A Me Thing

Hello? I’m sorry…95 degrees today? 97 on Monday? It’s freakin’ October? Some people are wearing sweaters this week in other parts of the country. No thank you. Too hot. Not a fan. NEED a fan.

Speaking of weather, the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene to the southeast…distinctly awful. I’ve seen too many art studios that flood waters kamikazed through, and that’s not even dealing with lost lives and homes. We have a friend who was supposed to be moving to Johnson City this fall, but they had delayed the decisionmaking. I’m not sure what you do. I mean, I remember when I was living abroad, people would always shake their heads at living in California, with “all the earthquakes”…that was before we were Wildfire Central. There’s certainly no escaping the crazy weather patterns caused by climate change at this point…there’s just mitigation, remediation, and plain old survival…if you’re lucky. I’m going to donate to somewhere…just haven’t decided where yet.

That same weather has delayed one of my quilts from arriving, which is not a huge deal compared to what actual people are dealing with…I see it made it to Jacksonville…if I’d known a hurricane was arriving…who am I kidding? I shipped it the first day I could, based on grades being due etc. It’ll get there when it gets there. The gallery probably has a bunch of pieces they’re waiting on. We’ll all survive the delay.

Meanwhile, my art here is all bugs, all the time. I have things in my head, but I need to get the bugs done by next weekend for delivery. And sanity. So I got two sewn down to the canvases on Monday night…

The third was fussy. The paint needed to be redone (they all actually needed it…sloppy painting the night before). This one, there was a flake of something shiny in exactly the wrong spot. I think it was the paint off the paintbrush handle. My paintbrushes are all ancient. So I picked that off…should have painted it Monday night, but ran out of time. Painted it last night, and then ironed the ladybug together…

I did two of each bug: one normal bug colors (for that bug) and one NOT normal…tending toward rainbows. I also trimmed the Wonder Under for the last bug. I had bugs in different stages of the project so people could see what it looked like in the demo. So now I have four ready for stitchdown, and hopefully the fifth tonight.

I also went to ceramics on Monday. I had this thing that was supposed to be another mug (ha!), but was way too big (I will never learn), so now it will be a planter. I had painted it with all the leftover underglazes and started carving it.

Or here’s the picture…there were so many people in the studio on Monday. It was too many people for me, really. I prefer a quiet Friday afternoon.

I need to make a decision about buying more clay. I did some touchup on the boot vase and reduced glaze on the paper bag vase…need to touch that one up a bit. I’m worried the glaze is going to run everywhere.

This is the opening between my kitchen and the living area. It’s usually not blocked by a baby gate, but we have an inquisitive kitten who has decided this is where he will climb into the kitchen 17 times a night. So baby gate.

Don’t judge the mess there. I can’t seem to get it under control. It’s totally a me thing. Not a priority. Why would it be when I have bugs to iron?

OK. Wednesday. The last two days, kids have been sleeping in class. Today is a lab. Hopefully that will help. I can’t be amazingly entertaining all the time. It’s exhausting. I couldn’t get into pilates this week (ugh scheduling), so I went to the gym last night (and finished my book! yay!). Tonight is book club. I read the book and three more in the series. It’s light, but enjoyable. Ghosts and dead people light. Not traumatizing. Then hopefully more bug things. I’d like to be done with bugs soon, finish the clay pieces, and then start the next big quilt. I like working on big quilts. I like reading big books. I like coming home to things that I’m already immersed in and can continue to be immersed in, instead of trying to start new things. Also a me thing.

A Deadline

Some weekends, all I do is try to check things off the to-do list. I did mop the kitchen floor. It seriously needed it. I watered some things. I will need to keep doing that. It never stops. I tried to find someone to trim a bush, someone else to clean a pool (I’m close on that one), and a solution to the pool shed that is falling down. Not as successful on that. I need a ton more money to fix all the things. I graded two academic assignments…I’m glad that’s done. It wasn’t really how I wanted to spend Friday night, but I was dogsitting anyway and not in the mood to get up and be active, so I just sat there, bingewatched bad TV (some YA ghost thing), and graded most of them. I finished the rest last night. That’s a weight off my shoulders. That gives me some time this week. To what? I’m not sure. Get a bunch of little projects done. I might need to start drawing the next big one. Not sure what deadlines I have coming up. I entered a show. I probably will get rejected from one today, so it seemed fair. I entered with three pieces that have never been shown, and two of them are not new. I figured I should give them a chance, and if I didn’t get into the show, oh well. No biggie. Don’t have to figure out how to get to the opening! Or deliver the piece. Weird attitude for an artist who likes to have her work shown, sure.

