Struggled to sleep last night. School…the district…the dumbassery of nuclear weapons. Hey, let’s destroy the Earth so we WIN! I am disheartened this morning. I’ve had some good news lately; hopefully more on that in a little bit. I’ve also had a pile of disappointing news about school and some downright stressful news about Kitten. The latter is going to cost money…of course…the one thing I’m really stressing about at the moment. I am going to try to come home and walk tonight…and hike tomorrow, although the man has a show and I have a shit-ton of work on all sides to get through. I’m trying not to panic about that…one thing at a time. Go to school and do the things there first. Come home and walk somewhere.
I have been ironing more at night. Perhaps I should have done some of my taxes last night instead of ironing for 3+ hours, but I had a stitching meeting, so I can’t do taxes during that, and trying to do them after 9 PM seems dangerously close to making lots of mistakes. So I chose art.
The mule deer after the lizard…
Oh yeah, and that hare…
And a bobcat. Stitching will make them stand out.
Got the whole bottom put together on Wednesday night.
Then last night, I tried to do the sky. The plan was to just iron the whole thing, but ironing up both sides and trying to keep the bottom aligned when it’s wider than the ironing board was becoming a major (frustrating) issue). So I skipped half of the 400s and went into the 500s, figuring if I got the torso between the sides ironed, it would stabilize the two sides and let me continue up.
It’s still a bit wibbly wobbly though. I did all the 500s, which were mostly snake and spider details, plus rocky ribs…and now I’m thinking I should do the arms first and just get this section done, and then continue up. So that means putting the rest of the 400s back in a box so I have room to pull the 600s.
Meanwhile, I need to do my taxes…but here’s the whole chaotic thing right now.
Yup. That’s chaos. More tonight. More tomorrow. I don’t know if I can finish this before Spring Break, and I’m gone for most of that. Hopefully. If we can afford to even do the trip. Ugh. Sigh. I need to get out of here, but I also need to be able to pay the bills. And be sane. Whatever that is right now. Tenuous place. It is Friday, though.
And we have owl videos…
We moved the camera so we could see the entrance better. There must be eggs in there, possibly even babies, although it might be too soon for that. Mostly we see one owl, but occasionally both.
There’s lots of swooping we hear in the yard. Sorry bunnies. Not sorry rats.
I hope we get good baby pictures.
So I need to go to school. I know some of the news is gonna hit today. I will get an answer (probably not one I like) about one of the others probably today. I will get through the curriculum and try not to feel completely disheartened by all of it. I’ll try not to think about war and nukes for at least a few hours. I know I will get exercise and ironing tonight. And I will have some socializing tomorrow in between all the taxes and other stuff. I have a home. The bathrooms are mostly clean (thanks to the Man). I don’t have to cook tonight (also thanks to the Man). I can make art because no one is currently bombing my country. There are owls in my yard taking care of babies. These are good things.
It’s been a busy weekend…did a ton of grading and schoolwork-like stuff, made it to a quilt meeting, cut out a bunch of pieces, ironed some more, hiked for a bit, drove to a closing reception, sold a quilt (that was fun)…still not done with grading…or ironing…or cutting things out. But I have money to pay for the septic fix now (yay!) and the current quilt in progress is further along, and I should be able to finish grades today, one hopes, because they are due tomorrow.
Meanwhile, acknowledging Ukrainians trying to escape war and/or save their country from invasion while Russia behaves like a big asshole. So there’s that. On my mind, always. I have a newswatcher in the house, so even though I am gone for hours on end, I will get the summary at the end of the day. It doesn’t seem like it will end well. Certainly it has already ended badly for many. Sigh.
