floor that takes a hot iron and doesn’t melt or otherwise disfigure. A simple requirement.

I decided against trying to iron his head and arm onto the existing stuff at this point…too much weight.

Well. That’s um. Yeah.

So what’s left? The thought bubble, which won’t take long. It was after midnight when I stopped there, though, so I figured it was better to get some sleep and finish ironing tonight. So I’ll iron it all down to the background tonight and maybe start the stitch down. Definitely I’ll be doing stitch down on Thursday and probably Saturday…it’s a big quilt, so it will take a while. Distance over number of pieces is what matters on quilting and stitch down. I’ll have to check my backing and batting stash over the weekend and make sure I have enough…maybe sandwich on Sunday? Start quilting?

I’m ready to be done with this one. I do (finally) like how it’s turning out, but it’s still not somewhere I want to hang out for long. The subject matter is worrisome.

Hard to say if these two are getting along any better. I’ve seen some playful moves from mine, but Satchemo is still just trying to invade space. They do both sleep on the bed sometimes, one at my feet and one under my armpit.

It makes it hard to move sometimes. But I’m looking forward to the day when they curl up together. Or at least exist in the same space without glaring or yowling at each other.

Man I want time to draw. It was loud last night, the voice…draw draw draw. I may just have to go with it at some point.

*Sarah McLachlan, World on Fire