Here’s what Friday night looked like…

Lots of nervous Annie with Bowie. When Annie gets nervous, she gets very close or in my lap. Bowie was not impressed.

I graded things that looked like this…

This one actually made no sense for the question. I did have some that made more sense in the drawing than in the explanation. Sigh. Had to reteach what evidence was because of this assignment. It’s fine. I even graded all the kids who transferred to the new section on the other team. Cuz it would be mean not to.

The Man had a long wedding on Friday that his band played for…the last wedding they’re doing is this Saturday. These things are kicking their butts…so much prep and then so much waiting around. I don’t go to the weddings…no desire to sit through that. Saturday’s is at the beach, though, so I might wander down there and sit on a chair with my stitching or a book. Or just go for a walk. I don’t know. Bring the dog? Not sure dogs are allowed down there. ANYWAY. It has sucked for us…he’s exhausted on the day after, so I took the dog for a walk without him…both the dog and I needed it. Honestly, I think he needs it too…more exercise would be good for all of us.

Simba was definitely out of shape. But we did 2 miles.

Artwise, I tried to find a better finish for the bug quilts, something that took less time so the price would come down, but that would still look nice. So I got some 8×8 canvases and painted them…

And then attached the quilts to that…which is always a pain in the butt because the wood framing is inevitably in the way…

But it worked! I need to finish three more before the 12th? I think? Easy peasy. And I think I can finish the other two pieces for the clay the same way (minus the canvas)…but I need a diamond tip drill bit too. Home Depot trip. If I remember.

I drew at dinner Saturday night…

A bit better than all the car drawings I saw the night before.

Yesterday, the Man’s dad had a surprise birthday party at the Jazz Lounge over by San Diego State. It was a nice couple of hours…mostly listening to music.

Jazz isn’t my favorite, but this was mostly old classics, so I knew most of them.

I came home and worked, because it has to happen sometime. Today, at our staff meeting, we get to ‘debrief’ the poverty simulation from last week. Not sure what to say about that. Did I gain new understanding? Um. Not really. Empathy? Already had it. I guess it’ll be interesting to hear what they think we should have learned. And then we get to make phone calls for an awards ceremony. I totally love the awards part, but wish there were staff who could make the phone calls…there are so many translation issues when we call parents. I’m sure it will be fine, and it’s for a good thing for once.

That’s always me. Gotta prep a lab today for Wednesday. Gotta plan next week…and next week…and next week.

This is too real.

OK. School today…watching a movie…Bill Nye. It’s where I’m at. Vocab and preteach Newton’s second law tomorrow, then lab Wednesday. We have Friday off…random 3-day weekend. I’m using it to get my labs done, two vaccines (because you can’t get in to a nurse for a vaccine before or after work…it’s 8:30-3:30 only…like WTF?), and a blood test or two…fasting…so that’ll be fun. And a smog check! What a day. Maybe ceramics if I’m lucky. Gotta do some stuff at home too. Always. That shit…I never get caught up with that. My goal is to get the hallway done before the boychild comes home. I have 3 more weeks. I might get there. Nice to have a deadline I guess.

Buggy

Whoo! Finally made it to Friday. And the tea is cold. Back in a minute. OK, so lots going on. Trying to finish some small bug quilts I started back in July. I originally made these for the Oceanside Museum of Art street thing, where I demoed for an hour or so. I had one premade, some in different states of existence, and some I could do in front of people. And then they languished, as things do when they have no priority in the to-do list. They’ve been in the bullet journal list since then, but always at like number 4 or 5. So now there’s a place that wants to sell them for me (always a plus), so I need to finish them…but the original hand-sewn binding takes too long and makes it too expensive (yes, I actually charge for my time. I think it’s important that artists consider their time when pricing things). So I’ve done a satin-stitch binding in the past. I’ve also done some canvas wraps…so I thought I’d do a combo of that. Actually, the combo part came to me at around 10:45 PM last night. There’s a heft to putting these on a canvas that is helpful for people NOT thinking they are coasters. Which they’re not.

So process…find all the things I made back in July…figure out what step they’re at. I embroidered some legs Tuesday night and some more legs and antennae Wednesday night…

More legs…

These were quilted in July…just waiting on the embroidery and finishing.

