The Picture of a Happy Family

It is just the picture of a happy family at home here, as we nestled on the couch last night, boychild providing calculus support to the girlchild while randomly Googling facts about the show we were watching, SVU (happy wholesome TV), and I graded assignments about reproduction (asexual, sexual, and cloning), often dissolving into hysterical laughter when I read student interpretations of the notes I’d given them. Girlchild cooked a lovely dinner with vegetables, which are no longer forbidden here…well, they were never forbidden, but they were limited and now he eats a lot of things he wouldn’t eat before. Boychild helped out in the kitchen and then cleaned things, which was scary and nice. But eventually girlchild, who gets up earliest, went to bed, boychild wandered off to his room, and I went off to my studio to deal with the flesh and the water.

Tuesday night, I had time to pick the flesh fabrics I was going to use, but not to actually lay them out and iron them. So that’s what I started with…

There’s not actually much flesh in this quilt. Most of the larger body and a goodly portion of the child are all under water. While I was ironing, though, I realized the bones didn’t go through to the bottom part of the leg. I don’t usually change things at this stage, but this bugged me, so I drew in the lower bones…

Traced them and ironed them. Easy enough, and now I won’t stare at it, wondering where the bones disappeared to.

Really, that’s when I should have gone to bed. I’ve been up way too late all week, and it’s starting to hurt in the morning. Or maybe Thursday mornings always hurt. Hard to say.

Being my usual cantankerous and stubborn artistic self, I kept going…and I didn’t keep going into something simple. Oh no. I went for the water…big crazy pieces of curliness…

And this crazy thing…

That is one piece. I don’t know what I was thinking. It will be “fun” to cut out (not).

I have quilt class tonight, so I’ll start cutting them out then…

I’m not done ironing yet though. I have at least another 150 pieces to go. I’d like to get them done tonight, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I have a little over 6 1/2 hours in so far, which is more than it should have taken for a 600-piece quilt.

I also seem to have more colors of fabric than I normally would for a quilt with this few pieces…

We’ll see if that’s true at the end. All I have left to iron is the adult woman in the piece. She doesn’t have a lot showing, but her hair is incredibly complicated. Wanna know why? Because when I first drew it, it wasn’t the right size or shape, so I just added to it…and that added about 40 pieces. Crazy, right? Well we already know about that.

Today is the last day of state testing (hallelujah) and my kids started microscopes yesterday, which means my sarcasm spilled over…”What is that?” “I don’t know.” “Where is your slide, your coverslip?” “What are those?” “The things I just stood up there and showed you how to prepare, that I showed you a video on yesterday and made you take notes about the day before. Where are they?” “I don’t know.” It takes a massive amount of patience to teach some days, really, on any hands-on lab day and many technology days, and I can’t say that my patience is at a maximum at the moment. I said, “Oh my God! Look! It’s an e!” about 17 times yesterday (the first assignment is to look at a newsprint letter e).

But they will survive me, as I survive them. And they will move on to the next grade, the next science teacher, and they will either hate them or come back and tell me how they have an A in science now (good job!), and the really annoying ones, the ones I wanted to run away from on the last day of school, they will come see me every day and yell “I love you!” across the quad and hug me when they get close enough…except for the few that I am STILL glaring the evil eye at, even a year later. I think it’s sad that we only really remember the badly behaved or tragic students…that those good kids you see every day doing amazing work…they make me happy in the moment when I see their test scores or their very cool science drawings or their happy little faces as they wave at me…but they’re the ones I forget over the years…their names, their faces. Sigh. Is that proof that the bad sticks to us easier than the happy? Hard to say.

This is an interesting article about an artist who did a show of white women in advertisements over a span from 1915 to current-day, removing all the text and just leaving the pictures. I thought it was telling that the author, a white woman, wasn’t sure if things were better now than they were in the ad from 1915…in fact, they might be worse. In advertising, in imagery about our bodies, I think it is worse.

Me and my early-morning headache (woken by girlchild screaming about spider; I really needed that extra two minutes of sleep, dammit) will now attempt to go to work and be calm and patient for the first part of the day. It’s really up to the kids as to how long that sticks. Looking forward to hopefully finishing the fabric-choosing part of this quilt tonight. And maybe sleeping. That never seems important at night…just the next morning.

