Sundays? I Got This…

Sundays for teachers are hell. They are the day you get ready for the week. You do all your errands, do all the grocery shopping, get your laundry done, and also lesson plan. You do your best to keep Saturdays free, but Sundays…hell, Sundays belong to the man.

I love Sundays during breaks. I don’t have to do any of that shit. Well, I still have to grocery shop, and I’m sorta trained by now to make them work days. They feel that way anyway. I remember back in the old days, before kids, when I was married but not encumbered, when I didn’t bring my job home with me and have it looming over my head on a regular basis, Sundays were nice then. Late rising, a nice hot cup of tea, reading the paper (who gets that any more?), and watching all those fix-it shows on PBS. Hours and hours of Norm showing you the right tools…if you only had the right tools, your house would be fucking amazing. And Sundays were lazy days. You might make it to Home Depot for all the tools you needed, but you didn’t have to. That could wait until next Saturday, couldn’t it?

Well that explains a lot around here, doesn’t it?

Sigh. So I feel like I wasted many hours this morning on god-knows-what, but eventually, I got my act in gear and started getting work done. I spent an hour and a half on kid budgets…a fun thing you get to do when you’re divorced and all the expenses are split. December is always a clusterfuck for expenses, made even worse by applications to college. I sometimes just want to crawl into a hole and pretend none of that happened (three apps left).

After grocery shopping (holy crap, having the boychild home is fucking expensive) and buying textbooks (not mine; boychild again), I managed time for art…bindings on the two birds…

They’re pinned down now…waiting to be sewn down. These are the first two quilts of 2015…at some point, I’ll get that summary post done for 2014, wherein I made a shitload of bird quilts.

Sometime yesterday I got the good news that Absolutely Nothing, the Women at War quilt, will be in the show at Grossmont College in March. More about that later. But cool. Yay. Happy.

And then there was this drawing. It so wants to be a quilt. It’s too many hours for the cancer quilt, but I don’t fucking care…

It gets to be. I drew this ages ago. The Wonder Under’s been trimmed for a few weeks. I traced it back over Thanksgiving break…not sure when I trimmed the Wonder Under…my task app is not being helpful.

So I really should have started the cancer donation, but this one has been fucking screaming at me. So I listened. It only has 160 pieces.

It’s mostly flesh colors…

Two sets of flesh colors. It took about an hour and a half to iron the whole thing down to fabric.

Twenty three fabrics…

This isn’t going to be very big. It’s not going to take very long. In fact, in a little over an hour, it’s mostly cut out.

Probably another ten minutes would do it.

Why do this one first? Before the one I know has to be done? Before the bindings are done? I told you. It was yelling very very loudly. In my old age, I try to listen to the ones that yell. There’s a few more that are yelling, but I will do the cancer one next, I swear. Although I have to sew those bindings too. I also need to grade papers and do about a thousand things tomorrow.

I have one more week of break until I have to go back to school. Balance is the thing. I have to figure out how to balance all of the pieces of my life so I don’t feel like shit. It’s kind of important. I’ve got my focus on that. Don’t drop any damn balls, but don’t let the balls take over your life either. I figure once I figure the whole life/balance thing out? I’ll be dead and it won’t matter any more. No worries. I got this.

One Step Closer

So even though I didn’t get home until 8 PM last night, and then I made a breakfast casserole for today’s holiday party at school and cookies for people who deserve way more than that for how they support me, I was determined to finish ironing last night. By my standards, it wasn’t late when I started, around 10 or so. I start that late all the time, and honestly, there wasn’t that much left to do. So I ironed…

She looks creepy with no eyes.

This quilt really isn’t huge or complicated compared to most of mine. It’s funny that 768 pieces is what I consider uncomplicated. Yeah. I know. So I have 11 days to finish this and get it photographed, and if I’m really nice (and smart), I’ll email my photographer now and let him know that…although I think I could get away with an informal photo on this one, at least to start.

I got another art rejection the other day. I’d forgotten it was coming, but it wasn’t a surprise. They took 38 out of over 700 entries. I need to enter more shows soon. Although I have more work to do for shows as it is. It will be a busy Winter Break getting started on all that. And starting to think about the big quilt for summer, whatever it might be. There are some calls for entry that are intriguing, but I haven’t had the mental space to figure them out in terms of my own work yet.

Anyway, I had gotten to that point above, and it was late, but not really late, and I didn’t know how long ironing it down to the background would take…sometimes it’s a total bitch, especially with all those tree branches and leaves. When they come loose from the ironing sheet, they get all tangled up and make me swear a lot. But I wanted it done. Because I knew if it were done, I might stitch down tonight. Maybe. Although boychild flies in tonight.