I have some that are still pieces in bags. Not dealing with those right now. Also I have some that I ironed down at the event…

They need to be stitched down, sandwiched, quilted, embroidered, and finished. Probably not starting with those three.

And this is the one I finished that will be too expensive for this venue.

So last night, I did the satin stitch on one of the other ones…

Much less time. And I ordered canvases that are just a little bigger than these. They come Saturday. I’ll paint them and then attach these.

I’ve been keeping track of the time on the original drawings, but also a spreadsheet, because one side of the brain likes chaotic lists of things jotted on paper in whatever pen color I could find, and the other side likes rainbow-highlighted, organized columns of data. I’ll try to get the other three trimmed and satin stitched tonight with all the animals here and the Man at a wedding (I’m not crashing that party). Or I’ll grade things tonight…we’ll see. I should be allowed to do some art stuff though, although there will be an extra dog and you know how that goes.

I stitched on Zoom with friends yesterday…got this flower done (dog in background, fast asleep)…

And did a goodly chunk of this one (only because it is very simple).

Saw this online…

I agree. Just trying not to fuck up too much of my own shit.

This is from the book I just finished reading.

Yesterday I gave a lecture on what evidence actually is and also asked kids, after taking a test where people are in a moving car, where exactly the things were at rest…because they all were telling me that ‘objects at rest stay at rest’. So to have this show up in a book, and then the mitochondria thing, because that is the only thing everyone remembers…although mitochondria is plural, so it should be ‘are’. Pedantic, right? I know. Ask the history teacher how she feels about my correcting her spelling of ‘longitude’. Yeah.

TODAY! Is Friday. I’m giving another test. Sigh. It’s easy. Then they can read quietly (ha!). It’s been a weird week. We lost 11 students, transferred to a new section on another team. Which is good in the long run but was very traumatic for them and us in the short term. We’re still only planned a week ahead, if that. It’s fine; there’s stuff in there. It just needs tweaking. I’m too tired some nights to work at home…yesterday, I meant to grade things, but I left them at school (is that Freudian? Maybe?). Actually, there was something I could have graded, but I just remembered it, so too late. I have yet another early meeting today. I hate these. But tomorrow is no school. I’m going to go to ceramics in the morning, I think. And we’ll need to grocery shop later because of family stuff on Sunday. And next week is a short week due to a random school-board-mandated, 3-day weekend. Not gonna complain.

Gotta Go

I’m already running late. I’m not sure how. I filled out an art agreement, made sure lunch was ready to go, did the normal shower, feed dog/cat routine. I’m dressed and ready for school, minus shoes and socks and meds. And more tea. Could NOT sleep last night. SHUT UP BRAIN. Part of it was the hour before bed when I was prepping a quilt to ship and realized I hadn’t sent all the info to the people who were supposed to get it (I sent it to one out of four…not a great percentage) and I’d missed a form (note to art groups…just send ONE email with all the things…not two or three), so I panicked and filled that out at 11 PM. Whoops. A day late. The Man is shipping it for me, so that’s nice. OK, he’s dropping it off. Still nice. I should have shipped yesterday. Whoops again. Sigh. School really fucks you over. There’s no time for anything else sometimes (like when grades are due and you’re massively behind) and you keep seeing things that need doing and thinking, keep walking, you don’t have time for that right now. So yeah. Still not in a rhythm. Had a weird thought yesterday…maybe there is no rhythm any more. Maybe this is it. Chaotic event followed by overwhelming tasks followed by another chaotic event. Trauma after trauma. It’s not a great lifestyle…workstyle. Work is not my life. Even though it feels that way. I worked the whole weekend. I don’t want to work this weekend. How will I avoid that? Yesterday, the kids were taking a test and normally, I’d walk around and eyeball them, but come back to my desk and grade things. I couldn’t find the mindset for that. My brain was just tired of it. So I didn’t. Might have been a mistake, because I’m totally not going to have time in class today or tomorrow for it. Ah well. That sucks.

ANYWAY. How’s the art going, Kathy? Chaos. Good chaos? Maybe. I got into Quilt National! I’m going to try to go to the opening weekend this year. I didn’t go in 21 because COVID was still pretty rampant. In 23, we had no subs, and it’s a really shitty weekend to try to go anywhere for a lot of reasons. I think I’d like to go in 25. So I got into Visions and QN in the same year…nice. I feel good about that.

