Somewhere Better…

This day. Man. I was sort of hoping for news that the swearing in didn’t happen. I don’t even care why…like I’m voting for aliens from a distant solar system at the moment. I’m off the Meta socials this week. I considered not doing it, because my dad always told me if you want to change something, you need to do it from the inside out. And why are we letting them control where we are and why? But then someone said that there’s ad revenue and that gets them where it hurts…so I changed my mind. I’ll be here on the blog, and I’m over on Bluesky (@knida.bsky.social), posting there instead. I’m a picture/visual person, and Bluesky is more like Twitter, where I never really hung out. So yeah. We’ll see if it changes anything. I don’t trust a rich white man farther than I can throw them, and I don’t throw well at all.

Some guy is out looking at my shed right now with my dad, and I’m sort of listening. I’m not sure I care about the details of how to fix the damn roof right now. I’ve got too many things on my to-do list. I did finish grades yesterday, and then, like a crazy woman, I sent 72 emails to kids/parents about specific missing academic assignments, so when they see their grades, the kids won’t be able to lie about the teacher not letting them turn late work in. Today? I plan to not to school…except I never graded the warmups yesterday and I need to do that. Or I could just do it in class tomorrow. Maybe. We’ll see. I’m aiming for day job sanity and having a hard time getting there.

Quiltwise though, things are going better…I got the visual disturbance part done…

Those are the things I see…not all at once, but one at a time. Swirling around in my visual field.

Saturday night, it took almost 2 hours to do the words…which do fade into the background and they’re supposed to…

Like I’m yelling about these things and no one is listening. I’m a little concerned that the arm is not quite reaching where it should, but I can futz with that when I iron it down to the background.

Last night, I got a good chunk of the tree done.

Plus all three owls…

The three has all four seasons on the branches, so I have a few hundred pieces left, hopefully today.

I lost Kitten on Friday…couldn’t find her anywhere. Usually when I call for her, she comes out. She has some very specific hiding places, but the actual kitten, Bowie, has been harassing her. He doesn’t understand that she’s old and sick, so he tries to chase her. He’s really curious about her. So she’s been peeing up in her safe spaces. I finally pulled all the batting out and replaced it with pee pads…which she hasn’t used. I also carry her out to the litter tray twice a day. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Anyway, I was searching all over for her and finally had a guess and went outside…there’s a glass sliding door on one wall that is essentially not accessible because of the sewing machine table…and there she was, hunkered down behind it…

Snuggled under the quilt I’ve been working on (which she did NOT pee on, thank goodness…it now has a towel covering it). I’ve found her there twice now. I think her hearing is going. Poor baby. She’s old but not in pain. She still purrs when I pet her, snarls at Bowie for invading her space, eats a little food, and goes back to sleeping. Sigh. It’s hard to deal with elderly animals.

We’re trying to use up our stash of restaurant gift cards, so Saturday night had us in Little Italy at the Princess Pub & Grille, which had pretty decent British food…

I drew…it was really loud (football!)…

Need to remember to stay away from sports bars for a few weeks I guess. I don’t actually know if we’ll be going out at all for a while. Long story. Been here before.

Hey, there’s my quilt in the background! At Form, Not Function, where it won Honorable Mention.

It’s the only photo I could find of it in the show.

OK, I need to leave to get my hair cut, rescheduled from when I had stomach flu. I was going to go to ceramics afterwards. Not sure how I feel about that right now. I’m tired. Nothing new there. Got some art to do, some cleaning to do. Need to make lunches for the week. Hoping to still be able to retire in 2029, but who knows what the fuck that idiot is gonna do. If I can’t afford to retire, then it’s gonna be rough to stay in teaching. We’ll see where we’re at in four years…hopefully somewhere better.

Made It to Halfway…

It’s amazing how quickly I get tired…I’ve been trying to train myself to go to sleep earlier again. I just suck at it. The boychild says I can easily train myself to be a morning person, but I’m not so sure. Maybe when you’re younger. I know Monday night, I’m trying to fall asleep, and my brain is just tossing stuff out that needs to be done. I finally gave up and pulled up the calendar app on my phone, and scheduled a bunch of stuff. Then I could sleep. As the week goes on, with every morning an early wakeup (tomorrow is even earlier ffs), I get tired enough to fall asleep before the meditation app turns off. Pros and cons of that. I’m trying to carve out art time, though, and that’s usually after dinner. I should’ve graded last night, but I didn’t. Monday I came home and took a nap…and we didn’t even have kids on Monday! Just an all-morning staff meeting. I’ll get used to it; I always do. Maybe. Right now, it feels like I need a tea injection. My fault for taking the head meds late…they make me tired, so I have a reminder on my phone to take them at 8 PM, but then I keep forgetting and not taking them until bedtime. Ugh. I don’t think they’re going to work anyway. They’re another migraine medication the doc wanted me to try so she could finally rule out migraine for the visual disturbance I have…she calls it a ‘scotopia’ or a visual disturbance. I call it the swirling universe and am convinced it has alien origins. She laughed at that. At least she has a sense of humor. The scotopia is not quite correct, because I am seeing colors…anyway, I think she really doesn’t know what it is and it will either go away, stay forever, or eventually turn into something the docs recognize. But for now, I’m taking a medication for migraines that I don’t seem to actually have. So there’s that.

