Fabric at the End of the Day

Watching the fog lift this morning. Everything seems calmer in the fog for some reason. There’s something about being encased in mist that is chill. Kind of trying to be one with that after yesterday. We’re blaming the full moon, Halloween after effects, the beginning of the new trimester, an upcoming 4-day weekend, and just general middle-school brain for the chaos we’re seeing. Feeling. Living. Glad for election results. Hopeful for the future. Taking deep breaths for the immediate reality of a Friday before a 4-day weekend. May the most annoying kids be absent (they never are). May learning happen. May it be chill and laidback, but effective. Ha! I’m serious. Not sure how this will roll. Ironically, we’re studying friction, so rolling will probably be impeded by something rough and bumpy.

Looking at a 4-day weekend for me too though. I will spend one day getting that damn academic assignment graded. The rest is yardwork and artwork and housecleaning. Not all fun and games, because some of it just needs to be done. Plus a doc appointment. Need to set up Wednesday’s lab today…might forget about that. That would be a mistake. Just put it on my calendar. Will write a post-it later. Then maybe I’ll remember.

Wednesday night, I packed up the quilt that needs to ship so I could get a shipping estimate and label through the art group showing it. It’s nice when they help. Then I started cleaning. I found all the fabrics from the last quilt and that I had bought in the interim (not a ton, but some) and organized them all by color…

And then I put them all away. It’s a tight fit on some colors. I need to cull again. I never culled ALL the bins, so this just complicates things when I put new stuff away in bins that might have been cleaned out already. Ah well. It’s a neverending battle, for sure. The only solution is to stop buying fabric, and that would suck.

I had a little time left before bedtime, so I laid out the first 100 pieces, ready to go.

And last night, I started ironing…

Not much of a start…a towel, a gun, some bullets and blood, and the beginnings of a bathtub. Tonight, there will be more. Hopefully there will be some solidly big chunks during this weekend. Around the floors getting cleaned and bushes getting trimmed and all that stuff. Maybe some cleaning of piles of stuff. That would be good too.

I can pause my panic attack for Tuesday this weekend. That’ll be nice.

Here’s a walkthrough of the Quilts=Art=Quilts exhibit, with mine at the front, to the right…nice location!

Today, I’m teaching friction. Hoping to get some peace and quiet at the end of each class, but we know how that rolls. I spent too much of yesterday explaining what ‘gentle’ means, fixing spring scales, threatening to pull next week’s lab, and telling kids to go check their grades. Sigh. Yeah. Long year. The sex-ed meeting after school where the state is going to impose an arbitrary deadline on us having to teach sex ed next year due to the kneejerk decisions of our school board? Well then I emailed the board of the California Department of Education. Because ffs I didn’t cause this problem and neither did my students. Long story. I’m pissed about it. I’m hoping we can change it, but you know how bureaucracy works…sticks are in the mud and won’t move even when it’s the right thing to do. So we’ll see if any of them deign to answer me. I’m going to ceramics after school and then home to cook dinner and iron a body bag in a bathtub. That doesn’t sound relaxing, and certainly there are parts of it that are NOT, like when I think about why I put that body bag there and what it stands for, and yes, the elections went well, and some daycare teacher still got yanked out by ICE agents. And there’s still a ballroom being built. And food is still expensive. Deep breaths. The world continues, and I worry about things, because it is my nature, and I rail at things, because it is also my nature, but there will be fabric at the end of the day.

Forgotten All the Things…

OK well that was a lot. I think I graded for 9 hours yesterday and didn’t finish. Need to adjust something. Might be me. Not sure how though. OK, so what art did I do? I finished tracing pieces on Wonder Under…

Well, I traced Friday night and almost finished…and then traced Saturday night and finished…

It took almost 13 hours to do about 4 1/3 yards of Wonder Under.

Then last night, I started trimming it and didn’t even finish a yard.

Also, that’s just under an hour, because that’s all I’ve been able to pull off the last week or month or eon. And this week, I think I have to be at school early 3 days, so I really should go to bed early the nights before, but I never do. Sleep is so HARD y’all. I just am not very good at it. I finish meditating, I’m all chill and relaxed and ready for sleep and then my brain yells “HIGHLIGHTERS! THE KIDS WILL NEED HIGHLIGHTERS TOMORROW!” and I’m like, Brain, you could have told me that tomorrow morning and it would have been fine, but no, “HIGHLIGHTERS!”. Ugh. Anyway, I will be trimming most of the week. I did get my quilt photos for the last one back from the photographer yesterday, but was too busy grading and cooking dinner to look at them. I’ll do that tonight and pack up the quilt and ship it to the new owner, which is exciting in itself.

In other cool quilt news, Kathy Ford was nice enough to photograph my quilt Portrait of One Self at Quilts=Art=Quilts this weekend.