Meanwhile, here in San Diego, I ironed a little on Friday night, exhausted…
I’m in the 1000s…getting close. I got home late, because I stayed at school to grade all the art assignments and set up for today. Today’s Kathy appreciates that I did that, but Friday’s Kathy was pretty tired when she got home well after 5 pm. Owl box at sunset…
We’ve been having camera issues. It’s currently charging in here and will go back out this afternoon, if I remember. Simba demanded some play time when I got home too…
Saturday, I had my quilt meeting…nice to hang out and do art things in person. I took pieces to cut out, because I had a huge pile of them and it seemed to make sense. Then I ironed some in the afternoon after we hiked…it was cold out there and rained on us a little bit…
I guess ironing continued into the evening…
Still very green and brown. Which is OK…
We watched a movie with dinner. After the quilt meeting and the movie, I had this many pieces cut out…
The top box is cut. The bottom is not. There are still a ton in the other box that need cutting. Last night, I managed a whopping 29 minutes of ironing…
I think I ironed a rock and a chuckwalla. Getting closer to done.
And I sold a quilt! One of my favorites, but I think once I make them, I don’t need to own them.
They seem to really like the piece…I hope they enjoy her. The California Center for the Arts show is now closed; I brought home the other two pieces. There’s still one of mine at Visions Art Museum, and in April, there will be two more. I’m also going to be doing a Lightning Talk for the SAQA conference, so I’ll be working on that in the next few weeks…I thought I would have through the end of the month, but apparently not. Yikes. And I’m finishing up my copyediting job this week, as soon as I finish grades today. Deep breaths. Everything will get done. Everything will get paid for. I might even end up with some extra to put into savings. One can dream. Thanks to all who support artists though! We appreciate you.
Still watching news of war abroad. Still wondering what Putin is thinking. I spend entirely too much time wondering what other people are thinking, not in a “I wonder what they are thinking” kinda way, but a “W.T.F. are they thinking???!!!” kinda way. I should work on that. Also, war quilt in my head. I am back to wondering when I will ever be sitting here thinking, “OMG, I can’t think of anything traumatic or troubling to put on a quilt. I should make a pretty landscape!” Not dissing the landscape people; y’all bring us peace and beauty when we need it. Actually, the quilt I’m working on IS a landscape…and it’s not about politics or war or climate change or any of that. It’s just about the desert landscape. So that’s a thing. The last quilt was hard on me. This one is too, but in a different “what freakin’ color is a cholla tree” kinda way.
So yeah, I’m in the 700s. Finally I can definitively say I am halfway. 18 hours in too. Did some yucca and some cactus on Monday night…
Then last night was the cholla tree and something else that I don’t remember…
Agave…and some grasses. This is super slow. But I’m halfway up one arm. So I’m getting there. I keep discovering more green fabrics that are useful in this quilt. You don’t want all the greens to be the same. I don’t anyway.
I am grading every night too…and last night, I made it to the gym, mostly to read my book (it’s a good one! John Scalsi’s Lock Out…really enjoying it.), but I’m also icing the right shoulder, dealing with tendonitis I think of the rotator cuff. That is painful. Hopefully it will get better if I let it rest and just do everything one-armed. Thus probably damaging the other shoulder. Aach. Getting old. At least my tendons are.
I have made the plan (again, for IDK how many years) to participate (as best I can) in #igquiltfest2022 and #marchmeetthemaker2022. They don’t match up, so that makes it exciting, yeah? Plus a lot of the maker stuff…I don’t really sell myself. I sell quilts, but not as a real business. I did have a conversation with a friend last night about trying to set it up as a hobby for last year and this year…made some money, could deduct some expenses. We’ll see. It might take more brain power than I can handle. A lot of the Quiltfest stuff doesn’t apply because I make art quilts…every one is scrappy, I don’t have favorite tips, blah blah blah. We’ll see how it goes. I might not have a ton of mental space for it. But it’s why I took a picture with the drawing for the most recent quilt. I think I’m gonna put a river in her face. Maybe.
Anyway, slow process at the moment, but I get an hour a night. Grading this weekend will slow down the art, then the copyediting, and then maybe I’ll get a break? Maybe? Hopefully?
