Well the man is heading back to the trail. I’m not driving him this time. I didn’t have another 8-hour drive in me yet. Yes, I will be meeting him in about two weeks…and it will be a long drive up and back, but not in one day. My hopeful plan is to go up, camp, hike up to meet him, and then hang out for a day and a half before driving him back to where he can get up to the trail. That’s the plan anyway…can’t actually schedule anything until he’s hiking and he’s made it to Kennedy Meadows and maybe Whitney. Too many variables. Honestly, camping will be impossible on the earlier end of our hike-time guesstimate, because of the 4th of July. It’s OK. We’ll figure it out. So he’s driving up to Ridgecrest today and getting a bus to the campground, and then he’ll start hiking early tomorrow to beat the heat. It’s cooler than it was last week, but still warm.
We had a last dinner out together for a while…
I shaved his head the next day…not the beard though. Definitely not the beard.
He’s completed 652 miles (approximately) of the PCT so far…only 1998 miles to go. Yeah. I know. Plus even to get to where I’m picking him up next for resupply is an 8+-mile hike off the trail. So more than that.
Meanwhile, I’m on Summer Break, which is mostly me being braindead and trying to finish things and falling asleep on the couch…
It’s a pretty rare occurrence during the rest of the year, so I’m just going with it. I’m exhausted. I must need rest. I also need exercise and to finish shit, though, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’m not the only sleepy animal…
Ever.
I am progressing on the newest quilt…this was Friday night…
There are lots of small pieces, but they go quickly…I finished cutting them out on Saturday night…
Just under 5 hours on that part. Then I sorted them last night…
After dinner with my parents for Father’s Day. Nice to have that.
Today, I’m hoping to clean up the studio, put all the fabric away, and start ironing the Wonder Under down. I like to try to keep my mind off the man leaving and the four months left before he comes back.
Gotta have stuff to do, books to read, food to eat, things to watch or listen to. It was nice having him home for 2 weeks, but he wasn’t mentally ready for that much time here…silly climate change causing big heat waves. Yeah. Not so silly. There’s another one coming in 10 days apparently.
OK. Tired. Seriously still tired. Maybe daily naps is a thing now.
This isn’t done. Started before dinner on Saturday…they brought the food really quickly.
Sometimes it takes two dinners out to finish a drawing…although I’m not sure when I will next be eating dinner out…
OK, so I’m going to make another cup of tea and do some cleaning, and then go run some errands. I need a new chandelier…not sure where I’m going to get that, but I need to get the electrician scheduled to fix, add, and replace some shit, then tomorrow I’m starting on the deck…fixing it up, plants to block the neighbors, both sound and view, and I’m still reading. Can’t stop doing that. Nonfiction break though, so that might be hard with this Summer Break mindset. We’ll see. Maybe it’s one chapter nonfiction, two fiction? Seems fair.
No Zoom teaching ever again. Or at least not for a super very monstrous long time, yeah? I spent yesterday afternoon taking the workstation apart…monitor from the district back in a box (they didn’t give us one until March 2021), extra computer unplugged and divested of my identity, all the school paperwork and notebooks and detritus shoved into my car, packed up, with the bag of extra frogs for dissection next year. All of it. Gone. I was at school by 7:30 AM, had my shit all put away in a variety of random places I will promptly forget before August…I’m gonna have to pull everything out anyway…and back home by 8:45 with a bag of candy for kid rewards and water for me. I packed up all the kid rewards for competitions they won and they are ready to go to the post office. I’m waiting on two Patreon emails to follow through on that task. I read my book for about an hour. Just sat my ass down on the couch with a cup of tea and read dammit. Didn’t worry about what I wasn’t grading or prepping. Didn’t freak out over some parent or kid email. Didn’t look behind me and see the document camera or the pile of school-related art supplies or my grading notebook. All FUCKING GONE. Yeah. I need this to be my home, my art workspace, but not my school workspace. For at least 8 weeks. I’ve never needed to say Fuck You to a school year so badly.
Sigh. Yeah. Brings tears to my eyes just to think about it. Too many kids, too much nonexistent curriculum. Onwards to summer!
I’m going to make art and do some yardwork and some house stuff. Mostly make art. Exercise. Read books. Hike. I set my reading goal for this year at 45 books for the whole year, but with the man gone, I have been reading a lot more. So I’m almost at the annual goal, but there’s 6 months left. I’m OK with that. I’m even almost OK with him leaving to hike again on Monday. He’s going to love the next section, I think. I hope. And I have some plans to meet him along the way. So that is the closest I get to a vacation away from here…and that’s OK. For now.