Art! I am ironing, and finally hit halfway last night. I’m mostly in the fussy little bits, so there looks to be very little progress from day to day. Monday night, I ironed the heart with all its flowers.

There were quite a few pieces in there. I also added some bits and pieces to fill in blanks. Last night, I did the arm and the neck.

I’m in the mid 800s, so halfway. Still fussy shit going on, trying to make everything fit. The bottom was getting too heavy; it kept pulling everything off kilter, so I removed the teflon sheets from the bottom and rolled it up.

You can see it all rolled up there. You can also see the ginormous quilt I’m quilting for (this is my plan) 30 minutes a night. It’s for a friend of mine. Her mom made the quilt before she died and was able to quilt it. It’s large. I’ve managed to quilt all the way around the center medallion, although I will add some quilting in the middle once I figure out the rest of it. The next step is to quilt around some of the outside icons and then do an allover stipple in between all of that. The hardest part is that I got a bag of thread with the quilt, but I don’t know what mom wanted. How I would quilt it vs how someone else would quilt it? I try to channel mom thoughts while I’m quilting…it’s weird…I’ve done finish-up quilting on projects before for people who needed help finishing something up for someone else, and there is a moment while you’re working when you picture the person and try to think what they would want or need. Definitely communing with intent. Or for intent? I’m not sure. It’s a strange headspace. Anyway, I feel much better about it now. It was an overwhelming project when I first took it, and now it’s just ‘do this one thing’ and then ‘do this other thing’. One piece at a time. Much more manageable.

I did more clay on Monday…honestly I thought I’d be doing clay stuff all the time during break and that definitely didn’t happen. I barely made it in. Which sucks. But whatever.

Shoulders. Still not sure how I am going to handle arms. There’s a roll of plastic-covered paper towels holding the boobs up. Some sagging is allowed. But also, the weight is all pitched forward at the moment because of the construction I’m using to fit the two parts together.

Lots left to do. I haven’t even started decorating this part. The other part is over on the drying shelves. AND…I’m almost out of this clay. I’ve used almost 20 pounds. Crazy. Hopefully I’ll be back there on Friday (possibly exhausted by then).

So we dropped the owl box…definitely bees in there…

You can just see a bunch of bees and the honeycomb on the right.

I talked to a very helpful, very nice bee woman who lives too far away to help us, but she gave me some ideas. I ordered another owl box. This one needs to move with its bees, we think. Someone local will need to help with that. The bees probably won’t survive being moved out right now. Not enough resources. So I’m still trying to figure out how to handle the next part, which might just mean moving it over 10 feet so we can put a new owl box on. We’ll see. My brain is overwhelmed with school right now, so I’m taking small steps each day toward my to-do list. Yesterday was an art thing and a retirement thing. Today will be bee things.

Yesterday, we started Unit 4 and I actually finished a cover page the same day I started it.

Sort of miraculous that.

OK. Teaching light vs sound waves today. Kids are reading out loud as characters in a story. We have new seats, new folders, a new unit. Kids are still tired. They got a lecture about trying harder and redoing work when it wasn’t up to standards. About how they’ve already done hard things and they can still do hard things, that hardly anything goes right the first time. Meanwhile our grade file opens tomorrow and I have some more stuff to grade. I do love their confidence sometimes though. Actual conversation: I filled out the regrade form and you didn’t grade it. I did look at it, but didn’t see a change. I got a better score. Did you get my email? No you didn’t email me. I did, on December 27. Oh. If you can screenshot your score, I’ll change it. Otherwise, I can’t grade something I can’t see. OK, Ms. Nida; I’ll do that. Luckily, I keep pretty specific notes or I wouldn’t remember anything.

After teaching, I have pilates. I’m not cooking tonight, so hopefully I can read my book a little and then grade the silly things I have left to grade. And then quilt and iron after dinner. I’m better with routines. I get more done. I need the breaks from school, but the break in routine doesn’t always help. Still tired, by the way.