Apparently it is right up front at the entrance, which is cool.

I wish I could have been there, but I also greatly appreciate the photos. Sometimes my work goes to shows and I never see it in the exhibit and I wonder if it’s actually there. Of course it is, but it doesn’t seem real if I don’t see it. So there it is!

I also went to the ceramics studio on Friday and did a copper wash, mostly wiped off, on the base and the upper torso, and then a light clear satin over that, and then put it in the pile of stuff to be fired. I also put the head in for a bisque fire, and fixed the tree again. Hey, compared to all the fixes on the upper torso, this is nothing.

Remind me to work on something smaller next time. Way smaller. Yeah, I know, it’s not in my nature.

I also went to the dentist on Saturday, where they did this weird 3D scan of my teeth.

Creepy shit.

And then I graded for a million hours.

Fun times. We’re having to go back and reteach some stuff, like the difference between evidence and inference, and where explanation goes (not in your claim), so they can write about science without making it sound like a narrative of their lives (tough one that). One of the more frustrating parts about teaching 8th grade is the obsession with getting Principal’s Honor Roll so they can sit on the stage for promotion. Except they’re learning new skills and it’s really hard to get an A on a new skill in the first month of doing that skill. And they’re so obsessed with the A that they can’t focus on what they need to do to get there. Anyway. It’s a challenge for them (and me) to get them there. Hence 6 emails from one kid and then one from his mom, all on Saturday, until I sent one back about hey, school is about learning. If he already knew everything, he wouldn’t need to come here. And some more stuff. Parental pressure like that is also not helpful. But also, it’s only going to get harder from here on out and I’m not sure he has the A in him. We’ll see. But that’s the point, right? That they grow and progress? Not that they are an A straight off the bat. Sigh.

So I graded in the car as a lovely person drove me to Huntington Beach for a meeting that I also graded through (I contributed to the meeting, so don’t think I blew that off…it was a lot of discussion of how to meet and get members moving forward, which was necessary but not fun), and then graded on the way back. I think I finally quit in Oceanside on the way back…so from 9 AM (I left my house at 8:30) to probably 3:30, and then I picked up my quilt and went home and graded some more. So yeah, at least 9 hours just on Sunday. Another 3 or 4 on Saturday. And an hour or two on Friday. I’m not done with that assignment either, although I didn’t do that in the car/at the meeting mostly. I did all the other things that needed grading. So three homework assignments, all their warmups for the week, plus essays, probably about 100 of them. I have 18 left…that’s probably 2 hours. Seriously. Ugh. I took one picture at the person’s house of this really cool piece of art…

I meant to ask if it was the same person who made the piece I saw at Sebastopol over the summer. I’ll email her and ask.

Otherwise, my weekend was a bunch of memes when I would take a break from grading…

It’s weird. And this really bugs me.

And harassing people who are following the law to be here. Or were BORN here. That’s fun. I totally want my money going to that when you can’t fund special education any more. Or rural schools.

I would love a Schoolhouse Rock song for this…

Someone will do it.

Yeah. That.

And lastly, though I’m going to BREATHE in instead of BREATH in…I think this is how my week is gonna go.

It’s been like that since the beginning of the school year.

Today, my coteacher is out, so I’m not sure whether I can copy the things I need to copy. We couldn’t meet Friday because she had to sub our prep period, because teachers called out without any warning and we couldn’t get subs. I get emergencies, but also, leave sub plans. Have emergency sub plans. I do. I also need to grade those 18 essays, but get kids through a review of what the fuck a CER is, because they’ve forgotten all the things. Next year, we’ll do this earlier for goodness’ sake. We will NOT assume they were taught things last year. Even if we’re the ones that put all those things into the 7th-grade calendar. It’s fine. Really. I love reteaching when I have a shit ton of content to get through before the state test. Then staff meetings about a debrief of something we didn’t do because they never opened the list of sign ups for us to be observed doing it. So yeah, that’ll be a fun, “hey y’all dropped the ball yet again”, in fact I don’t even know if you know where the ball is. Then ceramics today? Or tomorrow? I can’t decide, so I’ll take my stuff with me…I think it needs to be tomorrow though. Yeah, it does. I forgot about book club. I don’t even know what book I was supposed to have read, so hopefully some other part of my brain took care of that and already read it. Yes, that’s where we’re at right now. It’s not great and it’s not particularly enjoyable, but at least I’ll be doing art stuff at the end of the day to make up for all that crazy nutso fuckedupedness.

Iterations.