And drawing…I miss drawing. Damn. Need to draw.
And sleep. I need sleep. More of it. No more 6:15 AMs. Well, there will be a few…there always are. But a few is better than ALL the days. Wow! This summer feels so much better than last summer…although I will miss having the man around. Lots. Saturdays will be weird. I did sign up for a hike with my local group though…first one since just before COVID hit. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to lots of things.
Ah. Deep breaths.
So I straight up didn’t get much done last night…just cut out like 5 pieces of Wonder Under.
OK, maybe 10. I was exhausted. Calli was a big help. Ha! Not.
The night before, I was working on finishing up all the Patreon rewards…I hooped them, then backed them with felt. So I sewed 3 of them Wednesday night and 2 of them last night…oh yeah, I had school for the whole morning, playing games and watching videos with my advisory kids and another class. Then the end-of-year school party, where I saw people I hadn’t seen in 8 or 10 or even 16 months. And then I had a stitching meeting and that’s when I finished the other 2 hoops. Braindead, y’all. Totally and completely braindead. It’s normal! It’ll take me a week to find my brain again. It’s OK. It happens every year.
And my niece released another song last night…
It’s on iTunes and Spotify and probably other places…more of a pop influence on this one than the last two? Maybe? I’m glad she’s found this way to express herself…it’s a good thing to have. Check her out!
And here’s the finished Patreon rewards…whatever doesn’t get sent to a patron goes on Etsy…I’ll let you know.
They’re all 6″ hoops. I am reminded (again) that embroidery takes longer than quilting. And quilting isn’t fast, although this method is faster than what I normally do.
I have some other hoops that have been waiting a long time to be finished too…they are bigger, but will make it on Etsy soon enough. Clearing stuff out! Crossing stuff off! Feeling lighter and freer! Or something.
OK. I need to eat some lunch. Not rushing to do it in between Zooms! Not at 11:05 in the morning! Oh yeah. Teacher on break. Y’all can see the rainbows around me, can’t you?
Yesterday I talked my voice partially out of existence. What about? Um a tobacco curriculum that mostly (no, all of it) sucks, where I literally just read off slides and try to find the info that the company (STANFORD UNIVERSITY, WTF) put in the silly quiz. Wait. ANTI-tobacco curriculum. Sigh. My poor kids are putting up with it. And then teaching how to make pop-ups. Which I’ve never done before. Apparently for damn good reason. In the middle of all this, I get a call that I might be teaching a class of art next year too. To 6th graders. It always seems like a mistake to give me 6th graders. They’re even more sensitive than 7th graders and their parents are so protective. I’m like a bull in a china shop and then feel bad because I’m so used to the half-jaded 7th graders, as opposed to the fully jaded 8th graders. I’m not thinking about next year yet, because I can’t. I literally just can’t. Yesterday’s staff meeting got canceled and put in an email (a fucking miracle that) and this morning’s student meeting got moved later to while I’m teaching, so I don’t have to do it. Free time! Not really. I’m buried in classwork and grading and planning. I think I’m scrapping next week’s video final project for art for something that will grade faster…I like the idea and may use it next year, but not now. Not with everything else.
There are 10 days of school left. I can do this. I will need to sleep for a week, maybe two, after it’s all done, but I can do this.
I think.
OK, I did finish quilting the current quilt, good news. It was 10 1/2 hours of quilting in the end…not a small amount, plus an extra 30 minutes to quilt the quilt-block clouds on top. Wednesday night, I finished quilting and then trimmed the quilt before bed…
And cut the binding and sleeves, so I could be on top of it for Thursday…
Then Thursday, after picking up dead frogs and dissection kits from school, coming home and walking 3.69 miles, tasting mulberries for the first time ever (weird things those), and eating dinner…no wait! WHILE cooking and after dinner, I sewed on the bindings and the sleeves while the man was texting me from a hellacious day of climbing sand mountains and trying to decide whether he wanted to take a week off and come home (ah. That.), and then started the hand-sewing part.
Which I did not finish. But I have to finish tonight, because depending on whether I am driving 8 hours round trip to get the man, I will be dropping this quilt tomorrow at the photographer. (I’m hoping I’m not driving.)
IT’S GONNA BE FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE.
