I turned 54 yesterday. It’s an OK number, divisible by 9 and 3, not a prime number, but it’s good. Yeah, numbers sit in my head in weird ways. What can I say? It was an acceptable birthday. I felt well, got enough sleep the night before for once, had a break from teaching in the middle of the day (prep period…can’t say I was particularly effective, but that happens), exploded some baking soda and vinegar for class, texted about 10 parents about their kids (one was FINALLY a positive, made me so happy; I have so little time for everything, that the positive contacts have been the first to go), went for a non-strenuous walk, and went out to dinner. My Assistant Principal was my waitress…first time I’ve seen her since some time last March, I think.
It’s weird how our brains are training themselves to recognize people with their masks on. So that was cool.
I did not work after 3:30 PM on school stuff. I probably should have, but the world will not end if I didn’t grade an assignment yesterday. It will end because of the patriarchy and/or human stupidity. Straight up.
Really, if there hadn’t been a pandemic, it would have been a great day to take off and hike, if I weren’t on hike restrictions at the moment and we weren’t doing chemistry labs. So there’s that.
In art, we did a little blind contour drawing…
Bowie is looking good.
I also finally pulled one of these out. I bought canvas last May, I think, wanting to try this. Finally painted backgrounds in December? January?
I have about 4 of these done. And the other night, I finally had the guts to draw on one of them.
It’s kind of fun. This isn’t done. And I need a better white. This one isn’t that good. Actually, I need about 700 more colors to make me really happy, but this is good for now.
I also decided to finish this old hand-applique art quilt. It’s been lying around for way too long, and my sewing machine is still at the shop.
It’s a bit of a mess in terms of tiny little pieces, but I haz the skillz. So far, I’m only missing one piece, which isn’t bad. I think I started this in 2000? Something like that. I’m not sure there’s documentation of anything that far back. I used to put dates on the drawings, but this is an enlarged photocopy and the date isn’t on it. I don’t know where the original drawing is. And it pre-dates my writing the blog. So who knows? I can just place it after the last one I know I finished, which was January 2000. After 21 years, it deserves to be finished.
Cat NOT helping with chemistry setup…
One of the reasons starting another quilt in my normal fashion is not really happening right now. Nowhere to do it. Which reminds me, I need to set up for more chemistry demos today. And tonight is a union meeting, and I really do need to grade some things. But hopefully, I’ll get back to either drawing on canvas (and trying to figure out how I will finish those pieces when I am done drawing) or working on the hand applique. May my 55th year on the planet be full of vaccinations, openings of the things that keep me sane (hello art and museums and music and the like), and a shitload of art.
Ah yes, and this guy…
Whose cute little face was poised under my plate the other night, ever hopeful that I will spill all the foods.
Well, that came up quickly. I have 5 minutes to write this post. There’s no way I can do that. What happened to the morning already? Oh yeah, I did 5 work things before I sat down to write. Duh. I still don’t know what I’m doing for my art warmup today…should figure that out. My brain is all over the place. AND tired. Not a good combination.
In art news, I finished painting the 4th background…
Saturday night? Because that’s what you do.
Hopefully I will now start drawing on them, instead of being terrified to do anything to them. We’ll see how that goes.
I cut the pieces out for one of my Applique Stories women.
She seems surprised. Need to stitch all this down.
And I finally started stitchdown on the current quilt.
I only got 15 minutes in last night before I persuaded myself to go to bed. Hopefully more tonight.
Kitten is a great support.
Saturday afternoon’s 4-mile walk was full of people…
But mostly flat, and that was requested, so there we are.
Ugh. I’m so tired. It’s OK. I’ll figure my shit out. Hopefully. First day back to school in 2021. May it go well. May I figure out what the hell I’m doing.
This week has been interesting. I’m all over the map on what to worry about. Maybe better to not worry. Make something in fabric. Except I don’t have anything ready for my art classes, minor issue, keep waiting for info, but I don’t have any, so I guess we’re making sculpture out of celery and cilantro. It’ll be fine. FINE. I can’t concentrate on much either, so that’s helpful, brain, thanks so much.
I will panic more about school tomorrow. Really. It probably will involve celery.
The quilt is ironed together and I’m ready to stitch it down.
That will hopefully be an easy task. Who knows, though.
I’ve also been trying to finish the painted backgrounds, because I need to clear off the light table for teaching this week. I added the figure for this one.
Again, gonna be drawing on top of them later. Then for the biggest one, I did the figure first…
Shiny wet in the middle. And then started to paint the background.
I have to wait for parts of it to dry before I can paint the next bit.
I’m almost done with it. I’ll be drawing all over this one.
Still cross-stitching this…
I have other things I’ve been working on while watching bits and pieces of non-news TV. Really nice to not watch the news. I also finished a book…because that seemed important at the time…
I wanted to know what happened. Calli did too.