Tuesdays have gotten so much harder lately. Not sure why. I feel like I’ve run a marathon in only two days of work, and then there’s a slow slide into the weekend. Sometimes that slide upends me into a pile of steaming compost before the weekend, but it feels like the hump, getting over that, is now Tuesday. I mean, the work doesn’t stop after Tuesday? There just seems to be an inordinate amount of it in the first two days…well, include Sunday, because I work then too. Maybe that’s why? Nah, I’ve always had to do that…well, always in the last 5 or 6 years? I didn’t always have to put in so much weekend time. Not sure why. So far, I haven’t managed to grade anything in class. Like the kids won’t chill out enough to allow it. That will hopefully change today. We’ll see. Some groups do well, some are incredibly needy (some for good reasons, lack of English skills and all), and some can’t stay on task to save their lives. I’m looking forward to October, when things seem to chill out a bit (weather and school)…but it’s still an awfully long way away.

The stitchdown is coming along slowly. I’m not getting a full hour at night…I’m coming home later and eating dinner later and then it’s 10 PM and I know I have to go to bed around 10:30. So I made it up to the sun and planets last night, and that’s all that’s left. I should be able to get that done tonight, but I have a union meeting after school and pilates late, so maybe not. Trying to fit in all the things I want to do with all the things I have to do and then the things I should do…ugh. But here’s Monday night’s stitching…

I got through one arm and most of the left side of the torso. I don’t remember where I was before that though. Last night, I finished the torso and the head and the hair, the hands on top of her head, and the barn owl…

And I found this in my yard…

There’s two great horned owls nearby, but I still hear the nightly screech of one of the barn owls, plus the occasional feather. Nice that they’re hanging around. They can all have the rats and gophers. Please.

This piece, Portrait of One Self, got into Quilts=Art=Quilts, so I’ll be shipping her later this month.

She’s got a lot going on too, much like me. Not often you see a fox sleeping with missiles. Or bunnies on body bags. Kitten is in there too…apparently I knew she was near the end, because she’s got angel wings. I miss her lots still. The Man says I can borrow his cats, and sometimes I am a good substitute for them, but mostly, they choose their daddy (of course). So I miss the kitty time. I don’t have the time or energy for a new kitty right now, though; the two dogs are enough. Katie is here! My parents’ dog has been visiting for over a week. She’s pretty chill these days, as long as you give her what she wants. She misses her people too, I’m sure. They’ll be back Sunday.

I have been having a hard time finding the time and energy to make it to ceramics, which sucks, because it’s very meditative when I’m there. I mean, the piece that needs to go in the kiln stresses me out, because I’m not even sure I can lift in into the kiln without breaking it…but the freeform head piece has been loads of fun.

I just keep adding weird shit to it. I actually need to go in when the owner is there so I can put the base back in the bisque fire and then try to get the torso in as well. Then I can just focus on the head, which is now going to have a tree coming out of it? I don’t know how that’s going to work. Shhh.

It was great being there yesterday…one other woman was there who I see on a regular basis, and about three other people just stopped by to drop off or pick stuff up, and then it was just me. Unfortunately, I only had about 90 minutes and then needed to pick up mail at my parents and then go home and cook dinner and do schoolwork and eventually get to stitch stuff down. Busy fucking days. I feel like I wake up running and don’t stop until late at night. And then the CGM has been off again. I’m wondering if my body is fighting this one even longer before it settles, and if that is the new thing. The numbers are still completely off and the alarm kept going off last night but it was like 50 points off. And I don’t have time to call them and go through all the phone call shit again today. Ugh. Why can’t things just work? Why does my body need to make it so fucking difficult. This thing has been really helpful for keeping my blood sugar in the right place. I’d really like it to keep working.

Sweet boy. Needs attention. I reread the same page like 5 times while he kept flipping around and smiling at me. Dork.

This is too true. Also, I think the Man is the caterpillar in Alice. At least right now. Maybe he’ll be the White Knight later on.

OK. Teaching energy while lacking it. Actually transformations today, which is different than transfer. Gotta make that distinction today as well. Then they get an INDEPENDENT assignment, for some definition of independent, right? Then union meeting and pilates and dinner and schoolwork and stitching, then sleep. Repeat some iteration of that. Ugh. September. Double ugh.

Up and At ‘Em

Good morning. Splendid extra hour of sleep? Well, maybe. I mostly wasted it on checking my clock because it was light and I thought I hadn’t set the alarm. My brain went right into staying up an hour later though. I was working Saturday night well past bedtime (school stuff, unfortunately). I’m not done with grades. I have to do about 15 redo grades and then input everything, which is more than it has been in the past. There’s some new thing we have to check for certain students. The government doesn’t trust us to do certain things, so we have to check a box saying we did it. I’m not sure which teachers aren’t doing it, but if they aren’t, they’re still gonna check the box. So yeah. Didn’t fix that problem with more work, did we. I have not fully planned the rest of this week for 8th grade. Again. I’m not sure when I will get ahead. Ever. Like more than 5 days max ahead. I have through Wednesday planned, but only if I get the lab set up today. Lucky for me it is only a 4-day week, but we are camping this weekend, so I won’t have access to internet to plan, so next week’s gotta be planned before I go. I had Friday for that, but I added an exercise class because I can’t go earlier in the week, and then the cat needed to go to the vet, and then the Man decided he wanted to be out of here by 2 PM, and all of a sudden, the day is no longer mine to lesson plan, eh? ‘Tis how it works.