I am so exhausted. Really. Yes, I would love for him to come home for a week. This coming week is ugly, but OK, we don’t always get to choose, right? And he is going back on trail after that. So it’s all good.
Insert pink fluffy flower to prove everything is good.
The other day, I asked the man WTF he was doing around 2 PM because I saw this…
Apparently that’s what it looks like when you are mid-afternoon napping and you keep having to move to get out of the sun. Now you know.
I told you I demo’d pop-ups yesterday…24 of them. I demonstrated 2 different techniques in 3 different ways in 2 different classes, 2 times for those in the back.
No voice. Exhausted. Still gotta talk a big chunk of today, reading stupid ANTI-tobacco powerpoint slides with speaker notes. Did you hear my forehead hit the desk? And then teach more pop-up stuff. I’m not demonstrating today. I’m explaining and then hopefully just answering questions as they work and I try to grade things in the background.
This year. Sheesh. Fuck me. If two weeks on a tropical beach with fruity cocktails brought by cabana girls and boys EVER appealed to me, this would be the year. (I don’t get paid in the summer…it’s not happening.)
The first week after I drop the man back on trail seems to always be hard. Maybe it will be less so when school is not part of the mix, hopefully…right now, I’m trying to catch up on planning and grading, which is time-consuming as hell…yesterday I started at 7:15 AM, continued through until after school, went for a lab test real fast, came back, worked some more, took about 90 minutes for Pilates and dinner, and then worked until about 9:45 PM. I’m calling it 12+ hours. And nowhere near done. I’ll get there. I mean, the last day of school is the 17th. Grades are due some time before that. It will all get done, for some definition of ALL. But no art happened yesterday. Some happened on Monday, luckily, so I’m not feeling totally inept. Just mostly.
Plus honestly, I just really miss him and it’s a damn long time before I’ll get to see him again. It’s trail-dependent…there are many days when he’s in the middle of nowhere and there aren’t even dirt roads to get there. The next section is particularly complicated for that. There’s some chance of one connection at Kearsarge Pass, but if that’s before school gets out, then it won’t be until Tuolomne Meadows. And that’s a long time from now. He’s been having water issues, plus a heat wave, but today was gifted deer footprints and a Gatorade and amazing views. So that’s how his days roll. They seem simpler (not easier…just simpler) than mine. I see the appeal. Especially with 12 days of school left and meetings every day this week. And just plain too much work.
I did manage a hike with the boychild and one dog on Monday…
I’m trying to type this with Kitten rubbing her head on my face and the computer monitor. Apparently I need to pet cats more. Seems unlikely. But I am not a cat, so what do I know?
The old lady is still hanging on. She sleeps a lot. Simba needs long walks, so we do that at least once a week.
I also need long walks, so it works out. Although he brings these home in his fur…
Those are some fun seed pods.
I got a lot of the background quilting done on Monday…
I started behind the clouds and got more than halfway done…
I think another hour tonight would do it…if I can find an hour tonight. Union meeting after school. Who knows how long that will go. I’m already exhausted though and I haven’t even officially started working today. I need to get the quilting done and the binding on. Sooner rather than later. I’d really like to deliver this to the photographer this weekend. I can’t email him though until I have the binding at least machine-stitched on…then I have some chance of making sure it can be done. It’s OK…I have no social life, so beyond school and exercise and watering the plants and occasionally talking to the boychild and petting ALL the animals, I should be able to get more art done. Ha! This is been such a shitshow for making art. Between the stress and anxiety of the last 16 months of school and COVID and other stuff, and the sheer number of HOURS my day job has sucked up in that time, I have made very little art. I have ideas, I have the need, I have the want…I just don’t have the TIME. This summer? We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully from June 17 on, this gets better. I can’t conceive of putting this amount of time and effort in endlessly. I will lose my mind.
I’d like to thank this evening sky, AND my neighbors for having all their screamers inside and not ruining it, for keeping some of my sanity last night. Yes. I just stared at it for a while.
Also I was trying to keep this innocent-looking beast from eating my succulents.
I was grading things. Luna was not helping. That plant in the middle looks like that because of cats.
And Monday night, while trying to meditate. Sometimes they are just not helpful.
It does appear that they missed me.