The Year Changed…

I somehow have lost a week. The year has changed. I have not posted my memories of 2024 nor my goals and hopes for 2025. I missed the boat completely. What happens to me if I do not consider everything that 2024 brought and 2025 might bring? I dunno, but I don’t seem to have the brainpower for it. Although I redid my big long huge CV/resume/whatever the hell it is yesterday and I know that I was in 12 exhibits last year and I made 6 quilts and 10 bug things that aren’t really quilts. I read that an art quilter I follow made over 60 quilts and I can’t fathom that, but probably she’s not working full time as a middle-school teacher. So that’s another reason I have a hard time with the review/gratitude part of the year ending. It makes me feel inadequate until I have some interior brain argument about what people are capable of and that’s why I picked a fucking retirement date last summer. Oh yeah. I remember now. So in 2025, I hope to make another 6 or so quilts and get into another 12 or so shows and keep messing around with clay and trying to keep my day job from inserting itself into my recharge time more than it already does. No change. I actually usually do resolutions in August, right when I’m about to go back to school. It makes more sense as a teacher to think about those things then rather than in the middle of a school year. I am glad I have next week off, because I have to get 6 quilts out of here in the next week or so for delivery to shows. So some of that will happen today.

I’m quite happily ironing the first big quilt of 2025 together now…

I forgot how fun and relaxing it is to iron stuff together. I had been putting it off because it seemed hard, but it isn’t. Time-consuming? Yes. Fussy as shit sometimes? Yes. Absolutely relaxing? Oh yes.

I’ve got the dirt done, with its furry beasts, body bags, bullets, and skull.

And I’ve done one leg. That’s it. Well, it has a snake on it. So there’s a lot to come. I’m well into the 200s…I’ll be here for a while.

Then I finally quilted this beast, which I started in January 2013.

No joke. Those bird blocks went to almost every soccer game in the girlchild’s last two years of high school. Two years ago I started quilting it, and then it sat. So here it is…

Just need to do the handstitching of the binding and sleeves, and it’s done. Twelve years. Impressive. Can’t say I don’t finish shit. I do eventually. This is Sue Spargo’s Bird Dance, by the way. I called it Bird Crazy for years.

I also needed to get to the next step on this one…trimming all the houses…

To the same size. A few are a bit short, as always. Wool stretches. But the center piece is definitely too small, so I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that. I have ideas.

That’s the layout. This is Sue Spargo’s Homegrown, which might have been started in…hell, IDK…wait! OMG. Started March 16, 2020. The day they sent us home for two weeks because of COVID. Little did we know. Oh my. I’m laughing. So this one is just two months’ short of being 5 years old. I did Folk Tales in between the bird one and this one. And there’s another bird one I did too, Chirp…both Folk Tales and Chirp are ready to be sandwiched and quilted, but this one needs to be put together so I can do borders, so it’s a good year out from being finished, if I’m lucky. Anyway, I have a Zoom tonight and I will sew things together and try to figure out how to solve the problem of the center being too small. It’ll be fine.

Right now, I’m going to pause in the writing (you won’t even notice) because I need to pick up a quilt and then head to ceramics and pick up meds because my online pharmacy ran out of insulin again (they did last year too). But I’ll be back and you won’t even notice I was gone for three hours. Like I said, here I am. Sigh. But in a fairly rancid mood…thanks to health insurance and pharmacies and ugh. It’s fine. I just lost an hour to whatever stupid shit happened yesterday that I didn’t do. I’ll have meds on Monday. The only medication I really freak out about is insulin. And that’s the one with the biggest issues. Ah well. Done now. I ate lunch and read for a bit, and that helped.

I found my SIL’s heart…she had asked for it back in November and then I ‘lost’ it (read, hung it up and put this drawing over it and completely forgot it was behind there…

In fact, I didn’t even see it when I first pulled the drawing down so I could iron on it. I saw it last night, because the Man came in and was talking to me, so I was actually facing that direction. Sad but true. So I need to finish that and mail it to her.

New Year’s Eve was a little low key. Nice fire in the fireplace. Tried to draw and watch a movie. The movie was horrible. The drawing wasn’t entertaining enough…

So eventually I went in and put the binding on that bird quilt instead. I did make it to midnight, no worries. Unless I’m sick or exhausted, I stay up that late on the regular…unless I’m working. Then I have to be up between 6 and 6:30 AM, so I need to start heading for bed at 10:30…although I haven’t been good about that lately. Huh.

I think he’s smiling.

But he’d had a 4-mile walk and a bath because he pooped on himself and then vomited on himself. I wasn’t there. He was certainly tired out.