Cat play time…I knocked all the boxes over…
The cats enjoy words like “under” and “in”…
I’m thinking a box fort for the next 76 days (Spring Break). For me. Not the cats. I mean, they can stop by, but I really need the space.
Also this. As art. Because I don’t have enough going on.
It’s OK. It probably won’t happen. My life is about to go into overdrive again. Probably also I need help with the art planning for school. I’m not gonna get it, but I need it.
Today, I’m hoping to finish that one big background, and to start the stitchdown on this quilt. I’m in a quilt guild meeting online right now, so as soon as I finish this, I’ll probably cut some fabric out on the applique stories piece I’m working on right now. I’m tired, but we should walk today and maybe play a game tonight. I think. And tomorrow, I’ll panic about school. For realz.
I moved my calendar. It’s now to the left of the computer instead of the right. I keep looking to the right, staring at the blank space, thinking “where the fuck is the calendar”, remembering, and looking to the left. I’m wondering how many days before I just remember to look to the right. Probably not a lot. We relearn simple shit like that, if our brains are in working order, pretty quickly. I feel like I’m unlearning how to teach this year. This is not how I like to teach. So much of it is direct instruction, cutting corners, just telling them stuff we’d normally have them figure out on their own in groups. Ugh. Don’t forget how to teach. Don’t forget what it feels like to be in the classroom. Seeing their faces. Responding to their understanding there instead of in the chat.
I made one longer video yesterday for school; 23 short ones to go, but I need to get the Man to stop watching survival TV long enough for me to do that. Later today, maybe. We delivered two quilts yesterday for a SAQA show, Here and Now: Now and Then, at the Front Porch Gallery in Carlsbad. The show opens Sunday; 10 people are allowed in the gallery at a time. After that, I wanted a walk in a different part of town, so I persuaded the man to wander off into the Mount Calaveras area…we were expecting a chill walk by a lake. Not so much.
There was a steep downhill and then a steep uphill and then some bushwhacking crap and trails wandering all over…
We eventually found something that might have been a lake, but never got near it.
We backtracked a few times, had to follow the app to get us out. Found a fucking volcano (who knew? Actually, I vaguely remembered it existed…)…
No one should allow me to pick hikes.
To get back out, we had to go back up the hill we’d gone down. Weird how that works. There’s the volcano in the distance.
It was fine in the end. Finished it off with a trip to Costco (oooh exciting) and picking up my car, which needed an oil change, but broke some lug nut stud in the process (oops), so that cost more than I had thought it would. Poor car hasn’t gone hardly anywhere this year.
My goal is to finish up the background painting on all four of these this week.
Then I can draw on them in future weeks…
To draw on them, I don’t have to clear the entire work table, so that will be easier. I think that’s what kept me from doing these until now…work space. Although that doesn’t explain flailing over the summer. Nothing really explains that.
After doing that background, I set off to continue in the Land of Fussy Ironing.
I did get the entire background done, though…it took a while, but I did it…including the rocket ship.
All I have left now is the main female figure: her torso, arms, and head. LOTS of fussy little pieces. But I’m going to iron them all together separately and then hopefully just plop that mess on top of the existing background. I laid out the 900s last night, plus the 1000s and the 1100s. So still a bit under 300 to go. Slow as fuck, this one. Slow as fuck.
It’s OK; it will get done. It gets easier from here. Maybe give myself a break on the next one, less complicated. Yeah right. Today, I’m baking bread, like a good pioneer woman, plus making a bunch of videos, posting shit for school, can’t remember what else is on the to-do list, but it’s good and fat and long (ugh). Tomorrow, we’re doing the 5th and last hike in the Coast 2 Crest Challenge…hoping for chill weather. So many things need to happen before next Monday. So many things.
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.
Good morning Sunday. I don’t usually write on Sunday. I consider it my day off. But I didn’t write Saturday, because I got up late and then had to get out of here for a social event. No way! I know. It’s crazy.
But honestly, I didn’t get anything done on Friday after school except some work and going to see the man’s band play. After that, sleep. Sleep. And sleep. All the sleep I didn’t do during the week.
So instead, yesterday morning, I picked up my birthday friend and dragged her, with her art degree in painting, and we went to a bar to paint someone else’s vision.
Except, if you know us at all, you know we won’t be listening to the teacher. Much.
So you can see the teacher on the left and her sample on the right. And what she’s telling the students to do.
Neither of us understood the stripey thing, so we kinda blew that off.
You can’t make us. Laurette’s is on the left; mine is on the right. Then we did consider other options besides the tree…like a dinosaur. I was going to do the silhouette of a woman, but this is going in my prep room at school, so kids will see it.
Notice the glass of wine in the left hand. That might be the only way to do this shit.
Not bad. Certainly it was relaxing and amusing to hang out. Although I’m pretty sure she needed a nap afterwards. That’s how we know we’re old. We can’t drink in the middle of the day without a nap.