Ah. Missing people. I’m feeling totally overwhelmed and in a bad place right now. It’s OK. It will pass. I will start working and realize all the shit that needs doing and that will take over the emotional stuff until later today, when I will quilt that thing until it’s done. Hopefully. And maybe this weekend, I can start drawing the next one or two or however many it will take before I feel like I’m artistically back on track and my day job is under control or on hiatus for 8 weeks (along with my paychecks, ah well). Yeah. It’s a day. Happy June! Happy Pride actually…that is a positive thing for so many people. May society get their collective act together and stop making the world a shitty place for those who often make the world a more wonderful thing.
I always appreciate a day off from teaching during the school year. I appreciate that I got to drive to see the hiking man and I still have a day to plan for school, because honestly, I have no clue what’s going on with 2 out of my 5 classes this week. Minor issue…I will figure it out. As soon as my brain wanders back from I’m Exhausted City. I appreciate that some people gave service in wars that changed our world, hopefully for the better, and I hope we have less need for said service and sacrifice in the future.
I did find out over the weekend that my piece at Quilt National sold. I do not know who bought it. I only saw the red dot (thanks to a friend for that). This is Fire and Water…
On the far left. I finally found someone who posted a picture of it. Thank you! I am planning on going to the closing exhibition…just couldn’t swing the opening. Hopefully school will be less crazy in September. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, we stayed in a “beach house” (nowhere near any beach) in Tehachapi…full of interesting bits and pieces…
The man claims I pick quirky places, but really, I just pick what I can find most of the time…
And I don’t mind quirky. We were almost at the end of a road out of Tehachapi…
Nice views…including deer…
But yeah, some quirk…
I feel like the aliens are everywhere we go…
It was nice to have a home base out of town a bit…
We don’t actually do much…just hang out…
With our friends. Yeah, it’s a mannikin. I did some drawing in fits and starts…
He’s on the phone…not something he can do on the trail usually.
We saw this weird refraction happening in a cloud at dinner one night…
And we tried out a brewery…
I’m not actually drinking beer. The guy called it a seltzer? IDK what it really was…
I did some drawing…
And this one might have been at dinner…
I don’t understand the giant-flags-in-truck-beds phenomenon. I also didn’t understand this sign in the bathroom until the man explained it to me…
So yeah. I’m not really a gun/flag-in-your-truck person. Obviously.
The hardest part for me (well, for both of us) is dropping him back on the trail…
This is at mile 566. And that’s where he turned back to wave.
He had a rough day yesterday. Water is short in this section and it was bright and dry and warm. Plus he took some days off and it’s hard to get back into hiking. He just got more water, but there’s an upcoming stretch of heat wave plus areas where there are no streams or springs, just water cached by trail angels. Scary bit of miles. Plus his pack is heavy with food for about 8 days of hiking. Hoping it will all be OK. It’ll be at least 3 weeks, probably more, before I can see him. There’s one place he has a plan to be pulled out, but if it hits before I get out of school, I can’t do it. We have a friend who will, but then the access for me to be able to get to him is a bit iffy for a hundred miles or so. Sigh. At least I will be out of school. I plan to drive up a little early and do some hiking myself, relax a bit. We’ll see how that goes.
So I drove home yesterday and was mostly braindead. It’s hard to leave him and come back to what feels like hard work at the moment. I did pull out the quilt in progress, which needs to be done SOON, and placed the dyed blocks on top. These are old blocks I bought off eBay a million years ago, and I never did anything with them. I dyed a few of them about a month ago, and I was going to piece them into the background, but then I didn’t do that. Then I was just going to place them on top, but that looked weird, so yesterday I had the idea to cut them into cloud shapes and use them that way.
I put a few little squares of Wonder Under underneath some of the edges, pinned them down…
Then stitched near the edges, not zigzagging, like I normally do, and quilted them down. Hopefully I’ll get this quilted and bound before the weekend. That’s my plan anyway. Along with everything else.
Last night, we had dinner at my parents and I was working on this Sue Spargo block…
I did one how row in the wrong thread. I’m not pulling it out. I will probably be the only person who notices.
The cats were glad to have me back, apparently…Kitten giving me the eyeball….
I’ve had both Luna and Nova on my chest, poking holes in my flesh…
And some play time as well.
Ugh. I am still tired. More caffeine. Check the to-do list. There’s some art stuff to do first, then some art stuff for school. I might get a walk in later, and then quilting tonight. At least this week is a short one…and school is getting closer to done. I’m more than a little panicked about getting all the grading done in time, but that is what it is. I also need to get my Patreon rewards finished…they are in progress, but all this travel plus deadline on the big quilt is screwing up my schedule. Ah well. Eventually everything will get done, one way or another.