I’m actually finally kicking this thing.

KNOCK ON WOOD. My sinuses aren’t completely clear, but mostly. I’m not coughing stuff up any more. Time to go back to school and get sick again, right? Sigh.

OK. Well I have a bunch of stuff I need to get done, mostly in the quilt realm. I added to my CV last night, but still need to finish and submit the application by Monday. Lots to do, lots to do. Looking forward to three art classes next week though. Fun times. I appreciate the time off, but it’s too bad the job is so hard that the time off feels so absolutely necessary. I don’t have a solution to that.

Dribble Away

The last Monday of 2024. Weird that. Why do Mondays have such strange power over us? I suspect if I had a different job, Mondays would be less ugh. I am a little over 1/3 of the way through my Winter Break. I still have a few things left to grade…a small pile of redoes that I can’t quite bear to look at…yet. I’ll get there. I’m in that weird molasses part of the year (break) where I don’t seem to get anything done. Although the boychild and I cut down part of a tree that was growing haphazardly. That was a thing. And I’m sure I checked some things off the to-do list, but as I do them, more take their place. It’s annoying. So then I check out and pull out a book and don’t get anything done in a day that seems really short anyway. I think every Winter Break is like this. I have a pile of labels to make and print, an art application to fill out, which means revising my resume with everything from this year…which sounds just like a lot of work. Good work. Work that needs to happen. But work nonetheless. I need to go trim some shit. I should just go do that. I’m tired, though. Trying a new medication to see if the visual disturbance goes away. It’s supposed to make me tired. I can concur. I am tired.

Or that’s just where I am right now. I also need to prep 5 quilts for shipping/delivery. Maybe later. Sounds like work.

I did restart quilting this, from two years ago.

It doesn’t take long. It’s lame that I haven’t finished it yet.

It’s Sue Spargo’s block of the month Bird Dance, which I started a million years ago. It took me through a lot of soccer games. I have about 1 1/2 columns left to quilt and then the border and then I can put a binding on it and it’s done. Then I can toss the other big quilt up there and quilt it too. While ironing another quilt together. It’s all doable. I just need to do it. Sounds simple. And complicated.

Thinking too hard at the end of the year.

Friday night, I was still trimming, but there wasn’t much left…

Saturday night, I finished…

A total of 18 hours and 49 minute of trimming…after 24 hours of ironing. I never documented the fabric range for this…but it was 189 fabrics…

I cleaned them all up yesterday, so I could reclaim enough boxes to sort the pieces…

No, he wasn’t helping.

It took 2 hours to do that. But I’m ready to start ironing together today. I’m ready to do a lot of things today; if only I had the energy.

The girlchild and I went to ceramics on Saturday…

She’s very intent on a few things. I’m making some random little things…

And this has been sitting around forever, waiting to be carved.

We’ll be back today. I did work on the big piece, in that I found a place on the drying shelves for the big one and the top of it is back on my shelf, waiting for me to figure out how to make the arms.

Finally made it out for a hike on Saturday afternoon.

Another energy thing.

Nice to get outside and exercise though. Even though my knees are complaining like crazy today.

It’s cold, y’all, but apparently not quite cold enough to cuddle.

Weirdos.

OK, I have a chonky to-do list still and it makes me feel better to check things off of it. Sort of obsessive in that way. Need to sort out some plant material…probably easier to do that before a shower, so do that first. Then shower and lunch and somehow the entire day will disappear and I’ll be at ceramics again. Seems fair. Nice to have days that can dribble away for once and not cause too much havoc.

Excuse Me As I Run…

My photo app is currently updating. I think it’s stalled, much like my brain…hopefully it’s just slow internet and not holiday/school panic like my brain. Hard to say. Sleep has been difficult this week, and I’m really feeling it…plus the sinus infection, feeling that. Definitely worse again. I may call today and see if I can get a telehealth appointment instead of waiting another 3 days to a week, like the sub doc wanted me to. Sigh. Also coyotes, could you be quieter at night? My little dog can’t handle the singing. He has to join in. And then growl under his breath for the next 20 minutes because you offended his sensibilities…whatever those are.

So yeah, I signed up for the SD Pottery Tour and I wasn’t really sure what that meant and the pro is that I got my act in gear and finally drilled out the four holes I’d been avoiding for the last oh IDK 5 months? And figured out a way to hang the quilts in these two pieces. Not sure how I feel about them, but they’re done. And I figured out hours and prices (oh my, no one will ever be able to afford my ceramics…sorry…I take way too much time).

I love how FREE is huge and red.