Girlchild is now at school, now that the spider is dead. Boychild is intelligently still asleep. I am questionably awake and ready to go to work (well, not really READY per se, but I should go). The happy family continues (yours may be a bit different than mine).

Sanity Is Built Up of Many Crazy Parts

Not much time this morning. Yesterday was crazy rushing around, but the boychild is finally home, recovering from not eating for hours and all that other traveling crap. I suspect there was some serious running in Philadelphia’s airport (he has long legs), but all three California kids from that really late Ithaca plane made it. Apparently no plane ever leaves Ithaca on time. He can sleep almost all day here if he needs to. I don’t think the cats know he’s here.

Meanwhile, I have three interviews (not mine), an emergency scary meeting (not about me), and a massive lab to deal with today, so I need to be at school early and for a million hours (fun stuff)…so I’m writing this quick! That Quick!

I did iron for a short bit yesterday…

There was a faucet and a handle that needed doing, and then a soap holder with soap. I’m trying to remember what the red fabric was for…who knows…part of the handle maybe? No, that doesn’t make sense. Anyway. I then spent about 20 minutes under the desk picking out flesh fabrics in a run of 7 (the pink/flesh drawers are under the desk…gonna install a light under there next)…

Before having to leave for the airport. It was too late to start ironing when I went to bed, so I’ll be ironing body parts when I get done with everything tonight…maybe. If I don’t collapse from exhaustion before then. Plus boychild is home and he’s usually pretty talkative the first few days. I’ve got about 4 1/2 hours into the ironing so far.

So there is progress, but it’s fucking slow at the moment. I’m not a full-time artist…some days, I’m barely a part-time artist. That’s because I choose to hang out with more people after a long day of hanging out with mostly little- or medium-sized people. Crazy, I know, but sanity is built up of many crazy parts.

Five Whites That Aren’t White…

Oh morning. You are sometimes so sweet and pretty and bright, but this morning is delightfully gloomy (really, that’s easier to wake up to) and there is a cat butt in my face. The cat quite boisterously cleans itself when it thinks I should be waking up. I have three alarm clocks really and one is sentient. And it’s not my iPhone.

I sat through my daughter’s prom dress fitting yesterday. I have pictures, but she would surely kill me to post them. A small, lovely, and very competent woman is making my daughter’s dress from a photo. I’m thoroughly impressed by her wizardry. After that came flopping on the couch to read, because it was a long day that included a bunch of crazy because one of the substitute cleaning team at my school unplugged the computer cart over the weekend and every computer was dead…on the first day of math testing…online. We managed that crazy though (never again, please).

I also spent a good chunk of time finding all my reproductive unit paperwork (didn’t actually find most of it, strangely), and then creating a profile on a proofreading/editing site. Once they’ve approved me, I’ll post it here. Because y’all are looking for editors? You never know.

So it was late when I started the artmaking part of my life…as always.

This thing is actually going pretty quickly. I stopped the night before when I got to the bathtub pieces, because they are huge and required some thought. Here’s one of them.

Basically, I have 5 whites that aren’t white. Well, one of them is white. The other 4 pretend towards whiteness but are really what white would be if there were shadows and 3D going on.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

You can see the whites, such as they are, in the left column in the middle. So I didn’t do a ton of pieces last night, maybe 50? But they were huge and complicated and took a long time to iron and cut out.

The pile grows…

And this morning, I still have three hundred pieces to go. Tonight I’ll be somewhat busy…and my late night, which is normally saved for artmaking crazy (I stayed up too late last night), will be spent at the airport getting the boychild.

Really, there are days when my life seems inordinately busy. I’m glad I took a half hour with a cup of tea and my book yesterday, partially because I like this book and want to finish it, but also because my brain needs shit like that. I didn’t grade hardly anything yesterday, between the testing fiasco and refusing to work when I got home. I worked enough hours as it was. Oh, I also took the lake boating test so I could kayak/canoe at Lake Arrowhead this weekend. I need a license for that! I don’t know if I passed. I would hope so. It was open note.