I finished quilting the second little quilt…

Need to figure out how I’m going to finish and hang these in the ceramic pieces. I need a drill bit.

Then I got an email about possibly selling stuff at Visions…and I had those bugs from the OMA Street Scene thing that I never finished…so I did some legs last night…

I like them.

Gotta figure out how to finish them quicker, and then I can figure out if VMOTA will even want them. I also glazed this yesterday…

The final is not going to be that red. Which is weird. But then I came home and read about this glaze and it runs a lot, so I’m going to go lighten the layers at the bottom and above the flowers to see if I can keep it from running in those areas. No, I don’t know what I’m doing. Why do you ask?

So I’m working on a bunch of little things that never looks as impressive as working on the big things, but I wanted to make space for those things to happen. The big one is in my head, percolating, waiting for me to finish all the littles. School! Holy crap, I gotta go.

School Breaks…

Rough way to start a week. No, I didn’t finish grading. I’m not even sure I can finish tonight. Two-hour staff meeting plus book club. I have about 20 more of the academic assignment to grade and a pile of redoes on homework. Not a ton, but I have to process it as well. And there’s book club tonight; have I finished the book? Nope. Oh well. I’ll go. I need a break from school. This weekend was not a break from school. My tiny breaks this weekend consisted of allowing myself a chapter here or there of the book, washing the dog’s butt after he pooped on himself, washing the boychild’s bathtub after I realized where the old lady cat had been pooping (I had wondered where she was hiding it), and watering most of the yard. Oh yeah, I had to pick up and reposition a trellis that fell over. I also delivered a quilt and got my blood labs done for the doc; she’s been harassing me, but with a 12-hour fast, I needed to do it on a weekend. That’s about all I got done. I did allow myself most of an hour each night for the little quilts…

Friday night, I cut out all the pieces for both of them.

Saturday, I ironed them together…

They’re super small.

Last night, I did stitchdown…

One…

And then the other…

And then sandwiched and pinbasted them…

I quilted the little one before I needed to go to bed…

I had to be up early this morning to deal with school meetings. I’m exhausted again. Not enough sleep.

I did go to ceramics after school on Friday, spending about 2 hours doing this and that. I did more on the mug…

It might be done now? Not sure…

I had this bowl I made out of leftover clay and it’s been sitting around, underglaze just waiting for a plan. I had one on Friday.

Some more underglazing and a little carving. Although now I’m realizing I didn’t do the inside of that one heart. OK. Need to do that. I can’t go today though…it’ll have to be tomorrow.

The paper bag vase came out of the bisque fire. I was texting girlchild pictures of it and she reminded me of the plan we had for it. But I had wanted to try some underglazing with a wax resist and then glaze over. So I painted a little thing…

I had some leftover underglazes. I hate to waste that stuff. It’s expensive. So I made an underglaze coat on this pot/mug/whatever the fuck it is.

I also picked up the glazed base for the winged woman piece…

I love how the oil spills turned out. I also love how it fits with the rest of the piece…

Next up? Wings and headpiece thingie. Bowie is not so sure about it.

Have to hide the ceramic stuff in bathrooms and the girlchild’s room so he doesn’t knock them over. He’s still a kamikaze parkour cat, despite the neutering. Nova doesn’t necessarily appreciate him.

She’s mostly just shocked at his existence…unless she’s playing with him.

This did actually start out as play. But sometimes she goes places just because he can’t go there with her, like the hammock.

The Man’s band plays a wedding this Friday. The singer made a poster with a GoGos’ image, adding in the guys’ photos…here’s the Man himself…

So goofy.

OK. Two meetings this morning, before school. Both student-related. Then teaching balanced and unbalanced forces again. I tell you, I’m not sure what’s happening the rest of the week. Prep period is definitely grading. And screenshotting kids’ grades for the new 8th-grade team that goes together on Wednesday. Plus? I lose 10 kids. Con? The work to get them out. I feel for the combo teacher. I’m glad I’m not them, for sure. And none of them know what’s about to happen. I’m losing one kid I really like. Maybe two. The others I can live without. Three I’m quite happy to see leave, maybe four. Then a 2-hour staff meeting about poverty. Hoping it’s useful instead of just “your students and their families are poor”. No duh. I have duty before that, so normally I need to pee, make tea, and find food before coming over…I’ll be late and it’s in the gym, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the eating part. I’m going to need to. Blood sugar was low this morning. I’m feeling it. Then finish grades. For real. And book club. On the book I haven’t finished. Can I have a nap in there too? Not sure. Might be a contentious parent meeting with me as a rep (not one of my parents). Fun times. I’ll just be glad to be done with the first round of grades. The second round is due the weekend we’re going camping. I think. Ugh. OK. Going. More tea.