We were at Twisted Taps…and there’s a Gloria Muriel mural on the left. I feel like I recognize the other two artists as well…but can’t remember their names.
OK, thank you Google. Erin Yoshi did the giraffe…and Amandalynn did the butterfly piece. Very cool.
On the way home, I saw one of the neighborhood goats.
Good way to control all those weeds.
I eventually quilted for about an hour. I’m most of the way through the 3rd side, with a little incursion into the design.
Probably there’s another two hours to go on this…at least. I’d like to get it done tonight. We’ll see. I’ve got a ton of schoolwork to get through first.
Then we went out to a small opening in a garage…this is Cindy Zimmerman and her distinctive pieces…they are all saints.
Good little show. Then dinner and trying to stay awake. I quit trying and gave my body what it needed. Sleep! Bless it. OK, off to work on many things.
Two places are safe at the moment: deep in a storyline like the one from the blog title, or way up in my artist’s brain, tracing or ironing something. There is nowhere else that I can be at the moment that doesn’t hurt. I’ve been divorced for a long time–the separation took place in 2002–but there are still things that can happen related to the divorce that are reminders of that stomach-dropping nausea of realization, that cut you deep and make you wonder why people behave as they do. It’s convenient, I guess, if you don’t have to consider your actions and how they relate to other people. I guess if that’s how your brain works. Mine doesn’t. I’ve spent a million years considering my actions.
So yesterday. Yeah. I read, I meditated, I traced Wonder Under…
because otherwise I would crawl into a hole of WHY? and never come out. I’m not in a good place; I know that. I’m trying. I’m staying busy, too busy probably. I am letting some things drop, just because I can’t seem to do ALL the things. My brain. It sucks.
I traced the last three birds, which were bigger and more complicated than the others, but still, I’m at about 30 minutes for the larger birds…the quickest bird I’ve traced was number 3, in just over 7 minutes. The next step is to cut out all the Wonder Under…and then I’m supposed to iron to fabrics, but I think I need to finish ironing this big quilt, which I haven’t touched in a few days. So maybe I force myself to do that today. It was overwhelming last night. I couldn’t get my head there. It’s easier to trace Wonder Under, a kind of brainless task that also engages a huge part of my brain that would otherwise wander off into rumination ruination. Tonight it will have to deal, though.
So we did finally finish painting the smaller room…two shelves ended up needing 3 coats to cover the previous layers of dirt and yucky. Then we started pulling apart the dining area…the boychild really is a slavedriver in some ways. He seems to enjoy the archaeological-dig aspect more than I do. We’re tossing and recycling a ton of stuff, and then the girlchild came home and started on her piles, so that helped. Here’s where we’re at now…
Lots of furniture moving around and books being boxed. Still need to deal with the piles on the table, but honestly could paint with all that there…but today is wash and patch day…because I need to deal with this…
this remnant of trying to find a water leak that wasn’t a leak at all in a part of the house that has no water pipes. Long story. I have the stuff to fix it, but need additional stuff, which might be coming from the Dad Store…you know what that is. It’s the pile of stuff your dad has in his garage that helps you finish your project without having to go back to Home Depot for the 10th time. I just didn’t have it in me yesterday. I went to Dixieline (closer) to get plug plates for the walls, handed them to the boychild, and he promptly broke two of them by overtightening the screws. Nice. Anyway…today I fix that hole and a bunch of smaller, less-challenging ones, and we wash walls (if you never move your furniture, you never know how disgusting it is behind it, which might be a good thing), and tomorrow we paint, because we will have three of us…although I do need to go back to Home Depot for more paint (I knew two gallons wouldn’t be enough, but I was having a hard time envisioning three…no longer having a hard time with that.).
Then the mirrors…damnit, the guy I called is flaking on me, set an appointment and then didn’t show up or return phone calls, so I guess this is one of those jobs that people don’t want to do. So I will call someone else today, but we can’t paint that last bit until we get those down…although we could do the other two walls in the main living room. Here’s the offending 1970s crap…
Yeah. I know. Wall ‘o Mirrors. Been staring at them for 16 years. They’ve been covered with kid art all that time because I really hate them. Plus the mantelpiece. Sigh. It’s going.
Anyway, speaking of going, I’m supposed to be at a temporary art install in 32 minutes, so I should go. Summer is not low stress, for sure, but hopefully I can keep my head away from yesterday’s bullshit. People suck. OK, not all of them suck, but enough of them suck that I feel like staying away from lots of them for long periods of time. With books. And art instead.
Back to my high-school epithet: Fuck the World. Not the healthiest mantra, but occasionally useful. At some point, I will replace “the world” with the names of the people responsible for my current state. And then I will kick their asses. In art, of course, not real life. Oh yeah, you piss me off? I will make unflattering art of you. Expect it. Whoops…that sounds sorta vengeful. Sorry.
Kathy Nida 