Lost Day

First of all, Happy Fourth to those who celebrate. I hope our country remembers its immigrant origins (and the people who lived here well before us white folks) as it celebrates. Maybe we can make the world a better place again. And not the way that orange-haired guy thinks.

Y’all know about lost days. You have plans and then everything gets turned upside down for whatever reason (car breaks down, someone has to go the emergency room, the water heater leaks all over the place, whatever) and the day goes to hell in a handbasket. So that was yesterday. That said, yesterday had some pretty awesome views for a good chunk of the way.

Yes, I drove to Mammoth yesterday to pick up the boychild and all his stuff (well, we shipped two boxes because my car is smaller than his, plus there were two humans in the car instead of one, so lost space). His car was a total loss. Well that sucks. Deep breaths. I left San Diego just before 5 AM…it took me about 7 hours to get up there (I had to pee, what can I say?)…

Apologies for the road views and the spot on the windshield…I tried cleaning it off multiple times at multiple gas stations. This is Highway 395, up the east side of the Sierras. California has beautiful mountains. I just put this trip (but a much more leisurely version of it) on my to-do list for future years…

There was a fire further up that added a lot of haze to the views…honestly, I got better pictures on the way back down, when I was the passenger. But those mountains…so beautiful and huge.

This is on the way back down…

I think it’s hard to grow up in California and move somewhere else that doesn’t have expansive views like this. I couldn’t live on the flat all the time.

Anyway, got up there, packed the car, shipped some stuff, ate some stuff, peed again, drove back.

It took longer coming back (those are the desert mountains in that photo…at one point, you’re flanked on both sides)…due to traffic. But not too bad. We got routed around one accident. Love map apps for that.

I really like this picture. Like I think I’m going to draw it…but add a figure or two somehow. Haven’t figured that out.

We got back just before 9 PM. LOOONNNNGGGG day. Yup. 14 hours in a car? Something like that. The dogs were thrilled he was back…this was Simba this morning, knocking on the door to be let in.

I did a little stitching while I was a passenger…almost finished the wild dog. He needs eyes and nose embellished.

That’s for today. The man’s band is playing down at the beach for the Fourth, so I’m taking a chair, some sunscreen, my stitching, my book, my sketchbook, some wine and snacks (hoping to get real food there), and I’ll hang out while they set up, watch the band, then we’ll fight the holiday traffic back home. Could be relaxing. I did lose yesterday. Nothing got done except what needed to be done, but that’s OK, because he’s home safe and stuff is dealt with. So that’s how life goes sometimes.

I don’t think there’s enough food in the house though.

A Place to Start

Empathy: a friend sent me an article this morning by Alisa Golden about empathy in art (you can read it here) and I was thinking about maybe that’s what the deal is with the quilters who want no politics with their fabric. Why do those of us who make more political quilts get upset with them? I don’t like to just write off a whole group of people with the “stupid” or “ignorant” label, but what I really think they may be lacking, or maybe just AVOIDING, is empathy. Putting yourself in the shoes of a mother who has been trying to get her children away from drug dealers and violence. Feeling like you need to find a better world to raise children. How is that hard to understand?

I had a student this last year with gang connections and lots of family pressure regarding that, and I said more than once, if I were his mom, I would pick him up, put him in the car without telling the rest of the family, and I would drive him far far away and not tell anyone where I was going, and I would raise him somewhere that those influences were not available. Because he’s 12. And he deserves a chance to grow up without having to fight a rival gang member or be surrounded by drugs and violence. And I realize mom probably doesn’t have the ability to do that financially or supportwise. It would take a lot of courage to walk away from everything you know and some of your own children to make that happen. So if I were really her, maybe I wouldn’t do it. But I do think about being her and being the mom of this troubled kid and how I would solve that problem.

So empathy. We certainly don’t have an empathetic president…or government in charge. If I listen to any more white men explain people of color, immigrants, gays, trans, or women to me…I try to avoid them, but occasionally their rhetoric slips through. I don’t have a lot of empathy for them. When I try to get there, I just feel their fear of change and loss of control and power. Geez. Find something else to get you excited then. White supremacists? I have a hard time with empathy. They probably have a hard time with me too. But this is what we need…to feel the humanity in all of us and to help people through the hard stuff without the NIMBY attitude. Ask them why they need to believe what they believe. Explain it to me.

So what does this have to do with art? Well, I guess that’s how I do the empathy thing…I put mine out there and hope it speaks to someone. It’s what I know how to do. Golden wrote: “Art is not just about the message. It is not only about the meaning or feeling or mood. It is also about getting outside of yourself and your own game and respectfully touching base with someone, somewhere else.” So if we can do that with our quilts, that should be a good thing.

I am incredibly lucky and pleased to not have jury duty this week…I’m even more pleased that they told me I had the whole week off, because I was all stressed out about gas in the car, food in the fridge, stuff to take with me, planning for something that might not even happen. I don’t do well in those situations. I like to know what’s coming. I handle uncertainty all the time, but every day? Yikes. No. So this week is free…which is good, because I already had 3 things planned and now I have 4. I would have canceled or moved them if I had to, although the two medical appointments are not so easy to schedule…so it’s a good thing I don’t have to.