Couple things about driving a million miles (not really) north to see the man:
1. Dear California: get the fuck over. If you’re not passing someone, get over. Seriously.
2. Google Maps needs a setting for mapping routes that takes into account the fact that I am a woman driving by myself in the middle of the night and I don’t want to be on an isolated two-lane road in the middle of nowhere unless there’s a damn good reason for it. Saving 5 minutes of drive time is not a good enough reason.
I’m in Tehachapi, California, hanging out with the hiking man for a few days. Yesterday’s drive was exhausting but totally worth it. I delivered new shoes and inserts (700 miles on the current pair), a smaller pair of pants, and a smaller hip belt for the backpack. Plus we get to hang out for a couple of days.
I did finish the outline quilting Wednesday night, so hopefully this quilt will get done in time for its deadline.
I have to figure out how to use at least one of those dyed blocks I did a few weeks back. They are part of the story. Maybe Monday? Hopefully.
I also stitched most of one of my Patreon rewards…
Hair is not a natural color. She looks angry. Not sure what’s up with that. Probably all the cat hair on the fabric. I’d be pissed. (No worries. I dehair and wash everything before it leaves the house.
Luna is talking to the birds.
Ok, well I’m hoping to do some drawing this weekend. Maybe draw the next quilt or two. Spend time making art this summer. Make up for the last year of too many hours spent on my day job. That would be good.
Art Brain is like a little kid who doesn’t like bedtime. I wanted to be done with the stitchdown last night, and if I’d stayed up another hour, I could have done it. In retrospect, since my body refused to fall asleep anyway, I could have just stayed up and stitched and gotten the same amount of sleep, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Someone should explain that to my currently very tired brain.
Wednesday night I managed to get the whole thing ironed together, finishing up the face…
And then added the birds…
Then pieced a background, ironed the top of the torso to the bottom of the torso, and pulled it all off the teflon sheet…
And in a total of 13 hours and a few minutes, had the whole thing ironed down to a background…
That’s faster than I have been working. Good sign. Fuck school. Right? I don’t know. Ask me about that next week. I’m always playing catch up with this job.
Then last night, I started the stitchdown during my monthly quilt meeting…
IDK why the machine is always crankballs in the beginning with tension and then it eventually warms up? gets used to it? gives in? and stitches just fine. Annoying.
I took a break at one point to feed the other cats and do some stuff.
Came back and my chair had been occupied. She did eventually shift her butt over to let me sit, and then left because I obviously was hogging the chair. Oh yeah, the other things I was doing included hot-gluing the scratching post back together…
Like you do.
I really wanted to be done with this last night. Like I said, I could have done it. But no.
Just the upper torso, arms, head, and birds left. Then sandwich and pinbaste. Quilt. Bind. Might actually make the damn deadline. Who knows. Made an appointment at the quilt store to get binding fabric tomorrow. It’s the only day they’re open late enough. Frustrating. I miss being able to go over there after work whenever I wanted. I miss lots of things.
I’m working on my annual Patreon rewards.
Got them ironed to fabric. Hoping to get them mostly done this weekend. I have one set up for embroidery, but I haven’t started it. No time!
In other news, the girlchild…
and her dog…or my dog…who the fuck knows who in the family owns this dog…
Putting masks to good use.
The cats?
Would kill me if I tried that.
The man made it to Vasquez Rocks…
aka Star Trek episode location…
My meditation app made me laugh out loud.
Whoops. I really did try to think of a time. Blank.
And this.
Although that’s a blood clot. Or a bus clot. Whatever.
OK. School. Do it. It’s gonna be a long day for that. Then I think more rock hauling for me and the boychild, although he’s working for my dad today too. So we’ll see. Maybe a dog walk. Maybe not. Then finish the stitchdown tonight, maybe wash the floor, maybe pinbaste? That’s a lot for tonight. Maybe wash the floor and pinbaste tomorrow. Might be more realistic after working all week. I need to design (from scratch) a thing for my art students to do next Friday while I am driving to see the man. I need to finish sub plans for that, assuming they can find me a sub on the Friday before a 3-day weekend (ah well, admin can earn their big bucks teaching my hellacious schedule if they can’t find a sub). I need to wash the beeswax out of one composter and hope the bees don’t come back. I need to figure out the summer budget and see if I can actually afford to do more than eat and sleep. Which could be good goals. Add reading…books are free from the library. Make art and try not to need any more supplies (uh oh…do I have batting for this quilt? Yikes. There’s something to figure out like ASAP). OK. Yeah. All that.