I also need to start the next quilt, at least on the drawing page. I managed to put all the bindings on Saturday…

That’s some old-school fabric there for the sleeve. Then the bed quilt…

Only got the art quilt pinned last night…

Other art stuff happened this weekend though. I went to the opening of Portraits of the Anthropocene at Dance Place in Liberty Station…and a bunch of my co-teachers showed up…

So did the Man…

I have two quilts there…

Through early January, so check it out…also some other very cool art there.

And after that, we ate…

It was really nice of them all to show up, and we had a good time.

The next day, I had a quilt guild meeting. Met an old acquaintance and made a new one. Also did some slow stitching…

Came home, graded for a while, and then went for a much-needed hike with Simba and the Man…

The weather was beautiful…just the right temperature…

Although all three of us are out of shape…

Saw a coyote…

It’s a little blurry. Every time we come to Crest, these days, we see a coyote.

Quilts=Art=Quilts is up at the Schweinfurth Art Center. You can see the whole exhibit here. I screenshot a couple of shots of my quilt.

Gotta love those orange dots.

I love seeing my work in a space I can’t visit, so this is awesome for me. It’s up until January as well.

I also voted. You should vote too.

And visited the parentals, who have had a week to recover from their trip and seem to need another week at least. Katie was happy to see us though.

Happy her parents are home too.

OK. School. Two-hour staff meeting. Dropping the sewing machine off to be cleaned/tuned up. Finishing grades. Setting up a lab. Cooking dinner. Hopefully starting to sew the binding on to that quilt and/or drawing the next one. I have high hopes for the next one. More time during the week to make art? Working on it. For now, gotta get up and at ’em. Whatever that means.

My Apologies for the Stuff…

It is the last Friday of Winter Break. All hail the chaos ahead. I’m sifting through my plans for next week (especially art) and trying to adjust for possibly having up to 40% of my kids out. OK. With progress report grades due a week and a half later. I gave my art kids this coming week to finish the two projects that should have been done by Winter Break, because they weren’t going to be done. And now? They may still not be done. Gotta move on, y’all…gotta move on. But I will look at what’s on the calendar and see if I can shift any digital stuff to this week. I hate this year. Science is fine…I did this whole unit digitally last year, so I have the 23 videos of the elements already. It’s totally doable. Minor issue that I don’t have a table of contents yet…I’m hoping that solidifies on Monday. Ha! Yeah right.

SOME YEAR IN THE FUTURE school will be normal-ish again. It’s not this year, that’s for sure.

So I was hiking yesterday, out in the pristine (mostly) wilderness of the Cuyamacas, beautiful day…

No really, it was beautiful. A little warm at times, only saw four other people on the trail.

And I got a phone call. I thought we were out of range…certainly there wasn’t very much cell service. I didn’t answer, although it told me who it thought it was, and it was an art person, couldn’t remember which art place though, gallery, museum, whatever. You know how your phone tries to guess things sometimes? Well it guessed someone I’d talked to before.

In retrospect, I wish I’d answered, but oh well. No voice mail left, but when we got into town for our requisite post-hike snack and drink, I checked email…

That’s Dyar Springs by the way…our destination. Well, honestly, we did a big loop and the destination wasn’t really the point. Six miles though of out in the foresty/meadowy bits.

I like this hike…I’ve done it a few times before, but it’s been a while. We saw almost no wildlife on the hike, but were checking out footprints in the mud…

IDK. You tell me…

So possibly some wildlife in the area…although we saw these while leaving…

Crossing the road of course…instead of out in nature, where we’d been.

ANYWAY, the email was to tell me Womanscape had sold at Quilts=Art=Quilts…

Wow. Did not expect that. I cried. Sigh. It’s been a rough year financially and I’ve been really stressed about some stuff that needs to happen, paying off college, trimming some big, dangerous, tend to drop shit trees, buying food over the summer. It’s why I took on the copyediting job over Winter Break, to pull in some extra cash. So this was a big deal. Also it’s a really cool, complicated, political quilt and I love that someone loved it enough to buy it. Plus this is a venue that has shown a lot of my work, so I feel good that they are benefiting from the sale as well, especially during the pandemic, when so many places are losing money and/or shutting down. We just got news that the Escondido opening is not happening. The show is still going on…just no super spreader event. That’s a good thing. Plus it was going to be a Thursday night and trying to get there after teaching is a pain.