One of the appointments is with a diabetes educator, because that’s the way I get to figure out how to use my new medicine. I went through the diabetes classes when I was diagnosed 16 or so years ago, and I’m pretty good at paying attention to what I should be doing…but my body is changing as menopause decides whether or not to be a thing (certainly yelling “Make up your damn mind, uterus!” has absolutely no effect on the situation), and I’m convinced by what I’ve read and understood about the whole thing that it is the hormones that are causing the majority of my issues right now. I am not exercising enough, that’s true, but nothing else has changed. I’m hoping the education comes with some sanity, because I’ve had some crazy thrown at me over the years…and when I try to say, um, no, diabetes is not caused by eating red meat…I get lectures or incorrect information. So I am trying to keep my mind open and not be cranky about being educated. Perhaps there is new information and they won’t just lecture me about my stressful job and my shitty sleep habits. Or not. They told me to bring my new meds too, but you inject once a week and I don’t want it to be on a Tuesday…it’s one of my busiest and most stressful days of the school week. So we’ll have that conversation. Show me without actually doing it. I feel like that could be a thing.

Boychild is still in Mammoth…there are worse places to get stranded, although this is one of the more expensive places to get stuck…

Apparently his dad and grandpa are on standby with a flatbed truck to go get him and the car if necessary. Sigh. Poor kid…finally decides it’s time to come home, and he’s stuck 6 hours away. Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

So I worked on this a little last Thursday and last night…on the wild dog in the center.

He’s a little blurry, but I did needleweaving over the brown dots…

I should find the instructions for those silly flowers…I know they’re in a different month. That’s why I haven’t done them.

After dinner with the parentals, I came home and quilted for a good long while…enough to get the dark outlining done. I started around the sun with a yellow…

Then I’ll do the stars with a golden orange, the background of the sky etc with a variety of off white and beige colors, and then finally the border in green. It’s not a small amount of quilting that’s left, but I might finish today.

When I got tired of that (I set a goal and met it), I came out to work on the drawing. I cut out the bottom of this viewpoint, because I wanted it to obviously be a penis, so it wasn’t long enough for the size I drew.

Fixed. That was easy.

I can’t get all this immigration bullshit out of my head, so it’s now in there too.

This quilt is more about women’s issues and women’s rights, but it seems like keeping one’s family together should be a right. I should put an American flag tattoo on the arm.

Then I drew the next of the pregnant women. She might be the last mostly full figure…we’ll see. The drawing is changing in my head as I draw (and watch the news…maybe should turn that off). I don’t know what her viewpoint is yet…

Still working on that. Added a cat. Like you do.

You can kind of see how it’s going here. I really am trying to keep it simple…ha!

Yeah. I should stop saying that. It’s not completely true. So I’ll keep working on this today.

So what’s on the table for today? Hope the boychild’s car gets fixed quickly. Go to the gym. Pick up the other dog. Hopefully finish quilting…I wonder if I bought binding fabric? Probably not. It was how many years ago that I sandwiched it? Two? I’ll go through the pile and see if I can figure it out. Then work on the drawing after dinner again. Let it percolate all day so I can make decisions. Have empathy for someone. Or lots of people. It’s a place to start.

Might Be Over Now, but I Feel It Still*

My definition of a break is different from vacation. Vacation is when you get in the car or on a plane and you travel somewhere and hang out there and it involves not sleeping in your bed and possibly eating weird food. Vacations are cool. I went years without vacations because I couldn’t afford them, and as it is now, I don’t do them a lot (still money), but I try to do one a year for a week and then a few smaller ones. This year, I’m going to Boston (excuse me, Waltham) to visit the girlchild in November. It’s really hard (for me) as a teacher to take time off during the school year. It’s such a pain in the ass to create good lesson plans and hope a guest teacher won’t completely fuck it up and teach the kids something completely incorrectly (sigh…it’s way too common) and then I lose days when I come back, trying to correct their misconception AND deal with behavior. So I avoid it.

I rarely get to travel during summer, because of that lost paycheck. It’s hard to plan to spend a chunk of money when you know you won’t have any more coming in. I currently have a list of things I need to buy but will need to wait until September (or whenever the credit card cycle starts that will bill in September…teachers, you all know what I’m talking about). I would love to vacate right now. Really. I would. We tried to set up a weekend camping trip, but we waited too long and all the campsites are booked. And I can’t plan anything in July during the week because of the silly jury duty. August is already a disaster schedule-wise.

So no vacation right now. Staycation? OK. Go see some music, maybe hike a bit, possibly kayak, go to the zoo? I don’t know. Something I don’t do during the school year very often, because I’m so buried. But maybe that’s my resolution for the 2018-2019 school year? More weekend things that are less about work and more about being a relaxing human. (I suck at relaxation, you may have noticed.) This is a break though…a break from the job and the kids and all the other crap and that in itself is a good thing.