The Power

Hokay. Wednesday. I’m a little tired, I must say. Not sure why. Rejiggering my lesson plan for today, I think. Some catchup, some kids finishing stuff up, instead of starting the next thing. I may do a piece of the next thing, but I have two classes that need to finish yesterday’s thing still. It’s OK. It’s fast. But I hate having classes on different things. It’s just easier when they’re all in the same range of stuff. It’s Back-to-School Night tonight…set for 5 PM, which makes more sense for parents, but it means I have 90 minutes after school where I’m just there. I have grading to do and will do it, so I don’t have to bring it home (the first batch of progress reports are due next week, which seems really early). I have a lot of work to get through. I really just want to finish my book though. And finish another one by Monday for book club. I had to finally buy that one, because it was still 5 weeks out at the library.

Artmaking is going slowly. I am not giving myself enough time because of grading, unfortunately. It sucks. I hate it. I guess I lose Sunday afternoons? I don’t know any other way to do this. I feel like I lose half the Saturdays too. UGH. So I traced the two little pieces onto Wonder Under, which took almost no time at all…

And last night, I cut them out…

Superfast. Hopefully I’ll have the energy tonight to iron them to fabric. I’m not holding out much hope, but some.

Monday, I worked on glazing the mug still…

Anybody who’s thinking, oh, Nida will make a bunch of these and sell them…HA! My god, they take so long. Which is fine. I’ve always been more about the process than having a product to sell…obviously.

This already has 10 hours into it.

Consider time, materials, firing fees…

Completely unaffordable. Sorry y’all. This is not going to be a second (third? fourth?) income generator for me. And I’m OK with that.

Enjoy the video in the round.

That long thin quilt is going to this show…

In Miami, Florida. As soon as it’s back from the photographer. It still needs a name, but I think I had one somewhere. I just need to figure out where.

OK. School. Ugh. Redo plan for the day. Get the kids working independently for at least half of class time. Grade things. Prep for next week. Try to figure out how to efficiently grade the thing the other teacher fucked up. Sigh. Spend more of my prep time not prepping. Yesterday started badly with a last-minute switch of two resource kids who need support into a class with no support, literally 2 minutes before they were supposed to show up to my class. They needed seats, they needed to be added to my Google Classroom, they needed to be told not to delete themselves out of the other classroom until I graded things. FUCK. And no support? So that put me over 20% resource kids in that class, so after my complaints and reminders of how shit should work, I have support in there today. But the long string of emails leading up to that last one? I could have been included. So I would’ve known. But no. Not important. So my mindset during prep was to put on loud music with lots of swear words and grade all the makeup work so it was off my plate. Pro? That last bit.

Anyway. Today will be better. I command it. And I don’t have to try to cook after pilates, like last night, cooking after 7:30 PM. Tonight the Man cooks and I collapse. With my book, hopefully.

They All Change…

OK. So this week has gone from 109 degrees to a delightful 77 or so. The Man replaced the ceiling fan. School has been…interesting. It’s fine. Lots of chaos. Like give us a bunch of kids and have us get to know them and then keep adding new ones and taking away some of them as all their school attendances adjust, and then about 4 weeks in, upend the whole mess and create a new section, which unbalances every single classload in that grade level, and then, probably, y’all will do it again with the Newcomer kids who are coming into general education classes because they have graduated out of that program…but wait another two weeks before you do that, so we have chaos all over again.

Every year. So you figure your classes out and how they work and then they all change. And you’ve done rules and expectations and how things work in this class and then it all changes again. It’s frustrating. It makes the first 6 weeks difficult. But do grades! And independent study contracts! And do them now and fast. Because the kids won’t actually do the work, and they’ll lie about it, because they’re kids. Fun times.

I have not figured out the balance yet.

That said, I finished the little quilt, which will get photographed and get a name. I had it on a post-it note somewhere, and probably a cat ate it. Or a dog. We have both.

I just had a tiny binding and tiny sleeves to sew on.

Simba is entirely unhelpful. So were Nova and Bowie, who tried to climb either on the quilt or on my lap or both last night.

Until Simba won the position.