Anyway, so we’ll hope today is better, less crazy, more grading at school (except I’m starting microscopes tomorrow, which is a little crazy in itself). Time to get stuff done at home, but also that the boychild’s plane comes in on time so I don’t have to go to bed super late. Like even for me. And nothing else pops up on the radar. For now. Just let me get a little caught up before something else shows up.

I Know You Know It…

Apparently I like to pick out fabrics…or my mood finally switched on to art mode. Either way, even though I spent a good two hours yesterday arguing with the girlchild by text about whether she had taken my shoes or not or whether I was in the right to demand that my shoes be returned to my house (ah, the wonder of divorce), and then we weren’t speaking to each other for the next 2 1/2 hours, somehow all that shit worked out and I managed to do some grading and make some art.

Actually, first of all, this is a drawing from Saturday…

Which needs a redraw. I like the hands. I like the belly and crotch area. I need the head further down. I’ll try again. I also went to an art event Saturday night, but I’ll have to deal with that in a later post…too many photos for a Monday morning.

I had mostly cleaned in here Thursday night (yes, I know it doesn’t look clean, but what do you know?)…

And set up for ironing, did a tiny bit, but then succumbed to cranky exhaustion.

So last night, I managed to avoid both, and made it through all of the first 100 and second 100 pieces…

There they are laid out by 10s. Very exciting, no? Yes, I’m a little obsessive sometimes. But look at what I can do with it!

Basically, last night I ironed everything together up until the bathtub…here’s the ginkgo tree…

Some of those browns are just shreds of skinny pieces because I’ve cut so many tree branches out of them.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…not much color.

There was a dog on a rug, a cat, a ginkgo tree, a pile of clothes, and a pair of shoes.

Next stop? The bathtub. Which might be a bit difficult. I need big pieces for that. Here’s everything I’ve ironed so far…

I got to piece 229. On this quilt, that’s almost halfway done…which is good, because my brain is realizing I have to get another relatively big one done by mid-July? Ish? And that is closer than it appears in that mirror.

I also started revamping my LinkedIn page to include my editing and proofreading experience, which is old, but still useful. I’m debating joining a couple of groups that might get me work, but school is still hanging over me. My car went into the shop, though, and between it and my house insurance, the next month is going to be ugly…which is a problem, because I don’t get paid over the summer. So I need to get some focus on…realizing I don’t know how to edit electronically (well, I can mark up in Word), and might have to take some courses to figure that shit out. Anyway. I try to worry about the smaller stuff, one bit at a time. College crap. Getting the boychild home crap. Getting through state testing crap.

I aired out the boychild’s room and rewashed his bedding, realized we were still short a pillow and his fitted sheet no longer fit. Elastic with issues…so I made a run to Target for another pillow and a fitted sheet. Set all that up, so he at least has somewhere to sleep. He can work on cleaning the rest of it when he gets home. Asked the girlchild to clean the bathroom, and she tried to blame part of the mess on her brother, who hasn’t been home since January 19. It’s gonna be a fun summer! I know you know it.

More drawing. More art. I was commenting that I find it hard to draw specifically about the relationship I have with my daughter. I can draw about motherhood in general and the stress that goes with it. Earth Mother shows up a lot in my work. But when I try to parse out how the two of us work and why it drives me bonkers sometimes, I just can’t make a picture about it. I can only hope she has a really nice roommate in her dorm who doesn’t kick her out after three months.

It’s OK. I know her worst behavior gets saved up for me. OK. Apparently I have to go to work. Damn paying-the-bills job. And please don’t tell me you want teachers to love their jobs…there isn’t a single teacher out there who loves state testing, and most of us are trashed by the last 6 weeks of school.

Speaking of trashed, I dropped my favorite mug yesterday…

Dammit. I made it myself. I made another one at the same time, but I’m apparently not allowed to have it back. And the other large mug I had sprung a leak. So I’m fussing around with a tiny mug, checking Groupon for the next coupon for the ceramic painting place.

OK, off to my day, if only to figure out all the ways I have screwed up already. Love Mondays.