Ugh. OK, well more labs at school today. Survived yesterday, only two table groups were totally incapable of listening. Wait. No. Three groups. Sigh. One more class group on that set of labs today, then the rest of the week is demos and watching and reading and writing. They fight the last two. It’s kinda torturous. I have kids who are capable and care and get it done, and they’re just sitting there with nothing to do, and I wish I had the energy to create and set up (and eventually clean up) an extra fun chemistry thing for them to do, but I don’t have that energy. I’ll pop it into the calendar for next year, although I’m hoping the block schedule will go away so I won’t have to deal with it. Ha! The district wants it; I don’t. It’s too long, 79 minutes. MY brain goes into cognitive overload. It’s good for art; occasionally good for science, mostly not.
And more owl video…
Sometimes there’s like 60 videos of bugs flying around, but sometimes it’s owls…so cool. I’m excited. Can you tell? Yeah. I know.
OK, lab setup, grading, more ironing. Repeat. Think good strong thoughts for Ukraine, fuel and ammo shortages for Russia. Plus bad karma. Don’t attack neighboring countries. Bad Russia.
I’m a little slow on documenting stuff these days. I honestly keep losing days. How is it dark already? I remember getting up. What freaking day is it anyway?
I have one week of Winter Break left. I know I am lucky, because many teachers go back tomorrow, and I’d be really not ready to do that. I’m two weeks in to this ‘vacation’ and I’m still grinding my teeth. I think I stopped for two days, but that’s it. My to-do list is heinous. Then I get distracted, like today, obviously, and trim a bunch of plants that have been bugging me for two months, instead of crossing things OFF the to-do list. I mean, the plants didn’t even make it ON the list. Sigh. I think I focus better when I’m totally overwhelmed with teaching, simply because I have no choice. I have to do that…for survival’s sake.
So back to the 48 hours where we ditched the world. We got up the next morning, opened the front door of our Airbnb, and saw the chicken. The man says I have to call him a rooster, because it’s a definite sound difference, but I will argue that he is still a chicken. He kept trying to come in…
Finally shooed him out and figured out he wanted breakfast. I hope he liked it.
The place we stayed was definitely not the Ritz, but it was fun…this was in the bathroom…
And this was embedded in the floor…
What it lacked in niceties (a fireplace, working oven, consistent Wifi), it had in character in spades. After breakfast, we headed out to the Mecca Hills Recreation Area for some hiking. We’d hoped to go to one section, but my car wasn’t keen on the 9 miles of dirt (sand? ruts?) road out to it, so we headed for the Slot Canyon hikes on All Trails. The parking lot was definitely sand, but just off the road and pretty solid.
Again, hiking in washes…although we started in a really big one…
Signs of 4WD vehicles and shotgun shells for a while, but no people…
Eventually we turned into some smaller canyons where only people could go.
It was cold and windy most of the time, and kind of a trudge. Lots of sand and rocks and a slight uphill…
Very little wildlife to be seen, not even birds, and not a lot of living plants.
I like a good hike though. We got to a point where the canyon we were in would require climbing, and that was enough…I spent most of my brain power trying to figure out how to escape the water if it started raining (it wasn’t going to start raining, but I am the paranoid type)…
Weird cactus. So it was about 5.7 miles. Not bad. You have to like sparse desert landscapes and rocks for a hike like this.
We came back and wandered around Bombay Beach for a while to see the sights we’d missed the night before…the balls light up at night…it’s quite pretty…
It’s also an Airbnb. Same owner as ours, across the street. I like ours better because the yard was fenced. Lots of people wandering through the zigzag yard.
Not fancy. Quirky.
The trailers and sheds had art in them too. Interesting place.
Wall of TVS…turn right at the TVs to get to our place.
Down the road from there, is this wondrous beast…
Pretty sure it’s related to the one we saw in Joshua Tree back in February. Oh yeah, it is…Randy Polumbo did both. This is Lodestar; the other was Angel Queen. Fun stuff.
From there, we headed back to the beach, further down from where we were yesterday…
I enjoy random metal and concrete sculpture personally…
And a good sense of humor…
And some good colorful grafitti…
The museum was not open, unfortunately…
And pigeons lived here…
I’d seen photos of this online and was glad to find it…
The hardest part of all these installations is finding artist info to go with them…
All I can tell you is that it is in the Bombay Estates.