So I went for it. Because this is where my head is. In the art. It’s what it wants to do.

I had a significantly stressful and shitty day at work. Technology (and kids) kicked my butt. I was cranky as hell, going out to dinner with friends made it worse (they were talking about school), and then the girlchild was an absolute brat in between (separation from mom imminent), so I had no mental strength left. And finishing this would make it better…would make me less likely to go to bed feeling like a complete and total failure.

Yeah. We all feel like that some days, right?

So I did it.

Yeah. I like it. With black outlines in the quilting, this is gonna rock.

Sigh. Deep breaths. Because I’m at the point in my art where the last three quilts have just felt so good to get to this point, where I can actually SEE them. I can finally take what’s in my head and really just bang out a good piece of art. Just like that (100 hours later). And that is awesome. I am so grateful for that. Finishing that ironing last night makes it easier to get through today.

Yeah. Sorry. Still makes me all emotional. Not that you can see that part. Someone remind me of that all day when kids are running rampant.

Part of yesterday’s mental exhaustion was leaving school right when the bell rang to get to the girlchild’s soccer game…

They tied. Not that any of that matters. I took two wrong turns to get there because my brain was offline.

She’s always angry at me these days. I know it’s normal. It’s just hard to get that every day and not have someone standing behind you, holding you up and telling you it’s OK. It will be OK.

Sigh. Look at the quilt again, Kathryn. It will be OK. One step closer to done. Sometimes you just have to do it all yourself.

An Ode to Jake

Some of you may remember the big German Shepherd who occasionally graces these pages, especially his escapades of a few years ago. Jake was my ex-husband’s dog, never mine, but he loved me in a very special way. I was either his mistress or his best girl on the side, because every time I’d show up at my ex’s house, this giant-ass, 115-pound beast would jump up and try to put his paws on my shoulders (and often succeed). He almost broke my wrist once with his enthusiasm for seeing me, as I was holding his collar at the time (not sure why; never did that again), and it’s only recently been that he didn’t greet me with crazy behavior.

For a while, Jake was climbing or digging under fences and escaping my ex’s yard after 6 years of not caring, and he would come over here. I’d get calls from my neighbor that Jake was back, or he’d be sitting on my front doorstep. So for a while, he stayed here during the day, but we quickly learned that the destination was not the game; it seemed to be the escape he was after. He would climb a 6-foot fence like a monkey and take off towards places unknown, and then someone would call and say they had him because he was running around on a busy street. He never got hit, but after that, he had to stay inside during the day. The kids would go let him out after school, but it wasn’t ideal for a big dog like that.

In the last month, Jake’s been sick. They thought it was a doggie cold. He went off his food. I got no enthusiastic greetings. I would walk in and he would lean his big body up against me and whine, and I would pet him, and that would be it. Some tests had been done, mostly inconclusive, and he was signed up for an expensive procedure today to hopefully help with diagnosis and treatment, because there was obviously something seriously wrong.

When my daughter got home to her dad’s house last night, Jake was dead. We don’t know why. His dad (ever Scottish at heart) jokes that he heard how much the ultrasound was going to cost and he died to save him the money, but whatever the cause, it was kind of a shock.

He wasn’t very old, maybe 8 or 9, and physically OK until recently? And he was a good dog. It seems somehow different, easier, when they age in front of you and you spend time dealing with the elderly aspects of pet ownership, even though that’s a pain in the ass. It’s a relief when they die from old age. You know they had a good long life. On the other hand, I don’t think he suffered for long. He wasn’t sick for months on end like some of our pets have been.

Doesn’t really matter. Just know I will miss the big dummy. He was a freak in many ways, but a sweet freak.

So yeah.

Did I iron last night? I did. I wasn’t going to, but I guess I needed to clear my mind. I only worked for an hour or so…I did all the things hanging in the tree…

Maybe 100 pieces down. I also laid out all the 500s, so the next step is the body in the middle…and then I’m done. I’m not sure I can do it all tonight, but I’m going to try. (OK. That was crazy talk, just so you know.) There’s about 260 pieces left, so maybe 3 hours, but I know I won’t start until late because I’m going to the gym and I’m in charge of dinner. And I really need to get my butt out of here this morning too for a parent meeting. It’s OK. My lunch is made. My tea is boiling. The progress report is printed. I can go.

Sigh. Miss the big dog.