I Just Don’t Know

This damn piece is giving me angst. It shouldn’t. That’s what I’m told anyway. Wish someone would tell my art brain to get over the shit that bugs it so I could settle into my own existence. Apparently not an option. But maybe that’s why I make so much art…because I never settle into myself. I’m always questioning what I’m doing and how it makes me feel and whether it was good enough. Good enough for what, I don’t know. But that questioning, I don’t know that it’s abnormal in someone who creates all the time. Maybe that’s the difference between me and the people who did art in college and occasionally do something crafty, but they don’t stay up until after midnight every night making some piece that won’t get into any shows because it’s too in your face.

I just don’t know.

After running 17 errands in the morning, I was able to pick up my newly cleaned and tuned machine and I pieced the background. I also decided I didn’t feel like cleaning the entryway floor to lay it out. I thought the piece would be pretty easy to lay out, because it’s basically one large piece that’s all ironed together. If I had to place a bunch of smaller pieces and make them all fit together, I would have done it on the bigger floor space.

So here…it’s a little crowded, yes.

Couldn’t even get it flat. Oh well.

I laid it out anyway. Sometimes I’m kinda stubborn.

I tacked it down on the floor (this might be why my floor is dying…I do in fact iron on it.)…just enough to get it up on the ironing board, where I did the 30 seconds with steam thing that makes it stick better…enough that I can stitch it down.

And then the water droplets had to be placed…and I hung it up…

This thing is big…59″w x 66″ h. I thought 4 hours to stitch it down was probably an underestimate…but I did start yesterday…

And everything went fine for the first hour or so, and then I don’t know what happened. Something broke threadwise and I pulled everything out and tried to restart the stitching, and then spent probably 45 minutes fucking with my machine, cleaning stuff out, resetting it, turning it off and saying abracadabra over it, swearing and assuming I would have to take it back today to get fixed and I would never get done. Thread was tying itself up in huge fucked-up knots that somehow translated to shit in my head. Love that. Art brain. Get out of that hole. And then it magically started working again. And I spent an hour restitching all the crap it had fucked over. I’m sure it wasn’t really magic. I did something and that fixed it. But I don’t know what that something was.

When I finished restitching, honestly I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I was just depressed and frustrated with the whole thing. And with life in general. So I walked away and tried to sleep (ha!). Yeah. That was kind of a failure too.

Fucking Pandora is in pretty perky mode. I want to punch it. Where’s my screaming angry young men when I need them?

Seriously, though, I’m fighting a lot of stress about well everything I think. I’m about to crawl into a ball and lock all the doors (probably not realistic considering girlchild lives here half time…apparently) and not come out until I have to…which might be sometime around April 13. I’m sure there’s some people expecting me to show up before that, but I don’t know if I can handle that. Dammit, I unlocked the front door. The Golden Retriever is now here, lying on my floor. It’s harder to be depressed with a Golden around.

I’m trying to decide whether to stitch for a while (I might not stop) or to go to the gym first. I really should go to the gym. I have a social thing tonight. For a hermit who is feeling overwhelmed and antisocial, that seems problematic. Because otherwise I would go to the gym tonight. I like it when it’s quiet there. During the day is not so quiet.

This song was in my head too much yesterday…not sure why.

Not even sure I like it. Certainly can’t watch the video without getting sick to my stomach. Maybe just the lyric “I don’t know what I believe.” Maybe that’s all I’m hanging on to today. Trying not to think about all the crap I need to do. Trying not to think about that pit in the floor that’s screeching at me. Need to meditate more.

OK. Pandora has figured out I’m feeling depressed and is now playing depressing music. I’m not sure that’s helpful, Pandora. Really, you need a better formula.

She’s in One Piece…

I didn’t get as far yesterday as I wanted to…as usual. My machine is also still in the shop, so that sucks. Hopefully it’ll be done today, because I can’t finish the ironing. I need to see the background together before I can iron the whole thing down.