Anyway, my car window got fixed yesterday. I was worried that it would be the wrong window or something else would go wrong, but it worked out and the gardener who accidentally shattered it with a rock ended up paying for almost all of it. So all that turned out well. I was expecting to have to spend more time and energy on the issue, and I didn’t have to. So that sort of freed up my brain all day to do a bunch of different art- and fiber-related activities. I think it was the first day since school got out where I felt like I was on break. Because no school. No doctor. Only two errands and they were done early. Nice. Need more of that please.

So I started out with trying to finish the ironing on this…another cat! Shocking.

And some tiny sewing implements…

Then I started ironing it onto a background, but I needed to go to my fiber-related summer social meeting. So I packed up some bits and pieces and headed out. I cut the Wonder Under for the two small quilts…

These lunch containers work well for keeping pieces separated…the sandwich one doesn’t though because the divider doesn’t go all the way up.

So those are ready for fabric choosing.

Then I finished sewing all the wooly bits down on this, September’s blocks.

I also pinned October’s pieces down to that blank block, but that was when I got home…and I stitched a little on (I don’t know what month I’m actually on? July?) the bigger piece. I’m getting closer to done on this. I didn’t photograph any of that.

Then I ironed the rest of this down. I like her. She’s ready to be stitched down.

I’ve been trying to keep doing yardwork, but mostly in the evenings because it’s too hot otherwise. Last night, I was entertaining the dogs while whacking at trees and bushes that haven’t been trimmed for a million years. I lost the puppy for a while in there, and Calli kept bringing me half-chewed sticks to throw.

I will probably never finish back there.

So I can’t do the stitch down on the skinny quilt until I finish quilting this. I don’t want it to go back in the pile. So I quilted for an hour or two, until I was almost out of thread.

It’s not hard. It just takes time. Thread purchase on the list for today. I didn’t want to buy more unless I knew I needed it. Now I know I need it.

So after all that, running out of thread, I decided to try drawing. It’s always hard to get back to drawing if I haven’t done it for a while. It’s like my hand stutters. I have an enlarged old drawing, I have this original drawing from 2011 or 2012, and then I have this cat on my lap. Huh.

Anyway, so I started drawing the righthand figure again, but now I have an issue because I like parts of the old drawing better than the new and I like parts of the new drawing better than the old. Aargh. So I think I’m going to copy both real size and then put them together? Or maybe I’ll copy both enlarged and put them together?

I just don’t know. Or redraw it again. Sigh. Maybe that. The shape of the old one is better but what’s in the belly of the new one is better. Fuuck. OK. Well no decision there, eh? Nothing new. Indecisive brain for two weeks now.

OK, so today…buy thread, make some copies (decide at some point what I’m copying?), pick up the ceramics I painted last week, go watch some music and grab some dinner. Easy. Not too bad. I can handle it. I might even feel relaxed by the end of it!

*Portugal. The Man, Feel It Still

Need to Be Out of Here

Well. I need caffeine delivery at my training. They are nice. They feed us lunch. They bring us snacks and extension cords that don’t have a third prong hole. There’s plenty of water. We can pee whenever we want (trust me, for teachers, that’s a major issue)…but there’s no coffee or tea and the day was long. I don’t sit for that long normally either…like unless I’m on a plane. They had us stand up a few times, but I need a long walk and more caffeine. I’m even willing to bring my own milk and tea bags, if they’ll just give us hot water.

So if you’ve never heard of National Board Certification for teachers, it’s not an easy process. In fact, it’s a monstrous pain in the ass…but doable. And I think it’s useful…not only as a way to focus on how one teaches and picks resources and handles assessment and feedback and differentiation (which is hard), but also to protect teachers from crazy administrators (they’re out there, along with the crazy teachers and the crazy parents). They talk about creating teacher leaders, which kinda cracks me up as I look around the room…there’s some crazy people like me in there, and then some high achievers (English, we’re looking at you), and some who had no idea what they were in for, but it does take all kinds. The teacher leaders I’ve dealt the best with are those who work hard, think about kids and curriculum all the time, reflect all the time, and are willing to share information. Science doesn’t attract a lot of teachers who like to follow rules, I’ve found…there were only two other science teachers there, and I’m betting one doesn’t show up at all today and the other one is only going to show up because she thinks I might be able to help her. And I might.

Anyway, today will be longer. And harder. And I need to find caffeine. Or another thermos.

What else did I get done yesterday? Not much. I watched the window fall out even more…

Fixing it Thursday.

I sewed Pekinese stitch on three balls. THREE.

And then I ironed. Eventually. It was late.

The face…I ironed the teacup separately, same with the leaves…the snake, I did right on the hair. I don’t worry too much about being exactly in the right place for that. It’s not overlapping anything it needs to cover.

The camera and the eye were separate…easier to see where the pieces need to be when I do it that way…

Then onto the face. Cool. I like it.

She’s really pale…which means she’ll pop on a dark background.