Halfway Through

So I’m about halfway through. And that’s OK. I’ve got Wednesday…maybe some time on Thursday. That’s enough. Four soccer games this week, though…and the boychild comes home in four days. That’s freaky. We’ve survived the first four months of college. Me without his calming influence; him in a brand-new, demanding environment. I wonder if it will feel relaxing being here, or just more stress? At least there is good Mexican food here.

Halfway through the ironing, by the way. I don’t think I’m halfway through anything else, except maybe my life, if I’m lucky. I have 5 hours and a bit of ironing done and I’m in the low 400s on the pieces. Now that said, I think that pile of bodies was the worst of it. Everything else is pretty straightforward, so you’d think I could get it done in less than 5 hours. About 350 pieces to go…a little less than half.

We’ll see.

So first of all, when I got the pile ironed together, I realized there were a couple of spaces that needed the dark fabric behind them…

There’s two right there. No biggie. This is easypants. So two pieces traced…

And then ironed underneath.

I like that my iron is Anti-Calc. I also did not enjoy Calculus, but mostly because of my teacher. He was kind of a jerk. Assumed math was more important than language. And yeah, I teach science, but writing? Words? Communicating? Pretty damn fucking important. But here’s an interesting question, from last week’s warmup for my kids: words or pictures? If there were someone you liked and you could ONLY communicate via words OR pictures, which would you choose? Yeah. I prefer drawing to express myself really, but words would make more sense to me in communication with others. I love that someone I was texting this week corrected himself, his SYNTAX. Wow. In a text. Can’t beat that.

And then I had these two random pieces left over. Here’s one.

No freakin’ clue where it belongs. Or the other. Just set them aside. Obviously not crucial.

Moving on. Ironed the damn cat.

I don’t usually draw the cats as the two black cats in the house. Not sure why. I usually draw calicoes. I think personality-wise, I am a calico. Raise your hand if you know what I’m talking about! Yeah. OK. They’re feisty. And troubled. Black cats…they can go either way…we obviously have the Queen here…

And she’s a total bitch. I am going to get in so much trouble with the boychild for not combing her belly for the last four months, but she claws the fuck out of me as it is when I comb the rest of her, so he can handle that shit.

The other black one is just mellow. Mostly. So I don’t fuck with her. Much. I can’t really tell you why the calicos end up being in the quilts most of the time: Juniper, Limbo, Kitten. Even Cinnamon, if you go back enough years.

So there’s DNA hand again. Like we can control any of it…

The background on this quilt is a deep dark blue, so this hand is gonna pop right off of it.

And then there are the flying hearts.

These have popped up in the last few months. I think of them as hope for my future. Like I have a heart and love and all that gooby stuff, but they’re just loose, flying around, waiting to land/be captured, I’m not sure which. So this is like the third or fourth drawing where they’ve appeared. Never been in a drawing before this Fall, I think. Weird, huh? I used to always have Christmas lights in my drawings. None of those today.

I did pull that drawing from yesterday out again, but it didn’t speak to me tonight. Weird how that works. Sometimes it’s so adamant that I hear it, that I draw it; it just fucking takes over and commandeers the pen, grabbing my brain and making it listen. And then…then it’s silent, like I pissed it off too many times. It won’t listen. It lies in bed with a pillow over its head.

So fuck the drawing.

I was going to stop and go to bed, but it (the ironing) kept dragging at me, so I started the tree…

The stuff on the tree is next, and then the human figure in the middle of all that.

It’s exciting. I like when the image starts to appear…when it starts to BE a quilt for real. When the shit in my head gets out there and kicks some real-life ass.

Speaking of kicking ass…blurry pictures due to late night, fading light…

Girlchild made an absolutely awesome twisty header goal…

And then her coach, being a rancid idiot, barely played her for the rest of the game. But when he did put her ass back on the field in the last 7 minutes, she continued to kick ass. Thus proving that assholes are out there and we all have to deal with them.

Sigh.

So here’s what you need to know about me this week. It is survival this week for teachers. We are about to explode on a daily basis, because we are in a classroom with kids who cannot stop thinking about Christmas. I’d like to say they were thinking about other things, but in my school, it’s all about the presents…not the present. So even though I’m trying to get them through a major project, by the end of third period, I’m about to throw things. And I significantly appreciate those who bring me back down to Earth, who ground me with their sanity, their competence, their caring, their profanity, their beauty, their hugs, their Google Docs. I will be saying Thank You about a million times this week. Maybe even out loud. Maybe I will just hug it out. I think I actually told my co-teacher that I loved her for managing the tail end of a meeting so I could go to my kid’s soccer game.