I’m at Get Centered Clay in La Mesa…with a bunch of people who have a lot more to sell than I do, probably at much more reasonable prices. The reality is, the stuff I choose to do is incredibly time-consuming (I know this shocks you), and that’s just the way it is. I’m not expecting to sell anything at all, but I will be there on Saturday, grading in the background (because that’s what I needed to do on Saturday anyway), and Sunday, I’ll be there at some point in the afternoon, because my Sundays are nuts.

So drilling glaze that dripped into holes takes much longer than you’d think it would.

In case that’s something you needed to know. Sewed baby quilts to wire, used wire to hang from holes inside clay pieces.

Need better pictures with natural light, but that’s 11 PM for ya. Not totally sold on this one, but it’s all a living experiment, right?

Learning from the mess you make. I have some pots and a bowl and IDK if I’m taking the $500 mug, because that’s nuts, and one sculpture that’s kind of crazy. Plus figuring out how to provide prices and a tablecloth and how to set it all up, because it’s on a table and not hanging on a wall. And I don’t do sales like this for my quilts ever, because they’re weird, so yeah. Out of my wheelhouse…and down the block really.

Yup. This was not on my list for the next three days. But I’m doing it! So there.

Meanwhile, I did iron on Wednesday night. I decided all the innards would be rainbow colored.

Yes, that’s officially where I’m at right now. I didn’t get to the uterus. It will predictably be pink and purple.

Hopefully I will be ironing tonight because I will have figured out all the other shit and will have set up for the show. I will not be getting enough sleep this weekend to make up for what I missed this week. Just a heads up.

Yup. The dumpster is on fire and I’m sitting in it. Also don’t ask me about Christmas gifts or decorating for the holidays. The White Elephant thing for school made me hyperventilate. And it’s optional.

I finished reading Babel. Loved it. Here’s this from the Epilogue…

Holding that going into 2025. Hearing about what men are saying to women about when the big dumb orange lump is inducted in January. Speak up, y’all. When hinky shit is happening in front of you, speak the fuck up.

OK, magnets today, should be good, although yesterday was a braindead cluster in 3/5 classes, so that doesn’t help. Still down two teachers on my team. Down half a brain at least. Trying to mentally do too many things. Oh yeah! It’s my 10-year anniversary of meeting the Man. I’m sure he’s thrilled I’ll be spending this evening at ceramics, although we didn’t have anything planned and I think I’m cooking, so there’s that. Excuse me as I run screaming into the rising sun.

The Monsters…

America. I had hope, you had hate. It’s not all of you. My social media shows me that. But too many of you do. Hate for my students, hate for my friends, hate for me. I dodge a lot of it by being a white woman, but an artist? A teacher in a Title I school full of immigrants and refugees and kids of color? Sigh. I’m…there’s got to be a better word than disappointed. I’m wearing all black today…ninja teacher, ninja artist, ninja liberal. My plan to retire in 2029 may be thrown by this. When the orange monster was in before, my med costs went up, my taxes went up, my expenses went up. They all relaxed during Biden. I’m not rich enough to get the benefits of a GOP ruler. Ah well. We fight the monsters, y’all. And the monsters are half of us.

My art is sort of stalled…or waylaid? Or on a different track. I started a new clay piece…loosely based on my The Way Out quilt. Same shape to start anyway…

Gotta figure out how to piece it together so it fits on my shelf again.

I also brought stuff home that looked cool that I forgot to photograph. Oops. And one thing is drying, getting ready to bisque. And I had a tiny bit of the old clay left and I made a pot shape. I always need more pots for plants. Anyway, it will start to look more like something eventually.

Then I started with the ceramic winged woman (who still doesn’t have wings). She’s all about climate change, which is going to get worse because of who y’all voted in, in case you were unclear about that. I made some shapes on paper and picked some fabrics and decided to try to build a tornado…like you do.

I bought that rope during the beginning of COVID to do something with. Last night, I cut the pieces out and cut an appropriate piece of rope…

I have tiny people, and there are tiny cars coming, plus balsa wood, because apparently I’m going to build a house? Or am I? Hard to say. Wonder Under isn’t arriving until Friday. Need to entertain my art brain.

I’m also grading things…

It’s slow. Nova thought this one smelled nice. It’s a nice kid. I’m slowly getting through these packets. I spent two hours at Urgent Care again yesterday for the cough that was getting worse. Acute bronchitis and a sinus infection. Fun times. More meds. Hopefully will kick it though, because I’m tired of coughing violently for no apparent reason. It’s kind of exhausting. Much like my country.

Those cloud things are going in those smokestacks on the top of her head. Then I’ll work on the wings. Slow and weird process for me, but I like it. It’s different. Different allows our brains to grow and develop. Some of you should try it.