So the positive from yesterday is that I finished cutting out all those tiny pieces and then sorted them, so if I have the energy and/or brain power tonight, I can start ironing this quilt together. I’m actually behind on my scheduling…this thing has a deadline, so I’ve got to get my act together. Hello, Day Job, back the fuck off my personal time, eh? Yeah, I know. Whatever. Only 20-some days left of that crap. My co-teacher and I have labeled the weeks with what we’re teaching. All that’s left is biodiversity, Gorongosa National Park, frogs, the stupid lame tobacco curriculum, and some weird last week when who the fuck knows what we’re doing because grades are done and that’s when we usually do awards ceremonies and field trips because everyone is completely checked out. Five weeks. Five weeks of daily minor nervous breakdowns and feeling overwhelmed and not wanting to turn the computer on or sit in that chair. Then I can crawl into my pillow fort with all the books and try to figure out how to reset my brain over the summer. The next quilt is already in my head, but I might need to pump out a smaller one or two before that (man, this year has sucked so far for quilt completion…my head’s not in it, there’s so little time).
Wednesday night…Nova has been inhabiting the couch and my lap more and more these days.
She is the more adventurous (and chill) of the two younger cats. Luna is more chicken, more tense, more likely to take off, although she’s been hanging out behind the computer while I teach lately. I suspect that is bird related. The window looks out at a wire where the birds like to sit, hence to better poop on our cars.
Wednesday night…damn…I really wanted to be done, but it was late and I’m trying to keep to an earlier bedtime, so I stopped.
That was only another 25 minutes of cutting though…because I finished last night, easily.
That’s 11 hours and 14 minutes of cutting you’re looking at. With the man gone, I am spending more time on art at night. I guess that’s a good thing. Pros and cons.
I had a stitching meeting on Zoom last night, which I appreciated, because my brain was not happy with me. It was a few hours of not remembering the ugh. Afterwards, I sorted all the pieces out, so I’m ready to iron tonight…
There’s actually not a ton of pieces in this quilt…only 890. I think the next one will have more. These are all the 500s…in the flesh.
If I can manage to get most of my planning for next week done today, I can iron for most of the day tomorrow. I have some errands and I need to hike, but otherwise, I have nothing going on.
I also traced and numbered some smaller pieces for Patreon rewards. I have these small hoops leftover from something that I can mount them in…I think.
So those need to get traced tonight too. I’ll do some as small quilts and some as embroidery I think. We’ll see.
The cats are sort of getting along. As always. Guess where I sit!?
The man is working his way toward Wrightwood today. There’s a fire up in the mountains causing some smoky haze. I miss him lots.
He’s still up in the mountains, but the desert comes next. Water shortages and heat and all. A bunch of people have hiked this section backwards, because it’s all up. He’s not…he’s getting himself ready for the Sierras (smart move). Still another two weeks before I can see him again…hoping that works out, because after that, it’s gonna be a while, until after school gets out.
OK, I’m tired and not in the mood to teach. Doesn’t really matter if you’re in the mood, though. I do know that being physically in the classroom helps. Being around the kids, even when they’re being annoying twits, it refuels a teacher. I spend so much time sitting in silence, typing in the chat, staring at black screens…it just sucks. Next year will be better. Also, I’m still paranoid about masking/not masking and going out in my neighborhood. I’m vaccinated, but I’m just not comfortable with the unvaxxed masses that are in my neighborhood. “So don’t go outside,” they say. Fuck you. Get your damn vaccine. Give a shit about the rest of humanity. Yes, please, send their rejected vaccines to India or any other country that’s short and needs them. There are consequences to all this, y’all. I know, I’m preaching to the choir. Thanks for vaccinating. Thanks for considering humanity.