Working on a creative endeavor, a quilt that means a great deal to me, to my existence, to my core, this week makes it all that much more…well…HUGE. So that’s good. And the rest? Well, fuck it. Hug someone. Then move on.

Ironing the Pile

Finally Fucking Ironing! Sorry. It felt so good. Why do I forget EVERY TIME that it feels good to start putting the damn thing TOGETHER. Seeing the image in color finally going together. It always seems like such a torturous thing…ugh…after working all day long, standing, I’m tired, especially on a Friday night, to consider STANDING and ironing for hours.

And then I start.

And then I cannot stop. First we sort…and I should have sorted the next 100 last night, but when I finally decided I was tired, I was REALLY tired. And sorting is boring. So I don’t like to do it. Which is why I try to do it at the end of a session, so it makes it easier for me to start the next session. Because I didn’t do it LAST night, now that’s the first thing I have to do today. Ugh.

Anyway, I ironed a bunch of dirt and rocks…

Pretty easy stuff…then moved on to flames.

Yes, I am still watching Next Generation…plus Orphan Black on the Tivo. Good show that. Not sure why my quilts are so often on fire. I think of the depths of the earth as being at the base…which in reality, I think the flames should be on the bottom, then rocks, then dirt. I’ve done that before, I think. I don’t know why I didn’t do that here. Except the PILE is on fire. And I’m OK with that. This is a quilt about the war against the female, isn’t it? Then let’s set that pile of men on fucking fire.

Um. If the boychild is reading this (and he probably isn’t), I still love you. I just have some issues. Big smile. Mom wave. HI!

Just so you know, I’m writing all of this with an intermittent cat claw in my butt. She wants her chair back and is quite demonstrative about it.

Then I started on the pile.

This damn pile. Fun to draw. A pain to trace. A bigger pain to pick fabrics. Ironing? Holy crap. I’m just going slowly and trying to make sense of it all. That’s two different bodies…but I’m missing some of the pieces on both of them (one of them is headless anyway). I misnumbered one of the fingers, so it’s in the 200s instead of the 0s pile. I think the leg is in another box, and there’s a continued leg for the first body, plus two of the parts on the first body were in the wrong box, the 600s, because they were 60-something, but with letters, because I forgot about them, and they looked like 600s when I was sorting. Yeah. Crazy stuff. So it’s really hard to get motivated to iron more pile together because it’s a rancid pain in the ass. EXCEPT. It will look fucking awesome when it’s done.

So my plan for the weekend (you mean besides soccer etc and grading and putting ornaments on the tree before the cat eats all the needles?)…is to get this thing mostly ironed. I’m behind. I think I’m OK, but only because I have Winter Break coming (WINTER IS COMING), but I also know I’ve got some stuff that’s distracting me from working straight through like I have been, like the boychild coming home and other stuff, so I have to just manage my time better than I did this week. Although this week had some good stuff that distracted me, so I can’t complain.

Anyway. I’m ironing the penis pile. You can think about that.

I Was Tired…

Yeah. I know. I missed a couple posts. I was really tired. And sick. And then I went on a hike, which made me tired again. And sick is still hovering, though mostly only at night. And when I’m tired. And when you hear me talk. Anyway. Hopefully I did enough sleep catchup in the last few days to last for a bit. Still missing a big chunk of my working voice though. Oh well.

The good news is that I finished ironing everything down on Friday night (yes, I went to Sea World with 180 kids and then came home and went shopping with the girlchild and THEN I ironed).

This is what the tree looked like after I pulled it off the ironing sheet…

See why I was scared to do that? I untangled that thing about three times Friday night, trying to get it to fit on the background…because all of the quilts for this show are supposed to be the same size, which I have a really hard time doing. I can easily do a range, but god forbid I draw the piece so that there’s some leeway on each side. NAW. Let’s make it go RIGHT to the edges.

Yeah, I know. My fault. So I cut the background with about 2 inches to spare on the horizontal and vertical measurements, and then made it work. Maybe. We’ll see when I go to trim it.

And then I put the whole mess on the floor and started putting the parts on to make it fit…and that’s where I have to stop showing pictures. You’ll have to wait until January, when the show opens. Here’s the bottom…

I had some issues with the batik bleeding again. I’ll have to figure out what I want to do about that…you’d think I’d remember to use that stuff when I wash it, the Retayne…but I always forget. So either I’ll be using pencil or pen or something to handle that. More work. Oh well. Maybe next time I will remember to wash it special.