Anyway. Thanks to the buyer. This piece has been in a bunch of shows and won an award and it’s a piece I really love. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to finish this other complicated beast…

I spent about 2 hours yesterday evening blasting music and quilting, and almost got done…

There’s a little bit of outlining left and then the borders, and then she’s good for binding…which is good, because my favorite quilt shop still has limited hours, so Saturdays are really the only day I can go during the school year. It’s today or tomorrow! I don’t think I have anything big enough to bind this thing. I might. I will look first.

While I quilt, Kitten likes to sit behind me and stick her claws in my ass.

Not a fan.

Simba got combed the other night…

He spends the time blissed out or trying to bite me.

The winter sun is hard to find these days…but just find the animals and it’s probably there…

Nova is a weirdo.

I did this drawing on Wednesday night…

I think that’s number 16? I’m not sure, honestly. I’ve missed a few nights…like last night, I didn’t draw because the Man wasn’t here, so I graded stuff (yeah, that’s still happening unfortunately) and then quilted.

While I was quilting, I was looking at these stacking drawers behind my machine…there’s a bunch of thread in there that I don’t really like, but I save it for when the girlchild comes home and needs me to hem something that’s a color besides white, black, or gray. But also, as I was looking at it last night, there’s a bunch of bobbins (and bobbin holders too) in there.

Shit, I don’t even think I have that machine any more. Like why am I keeping bobbins that don’t work in the current machine? You are probably like me, in that you have drawers or boxes full of stuff that you haven’t looked at or touched in years (seriously, many many years) and they all need cleaning out. I could do that right now, or I could quilt. I guess you know how THAT argument goes in my head, every single time. Sorry kids. I love you, but I also love making art. My apologies for the stuff.

Just Wibbly Wobbly and Blech…

It’s a Monday morning and I’m not at school. I am however soon to be on my way to the vet, probably for the last time with Calliope, who is a very good girl. Maybe there will be some miracle treatment that will make all her tumors disappear and persuade her to eat consistently, but I doubt it. I think this is the end and it is always so hard, even when they’ve had good long lives and honestly have survived longer than they said she would.

So there’s that, and I’m trying not to dwell too much on it right now.

I was sick over the weekend; got tested Friday and it was COVID-negative. Will probably get tested again this week, just to be sure, but most of it is gone…just a tiny bit of a dry throat and a cough. Never had a fever, never lost smell or taste. Just wibbly wobbly and blech. It’s a strange world where a simple cold is such a big deal. It meant that I didn’t get much done, mostly finished ironing the quilt down to fabric…which is actually a good thing. At some point on Friday night, this is where I was at…

All the people in the bubble had been ironed down, and I just needed to iron all the hair and shirts and signs. That might have been Saturday, actually. I don’t remember.

Yeah, I suspect this was Friday night…I got all the people ironed…the ones in the bubble are all those white fabrics.

Then Saturday, I finished the rest…this is the 199 fabrics I used in this quilt.

I think that’s my record. Not sure. It took 24 hours and 56 minutes to iron everything to fabric.

And then Saturday night, I started cutting them out.

The first two batches were just tons of letters. Tiny fussy shit. Kitten does not help. She wants to sit next to me and the boxes are in the way.

She tries to stand IN the boxes sometimes. I even cleared a space next to me and she rejected it for this…

Which didn’t last long. Mostly she wants pets. She is an old lady too. Sigh. This vet thing. Fuck. It’s not like you don’t know it’s coming…it just sucks anyways.

Last night’s cutting…the pieces are piled up mostly in order, so I’ve made it down from the 1500s to the 1000s.

I’m about 6 hours in. Probably another 15 to go or so. I am grading things too, slowly. And reading my book. And dealing with lightbulbs and crap that’s been piled on the counter for weeks, maybe months, and laundry and the yard. So much gets put aside while I’m teaching because there just isn’t time for it.

I pulled a drawer out to look at the fabrics in it, turned back around, and found a cat instead.

Petulant beast.

My quilt Womanscape at Quilts=Art=Quilts…

Nice tour of it here.

OK. Vet soon. The inevitable visit. Then book reading and crying and maybe grading and cutting things out in between all that. Ugh. She is a very good dog.

Up into the Sky…

Good news…got into a show. Womanscape is going to Quilts=Art=Quilts, so you can see it there.

Bad news…one of the shows I was in has canceled due to COVID. OK news…they’re trying to find a new place to travel the exhibit. So what do I do the last two nights? Enter two more shows. Always doing that. But between that, the paperwork part of being an artist, and my day job, I haven’t made it to the sewing machine much. That is frustrating. And today won’t be much better…

I managed a whopping 45 minutes on Monday night and zero minutes last night.