I’m almost done with the ironing of the bits. I wanted to be done last night, but I got home and was tired and tried to deal with some stuff, entering a show, finding an old poem for a show…now I need to make the art to go with it, because I committed to that show. Whoops! Nah, it’s OK. I have to do two small pieces by the end of July too. I cut out some small pieces of paper to take to my training, in case I feel like drawing, but that’s hard to do with total strangers sitting next to you and watching everything you do. Plus I don’t know what to do on such small pieces. The big drawing is still sitting on the light table, waiting for me to start something…anything.

But I was in bed around midnight, because I knew I had to get up even earlier this morning…gotta fight traffic. If I get called on jury duty, it’s downtown. Talk about fighting traffic. Ugh. Not looking forward to that. I need lots of sleep over summer break…to make up for how little I sleep during the school year.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll finish ironing tonight, maybe even get it ironed to the background? I only have about 60 pieces to go, if that. And they’re big and easy…no fussy little face parts. Then I’ll have to finish quilting the other one so I can do stitch down on this. That won’t take long…but it will take SOME time. This week is so packed.

There was a video made of the Things That Matter Preview Exhibit…my quilt and I are in it…this exhibit is up at Visions Art Museum through July 8…and then the full exhibit will be in Chandler, Arizona, in November.

I don’t think I’ll be able to make that opening…pretty sure I’ll be hanging with the girlchild in Boston…but I hope I’ll see the full exhibit at some point.

OK, need to be out of here…in so many ways…

Whole Days Turn into Holes in My Mind*

Sigh. Well the universe said hi yesterday. With a rock. It’s interesting (I was gonna say funny, but it’s funny strange, not funny ha ha, so maybe it’s not funny at all)…it doesn’t matter how much I plan money out for summer break, there’s always something that throws a wrench into that plan. I guess in the scheme of things, this is not a biggie…it just had shitty timing. We were driving home from the grocery store yesterday and drove past a guy weedwacking a slope, and his machine shot a rock right through the side window of the car. Shattered it. Now thinking back, with about 12 hours of processing, I guess we should be really really glad we were almost past when that rock shot through, because it would probably have damaged a person if they’d been in the way. I still haven’t found the rock in the car. A chunk of the shattered glass below has now fallen out…on the driveway and into the car…

Just from opening and closing the door and the hood…the hood because the next thing we had to do was jumpstart the Honda, because its battery was having issues (we don’t drive it enough with the kids gone). And then I drove that down to the gas station and filled the tires, put gas in it, cleaned all the windows, because I have teacher professional development today…so I can’t get the other window fixed until probably Thursday, the guy wasn’t insured but said he’d pay for it (if he gave me a real phone number and actually has $400), and my insurance won’t cover it because I carry a high deductible to make insurance cheaper. I hope he’ll pay some of it though, because I don’t get paid in the summer….so it makes bill payment a little challenging sometimes. Especially by the end of August. I can’t order stuff for school until after the credit card cycle is done for July so I won’t see it on a bill until September, when I have a paycheck.

Anyway. I’m trying to find somewhere cheaper than the first two I looked at, but they want a 4-hour window of time to come fix it, and I can’t just leave a car with a hole in the window in a parking lot…so I guess it’ll be driving the Honda for a few days. I just tried the Honda again this morning to make sure it would start and it did. I guess that’s the universe too…

So that kind of blew my afternoon up a bit, trying to get information from insurance and glass places on a Sunday afternoon, with both neighbors throwing parties…we had kid noise on one side and bad cigars on the other. Fun stuff.

I did eventually iron…I was going to draw, but the afternoon kind of clusterfucked my head. So ironing was easier…bird and heart. I’m not sure how the bird will play on the background…I might need to add something behind it…we’ll see. I can’t remember if I was holding fabrics up to the background or not. I think it’ll be OK. The background is pretty dark.

Then a phone and the pills in the stomach…plus all the rib details…

With dinner, there was some more stitching on balls…

Three of them. My average no matter what? I thought these would be faster, but apparently not.

Then back to the ironing…lungs and heart…fussy little beasts.

And the left arm, down to meet the squeegee.

Then I rolled all of that up so I could do the top section…the right arm.

Next is the head and then all the stuff in the sky above. I think I have about 170 pieces left to iron together, and then obviously I need to put it on the background. I might get to all that tonight. Since I can’t fix the window.

Kitten told me it was time to go to bed (it was after midnight…she was right…)

But that mockingbird. Pillow over the head. Gotta pack up for this meeting…call my car guy and see if he has a recommendation for glass replacement. Text the gardener. Meditate.

*K.Flay, Giver

I Like a Plan

A Sunday without planning for school. Again. So delightful. No school worries. Although I’m in teacher professional development for the next three days, so that’s not really no school. But they will feed me. And hopefully it will be informational and useful and not just annoying overachievers. We’ll see. I think I use up all my people skills (what few I have) on my students all year. I need to rebuild those reserves. Maybe hanging out with teachers I don’t know for three days is not the way to do that…but who knows? Maybe I’ll be totally reflective and motivated.