I started with the hair…

Then got the full face ironed together…this was the water section, so there’s a jellyfish, some regular made-up fish (Kathy-style), and a shell. Oh, and a starfish on her face…

Then I did the sun on top of her head…

I debated ironing the whole thing together now or fitting the pieces together on the background. It is easier to just deal with one piece though, especially if it can be ironed down to the pressing sheet, because then I can stretch pieces to make them fit if needed…which is what this one needed. So here’s the head ironed to central torso…

While I was working on this, a duck love triangle was working itself out in my pool. This is an annual event. The duck couple has been visiting every day, but today an extra male showed up and there was some significant drama for a bit until this point.

I kept working. Here is ironing the upper section to the lower torso…

Which also needed some adjustment, but overall, everything fit together fairly well. Here’s the whole thing rolled up…

For storage until I can get the background ready to go.

I’m sitting at the vet with the tiny-bladdered cat for her followup. I don’t want to spend an hour here, but it seems that is always the case. I need to go buy batting and hopefully pick up my sewing machine so I can get this thing to the next stage. I might have to do a college-visit trip next week, which is going to seriously mess up my schedule for everything I needed to get done over break (much like last year). Sigh. I don’t know why I make plans…it seems life conspires against me.

Left the cat…she wouldn’t pee and I persuaded the vet to let me leave her there for a few hours. I wanted to be stitching down yesterday! Oh well…let’s see what I can get done today…at least she’s in one piece.

I Need That Right Now…

I’m getting close to done, which is good, because I’m expecting to be able to pick up my sewing machine today, and I’d like to be stitching things down today, although that would mean not doing much else, so I might have to rethink that plan. I’ve been trying to grade a little every other day and to do some yardwork every day or so, and clean some part of the house every day, although my brain just wants to get the art done…it’s worried that I won’t get this quilt far enough along by the end of break, and the reality is, I probably won’t, because stuff will get in the way, but I’m trying. I’m always trying. Part of why I write here is because it forces me to be accountable to myself, to say every day, what the fuck did you get done? What art did you make? And if you didn’t make art, what’s your excuse? Is it a good one (spending time with people is a good one)? Or is it lame (sat on the couch all day and stared at a television)? I don’t usually do that, just to be clear. But I could iron for 10 hours in a day and I don’t, because other stuff just happens. So if I only get two hours in, that’s the same amount I would do if I were teaching…and I’m not…

Anyway, yesterday was pretty good. I cleaned, I did yardwork, and I ironed for 4 hours…starting up in the torso…sunflowers on the shoulder and the arm…

Then added the heron wing, which is quite pretty (and hopefully will still be pretty on the background I picked)…

The heron body is there too, as part of the arm, ending in the head below.

I often have snakes in my quilts…couldn’t leave it out this time…

Although I ironed it separately and then set it aside, because it was in the way. I do try to iron the pieces in numerical order…it’s just easier that way than having multiple boxes out at a time. I had made dinner earlier, because I had some time in the middle of the afternoon where I didn’t feel like ironing yet, and it was lasagna, so I could premake it and refrigerate it. I’m trying to be really efficient with foodmaking right now. Froze a dinner’s worth of it for next week or the following week, when we’re both back in school, plus made enough for two dinners this week. I seem to think this stuff through better when I’m not actually teaching, unfortunately. It’s all practice for next year, when I hope to cook a meal on a Sunday and freeze it so I can have it all month, interspersed with other Sunday meals I freeze. Or something. Some attempt to be healthy and not eat the same thing every night, and admit that cooking for just one person every night is tiring.

Then I ironed the bird in the torso…

Tons of feather pieces between the two of them. Then I added the cat on the right side and a piece of the snake on top…

It got a little complicated in here. I added the rest of the snake and the heart, and then the right arm is a fox, which turned out well…

Although I had misplaced part of his eye, apparently. Never found it. Just cut a new one.

The next two sections had complicated overlapping leaves and roots on a flesh background. With the roots, I just lifted the pressing sheet and put them approximately where they belonged…

But with the leaves, I ironed them together separately and then laid them out on the background. It was too complicated to not be able to see the pattern and try to iron it at the same time.

I did the same thing on the leaves on the right breast…then ironed the bird and snake down on top of it, where they belonged…

The last step was the grassy area growing on the right shoulder…and there’s the whole torso…

That’s almost 9 hours so far.