I am up in the sky, which is significantly less complicated than the shit down below (on the quilt and in real life, right?), so it shouldn’t take much time. That said, I have exercise class and book club (in person!) tonight, so the odds of my having any mental or physical energy left when I get home is low. So tomorrow it is. Goals adjust. I want to be done, but I can’t magic that into happening. I have a shit ton of school work to do as well, so that’s not helping. I did come in here, into the studio last night to do some stitching, but then entered a show and did some other paperwork for art, and yes, did a few things for school…

Because I walked/hiked earlier…3.4 miles. I needed it.

Last week I hardly did anything (granted it was hot and that doesn’t help)…walking all day at school doesn’t count. Although it does…just not as much as I’d like.

Hello friend.

It was big. And didn’t stop coming toward me until I said Hi.

Anyway, I didn’t cook either, bless those who live with me, but after I’d finished eating and we were still watching the show of the night (which is from a comic book I actually read…well, the first few anyway…I’d read them again), I needed something to work on, so I pulled out the scarf I started on Sunday in class. I really SHOULD have pulled out the SJSA block and just gotten it done, but I didn’t. I will. I promise. It needs to get done. Lots of things need to get done. Ugh.

Kitten for sizing. So this is going to be covered in stitching, mostly running stitch. I wanted to get the outline in so I could start adding parts, like veins and a heart and fingernails and lungs if I decide to do that. I have no idea what’s going to be going on around her, but it will be cool. Now that there’s an outline, I don’t need to mark things…I think. Makes it easier. OK, maybe need to mark the heart and the eyeball…and the hair? I don’t know…we’ll see. Fun stuff. Great way to use up all the thread I have…except you know it won’t use ALL of it up. This is almost all of one card of perle cotton. I’ve got about a million more.

And at the end, being Californians, we checked the news.

Oh yeah. Good thing. All politicians suck in many ways, but Larry Elder? Fuck me. He would have devastated the schools. All the things that help my kids, my students? Yeah, gone. Dumbassery. For all the talk of Newsom being heavy-handed with the pandemic, I’d rather be here than in Florida. Our numbers are better. Yes, we’d like to solve the homeless problem and make houses more affordable, but that’s not one guy…that shit has been around through Democrats and Republicans and unless we become much more socialist (oooh…bad word) than we are, it’s not changing. Voting one guy out and replacing him with a talk-show host who is an absolute idiot is not how to solve that shit. Let’s remember which party likes to help people more when the next gubernatorial election comes up. Hopefully we’ll have someone on the ticket who has some plans for that. The fewer rich white guys in charge, the better. The fewer totally unqualified, inexperienced, mouthy assholes in charge, also better.

OK, so today is early in, plan like a whirling dervish, work hard all day, be efficient as hell, hope no one co-opts my prep period so I can actually get the 19 contracts completed and off my computer that need to be done apparently by Friday, plus probably fill out at least one more I saw pop up yesterday…plus work out and then hang out (outside) with my book club friends. What book is it? Dunno. I read it…just don’t remember which one it was. Probably it doesn’t matter. Stitch down if I can tonight…I’m so close to done.

Shooing Snakes

It’s interesting that my brain is sure I should be up earlier on a Monday and tries to make me wake up and succeeds because as soon as any coherent part of it wakes up, it starts to worry about work and how to get it all done…that said, I was dreaming about snakes of all sizes everywhere and the dogs and cats were on them and chasing them and I was afraid one of the snakes was a rattler (they were all rattlers) and would strike, so I was running around, moving cats and dogs and shooing snakes.

If that isn’t a metaphor for life right now, I don’t know what is.

I spent a few hours last night trying to organize and finalize these gridded selfies for my Advanced Art kids, emailed all of the ones I had (28/38), planned the week for both art classes (as much as that ever seems to work), spent hours on science, made two videos, I have another 4-6 videos I need to make today and tomorrow for art, I think. I wrote it down. Graded nothing since Friday night…although I graded during gaming, the easy stuff, not the thinking stuff. Nobody should be grading thinking stuff on a Friday night. Gaming, being watched by the dog (she needed to pee), bouncing back and forth on the Mac between game info and what I was grading.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m gone this weekend, although I do have wifi, and grades are due in a week. So I need to not only plan for next week, which is usually multiple hours of stuff, but grade everything that counts for this trimester and input it all. Fun stuff. You wish you were me.

Halloween for the students.

I would have worn the lemur costume but (a) they only see my head anyway and (b) it was warm on Friday.

On actual Halloween, I exercised, twice actually, did some art stuff, got interviewed for an art video thing…the Schweinfurth Art Center is currently showing Quilts=Art=Quilts, and here is my piece, Swallow Me Whole hung in that space.

They have a cool tour of the show you can see on their website here. Check it out. They’re editing all my words down to a reasonable amount (you know how that goes). I’ll let you know when it posts.