Right now, I think I need a nap. The mockingbird is back. He’s been all over the neighborhood, but last night was in the tree outside my bedroom again. It makes me crazy. I slept with the pillow over my head. Drowning out noise with fabric and feathers. Ironic that. Bird drowning out bird. Very philosophical this morning.

I have this drawing I’m contemplating. I started it years ago, 2012? And it grew, but I’m not sure it grew logically, and it means something different to me now. I was going to just go with it and maybe add to the bottom, but now that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought about just using half of it, but every time I look at it, I see pieces I like and pieces I don’t like, that don’t go with the story as it is now. So I think I’m going to redraw it but move pieces around…make it less horizontal too while I’m at it.

It’s going to be my epic summer quilt. But first I have to tear this apart and redo the whole thing. No Biggie! It’s taken me a week of contemplating it and deadlines to finally make the decision. So redraw it I will.

But let’s go back…it’s been a busy two days. I had a voucher at the local ceramic painting place that was expiring, so me and a million moms and kids headed to the same place to use them up. No one would sit at my table…which was fine by me…but I got side-eyed by about a million people for painting nudes I guess…

These are before firing, of course…who knows what they will look like fired.

Well, we all will next week when I pick them up. I make about one mug a year…I tend to break them. Overuse them. All that.

I also made a uterus bowl…like you do…

With a lot of symbols on the outside.

And then I made a sign for Saturday’s march to keep families together. But that was once I came home and made dinner…I didn’t do that at the ceramics place.

San Diego had already scheduled a march for the 23rd and then the national one came through for the 30th. I already have stuff going on the 30th, so I’m just doing the one march…hope the second one pulls enough people to make a difference too.

I saw this cool sculpture walking to my meeting spot…

And then lots of speeches (too many speeches, honestly) and a short march to the federal building…

It’s frustrating to live in a time when we have to yell and stomp so much for our government to hear us…and they still blow us off. Sigh.

When I got back, my brother was texting me pictures of the boychild with his cousins…going tree climbing.

My kid is the biggest…so far. The others are getting taller every time I see them.

Mine is the long one in the middle…

Looks like fun. I wanna do that. I kinda miss those summers when I would drag the kids up to Seattle to hang out for a week.

Anyway, boychild will be leaving Monday apparently to head south. He should be here in a week or so. So that means cleaning his room. It’s not too bad. I piled the worst of it in the girlchild’s room last year when my guy moved in here and I hadn’t finished cleaning up stuff in my bedroom. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with stuff. I’m not sure if I need it or not and I hate throwing things away. I threw a lot away last summer with the garage clean out. I think I reached a limit at some point.

Anyway, that’s next week. And sometime in July, when I panic about the girlchild coming home.

Meanwhile, my office is always a disaster…but especially after I’ve picked all the fabrics and haven’t cleaned up yet…I leave everything out in case I lose a piece (I found a lost one last night)…there’s a cat in this photo…

There it is. Kitten on Mt. Batting.

She spends a lot of time there. It’s safe from the other kitty and it’s comfortable and in the room where mom spends a lot of time.

So at some point yesterday I felt awake enough to iron for a while, up into the thighs. The sun comes in here in the afternoon and makes it hard to see stuff.

And then I took a break for a while and went to dinner and then came back and worked on the lights and the squeegee and the uterus…not all of that is ironed down though, because stuff is supposed to go behind the top part of the pelvic girdle…

Kitten came down to visit (and watch Supernatural apparently)…she sat on the chair that is hidden there for a while, until the other cat came in and got territorial. Sigh. At this point, I had cleaned about half the papers that were piled on my desk…I still have the other side and then the desk to the left. School sucks up so much time that there are balls that just drop…and cleaning the paper crap up is part of that. So I lose shows sometimes in the paper piles. I forget about them. I try to be logical, but I’m not always good at it. I want to try a different organization plan in here, but I need a new stacking file thing…the two I have don’t fit into each other unfortunately. So that’s a trip somewhere. Organization has been my issue my entire life. I like it when it happens, but I keep changing how I do stuff to try to get MORE organized, and then I wait to see what sticks. I’ve reorganized in my office/studio about 3000 times. I have a plan for hopefully next summer (need money) to do a remodel of the whole room…but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, I was ironing the gingko leaves separately, because they had a lot of tiny pieces and I needed to see the pattern before I ironed them onto the belly fabric.

There they are…

And then I put them on the belly fabric, but folded the leaf itself down until the stuff above was done…first a stomach, liver, and intestines…

And then the ribs and abs…then I could iron the gingkos all the way down. I still need to add a bunch of detail bits in there, but it was just after midnight at that point. I took a break in the middle because the library emailed me that my book was due soon, so I finished it…plus my feet hurt from standing, so I gave them a break.

I’m officially more than halfway done now…lots of complicated stuff still to be ironed. You can see all the bottom bits are rolled up at the bottom. I decided to just keep going instead of ironing the parts separately and trying to fit them together at the end. Especially with the hand that will come down and hold the squeegee…I wanted to make sure everything meets up.