It looks a little chaotic without the head on top. And it definitely will need outlining to define some of the areas. I think the whole thing will read as a body, though, especially with the head. I really want to see it all together today at some point, so even though I have stuff planned (gym, more yardwork, book club for a book I read over a year ago and I’m really just going because I haven’t been since December and I feel out of touch), my goal today is to get it all ironed down and at least ready for stitching down. That part should only take 4 or 5 hours, then another couple hours to pinbaste, although that reminds me…I’m not sure I have a big enough piece of batting for this thing. I should check that today.

Everything else right now is stressful. It’s nice to come in here and iron and not have to deal with drama about colleges or health issues or worry about money or taxes or school. It’s peaceful working on this quilt. There’s the problem-solving of trying to get all the pieces to fit together right. It’s very methodical, laying the pieces out numerically, looking at the pattern, fitting them together, ironing them down, seeing the image come together. Apparently I need that right now. Which is good.

Still Gonna Make It…

I did iron yesterday…I also went prom-dress shopping, something I never did growing up (I wore my aunt’s prom dress to my prom). Wow. That was blingy hell. Blingy expensive hell…like more than I paid for my wedding dress hell. And the girlchild doesn’t want bling. So I could have done without all that, but I managed to come home and iron for a while, then eat with my parents, then iron some more before my body told me it really was tired and could we go to bed, and then it didn’t want to sleep.

Anyway. It’s on vacation. It doesn’t like going to bed early on vacation.

I started by laying the first 100 pieces out…they’re all pretty good sized pieces…

It didn’t look like much at first…

I put the drawing on the ironing board under an ironing sheet…I have two huge sheets and a number of smaller ones. If I can keep the cats away from them, they don’t get damaged (a couple of my cats like(d) to chew on this stuff).

The big stuff at the bottom went pretty fast…

I call this section Earth, Wind, and Fire.

The wind is pretty light in color, so it’s hard to see on the sheet…but the background of the quilt is a dark blue, so that will be much different looking.

Then I started the acacia trees…

All of a sudden, we’re into the teensy-weensy stuff. This is the 100s…check out how much smaller they are.

So they take longer to iron. Those are all elephant pieces…and that took me a while, ironing the three elephants.

Some of the smaller pieces I don’t cut out until I get to this stage, so I don’t lose them…like eyeballs and knee wrinkles. Outlining the elephants when I quilt will really help the detail pop out.

Here they are incorporated into what had been done so far…

I’m well into the 200s now. There’s an apple tree to the right with tiny stems and tiny leaves and tiny apples…so you know what I’ll be doing today. None of the stems are cut out yet…so I’ll be cutting as I iron those. I have a nasty woman-part appointment this morning (one of those where you take pain meds before you even leave the house), so hopefully I won’t be in too much pain this afternoon, and I’ll be able to iron. I’m hoping to get this whole thing ironed together by sometime tomorrow. My sewing machine goes in today for its annual (I really should put that in quotes, because it’s so not annual) cleaning. I can’t pick it up until Wednesday, but it would be nice to be ready to be stitching down on Wednesday.

That said, I do have other stuff to work on…I finished cutting out all the pieces for the second recycled piece last night too…

I was too tired to stand and iron, but not tired enough to go to bed and sleep, so I cut stuff out. So I can iron it down as well before I get the machine. And I could even start tracing the next big quilt if I wanted to. I’d have to go enlarge it and tape it together and number it, but that’s all OK. I have free time for that. Yes, I have a list of chores and errands and have-tos as well, but I’m trying not to dwell too much on that. A little a day…today I’m going to start the FAFSA for the boychild and maybe his taxes…and Cornell’s financial aid stuff. I’m worried about next year’s expenses. Really worried. But hey, whatever. I’ll get by. I usually do.

Meanwhile, I toldja I’d be making art. I’m actually excited to see what this one will look like. I’m excited about the recycled one too…even though I think it will fade a bit into the background, because I’m kind of OK with that idea. We’ll see. By tonight, I should be up into the heron arm and whatever’s past that on the numbering (can’t remember). Lots of feathers and petals, from what I remember. Lots of things that overlap each other, which can be a pain in the butt. But that’s how I made this drawing work…no nudity, no politics, no violence. And no, there’s no guarantee it’ll get in. As usual. Still gonna make it.