Cute little thing. About war. So many not so cute. And possibly already maybe sold? I don’t have a price yet and I can’t remember if it has to be for sale for the show I’m sending it to (I don’t think so…I think that’s the other show I shipped to recently). So photographer tomorrow, just in time.

What’s next? A giant drawing of my own choice plus finishing up quilting on two other quilts, one for me, one for a friend, and then some clay stuff that needs fabric. Coolio.

I got to stitch with friends last night…this is the second flower of five…

And no, I’m still not done with it. It takes forever. It’s cool when it’s done. And I like the process. But forever.

Bowie in low-energy mode.

Unlike at 6 AM this morning. Woke up everyone except the Man.

OK. Gotta go to school. It’s Friday the 13th. Can’t be worse than last Friday with its multitude of fights? Right? It probably can. But it’s cooler, so maybe it won’t be. Clay this afternoon. Shit ton of grading to do. Art thing tonight. The Man has a show tomorrow night at the Music Box (sort of; it’s on the street outside). I need a ride to the trolley station in the afternoon, because I’m not trying to park down there. I am tired. I want to read my book. Instead, I will go teach football with regard to Newton’s Laws. Or Newton’s Laws with regard to football? Not sure. One of those.

Dead Fan…

It’s finally cooling off…a week of ugh. And our bedroom ceiling fan died yesterday. So that was fun. I kamikazed over to Home Depot after school and bought a new one, but the Man will be installing it today, so we found one of those tower fans in the house (there’s like three of them) and put it on a dresser to keep the bedroom cool last night. The house does not release heat easily after a heat wave. My office here is still 88 degrees; it’s much cooler outside. But soon…it will cool off. At least the fan made it through the worst of the heat.

The quilting on this little piece took forever. I ripped out so much…I think because it’s small and any mistake is much more obvious? Or I was tired at the end of the day and didn’t stitch as well? I don’t know. I got all the outlining done Tuesday night and barely started the background…

I had the right color of thread. Miraculous really. And last night, I finished quilting…

And I trimmed it up, ready for binding. Which I’ll need to do quickly if I want it photographed before the deadline and shipping. It jumped up on me! Deadlines do that. I have a bunch of bits and pieces I want to do after that, while I draw the new big quilt. Which I drew in my head during the MRI on Saturday. Results came back fine, nothing that explains the visual disturbance. So good news, still no brain tumor or infarcty thing or blockage they can see. Bad news, they still don’t know what it is and they’ve run out of tests to do. So. There we are. It’s there, it’s not going anywhere for now, and I will be living with it. I realized as I was driving last night that nighttime is where it annoys me the most. I was trying to see where to turn into a road and the little swirly thing was right in the way. Frustrating. But in the larger scheme of things, better than cancer or MS or a seizure disorder or any of the other crap they kept throwing at me. A migraine that doesn’t hurt and will never go away. Except it’s not a migraine. Whatever. Moving on. Well, first make a quilt about it and everything else.

I’ve noticed people like quilts about one discrete issue, not many issues. Ah well. ‘Tis not how my brain works.

One of the shows I went to on Saturday was at the R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla for my friend Jeanne Dunn’s solo show Forest Bathing.

That’s her in the middle and the infamous Anna Stump on the right. I realized later that her new work kind of reminds me of Dr. Suess and the Lorax (I guess the trees?). But it’s very bright, colorful, and fun. Apparently this piece has a fourth panel…

My favorite part is the DNA tree there in the yellow. Jeanne works hard at her art and is a sweet person…glad to see her getting shows and selling stuff!

More pieces from the Techne Art Center show…

By Gail Wagner…

Interesting cyanotypes by Annalise Neil…

Rhonda Anderson…

These intriguing sculptures by Reginald Green…

They are listed as ceramics and mixed media…

Very colorful.

Ellen Dieter’s work is there too…

I’ll post some more next time. It’s a nice show…lots to look at. I strongly suggest you check it out.

Kitten is moving uber slow these days, but this piqued her interest…

She’s moved down onto the floor with the heat. It might be that she can’t get up on the table any more. She’s pretty stiff moving. Much like me after sitting too long.

This shit.

My school board may flip this way soon. It’s certainly trying to. Assholes.

Yesterday’s weird really red morning sun. Pretty sure there are fires out there causing this…

The smoke from the Line Fire in Riverside maybe? Scary fires in LA right now.

Oh, I did work on ceramics, on my mug, on Monday. I was tired and forgot half my materials, so I just carved for an hour.