OK. Teaching roller coaster parts and design still today. Fun to watch the kids work together (or not). One pro is the super-psycho didn’t win school board. The semi-psycho incumbent did. He at least understands laws and tries to follow them. Although there’s another psycho coming in. Sigh. I guess watch this space. My art will continue in the political realm…how can it not? My job will continue as long as I’m allowed…or until I can’t stand it and can actually afford to retire…all up in the air now. Things will still need fixing around here (two hosebibs today, finally), trimming, watering, painting, digging, etc. Cats will need petting and feeding, dogs will need the knots combed out of their fur and their bellies rubbed. Kids will need to learn how to be humans and productive members of society, even if they don’t figure it out in 8th grade. Some kids are awesome and will continue to be so, and I will rejoice in their existence and that of my friends who support all kinds. The monsters can fuck off.

Under Control…

OK. So my butt is wet. The cat did something on my chair. This is not a nice way to start Monday. Actually, I started with randomly low blood sugar. Always fun. The cat is old. I’m hoping it’s not…fuck…I’m pretty sure it’s pee. Sigh. She’s looking pretty irritated right now. Maybe because I’m accusing her of peeing herself. I guess I need to call the vet. Sigh. She’s old, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for her to be gone. She has been getting worse…unfortunately.

So artwise, I finished all the bugs. Except I need to repaint one for like the fourth time. I delivered 4 to Visions Museum on Saturday. The rest will hold for a bit (maybe?) and go on Etsy (maybe?). I took official photos of them; I’ll put them on the website later too. Here’s the last one though…

With the one that needs repainting in the background.

I finally started drawing the next big one…it’s been in my head for well over a month.

Not that you can see much, and the boobs might need redrawing based on this. I just get the general shapes with the pencil on something this big. I don’t usually use pencil on the smaller drawings. Here’s a pre-drawing for it…done in two restaurants before dinner came…

Not quite all there. But a vague idea of it. I drew this too, with no purpose…

On Friday, I did some underglazing…

This stuff takes forever…

But it’s relaxing…

Apparently two of my pieces came out of the glaze fire, but I couldn’t find them on Friday. Ugh. Maybe today.

I also finished the center panel of Homegrown…

So now I can piece all the houses around it and spend another year making the borders. It’s also relaxing, but in a different way.

My piece Stop the Murder Madness made it to Miami for the opening…

A fellow artist took a picture of it for me…

Her name is Eden Quispe and you should go look at her work because it’s amazing. And I appreciate her recommending this show to me in the first place and sending me photos as well.

I managed NOT to work most of the weekend (on school stuff), which I think is pretty healthy. We walked the dog on Saturday.

I also blew leaves off half the roof, terrified of being up there, trimmed a bunch of stuff, dumped plant matter in greenery trashcans, finally rehung the art in the hallway…

Drove to a sketch location and bought a recliner for my kid, who may or may not actually want it because he was in Pinnacles with no cell service. Long weekend. I finished a book! That was good. Wait, I actually finished two. So even better.

For some reason, all the animals were giving me judgy looks this weekend. Here’s Nova.

Bowie…

You already saw Kitten up at the top…and Simba…

Luna avoided me mostly, so I guess I didn’t wrong her too badly.

I’ll finish up with two new skull finds…

The one on the right is a new type…I don’t think I’ve seen it before? I’ll wait for nature to clean it up a bit. We get a lot of rats and mice…this is not the right shape for that. Wait and see.

OK, today is teaching speed and velocity…pretty easy stuff. Then a 2-hour staff meeting about literacy. I’ve been prewarned that the scientific content is factually incorrect (oh good), so I’m prepared to be irritated. Then to clay, to hopefully underglaze some more and find my two glazed pieces. Then back here to pack up three quilts for shipping. Fun times. And more drawing, hopefully…get those boobs under control. On the drawing. Those are the only ones I can control.

Check for Zombies

Well hey. I wish I had slept more last night, but the little dog made me get up once to check for zombies and there were definitely other barky moments when I was like, “it wasn’t zombies LAST time, so no, I’m not getting out of bed”. He’s definitely in need of something these days. A long walk…a cuddle with his boy (who still has 10 days of training to go). He is a grumpy old man (the dog, to clarify…although there are other grumpy old men in my vicinity, for sure). What it means is that my brain is a little fuzzy (when is it not?) and my eyes a little crusty, and maybe I’m drinking this whole cup of tea quickly so I can get another one down? Ugh. When my doctor tells me to improve my sleep, for health reasons, I want to explain to her that I’ve always been a bad sleeper and that has not improved with age and there are many factors affecting my sleep, most of which (zombies) are out of my control. Oh well. Doing my best. Mostly. Nah, I could do better. If I had more sleep. Maybe.