Dropping Balls…

What I woke up to (after someone shoved my sticky door open, making a horrible noise and giving me an adrenaline rush that made it impossible to go back to sleep): girlchild has been sick. Apparently that sick included a sore throat (a fact she did not share with me yesterday), which partially explains her swollen face and neck at 11 PM last night when she went to bed. Her dad is on doctor duty, once he finds her insurance card (minor issue). I think it’s strep. Yay! The elderly cat, who is decidedly not elderly when she wants to bitchslap a younger cat who might be in her territory, is apparently bleeding intestinally, and insists on walking around the house, dripping blood everywhere. I can’t get a sub this late. I’m hoping my mom can handle the cat. But who knows?

I’m personally praying to the Goddess of the Mother to keep me from strep, because I don’t have the time or energy for that shit right now.

SIGH. My students told me yesterday that all of us teachers were cranky and had no senses of humor at the moment. I refrained from telling them how close we are to Spring Break, because if I admit that it’s a week and a half away to THEM, they will stop working completely. As it is, I still have about 80% of them on task…for now. They’re right, though. I am cranky. I’m not getting recharged. I’m feeling distant and disconnected from everything and whether there’s hormones involved or not, it’s just fucking with me. I think I need a massage in a hot tub. With cheesecake.

I should be ecstatic somewhere in my head. Why? I finished ironing last night. Whoo! (OK, that was a faked WHOO, but if you fake it, apparently you can make it. I don’t actually believe that, because it’s never worked for me.). And I guess I am somewhat relieved…maybe.

Last night, I ironed a bunch of leaves and grass and blue hair (her hair is the water) and these are the jellyfish parts…

And I also did goldfish and the sun…

Those are sun parts. I used oranges for the goldfish.

It got later and later and I got more tired and I kept thinking, “Really, you should be grading. Why are you being so irresponsible?” Fuck that shit. Iron away baby. By the end of the evening, this is what the fabric pile looked like…

I don’t keep them all neat while I’m working…I just clean it up each night so I can see it all again. While I’m working, I pile. But there’s more yellows in there and obviously the blues are there and I had to add another orange friend (it’s not really orange…it just has a lot of orange in it), plus some purple for the jellyfish, and some pinks for the shell that’s in there, and I don’t remember what else…oh, more green. Because there’s never enough fucking green.

SIGH. It’s done. It took 13 1/2 hours, much longer than I thought it would. I don’t know why. Whatever.

It also took 103 fabrics…

Which is a lot. Looks very colorful…not sure what it will look like in real life. The larger pieces are more toned down…well, mostly.

And here’s my next task (minus the doctor thing and the vet thing and the sore throat/bloody anus thing, and then there’s the pool motor, which yeah, I don’t know, I’m just running water in there and praying)…cutting all of them out.

That’s probably another 11 hours or so. Twelve? Fuck, why do I even estimate? No, seriously. Probably twelve. I’ll commit to that. If I do two hours a night (ha!), that’ll be 6 days. Except I won’t do that every night. But I only need it done by a week from Saturday. Earlier is fine. Then I can do the other recycled one. Then my first task of Spring Break (besides cleaning house and trimming the damn bougainvillea and finding some semblance of my happy) will be to iron it all together, so when my sewing machine gets out of its annual cleaning appointment, I can start stitching it down.

SIGH. I know. I said that already. In 18 minutes, I can start calling doctor, vet, and mom. Oh yeah, and going to work. At the same time. I’m sure there’s some ball I’m dropping today. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m fairly sure I dropped it.

A Sliver of a Place…

Eleven hours plus…I really wanted to just throw sleep to the wind last night, ignore the fact that my job requires you to be ON at all times and being asleep is not an option, and finish ironing. I am that close. Maybe another hour or so. But I was tired. Huh. Stupid body. What do you mean, you want to sleep? You suck at it. Yes, practice makes perfect, but you’ve been attempting this for 48 years now and obviously you just don’t have a talent for it (seriously, as a kid, I didn’t sleep well either). Just give it up.