I was going to be all gung ho after the hike Saturday morning, but it kicked my butt (yeah, hiking while getting over being sick all week was maybe not a great plan, but I really did need to get the fuck out of the house and into nature, so I just did it), so I didn’t get anything done Saturday afternoon. And then girlchild had night soccer, where I graded…

We were missing a bunch of kids for a variety of reasons, so even though they should have won (they’ve beat this team before), they didn’t…

And the girls basically had to play all 90 minutes, so girlchild went down with a calf cramp after getting kicked there…

Thought it was her knee for a minute…dammit…never going to get her through a whole season! But just a cramp. She’s fine today. But we didn’t get home until after 8, and my brain was in a mood, so I fed it and made it meditate. I haven’t been meditating enough, because honestly, a lot of the time when I’m doing the art stuff, it does the same thing for me as meditation, focuses my brain, calms me, gives me some mental strength. But last night, I just felt unfocused and cranky and tired, so I did it. And it was good.

So I came in and did the final step of the ironing down…totaling the ironing out at 15 hours and 18 minutes (my estimate of 15 hours holds!). And then I started stitching down. I wasn’t going to, because I was still tired, but I really wanted to get a START on it. Because Sundays are notoriously bad for artmaking, due to the grocery shopping and the prepping for school and the hanging out with parents. I usually don’t get to do anything until late at night. I wish I were more efficient in the morning, but it really is the only morning I can just space out and make English muffin pizzas for breakfast and hang out and not have to DO anything or BE anywhere. Yes, I’m hanging out with myself (actually, girlchild was here this morning early), and that’s often depressing, but whatever. Someone claimed they were going to “laugh at the loneliness” once, and I thought it sounded like bullshit then and I still do…you don’t laugh at loneliness. You stare at it for a while and eventually you just embrace it, hold on to it tight, and if you can make it go sit in a closet for a while because you’re hanging out with friends or family, or because you’re at school, or because you’re in the artspace and haven’t come out yet…that’s awesome. But mostly, you can try to ignore it or yell at it or just accept that it’s there and hold its hand…but laughing at it is kinda stupid. It’s not gone because you laughed at it. I laugh all the time. It doesn’t make it go away. It’s still there, staring at you. Stupid depression. Doesn’t help. Stupid hormones. Also don’t help.

Stitching down…

one of the more boring parts of the quilting process. I know that to stay on schedule, I have to keep MAKING a schedule. So I look back at the Celebrating Silver quilt, because I’ve been basing everything on that one (about the same size and number of pieces)…so I’m guessing 5 hours to stitch it down, another 2 to pinbaste, and about 14 hours of quilting. I want it pinbasted by Saturday night. Quilting starts Sunday? I should remember I have some obligations this week…maybe.

Anyway. Progress. It’s always progress here at Kathy Central. If I keep running forward, then the bad shit can’t catch me, right? Naw, sometimes it’s pretty fast and I’m hiking with dead legs (that was yesterday going uphill…dead legs). Now I’m going to be running forward into the 70 million errands I need to run today in order to be ready for the week. And you wonder why I’m so tired.

Normal or Weird

How you know you’re PMSing: Something Worf says on Star Trek: The Next Generation makes you cry.

Yeah, dude. I was as shocked as you.

So it seems like a good time to take 180 or so 7th-graders to Sea World. Plus I’m still sick. I think I relapsed yesterday. I had two people tell me on the phone that I sounded worse than they thought I should sound after this many days. Whatever. I only have to talk a little today. I’m not going to be the yeller today. There’s usually someone who has to yell at all the kids and chaperones to get them on buses, and that’s usually me (you can think of that what you will). I’m bringing a change of clothes because I’m going on the rides with my kids, and if I get wet, I am not sitting in wet clothes for the last two periods of the day. One of my admin can cover my class for the three minutes it takes me to change.

Yesterday, we had giant chaperone snafus that eventually all worked themselves out, and meanwhile, the girlchild is texting me that Grandpa stole the door handle (he did). By the end of the day, after quilt class (I just took birds for embroidery…I couldn’t handle any other level of organization of a new project…I’m too much in the middle of this one), I came home and ate and booked a trip! I know. Not far. A friend finally harassed me enough to come visit her (and my quilt, which is hanging in her house) and all her noisy kids (who are much like MY noisy kids, but younger). I will only be there for 36 hours and it’s not until February, but it’s something. I keep trying to do all the somethings that build a life, so the parts that suck don’t suck as much. That is still the very very hard part.