I think my brain is completely done with this school year. The adulting part of it is dragging the rest along, bribing it with walks and time with a book to get the shit done that has to be done. I’m so antsy in my work chair, I just want to get up and run out the front door, leaving all the kids on Zoom, or make a pillow fort under the desk and crawl into it with a book…not sure some days that they’d even notice I’d left. It’s all frustrating and hard and some of that is my brain not working right at the moment, but some of it is just because I am so done. I’m tired of excuses, of trying to get what I need out of the district, of parents who complain and kids who lie. I tell myself to look for the amazing kids, remember the thankful parents, remember when the district was helpful (OK, that one is a lot harder to do, but they gave us some extra money this year, so I’m trying to be thankful). Then I go read my book again or iron some fabric or cut something out and try not to let my day job be so present in my head. Hard to do. Really hard right now. I’m frustrated by everything, and I realize it’s feeling overwhelmed and tired and not having the normal connections with the Man…we get some texting in each day, but it’s not the same as sitting on the couch together or eating dinner together and talking. The texts are delayed sometimes, so you’re not sure whether they saw the other text? Sometimes I’ll ask questions that don’t get answered, so I figure he didn’t see it, or he’s often really tired at the end of the day. Yesterday was a long, difficult day, and he ended up sleeping on a picnic table. So I got one “I’m camping” text and then a few complaints about where he was camping (because humans suck and leave their trash everywhere because we are assholes), and then he was going to bed. I don’t blame him…it just sucks to be in the void on the other end.
This is what I see at the end of every day…
where he’s been, where he’s at. He’s been moving further each day lately, doing 18-mile days instead of 10-mile days. It’s a good thing. I have a date I’m hoping he’ll be home, and he will have to mile up (not speed up…he can’t hike faster…he just needs to hike longer each day) to get back. Plus the snow will eventually happen in Washington, whether he’s done or not.
Anyway, I’m hoping to see him on Memorial Day weekend, probably north of Lancaster…then not until after school, and the drives get much longer…not something I could do on a weekend. Sigh. At some point, I won’t be able to do it at all without flying and renting a car, which probably won’t work with going back to school in August. Although, at the moment, I give very few fucks about my job (not true; I still work my ass off. It’s just easier to say fuck it and take a day off…or it would be, if I didn’t have to do 5 hours of prep to make it work)…so maybe in September, I’ll just take a bunch of days off to get up north. Who knows. Right now, it just sounds complicated and difficult. By then, it might feel necessary.
Anyway, I try to ignore my moody bitch side as much as possible (it’s hard; she’s loud), and make sure I do some art every night and some exercise as often as possible. So I’ve been cutting things out…FOREVER, it seems like. Not really. This was Monday night…
The pile on the bottom right still needed cutting out…it’s a lot still. But last night, I seem to have found the bottom of the box.
Bottom left…look! I mean, that’s still at least an hour or two of cutting, but I can see the bottom. Woo hoo! Then sort it and hopefully ironing together by the weekend. My brain will be happier if I can spend a good chunk of time on Saturday just ironing things together. Good meditative state. Hoping for that.
Here’s the current art project my kids are doing…well my rough mockup of an illuminated letter.
They’re being slow as hell and not listening to directions and questioning shit and it’s just been fun. FUN, I tell you. Not really. I mean, I would have loved this project in school, but it’s harder to do online. I can’t really help like I would in the physical classroom. Which reminds me, looks like I won’t have to teach distance at all next year, only in person. Fucking miracle. Although I might have to teach an elective. Art? IDK. There is already an art teacher, but now the principal knows I can teach this, so who knows what he’ll make me do.
Gotta be better than this year. I don’t think the absolute isolation of this year is something I ever want to repeat. It was all about keeping me healthy and alive, and I’m still really paranoid about the unmasked and unvaccinated and the virus in general…not sure how to rid myself of that anxiety. I know my coworkers are dealing with massive behavior issues in physical school. Me? I just get checked-out kids. Nothing new here.
One of the school computers I use died. It isn’t because of Luna…who likes to hide behind the one that works.
They all hide around the computers…
Hello Kitten.
Nova has been coming nightly for pets…
Both of them like to be right in your face, sharp little claws in the boobs or belly. I have a ton of scratch marks on my body right now.
Luna likes the top two shelves in the closet too.
Sunday or Monday, she knocked the roll of quilts that’s on the top shelf down onto the floor. Rode it all the way down. Silly cat.
Yesterday’s walk was better than last week’s…not sure if I was dehydrated or just exhausted.
Tiny little flowers…
Sometimes I run into the ex and the boychild walking one or two of the dogs. Calli is really slowing down and not moving well, so sometimes we just walk the little one.
That one’s not native…it’s my neighbor’s. I saw it at the plant store and almost bought one, because they are so amazingly wonderful…
We’ll see. They are fascinating though.
I’ll finish up with the boychild’s amazing bread from Monday night…
He’s a really good cook. Useful skill. We’ll make him cook for the grandparents next. I find it amusing that I raised two kids who taught themselves cooking skills. I’m a Food Is Fuel cook. Just get it done. Sure, that’s because I was working full time and making art and raising kids and just trying to get them fed. I appreciate their cooking skills though.