So I’m still slogging along on bugs. I stitched the edges of the last two on Monday night…

And last night, I painted all five canvases…

Last time, some of them needed a second coat, but hopefully there’ll be a couple ready to stitch down tonight. I also need to make labels for the back.

I did some carving on Monday as well…

Just for fun planter…

In video…

I’m just gonna work on this here for a while. I need to buy more clay for the next batch of projects. Not there yet.

After dinner, I’ve been working on the centerpiece for Homegrown.

I think I just have that last flower on top to do and then I can piece the whole quilt together and start the borders. I’m ahead of schedule! I thought I wouldn’t finish the center until next year. I figured 5 flowers, 5 months? But I’ve been faster than that for once. Mostly because I’m trying to get work done before I leave school and then leave it there. Much as I can. I did last night, anyway.

This is the face of a cat spying a gecko on the window.

I was reading a book the other day and they used the term ‘sanguivore’ for vampires, and turns out, it’s a real word (I love learning new words) for things like vampire bats and mosquitos (bloodsuckers), so my co-teacher and I thought it would be cool to add this word learning to our 7th-grade curriculum when we do trophic levels (carnivores, herbivores, etc), adding this one to the mix and then having kids make some up…I came up with ‘cerebrevore’ for zombies…

Makes sense? Right? We are supposed to be teaching literacy.

This is relevant as I get closer to the Quilt Visions opening, where I will have to explain my work in front of people…

Sometimes it’s a challenge. This quilt is actually easy to explain and way too relevant these days.

This is another word I like.

Unfortunately, I think if I do that today, kids aren’t going to try to learn…they’re just going to copy each other and then Friday’s test will be painful. So I will have to interact with them. And I have a union meeting after school, so that’s more people and talking. When I just want to read my book in silence. Not happening. Tonight, I’ll be sewing little bug quilts on canvases and/or repainting some of them. All good. I will read my book at some point though. It’s required.

Never Finished…

Hey. I know. I had a 3-day weekend. I should feel rested, like I got some extra time to deal with shit, like the world is wonderful. Huh. I feel tired. Might have been the snoring or the cat scrabbling at my back (he knows I’ll wake up and do something about it) or the dog barking at whatever the fuck he barks at. Not sure. I know the vaccines on Friday kicked my butt, so maybe that’s still lingering. I also know that I need to start a new big quilt because these little ones seem to stretch on forever and don’t give me the same hit or joy that a big project does. You’d think they would…multiple finishes in a day? Except it seems like you never finish and there’s just another step and you have to do it 10 times. Not a fan of production work. Which is fine. I don’t do much of it. Every few years, I get a bug (ha!) up my butt and do it again and remember why I don’t like it.

ANYWAY. Bug production is still happening. Saturday, at my quilt guild meeting, I sewed all the antennae and legs.

Then Saturday night, I decided to finish the edges of the two little quilts to go in the clay pieces…

I still need a drill bit so I can figure out how to attach them.

Not sure how I feel about them. But that’s OK. It’s all experimentation. I finished one of the bug edges Saturday night as well…

And two more last night…

I’m not sure I have the right thread color for the other two. Most of the thread I have is utilitarian sewing thread, in not many colors, or rayon thread, which doesn’t work as well for this. I don’t really want to go buy thread, so I’ve been using what I’ve got. I won a stash of little spools of lots of colors that I’ve been trying to use up. We’ll see tonight. But I still need to paint the canvases and then attach them to those. Delivery is Saturday and they only want four, but I want all of them done. I also want to start something new.

I went to ceramics on Saturday and totally forgot to take any photos. I put two things on the glaze firing shelf, checked the drying on the other two (they’re probably ready to bisque fire, but I’m overly paranoid), and carved some on one. I need new clay. I need a new big project. I need to finish the ones I have! While trying to fall asleep last night, I worked out the winged woman fabric parts in my head. Maybe that’s next. But also a new big quilt.

The parrots are here. They were quietly resting on Sunday morning…didn’t even know they were there at first.

Usually it’s very obvious they’re here. Also very backlit. Hard to photograph. Hard to see.

There are times when it’s useful to have all the things already in the house. I don’t have all the things though…yet.

OK. I’m not sure I have the stamina for school yet, but the fun thing about school is that it never matters if you are ready for it or not…it’s gonna happen. Teaching Newton’s second law and independent and dependent variables…which I have to talk myself through every time. Teaching those all week. Although we came up with one independent activity for them, which is blissful. Need more of those. It’s impossible to be ON all the time. Staff meetings after school…love those. Then back to ceramics. And cooking dinner. Don’t love that. Reading my book. And more bugs. Ugh bugs. Need to be done with bugs.