But on the Not Suckage side is that I have finally finished ironing pieces together…I fought the tree last night for an hour and a half…I was going to quit once I finished ironing all the objects together and on the tree…

Oct 17 14 002 small

But then there were a few leaves just lying there, and they looked so simple to do that I thought…fuck it. It’s not that late (you should go to bed early…you’re sick and you’re going on a field trip. Why? I won’t sleep anyway. So true.). So I ironed all the leaves…

Which took a bit longer than I thought, and then I had to do the Sit in the Chair and Mellow Because Your Brain is on ArtFire thing before I could go to bed.

But it’s done. Thirteen hours (still need to iron it onto the background, so I think the 15-hour estimate is still accurate). I’m scared to take it off of this, because nothing’s really connected like it is in the bodies, which are all folded up in a box right now, waiting for the background…and the background is tonight! Wow. I’m on schedule. I had food poisoning, a nasty cold, three art openings last weekend, a chaotic two weeks, and I am still on schedule. It’s funny, because I’m looking at the picture above and thinking, holy crap, that desk is a mess. If anyone who didn’t know me well came in here, they’d think I was a total slob (I am kinda…not that I wanna be, but it just entropies to that. Yes, I know entropy isn’t a verb. Whatever. I’m making up my own damn language this morning.). But really, what I should be thinking is, Yo, Kath. You’re an artist and you retreat into this amazing place where after you work a 60+-hour week teaching kids about respiratory system parts and function, you come home and you make art (AND dinner). That’s pretty amazing. If people aren’t amazed by THAT, and they’re focused on your inability to contain the piles in your house? Fuck ’em.

I’m sure at some point over the weekend, I’ll clean something. I usually do.

One of the questions on a dating site was Which would you rather be? And there are two answers: Normal and Weird. (No combinations allowed. One or the other.). I pick Weird because I am. If weird is the one who makes art until 1 in the morning on a school night, if weird is the one who draws at the dinner table, if weird is the one who sees a drawing in her head in the middle of a conversation with a 7th-grader about robots…then hell. I’m weird. And I don’t want to lose those things. And I know they’re not normal.

Awkward Foreign Accent

I’ve been having bad dreams, careening around steep mountain roads in a minivan, I’m not driving, mom is and sometimes other people are, and they’re fishtailing around corners, sometimes fully spinning around before regaining control and continuing at an incredibly fast rate down the hill. My stomach’s in my throat for most of it and then I wake up…and I eventually fall asleep again and I’m right back in the same place, starting over again at the top of the hill, someone else driving, holding onto the oh-shit handles and not screaming, because there isn’t enough air. That was Tuesday night.

Last night, it was lights in the eyes; I kept waking up thinking someone was flashing lights in my eyes. You know that crazy jump of your heart when you wake up terrified? It was that about five times. Scared the cat once.

I didn’t start ironing until late, and I knew I’d have to be up really early this morning for girlchild’s doctor’s appointment, so I told myself I was going to bed before midnight. It was pointless, because then I tossed and turned for at least an hour before finally falling fitfully asleep. My sleep app says my sleep was only 79% effective last night. I’m not sure which is worse…only sleeping 4 hours or sleeping crappy for longer? I’m not sure I got 4 hours last night.

I worked on the man’s head…

It was pretty easy to put together. The gender symbols throughout this piece…I purposely picked a fabric with computer code jargon on it for the male and typeset letters for the woman.

Think of that what you will.

The tree was a pain in the butt. First of all, I needed two of the ironing sheets to get the full width, but the other one kept falling off the ironing board.

Then I realized I had fucked up on the cutting…the top two branches were supposed to be different fabrics, but they aren’t (I left that mistake). The continuation of the top right branch, though…totally wrong fabric, so I had to recut that one. Same with below…there’s a piece of branch on top in the middle that is the same as the one below, but the ones on either side are different (like they’re supposed to be), so I had to recut that one.

There she is in all her glory.

See that’s why I do them. Because now it looks cool. Now I need to do all the things that grow off of it and hang off it. Not a small amount.

I only have about a third of my voice this morning. That wouldn’t be a huge problem, except I am a teacher. I did wonder yesterday, because I ran a lab about gas exchange (blowing carbon dioxide into an indicator to make it change color…they were very excited) and my voice was necessary, so I overused it, and now it’s barely here. I think I can do today. They’re doing research. I do have to talk in the beginning. Ugh.

A kid wore this to school the other day…find the typo.

Amazing. Yeah, I notice shit like that. All the time. In emails from the district office (bad practice in a school district). In emails from political locals. In books. Everywhere. TV ads seem to be better edited. Maybe you get better editors when you spend more money. Apparently there’s something wrong with me because I notice those things.