OK, work work worky work, with a union meeting after worky work. After that, I cook (not so fancy, but utilitarian), and then finish cutting those pieces out, hopefully. I have a ton of things to grade and prep for school, but I can’t do those until some of the grading is done, so that’s my goal for today. I had one academic assignment yesterday that was just hurting my brain, so I made it about 2/3s of the way through and quit. I need to unquit today and finish it off. I also need more tea. Like now.
Aerosmith song running through my head this morning. Actually, yesterday, from about 1 pm on, this song was in my head, as I was trying to finish all the things (I didn’t finish, in case you were wondering. I can just about teach what I need to today, although I need to make one assignment and one video, maybe two, before school starts. At 9 AM.). I did manage to do almost no school on Saturday…Friday was a bit hit or miss. I had plans to get some posts done before school and then leave by 9 AM, but there was a Zoomergency (an emergency involving Zoom, not a zoo) and I spent that time trying to get my guest teacher access to my online classes. So has the right eye stopped twitching? It has not. It probably will not until June 18. I’m trying.
I drove over 3 hours, through traffic, construction, up a mountain road, and then up a dirt road…
2.3 miles, where the PCT crosses, I found the man. He was kinda dirty and a little smelly (actually not too bad, considering), and has lost a lot of weight.
We ate some food and checked into our AirBnb, which overlooked an airstrip (it was kinda cool watching the little planes land and take off). The place we ate had Marilyn Monroe in the bathroom…
Like you do.
He showered and started laundry and we just sort of hung out together, because it’s hard to have full conversations via text and even worse via Garmin, because there’s a time lag, and you’re never really sure what conversation you’re on when you get an answer sometimes. So we needed to catch up and clarify.
Our AirBnb had a nosy neighbor…
Yup. That’s a goat.
The man did some planning and spacing out and talking and I did some cutting out of the new art quilt…
Dinner on the first night included these…
OK, we didn’t actually eat those. But laughed at them. Saturday, we drove to all the places to try to find him food (four places for that) and pants that were smaller that might stay up (no success there). We didn’t go to the lake or do any touristy things. We pretty much hung out. Like back in the day when you first started dating. Just hang out on the couch and talk and watch videos.
And for me, cut more stuff out. The flesh is all done. I’m down in the Earth stuff, which is a lot of little pieces and will take a while.
We went to dinner early, so we could hang out (some more) in the jacuzzi, which had a tad too much chlorine in it…
OK, a shit-ton too much chlorine. But it was warm and nice.
And then the next morning, we got up really early and had breakfast and saw three bald eagles fly over us as we walked back to the house, and then drove up this damn dirt road again and saw three deer. He hasn’t seen larger wildlife…just heard it. Ironic that we saw those in the car. I’m sure he’ll see them in the future.
It’s pretty up here…
Some part of me would love to just drop my job and get the hell out of this house and follow, but I can’t. I’m glad he’s doing it, because although he has bad days, low moments, shitty stuff that happens, in general, he’s finding peace in his head and trying to figure out his future. All good things. All big things.
He was smiling just before this. I swear. I think he was feeling the weight of 5 dinners and 4 liters of water in his pack and thinking about that.
And then he took off up the path. Both of us were sad about that part, but that is a good chunk of this trip, missing each other. Not much we can do about that part but keep trying to meet up (not an easy task as he gets further away, for sure). We have tentative plans for 3 weeks from now, and then it will be after school gets out. I’ll have some more leeway then, but the drives get significantly longer.
See, that’s the PCT face…he’s looking good, looking happy, enjoying (for the most part) the trail…and the trip. After I dropped him off, he did 14.8 miles and ended up here.
It’s a good thing…a hard thing for both of us, but good.
Meanwhile, I have to catch up on work this week (ugh) and keep cutting out pieces (not so ugh). I’m still tired…went to bed early last night and still don’t feel rested. Not great.
The animals were glad to see me back, though, so that’s a thing. I laid on the floor with the cats and watched birds for a bit with them.
Yeah. I know. Weird. I like seeing things from their viewpoint sometimes though.
OK, buried in work today. My guest teacher did fine, except he marked everyone absent who was actuallyin class, so I’m trying to go through that mess. Hopefully making it to the art stuff tonight though. We’ll see. And missing the man. Sigh. There’s a lot of that going on.
Kathy Nida 