Oh yeah, I finished all the red balls on this quilt and started doing the embellishment of the fuschia balls, which are only a slightly different color than the blush pink balls (there’s one of those on the top for comparison). The stitch around the fuschia balls is fairly easy, but requires going around twice. I only did one…I took time Friday night to finish the 4 red ones that were left and start the fuschia, which is why I got no artmaking done. Plus tired.

I made up for it by doing no ball stitching last night…but I figure if I finish embellishing 3 balls a night on average and there are 80 (79) left to go, then that’s 26 nights. So sometime in July. Plus I should be quilting the other wool quilt, but I have to finish the cotton one that’s under the machine, and ain’t none of that happening in the next three days. So there.

So there’s finishing ironing, maybe quilting, getting prepped for tomorrow’s teacher PD, groceries, maybe a dog walk…if it cools down enough. Maybe some cleaning or organization. We’ll see. Yardwork that’s never done. EVER. One week of summer break gone. I hate that feeling. Then I have to persuade myself that there’s a ton left, everything will be fine, don’t panic. DRAWING. I need to draw. That’s a plan…I like having a plan…

Today Is a Brain Fart.

Well on the one hand, yesterday I started to feel like I was on break. On vacation (staycation…can’t afford to go anywhere). I felt less like school was hanging over me. On the other hand, I still don’t seem to be able to sleep at night. I can’t FALL asleep, even when it’s really late. The shower is dripping (fixing that soon), it’s too warm, animals are making noise, even the human ones, my brain is racing. That! That’s the real problem. I almost got up last night to meditate at like 1 AM. That might have been a smart thing to do. I’m feeling it today. Ugh. I’ve been exercising too, so that’s not helping either. It SHOULD help, but it’s not. Ugh. Always a work in progress. Until I die.

I’m glad the brain is trying to vacation though. It should bring me along.

So yesterday was this…

I don’t really need all that hair for summer. Some of my upkeep is going to require me to use a razor. I’m cool with that.

And then I quilted this for a bit until I got annoyed…

I got most of the way down one side. I’ll do more today. Maybe. I think I need more thread.

Then this guy was Way Too Close. Satchemo. I need to be able to breathe without cat hair going up my nose. His paw is reaching out to caress my cheek…

Because I’m not petting him. It’s not because he loves me. OK, maybe he loves me. But only because I pet him.

Then I set this up to sort all the pieces for the current quilt. There’s always a cat involved when I’m working on the light table…

This guy came to visit. Too big. Legs. Bug. Eeek.

Luckily he was on the outside of the window. We walked the dogs in there somewhere, and then I finished sorting…

Ate dinner and worked on these…I think I only have 5 left…of the red.

Which means 80 left of the other colors. But the embellishments are easier for those balls. Simpler. Less time-consuming. Maybe?

So hopefully it will go faster. And all those balls will get filled up and then I’ll sandwich it and put it away for three years before I quilt it. NO! Not that. I don’t know where I’m putting all these in the house anyway. They’re wonderful and brightly colored. They deserve to be hung. Maybe I’ll rotate them.

After all that, I eventually made my way into the office, cleaned up the mess, laid out the first 100 pieces, and started to iron. At 10:30 PM. Just like normal!

There are two figures hidden in the landscape…they’ll be more obvious when it’s ironed to a background and outline stitched…but I didn’t want them to be really really obvious.

I made it well into the 200s last night.

This part is usually really meditative. Not sure why my brain isn’t cooperating. Right now, I’m so incredibly tired. Ugh.

OK, this is funny. I got a phone call while writing this and then realized my meeting was at 11 AM, not 4 PM, so I kamikazed off to that and totally forgot about this. FUCK MY BRAIN. Seriously, it’s impaired. So it’s good I’m making decisions about wills right now, right? Yeah. Shut up. It’s fine. Gonna go paint some ceramics now. Can’t deal with the rest of anything.

That’s When the Energy Comes*

OK. The animals are starting to get a clue that mom doesn’t budge in the morning until later. That mornings are longer than they used to be. That’s a good sign, because it’s the first summer in a long time that someone else gets up early (and wakes them all up) and I still need to be asleep. It seems fair…I’m going to sleep like way later (still) and my body doesn’t actually have to be up at 6:30 in the morning. Those who work with me know that I am not a morning person. I can do it, but don’t talk to me. I don’t wanna talk. Chat. Trade niceties. I want silence until I’m ready. I will however totally have a conversation with you at midnight about the motivations of the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale. You don’t want that? OK. Well then. That’s what my late-night texting friends are for.

Now my brain takes a lot longer to get functional. I’m really trying to hit relaxation mode…the place you have to be in order to recover from the school year so you can teach the next one. I met with my co-teacher yesterday to try to plan next year (another mess of reordering units and tightening some and adding to others…this is year 3 of new standards…maybe we’ll finally have it?). I now have 17.000 more things to think about. Whoops. I think we’re just going to plan the first unit and then be done with it. Hopefully I won’t have jury duty some Monday or Friday in early July and we’ll be able to pull that off. First we need a place with free wifi, beverage service, A/C, and bigger tables than a Starbucks. Preferably at the midpoint between where we each live. I’m sure there’s a solution…I just don’t know what it is yet.