Sometimes that’s all I have in me. I’m going to add more underglaze colors to it. If I remember to take the glaze box with me on Friday.

I found this interesting feather yesterday…

So polkadotty.

The last of the science lab apples…this was was truly trashed by Period 1, who didn’t realize I needed it to last all day and poked way too many holes in it (it’s used as a battery for one of the energy stations).

I went through 6 apples…and composted all of them afterwards. Poor things. Glad those stations are done; although they are cool…they are a pain in the ass for the teacher.

OK. Today. Test for the kids. Ha! Fun times. Finishing our first unit. Tons of grading to do, but glad to move onto the next one. I need to make 5 seating charts today, grade a bunch of homework, finish an academic assignment, finish vocab slides (I got next week’s done at least), and survive a union meeting. Ugh. Plus hopefully get a new fan in the bedroom (it’s still warm in there, really warm), take the trash out, and read my book. And put binding on this quilt! Because now I’m committed to delivering it to the photographer. So that’s a thing. It’s cool. I don’t know why it feels like the first two days of school is a week’s worth, but it does. How is it only Wednesday? Yeah. Well. OK. Off I go.

Melting

OK, there’s always a hot run of days in September and hopefully that was it…well, today is supposed to only be 102 degrees (yesterday maxed out at 109? I think? My car said 116…but then cooled down to 109)…so that’s today as the last day…95 tomorrow and then back down into the 80s…might need a sweater for that. This is the time every year when I think about air conditioning, but it’s so damn expensive to install and run, and I never have money in September because I don’t get paid all summer. So it doesn’t happen and next September, it’ll be hot again for a run of days that will feel awful. Definitely a cycle. At least I will be at work today, which has air conditioning. The old cat is not having a great time of it…neither is the furry dog. It also messes with my ability to get shit done. And I broke my no-work-weekend rule in a big way because I was so freakin’ far behind in grading. Sigh. I’m frustrated.

I was really hoping I’d be done quilting by now, it’s such a small piece, but no, the machine and/or me…there were issues and I had to rip stuff out, which I rarely do. I pinbasted Friday night…took a very short amount of time.

Quilted badly on Saturday night…apparently took no pictures of that…ripped last night and quilted some more.

Seriously this thing is so small…but there is some fussy quilting in there…drawing peace signs in thread. I should be able to finish it tonight…hopefully I have something that will work in the background. Then bind it.

I had an MRI on Saturday of my brain and neck…still trying to figure out the weird visual thing I see…eye doc calls it a visual disturbance, neurologist calls it a hallucination. Hmmm. Great. ANYWAY. It was 45 minutes in the thing and I drew (in my head, the one being scanned) an entire full-size drawing for the next big quilt. About my brain. And the boob. So much health crap. Mostly turning out OK or unknown. Unknown is stressful. But it’s not changing or getting bigger. Whatever the fuck it is. Alien spider in my head. So now I need to draw it in real life. I also started drawing (again, in my head) the banned book piece, which still pisses me off, because there’s censorship there of some sort. I’m just going to make what I want and let it be rejected if need be. Whatever.

I underglazed the girlchild’s boot vase on Friday…

It’s cute…it’ll be darker when fired…

The Man had a wedding to play at on Saturday…he was gone for like 14 hours.

Luckily they were at the beach, but it was still hot…

I drove past where he was twice on the way to and from art openings. One was in Oceanside at the Techne Art Center, a newer gallery space. The show was Flora and Fauna and I think it was all Oceanside Museum of Art Artist Alliance people? Which I am now a free member of for a year because of the Allied Craftsmen show there. Which is cool. I’ll post a few pictures from the show today and more the rest of the week.

Susan Osborn had four pieces? I think. She is a member of FIG with me, which was why I was originally going up there, for the FIG members.

There are probably names of pieces somewhere. There was a price list that I scanned and then my phone disappeared it unfortunately. Ah yes, this is Trees and Ladders.

There’s more! There was a lot of interesting artwork in the show. Totally worth it; just be warned that either there is no A/C or it wasn’t working. I’ll post more later this week.

Boychild left Sunday for 6 weeks of firefighter training in the Merced area. He left his lint roller.

The dog will miss him. We will too, but not as much as the dog. He ate my leftover pasta before he left…I was going to eat it Saturday night. Ah well.

Our barn owl was quite vocal and local on Saturday night…

No fear of me and the flashlight…

Right next to the house. Beautiful animal.