Mom brain realizes it’s only Tuesday and I have to survive three more days of school, and lack of sleep makes me cranky, and I’m already cranky with the kids because they think grades are magical things that I bestow upon them, and if they have an F, it’s because I did not bestow upon them something better. It’s never that they just didn’t do the work. It’s on me.

So that was part of the frustration of yesterday that dragged me home behind my car and made me too tired to stand at around 11 PM.

OK, yes, I know. Many people go to bed WELL before 11 PM. It’s a perfectly reasonable bedtime. But when you know you could finish the monster task you’re on by 1 AM? Sigh. Well, obviously I was tired. Annoyingly, I’m still tired this morning, even though I have an extra hour of sleep under my belt. Hopefully I’ll finish tonight (the ironing. Not the sleep).

Last night, I ironed a fox and some thorns and some clouds and lightning. Honestly, it wasn’t much. I added some browns for variety…

There’s some orangey browns for the fox too. But everything else was already in the boxes. The browns on the left, I didn’t put them away because I need them to hold up against the greens I haven’t yet picked for the leaves that grow on the brown branches (hello convoluted sentence). That’s where my brain balked, because I have multiple overlapping leaves, so I will need a run of greens and I was just too tired to contemplate it. It’s probably a good idea I didn’t, because my brain is sort of offline at the moment. Or there’s too many things in it. Hard to say which. Needless to say, I have a cut on my finger from cooking brainless last night, I’ve forgotten more than I’ve remembered, and my eyes are still at half mast.

It’s no fun to be annoyed by one’s own existence. I need to clean house, trim the bougainvillea so people can park in the driveway, clean up around the pool, fix the kitchen window screen, cut a piece of glass, buy a frame, hang some art, clean up, put the suitcase in the garage, dammit. How hard is that? The answer is that it all seems to take up so much time and I only have a few things I want to spend time on at the moment, and none of them involves a mop or clippers.

I’m in the 700s, smack dab in the middle of them…

Although there are some 600s shoved off to the side…mostly roots and grassy bits that I haven’t dealt with yet, and then all the leaves, I think. Then all the big stuff on the bottom is up in her hair…so yeah, I am nearly done. It’s hair and some facial details (lips, eyes) that are not flesh tones, and then the sun on her head and that’s it.

Dammit. Why didn’t I just finish it off last night (you were too tired). Fucking limited hours in the day.

Ah yes. I’m in a mood. An artistic mood. One that tromps all over all the other moods. Except they’re still there. I’m still fighting that low-level depression that messes with sleep and happiness and contentment. I think one of the things that makes me keep creating is that I’m never satisfied…that when I finish one, it’s not enough. It doesn’t fill up an empty inside me, so I have to make another one. No, that wasn’t The One…and there will never be a The One, guys…I know that…there will never be A Piece that makes me think, OH! That was it. You don’t have to make any more art. You’re done. You did it. That was The One. Fuck that. I keep making because it’s NOT the one. Because there’s still something to be said. Because I couldn’t put it all in one piece. Because that one said This and I still need to say That.

AARGH. It was a frustrating day yesterday and I’m still carrying all that inside me. Maybe if I’d stayed up and not slept and finished, it would be OK. Or maybe I would still be frustrated. And fucking tired. Wait. I am tired.

Here’s the bin of stuff to be cut out…it’s going to be very exciting over the next week watching that pile get smaller and smaller…

OK. Not really. I mean it’s slightly more exciting than watching paint dry, and sure, I get through a ton of stuff on my Tivo, but it’s not thrilling to watch or write about. But then the FOLLOWING week, I’ll be ironing it together, and that surely IS exciting. Plus it will be Spring Break, and Goddess knows I need that at the moment, even if it will be hours and hours of no one being around. There is no making my brain happy. Make art, which mostly has to happen in this solitary place, but you still need people…but not the ones that cause drama and scream at you. There’s a sliver of a place in there where I can exist and be content…if my brain lets me.