Meanwhile, I didn’t have a lot planned yesterday. I could have done some things, but apparently school planning sucks your brain out. So I did a lot of sitting on the couch, binge-watching Doc Martin (which now I have to find elsewhere, because Netflix is not getting the current seasons…although some part of me is significantly annoyed by the series and doesn’t know if I want to watch it anyway.), and trying to just keep my hands busy. So more of sewing these bits down…

Because it’s totally brainless and yet I’m achieving something. I’ve thought about drawing like every day for the last 5 days, and I can’t get there. I’m aiming for it. Maybe today? Just sit on the deck with a beverage of choice and some music and just draw. What will be my epic quilt this summer? What deadlines am I actually going to take on? When will I get my act together? Why don’t I just accept that the first week of summer is always a lost one? Anyway, almost all the things are sewn down on that month. I think I have to sew blocks together for the next month…and it’s easier to embellish on smaller pieces than big ones…so I’ll have to think that through.

Meanwhile, so I have to try a new diabetes medication. I’ve been diabetic for 16 years now and my control is iffy at the moment. I need more exercise. I need more time to exercise. And I suspect menopause (which is still not totally a thing here, unfortunately) is messing with blood sugar etc. So I agreed to try the new medication, even after last year’s clusterfuck. She suggested one and I immediately Googled it and found a similar side effect to last year’s, so we rejected that one. This one does not have that side effect, but it does mean injections. Sigh. This disease sucks. So those were delivered yesterday. I have to do everything mail order that’s a long-term prescription, so I get this huge heavy box…

This is so annoying though…I really am trying to reduce my footprint. I’ve been cutting back on using plastic, recycling more, trying to keep plastics out of the house. Now I have a huge styrofoam box coming every three months that is almost filled with ice packs. Plastic ice packs. Which apparently I can’t return to them to be reused.

So they just get thrown out? There has to be a better way. This is such a waste. Plus the injection equipment, single-use. So annoying. So don’t get sick! There’s so much waste in medical stuff…and yeah, I know it’s better than passing on disease and infection, but it’s still hard to stomach.

This was on the way back to my car yesterday. Impressive…

Next Saturday, the 30th, my cohabitant here will be playing at Nicky Rottens with his cover band, the Radio Thieves. Their lead singer likes to make funky retro record covers…

I’ll be there with my sketchbook and a table…maybe I’ll be relaxed by then.

I’m still embellishing balls. I did four last night…stepping up the pace!

And then I finished cutting all these out, which means I can start ironing things together tonight. That’s the fun part…when the image starts to show up.

It took a little over 10 hours to cut them all out. It’ll probably take 15 or so to iron it together…

This is Calli…she wants her morning meds. She thinks it’s a treat, but it’s really just arthritis stuff. She’s a good girl.

This one, Simba, wants to lie around in the sun. I should probably walk them sometime today.

After I get my hairs cut. Might be drastic, might not. You never know. I kinda want to color it too. Maybe this is just a ruse to get out of jury duty (is purple hair a good excuse?)…or maybe I’m just tired of having the same haircut for a million years.

One of the things I track is how many hours I spend each month (week?) making art…the stuff that I track (which doesn’t include drawing or any of the hobby embroidery). In the last month, I’ve only done 36 hours of artmaking…less than 10 hours a week (that’s grading and being sick for you)…the month before, which included teaching fulltime, I managed 75 hours (almost 19 hours a week, on top of working 50 hours or more a week). Kind of crazy that. With no actual day job at the moment, I should be able to do 50 hours a week of artwork. Hear that, brain? I know. I’m giving you a break right now. You need it.

*Sarah McLachlan, Building a Mystery

We Would Build a Rocket Ship and Then We’d Fly It Far Away*

Phone rings. I only keep a landline because my cell coverage doesn’t extend to the entire house. I know it’s probably not a real call. Sure enough, they ask for Kathryn NEEE-DUH. I say “well you don’t know how to pronounce my name, so you’re probably going to try to sell me something.” They hang up. Effective technique that. Don’t be surprised if I stop answering the phone this summer. It’s just junk calls on both phones.

I’m really tired today. Not sleeping well. Still grinding my teeth post-school-year. Crap, that reminds me…I need to move my dental appointment. Yesterday was all about appointments…dogs…

Me. My feet. Some weird out-patient liquid nitrogen thing in August on my toe. Hey doc! It’s not a blister, it’s not a wart, it’s a…dammit…I forgot already. It’s like a ganglion cyst but it’s on my toe (I do already have a ganglion cyst on my wrist…WTF is up with my body making all this weird shit?). It’s a digital mucous cyst and they commonly occur in people in their SEVENTH DECADE. Like again. WTF. Anyway, he’s gonna try to get rid of it. And yes, I have bone spurs again and also plantar fasciitis but now in the other foot and let’s talk shoes and exercises and a night splint. OK. Got all that. I knew most of that was coming…I really just wanted the shoe list.