This one lost his balls but has not really slowed down much…

Very kitteny.

Grading yesterday.

Hmmm. These kids…wish their parents would talk to them more about their futures, but I get it. Like fuck jobs and paychecks, right?

Anyway. I need to go to school. This week is pretty chill in the classroom…well, for me anyway. Only one day of labs this week. Thank goodness. The kids are finishing up a bunch of stuff, but hopefully I’ll find time to grade things while they’re doing that. Hope. Hope. Hope. So that I don’t have to bring it home with me. Friday was three physical altercations (two I was involved with) in the last hour of school. It was a lot. I need that not to happen today.

I’m going to ceramics after school, after the staff meeting about literacy that I found really frustrating to prep for, because I’m not an English teacher and testing for fluency is not something I’ve practiced. I get how to do it, mostly, but the fussy little mark-it-this-way or that-way shit is not in my wheelhouse…and I’m not entirely sure it should be. I have two new kids today, right before an assessment. Poor things. And a kid that was kicked out to the language classes and then kicked back to us (OMG, test him before you do all that shit), so he missed all the labs last week, but did them the week before. Not sure WTF to do with him. Sigh. It’s all that fussy little shit that takes us down. And hopefully finish quilting tonight and pick a binding and do that. But right now? I still have a headache, probably from the heat, so I’m going to take meds, make more tea, and get the fuck out of here.

What Good Are Notebooks?

Yo Ho Yo Ho, a pirate’s life for me. I wake up in the morning sometimes and wonder what my brain has been doing while I slept. Apparently piratey things, because that’s the song I’m hearing in my head. There was a quick rehash of some stupidity from last year (I know what triggered that). Love that. Thanks brain. Also, it’s hard to sleep well on Sunday nights during school…my brain is figuring the whole week out (and often worrying about it). I really pushed this weekend to NOT open the school computer. I did make a list for today (and the next three days). I cleaned out my notebook…I love that my notebooks last for years now instead of dying after one (heavy duty notebooks…what good are notebooks? OK, there’s the Talking Heads…that’s a better song than the pirate one). I didn’t have to buy folders this summer…there was extra money last year and I spent it on that. Hopefully I got enough…I should figure that out quickly, because I think they need them Friday.

So I finished the big quilt last night…I spent the last three nights (or more?) sewing binding and sleeves. Friday night…

Saturday night…I actually sewed for almost three hours (Saturday was very braindead)…got all the binding done and part of one sleeve.

And Sunday night…

Bowie assist…

We’re trying to get him to sleep at night instead of only during the day, so after this, I woke him up and played with him for a while. Didn’t work. He was up and down all night. Like me!

I stitched some on this on Friday at the back-to-school event. They had us go to the local mall and fed us breakfast (it was SO loud…so loud), then put us in the movie theaters by school and we watched videos and played games. It was shorter than usual, so that was a plus. It was also dark a lot.

Made it harder to stitch. Pros and cons. Then we went back to our schools and did the district-mandated meetings where we write on big poster paper and then never see this stuff again.

There’s my science team! Yes, we are dorks. Well, most of us anyway. You probably don’t wanna know why the science department is pointing at a math rubric. We had to send this to the principal who will send it to the district. Sigh. Anyway, at some point, the district will make something of all this and push it back to us in some format. Proving something. Yes, I’m cynical about all that.

Today, we have four hours of all-staff meetings, then about 30 minutes with our partner team-in-crime (which is finally wholly back with us), then who-knows-how-long with the core team. Then making a list of what to copy tomorrow AM, because I have to be up at 4 AM to make sure I am tired enough for the EEG at noon. Don’t ask. I’m not looking forward to it.

In between all this, I’m halfheartedly trying to finish painting the hallway.

It’s hot, I’m tired, my wrist starts to hurt after a while. All of the cutting in is done with one coat, about a third has two coats. Obviously need to roll two coats as well. I’m not highly motivated, but maybe I will be this week. It would be nice if it were done.

I also finally got everything appliqued down to this. I finally watched the video about the hexie papers and how to make that damn flower in the bottom left…

And then I made it Saturday and sewed it down, and sewed down the last velvet circle (those things are a pain in the ass) last night. So now I can do embellishment.

Little man plays with his tail a lot.

OK. School. Need to leave in about 5 minutes with more tea and my meds in me. Pack a lunch! Fuck. I forgot how to do all this. I’ll be exhausted later. It might not even be that long from now. Then hopefully starting something new.