Strangely, Friday night, after gaming, I had energy. I had enlarged a couple of things, still debating what to do next. This drawing from a staff meeting got an extended body…

And I did enlarge the third possible COVID quilt.

It’s smaller than the last one, but it’s complicated. That’s not a bad thing in general. I’m debating.

Size comparisons…

I found out about another show I should enter, but the theme is not something my head is processing right now. So I don’t know.

Saturday also involved getting a nail out of my tire and a 3-mile hike in nature.

Luckily it was late enough that most people had left nature for their Halloween parties.

I’m not kidding. My neighbors threw one. Fifteen kids. We left candy in a bowl in the driveway.

This guy kept eyeballing us, but was much more interested in finding food.

The sky was beautiful.

The neighbors were mostly quiet…impressive, considering the candy consumption that must have happened. We ate out (outside…still not going into a restaurant) and then I sat and drew for my Patreon…

Nova kept trying to crawl into my lap…but eventually I got something done.

Scanned it, cleaned it up, posted it.

Hi Nova. Then Sunday was all school, all the time, in between phone calls and groceries. I finished sending those 28 emails to art students at 9:45 PM or so…which was really an hour later in Kathy brain time. I rode the stationary bike for exercise…gotta incorporate that back in. I got lazy or overwhelmed or whatever.

Then I tried to draw, got the sketchbook out, put it on the couch, found my pen, and Kitten was lying on it.

Straight up, I didn’t have the energy to draw anyway. School really kicked my ass yesterday, on a Sunday. It was just hard. It feels never-ending, like there’s never a break, and when I take a break, then I’m on again for just hours to catch up, and I never catch up. I don’t ever see the kids in person, just online, which is hard for me. I do have relationships with kids, but it’s not the same. I worry about some, I worry too hard about some I should probably just stop worrying about, I try too hard sometimes. Need to let some of those balls drop so I can survive this workload. The plusses of having a team support with all the little stuff, with the kids, with someone to talk to about school or kids; the co-teacher helping with planning stuff and making posts and assignments. That’s all gone. New curriculum, no curriculum, no materials, no support. Exhausted. I’ll be 1/3 of the way through the year on Friday. The vast expanse of time that unfolds before me in this school year…sigh. I do think about quitting. I do. I always expected to teach until I retired. I think I will…but as a high-risk person, I wonder how long it will be before I can go back…if ever.

I need to start the next art quilt. Even if it’s just that little Boom so I have something to work on. I need to start. I need a place for my brain to rest at the end of the day besides this crap.

Friday Tired

Hey. It’s Friday. I’m Friday tired. Maybe more so. I find sitting for so long makes my feet swell up or something by the end of the week. I think it’s the chair or the height of the chair or just sitting for so damn long, but by 7th period, I just can’t stand to sit any more. I don’t get the kids who try to work while lying in bed, because I’d just fall asleep. Oh wait. Some of them do. Their camera is off and I’m talking to them and typing to them and there’s nothing…except probably some drool and snoring on the other end. I get it. This is hard.

My district officially made the announcement yesterday that kids would be going back September 9th. At my school, they will phase in in groups, so our kids probably have another 4-6 weeks until we switch. I wonder which kids I will end up with…and whether I will be teaching for multiple schools. Sounds hard. It’s all hard. Just give me a plan period with my co-teacher so I don’t go insane trying to plan it all myself. She scales me back. Then I scale her back. Then she makes things and I edit them. Or sometimes I make them and she makes me edit them. We always make it too long, too much to start. Right now, especially, too long is not working for any of us.

I’m trying out a different teaching location in the house today. I tried it back in April, but it was too hot. It might still be too hot…we’ll see. It’s more an internet test, because I got kicked out of Zoom 5 times in one class period yesterday, and that gets old. Tuesday was hellacious. All day getting dropped, sometimes just on the laptop; sometimes on all the devices. Fun stuff. Also I broke the toilet on Wednesday.

OK, the parts were just old and they were making noise, leaky noises, so I fussed with it and broke things that were plastic and probably 20 years old. So I don’t feel really bad. Plus I’m the one who had to go buy the kit at Home Depot after work so I could make the boychild install it.

He wanted to wait a day, and I’m like no, I need a working toilet so I don’t have to go down the long hallway in the dark at 4 AM and by the time I get to the other bathroom, my body is like (a) nah, I’m good. Don’t need to pee any more, and (b) now I am also wide awake PERK. Fuck that. I need sleep.

So it’s fixed. Now if I could get him to go fix the mailbox. Because IDK how to do that either and I don’t have the time or patience.

This was me trying to grade Wednesday afternoon at the vet with the old lady. Google Classroom has not been doing a good job with the iPad version of the app…

Which is unfortunate.