Managed to empty the fridge at work too…so no furry milk and chicken waiting at the end of summer…that would be enough to make me grind my teeth.

I had all these little bits and pieces of time during the day. I did more yard work, some trimming and tossing and sweeping. Most of the last few summers, I’ve had a major house project. I have some ideas, but I don’t know how much of them I can do on my own. Plus jury duty is a massive unknown. Been recycling stuff from school. Trying to find stuff, toss stuff, organize stuff. Always too much stuff.

I managed embellishing three of the red balls last night…

I also went and bought the thread to quilt the other wool quilt that has been lying around for years…literally, in 2013, I finished the embellishment, but there was one flower that I wanted to add to fill a space. So I mostly sewed it down in 2013, but then didn’t finish it until July 2016. And that’s when I pinbasted it too. So I have thread to quilt it now. I’ve never quilted a wool quilt. That will be new.

But then I also found this one…a block-of-the-month (All Around the Town) where I used their fabrics…from late 2000. I got it about halfway done, and then in 2009, I finished the other half, pieced it, and added the road and borders and the little cars on the road. Last night (summer 2018), I pulled it out and started quilting it.

It’s not big. It’ll be pretty straightforward. There’s some embroidery that needs to happen as well, but I found all the instructions (I’m so organized sometimes), so that will be easy. Why not just finish things?

Yes, I have other stuff that needs doing. Of course I do. Here’s 2 1/2 hours on the quilt in progress…

Much closer to done, with 8 hours in, but still not done. Maybe tonight? I doubt it though. We’ll see.

Today is just one thing that I really have to do: school planning. Let’s hope I have the brain power for it. I just heard a weird noise. Cat snoring. Damn I need a nap. Jealous of the cats. This is the cat who wouldn’t let me sleep in the last three mornings too.

*Twenty-One Pilots, Stressed Out

Everything’s Gonna Be Fine One Day*

Yesterday was a bit of a disaster. Two different things needed rescheduling. Dear insurance companies…your year plus one day policies are screwing me over this year with July being a no-fly zone. Seriously. At some point, I’ll just have to skip a year on everything so I can restart at the end of June and use the whole summer again. I’m not sure why a week’s leeway on each side couldn’t be a thing. Sure, after 52 years, I might have used one extra exam in there, but that seems reasonable. Much more reasonable than having to mess with avoiding an entire month. Anyway. I did get some stuff done, like a lot of sweeping of leaves was accomplished. I’m using all of it as compost, so it got placed. I have some I still need to collect. That’s later today…after the three (hopefully successful) appointments today. Although one will probably require another appointment. And we already know how that might go…frustrating!

I’m still waking up with these incredibly bad headaches. I need a solution…I don’t know if it’s still the vaccine or not. The tail end of the rash is still here.

I’m going to have to finish this later…need to take dogs to the vet. Fun stuff.

All right, two dogs through the vet experience…not so fun…but now onto the rest of the day. I went to school yesterday to try to rescue the food and milk out of the fridge…but they’d already locked the prep room so even I can’t get in. These sunflowers are courtesy of our tiny school garden.

I’m going back today to see if the custodial supervisor can open the prep room up. I really don’t want to come back after 8 weeks to see what might be growing in there.

I’ve started the embellishment on the berries…there are 16 of each color, 6 different colors. This is the most complicated (read time-consuming, because there’s nothing complicated about backstitch and French knots) of the embellishments…so figure 34 French knots times 16, plus backstitch around each. I only got two done last night after eating, so it’ll be a while.

I’m also trying to stitch down a few things each day to get Folk Tails near finished…I got all the tree parts sewn down last night except for the hole in the trunk.

The September blocks are the three with bits pinned on. I’m not sure what month the blank one is…must be October, I think. Plus obviously the two on the left are from earlier in the year.

This rat was in the entryway…made both dogs bark last night. Crappy photo courtesy of stained glass…

I also spent about 2 hours cutting stuff out last night…a significant amount is done…

But as you can see by the top box, there’s still a shitload to go. I won’t be done tonight I don’t think.

A teacher friend said she thought she had PTSD from the school year. We always do. It takes about a week to two weeks, plus a significant amount of sitting around and not doing much (oh dear, I’m not there yet…I went through my school notebook and recycled stuff, then printed all the stuff for next week’s teacher thing, plus went through all the paper on the table and tried to organize it) before our brains stop trying to solve teacher problems. Some years are harder than others. This one, I just feel spacey as hell…can’t concentrate. I guess that’s pretty normal.

I also tried some threads out on a wool quilt sandwich…and picked one thread type I think will work. The local sewing machine store carries it, so I’m going over there today (after I go to school) to see if I can find a better match in thread or a variety or something. The real quilt is a variety of blues, not beiges…that will be the bird one, which is at least a month from being finished.

Anyway. So school, thread store, foot doctor…I think I need to leave in about 5 minutes…and anytime the headache wants to wander off and bug someone else, that would be awesome…

*Seether, Fine Again