I blew off grading yesterday evening to finish my book…Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus…

I think it’s official. I’m done with Scott Card. We read this for book club for November, because Thanksgiving. And Columbus. Get it? Sort of. I know. I’ve read most of the Ender’s Game series, which I liked at first, but got bogged down with in Xenocide. His writing…it took me a while to figure out what the issue is. He’s deep into histories and politics and details of all that, but relationships? They’re dealt with in like one sentence. “Tagiri decided she liked Hassan and they got married and had children” and all of a sudden, 30 years have passed and we’re on to the next stage. It’s very separate from human emotions, which is strange, because he doesn’t leave those out…but there’s just very little feeling in all of it. Even when the two main characters meet after a bunch of years, there is a brief moment, and then we’re on to explaining the rest of the story. It’s an interesting story, sure, but it’s dry, and I had a hard time with the long middle of it. But he’s planning a series, and the next one is about Noah’s flood (he did actually have a theory about that in this book). I bet he’s Asperger’s. I found this quote from one of his books…one I’ve actually read, I think: “He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.” That’s it. He doesn’t know how to write about it. I think. Good topic for book club discussion (if I remember in three weeks).

Anyway. I know I haven’t posted any book reviews in a while. I’m still reading; I’m just not writing about them as much. I don’t know why. OK, have to get out of here. Need a title. Dammit.

Man Parts

So yeah, I’m known for my naked women. I’ve actually been making art with female nudes since college, so when people get all freaked out about it now, it just fucking confuses me. This is year 29, people. Get over it. Putting clothes on people puts a whole ‘nother meaning into it. I like the idea of universal ideas or personal experiences being shown through the naked body…and my bodies aren’t just naked…they’re god-damned see-through. You can see parts in there! So then you gotta wonder about why I show SOME parts and not others. I wonder if there’s any significance to that (just a hint on that…sometimes no. Sometimes I just likes to draw the inner gutlike workings.).

Anyway, occasionally in my checkered past (and my checkered present), I draw the male figure. I have to admit that usually it’s because I’m pissed off at them. I’ve had some significantly bad experiences with males (shit, should I admit that online? Oh. Well, I guess if you’ve read this blog at all, you probably figured it out. I’m sure it’s all my fault.), and bad things often end up in my art. I try not to make it all bad, though. I’ve got some reasonable males in my life. Mostly. And some of the jerks have redeemed themselves. Mostly. Maybe. But mostly I focus on women because that’s my experience, and most of what I draw is me, my experiences, my ideas. Because, like, I’m the artist. Duh.

Anyway. For the upcoming Expressions in Equality exhibit (which will be at the Visions Art Museum in January), I chose gender equality…because I draw so much about women and women’s lives and women’s rights…I wanted to try to do this. Because despite society and all the dumbass stuff I’ve been reading lately from men who feel a need to proclaim that Men Have Needs That Women Don’t Understand (oh sweetie, we DO understand; we just don’t agree.) and certain political groups’ desires to have control over my woman parts, I do honestly wish/hope/almost believe that there is such a thing as gender equality. I have a whole post that I’ve been working on about this…but it’s chock full of stupid stuff society does and says to demean and fuck over women. And I really shouldn’t be writing ANYTHING about gender equality while I’m watching episodes of Big Love…because it just pisses me off.

So drawing this…I had to be in the right frame of mind…and yes, I warned the curator up front that there would be a penis. Because if I’m going to continue in this vein of it being universal woman…it has to be universal man, and he’s not wearing boxers.

Someone once asked me if I knew how to draw naked men. Um. I get the weirdest questions. I have done life drawing for years. But yeah. Because I have STUDENTS to show me…

I actually critique their drawings…we get lots of them. It’s the age. For one like that, I always tell them it’s someone who has never seen one before, because that’s not what they look like. That kinda freaks them out, because it’s usually the boys drawing them.

Anyway, so now that you know what the typical day of a middle-school teacher is like (I was gonna put science teacher, but the other teachers on my team get the penis drawings too), know that I am building a man figure now…

And I’m almost done. Yes, I go to the office with my briefcase full of money NAKED. It’s a metaphor people. (Someone will make a comment. I know. I don’t care.) The real key is that I ironed last night. Yes, I’m still sick. But this ironing/art thing is important. I’m getting there. I’m in the early 800s, so about 250 pieces to go. I’ve been ironing for about 10 1/2 hours, so still on time with the estimate. So being sick the previous night didn’t set me back too badly. I think I can do it. All the poor guy needs is a head, and then I’m up in the tree…and I have to decide how best to iron that, because branches all over the place can be a pain in the ass. Plus all those leaves and hangy things. And at some point, I can’t show you this any more, because I’m supposed to wait until the exhibit opens. We’re getting close to that point.