Back home for dinner, reading, and drawing, because no TV…fine by me.
Very 70s. That night’s drawing…
And morning chicken…
We stopped by the drive-in on the way out…
And then kamikazed back home after talking to almost no one.
Meanwhile, back here…after New Year’s, I proceeded to make 17 more mistakes on this…had to rip out an entire tree, because it was half a stitch off and that won’t work.
Nope. Wasn’t drinking. Promise.
I’ve been ironing…it feels like this quilt is taking forever. Because it is. I got this leg done so I could insert it into the landscape…
And then worked on building the stuff up on the other side…a cat and a quilt of a cat…
Ironed her separately and put her in the landscape as well.
Here’s some bits and pieces I had left to do…mostly snake and bird, I think.
Progress as of Friday…
Leg in place. It’s just a really detailed piece is all.
Then Saturday, I kept going…
Pain. In. The. Ass. Yeah well. I’ve done the 600s and the 800s and barely started the 700s, plus I think a few of the 900s are done as well. So I have about 300 pieces to go? Or 400? I don’t know.
Great Horned Owl…
Which brings me to one of my Xmas presents, now installed and ready for inhabitants…
My very own owl box. I’m happy. And it’s on a system that can be lowered for cleaning, hopefully not when owls are in it. Awkward maybe. We’ll see.
Other things that happened. This cake made a spaceship on top.
It was the boychild’s 25th birthday yesterday…
His cake request was intriguing. No, I was not smart enough to take a picture of the final product. Apparently it’s better warmed up. IDK. I’m allergic to chocolate.
Coyote print from the front yard. They are here, y’all…right here.
Couple photo from the Salton Sea, stolen from the man.
My eyes might be closed.
So back in March, I asked for paint pens for my birthday…or maybe Xmas last year? I can’t remember. And then when everything shut down, I ordered gessoed canvas. I had see some posts Judy Coates-Perez put on Instagram (it’s a guide on there; can’t remember how to find it, wait, no, go here to her Instagram and then click on highlights and you can get to it there.) for how she paints and then uses the pens to decorate her paintings, and I wanted to try it. It took forever to get the canvas, and then school sucked and summer came and stressed me out with all its We Don’t Know What School Will Look Like shit and then Real School happened and kicked my ass, although at some point, I cut up some of the canvas into smaller pieces with some ideas to make some different stuff. Well, y’all, it’s been on my to-do list since fucking April, and I’m finally doing things with all the paint and pens. OK…just the paint so far, but I’m hoping to get the complicated stuff that requires plastic and water done so I can draw in peace over the next month or so.
Luna inspecting the biggest one. I drew a faint outline of a human figure in pencil on this one…
And on the others. I prepped four of them.
I wanted to just block in some color shapes to start…
I’m not really a painter, but it’s OK, because I’m going to draw all over this, Nida style. I think. We’ll see. Because I usually only draw in black and white and these are colors.
Obviously, right? I’ve got some more painting to do first. But I think this will be a nice change for me. We’ll see how it goes.
Also still baking sourdough, y’all, although the girlchild gifted me a lame, so I can stop using the box cutter to score the bread, and this nice glass starter container, so I can stop using the crappy plastic container.
My starter is still super happy to be alive. So that’s a plus.
From the book I’m reading, Gods of Jade and Shadow…
A good thing to remember for the new year. Well, like I said, I have a week before I go back, and now I need to actually do schoolwork (again) this week. I have one ungraded assignment, a few late assignments that kids have turned in, and a bunch of prep to do for all three classes. Science is mostly planned, but there’s details to get done. Art is a clusterfuck. Don’t even ask me, because I don’t know. Plus I’m dealing with the car, my teeth, and who knows what else this week. Making 23 videos about the elements (periodic table elements, not the other kind). And hopefully finishing the ironing of this quilt and the painting of those backgrounds, and somehow steeling myself for the next 6 months of teaching. UGH. I’m so not ready. Luckily I don’t have to be. Yet.
Kathy Nida 