Off…by a Day

I’m often off. This is just writing though. The district has given us these two weird 3-day weekends. I’d say thanks, but they just tacked those two days on to the end of the year. So I’m not sure how useful they really are. I do know that I’m not used to having Fridays off (most 3-day weekends give us a Monday), so I was totally discombobulated. That’s not why I’m writing late…that’s because I had to get a fasting blood test yesterday and I couldn’t get in very early, so my blood sugar was a mess, and by the time I did that and got two vaccines and smogged my car, I came back and took a nap on the couch. Not a short nap. I just zonked. I barely got my glasses off (I put them on my knee, apparently). Around 4:30, I stood up and thought, ugh, I’m out of it. Also some combo of all that made me nauseous (not eating often does), so then I only had a sandwich after the blood tests (a desperation sandwich) and that was it. I tried eating other things, but no. Uh uh. Eventually appetite returned in time for dinner, but every time I do a fasting thing, it just messes with me. I have to do one later this month where I eat lunch during prep so I can fast for 6 hours before the test. Anyway, I was going to go to ceramics yesterday and I totally didn’t. I slept and read instead. Hopefully I’ll get to ceramics today.

I’m still doing bugs. I’m not doing a lot at the moment, I admit. I aim for an hour a night and I’m lucky to get 45 minutes in. Wednesday night, I stitched this bug to a canvas…

This is one of my favorites.

Then Thursday night, I tried to iron this other rainbow bug but the legs were cranky and kept shredding. So I cut another set and left them for 24 hours. That was the smart thing. I think I also did the stitchdown on the other 4 bugs. Then last night, the bug legs released from the paper just fine, I ironed it down, and stitched it down…

This one might be my favorite now. And then I sandwiched and quilted all 5 of them.

The Man has a wedding all day and night today, so I’ll probably trim and finish these, and paint the canvases so they’re ready to stitch down to those. I also need to do some quilting on a friend’s mom’s quilt. So that’s on the list. Plus a quilt guild meeting. I was going to an art meeting too, but they changed the time and I can’t do two things at once. Well, I can…I just can’t do THOSE two things at once.

Progress on the home front: I fired the totally annoying pool company I’ve had for three years now and hired the old one back (there must have been a noncompete agreement for a while, because I tried to hire the old one back at some point…I did not choose to leave them). My dad’s garden guy, who is apparently retired, came over and attacked the bush that hangs over the pool. He was very judgmental and quit because of safety issues (I’m OK with that). I’m starting to think I should just spend the $150 and buy the thing he uses to cut bushes, because my problem is the time it takes, and he just shaved everything and shoved things in trashcans. Unfortunately, the bush is still too tall and one area, I would have cut it back more, but the guy was cranky and I wasn’t going to argue with him. If he wanted the work, he would have stayed. Whatever. That’s the hardest part about keeping this house up and finding people to help. Dad has a plan for the shed roof, though, so that’ll hopefully get fixed too.

Wednesday night, we had Annie for a bit.

She ate two toys and pretended to gack the rest of the evening. Plus scratched the shit out of my arm. Still love her. Bowie or Luna got me last night, some sort of desperation leap out of the bed (cat, not me)…totally bloody scratches this morning on my arm. Fun times.

Here’s one of the possible culprits, curled up next to me as I read for hours yesterday because I couldn’t do anything else.

Well I hauled a bunch of trashcans full of shit around. So did the Man. It’s hot here too…not too bad right now, but in the 90s later. It’s fucking October…can I have Fall please? Just a little? I guess this is Fall, Southern California style.

Dude, I don’t even know what I want to be for Halloween this year. Maybe an otter.

OK, so I have to shower and get ready for a meeting in a few hours. I did some schoolwork yesterday so I could avoid it today. I just need to grade one class of homework and then post everything for next week. I’m sort of caught up for once (knock on wood…it won’t last long). I probably should grade all the loose papers in my notebook too. I forgot about those. I did a predrawing for the next big quilt, but didn’t photograph it. One leg is distinctly wrong. But my hands were still shaky at night from the physical crap (vaccines and fasting, even though I wasn’t fasting any more). I need to water today, plus walk the dog (and me), plus make my own dinner, work on quilty stuff, and go to ceramics. All good. I think I have to sew a bunch of bug antennae…I could do that at my quilt guild meeting if I felt that organized. Do I feel that organized? I’m not sure. Not at the moment. Maybe later.