Wednesday night, I ironed a little. I have no idea how many pieces are left to iron because all I’m doing is all the little pieces in the body that AREN’T fleshy bits. So from the 200s to the 700s, but not all of them because a bunch were already ironed because they were skin.

Thursday night, another quick run at the ironing. About 45 minutes after 11 PM…

Yes, those piles look different. To me. Not a lot. I ironed a glove, a thermometer, some eyeballs, some virions, IDK what else. I’m getting close to done…

This is all that’s left…dirt, fire, blood, hair, lungs, heart. OK. That’s a lot. But I could bang it out in a night if I weren’t so tired.

I’m always tired at the beginning of the year. This is different, true, but the tired part is normal.

I stitched for a while as I listened to Beth Smith talk about the contemporary quilt exhibit she curated for the Oceanside Museum of Art…my piece is on the right, So Cal Mama. The slide show of the exhibit is on their website, so you can see it.

They’ve installed the show and it will be up until February 21…their hope is that businesses will open by then…

I don’t have a list of the other artists. This video will be up on the OMA site soon.

At least we could see the show.

Swallow Me Whole got into Quilts=Art=Quilts…so I’ll be shipping her off in a few weeks…

And here’s the morning, hopeful but predicting warm…

I’m hoping for the chance to stand up and walk around between classes. I’m hoping for everything to work techwise. I’m hoping that the tea kicks in soon. I’ve been trying to go to bed earlier and it doesn’t help most nights…I can’t fall asleep earlier. I’m hoping to get some ironing in. The man and I have a date night planned for tomorrow, but we’re a little nervous about the dinner part. We’ve agreed that if we get there and the table setup worries us with proximity to others (tables 6 feet apart does not mean people 6 feet apart), then we will apologize and get takeout. I’m hoping the girlchild’s interview goes well. I’m hoping the weather starts to cool off. I’m hoping the new schoolroom setup works better. We’ll see.

I’m Useless but Not for Long*

I woke up this morning, having slept through lots of noises and daylight arriving and I feel like I didn’t move all night, I was so tired, I must have been like a block of sleepy concrete that weighed down the bed and refused to let pillows and blankets move, until the first dog whined, and then it was awake time.

Quilts=Art=Quilts opens today and I have a piece in it…this is You Pollute Me…

It’s actually not a very big piece…just long.

I’m grading Unit 2…lots of them. I didn’t actually bring them home, because I have three days next week, maybe four, when the kids are supposed to be working on stuff independently (ha!), so I should be able to grade them in time at school. That’s my goal anyway.

We’ll see what reality looks like, won’t we.

Last night was tiring. But I got the field trip permission slips all trimmed, checked, and double-checked, so I know who’s going and who’s not. I started a spreadsheet for the chaperones as well…and I did seating charts for Monday for the project week, which will drive me nuts, but they do have work to do, so hopefully they won’t be total assholes about being with their friend. I’m always boggled by certain groups…when a fairly high-level girl agrees to work with a boy who does NOTHING. Sigh. Oh well. They don’t always get to pick their groups, so I guess I’ll balance it out. Put all the lazy non-workers together next time.

But the dogs last night…this was after I came back from watching the band play. Calli heard fireworks before I left and it was still upsetting her. The other two just wanted closeness, I guess.

That’s Calli’s nervous face. At this point, the fireworks happened three hours ago, but she was still panting and breathing hard about it…

And here she is with her head on my leg. Yes, I petted her lots. I told her she was a good girl and it was OK. It just doesn’t seem to help any more. Oh yeah, and here I am cutting out yard 4 of Wonder Under…

Four yards in, one to go…

Hopefully that gets done today…along with the humongous pile of other things that need doing, which are giving me palpitations at the moment: grade one assignment, start looking at the next unit which we’ve never taught before because I’m going to be gone for two days in the beginning of it so I have to leave something they can actually do with a guest teacher, plus find and sew on D-rings for a quilt that has to be delivered next week, and do another blogpost for the fiber art group I’m in, plus laundry and deal with compost bins and vacuuming and cleaning floors and groceries and cleaning up in here so I can start ironing, because if I don’t start ironing soon I’m not going to get this quilt done in time.

Deep breath. Maybe more than one. I’m overwhelmed. I know that. What my brain and body really need is a 7-mile hike today. And I’m not going to get that.

So I did go watch the man play disco, of all things, last night. Not their genre. And I drew this…

Definitely influenced by the music. I’ve been to this venue, crashing this same party, at least three years in a row, and I recognize the wait staff and one of them waved at me. I’m amused. Anyway. There’s art. I did do art. I did school. I slept. I’m going to make a list and conquer its ass. And then hopefully get some down time. Get out of the house time. Maybe some exercise. Definitely dinner out with that guy I’m barely going to see in the first two weeks of November. Yeah. That.

*Gorillaz, Clint Eastwood