I’m just glad there’s progress. Work is such a bog at the moment…too much work, too much planning, spending time dealing with union stuff. I was at the school board meeting last night, all in red, like everyone else (we packed the room), because they don’t want to pay us. Last year, the raise got eaten up by health care costs. Probably on purpose. We took pay cuts. Health insurance is going up again and our district doesn’t want to cover any of those costs.

Damn cat again…

She looks pissed off too. Probably because I bopped her on the nose when she tried to settle in among all the laid-out quilt pieces. What is it with cats and fabric? I just have to sacrifice small piles of it so she can shed all over it.

Anyway. Head tonight. Tree tonight. It’s getting exciting. Sort of. Not TOO exciting.

OK, I had to edit this to tell you that WordPress suggested I tag this post with “naked women”. Really, WordPress? Does that SEEM like a good idea? Technology can be so fucking stupid.

Hello Monday…

Hello Monday. I was not ready for you. I finished a bunch of stuff this weekend, but not enough (it’s never enough…isn’t that a song? Of course it’s a song.). I don’t feel prepared to face what you will be throwing at me today. For one thing, my voice and throat are significantly challenged (not a good thing for a teacher on the first day of five days…it only gets worse as the week goes on). I think I am officially sick, but with some really low-level viral beast that won’t just come out and make me actually ill. It’s content to lurk in the shadows and make things feel slightly off. I have a formal teacher observation today, though, so I’m thinking through how to teach this lesson without speaking…can I do the whole thing with hand motions? I think I can. At some point, when you’ve been teaching long enough, you can do just about anything.

I worked on the male figure in the quilt last night…I wanted to get it done.

Looks a lot like the female side, eh? Thought I could do it all in one evening, because it was less complicated than the female…plus I started earlier. Here’s all the 600s laid out.

I finished the 500s and 600s and did a few of the 700s. OK. Well, I got a significant amount of him done. I balked at the hands (hands are hard. I was tired. Tired and hard do not go together.). I got his sixpack done.

So tonight I can do the hands and the briefcase and the head maybe. It’s good progress. I’m getting there. It’s moving along.

At that point, I should have been smart and gone to bed. It wasn’t super late though, and I wasn’t tired. At all. Even though it was almost midnight. So I decided to watch the rest of the episode of Star Trek that I had been ironing to, and to work on some hand embroidery until the episode was done, and then maybe I’d be tired…

Yeah. Right. Made it through a whole ‘nother episode after that before tired hit. Something to do with the cat on the back of my neck? By the way, Data appreciates the embroidery.

It still wasn’t super late, but it wasn’t early. I seem incapable of going to sleep, or even to bed, at a reasonable hour. Seriously, that damn cat is on the back of my chair right now. Gives me a crick in my neck.

We did have soccer yesterday morning too…not super early, but early enough to set an alarm.

Everybody loses to this team. They’re good, sure, but they’re also pushy…and not in a constructive way. In a hand-on-the-back kinda way.

Our girls held their own, though…still lost, but only 3-1, and as you can see above, when their girls threw themselves into ours, most of the time, ours did not fall down. I think girlchild dropped about 4 of their girls just by continuing to stand upright.

It’s amazing to me to watch 17-year-olds who are about to go to college and play soccer with big scholarships (because one of their worst offenders will probably do just that) and they’re winning by being bad sports. Play the damn game, little girl. When you get beat, you don’t run into someone because you’re pissed.

Of course, that’s not true. That is what lots of people do…and not just in soccer. You get pissed? You get hurt? You try to take the other person down.

Soccer as a metaphor for life. Damn that pink vibrates…will be glad when we get back to our normal uniform colors. And one of their parents actually had the balls to come over and tell our girls to calm down? The ref was a good guy, though, and did a good job of calling the dumbass maneuvers.

So a successful game, even if they lost. You gotta lose sometime, right? Not the green team, apparently. They tried to justify their girls’ behavior, saying “well, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Um. So when you break someone’s leg? Will it be a problem then?

So. Yeah. I’ve been sitting with Monday for a while now, and it’s still a petulant whiny beast. I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of the day with it. It’s like an immature 7th-grade boy. Ugh. I got no choice. I gotta deal.