All of Them…

Hey. Friday. Hey, I’m glad to see you. I’m not sure where you’ve been hiding. The other days just haven’t been as friendly as you. Thursday tries really hard but it’s not the same. Although my workload won’t be any less. I still have a pile of stuff to grade and plan that is beyond overwhelming, but I’m doing a little at a time and I may actually feel like I’ve conquered some of it after the weekend. Maybe. Or it’ll be Monday and y’all know what they’re like. Too much, y’all, too much.

So I had hoped to be done ironing last night, and I would have been, except Art Brain objected to the background behind the justices, so I had to scramble a bit. It’s OK…the scramble took 36 minutes so far. When I tell people I keep track of my time to make these, I’m not sure what they think. I have a tracker. I turn it on when I start and off when I finish. I track each task, which is really useful when I need to figure out WHEN THE FUCK I can move on to the next step. Seriously. I’m at almost 29 hours on the ironing and there’s probably another hour. I guessed 30. That’s pretty good.

Anyway, on Wednesday night, I finished ironing all the bits I thought I’d be ironing…

Cool! I thought. I just need to iron it to the background. But a friend had suggested the drapes in the Supreme Court might be burgundy (they’re not, but that’s another thing). I had originally thought to put just a lighter blue behind them, but the idea of the drapes coming down from the goddess’ arms really appealed to me.

I pulled the image off the teflon sheets (a task unto itself, let me tell you)…

And laid it on the chosen background fabric…

I have changed the background fabric on other quilts, but not often. The difficulty here is if I go lighter for all of it, there are issues with other parts of the quilt. But that blue is too close to the justice’s robes.

So I started looking for drapery fabric for behind them…

And this seemed to work.

So last night, during my stitching Zoom, I pieced the background and laid the image on top of it, and ironed the bottom half down…

And I’m thinking, I’ll just freehand cut a piece to go behind the heads. But what about the feet? Shouldn’t the drapes go all the way down to their feet? This is getting complicated. Plus it needs to be fused. It’s too big to NOT fuse it. Huh.

So I grabbed the drawing and drew the drapes, and then traced them on Wonder Under, trimmed them, and ironed them to fabric…

Which you can see in that video. Tonight, I’ll trim those pieces, slide them behind the other pieces, and iron the rest of it down. Then I can start stitching…which I’m estimating at 8-10 hours. So hopefully I’ll be pinbasting next weekend. This weekend has meetings. Next weekend now has meetings. Grades are coming up again (when are they ever not?). My life is not my own.

Here’s the part that’s not ironed down yet…

And a cat. And here’s the background pieces…

Although my process looks like chaos, it is actually very controlled. Parts of it anyway. The fabric choosing is a crazy thing that happens in my head.

So this pile is (a) pieces that stand on their own and will need to be ironed down tonight and (b) random pieces that never made it into the quilt because (i) I lost them and already recut them or (ii) I don’t really know where they go.

Not that big green piece. I think that’s from the previous quilt. I think it was the wrong color. I have a hard time throwing away the orphaned pieces. They’re useless. Those two skinny red pieces, those were the wrong color. Somehow when I ironed them to fabric, they ended up red instead of white. So I recut those. The money all has a home.

So yeah. That’s where the quilt is at. It looks awesome. I know you can’t really tell from the photos, but hopefully tonight, there will be a whole quilt top photo. Definitely worth the time.

Meanwhile, the Man keeps thinking he’s hearing/seeing a cat on the roof, for over a year now. He’s out on the deck at night and hears it and calls to it and it won’t come down. He gets fleeting views, nothing definitive. I’ve asked, are you sure it’s a cat? Oh yeah. Totally. Last night, after I went to bed (I did hear the banging around for this), he heard the cat (let’s just do this…’cat’) and put some food in a bowl and shook it around and called for the kitty to come down. He put the food down and…well…watch this.

Um. Three. Three Not Cats. Nope. Those aren’t cats. Not surprising. We’ve had raccoons before. They are cute, but not feeding any more of them. Probably explains the ‘cat poop’ in the backyard that the dog is totally interested in too. And I think that’s the dog’s bowl, so that should be interesting when the dog comes back. Hmmm.

Anyway. Mystery solved. Those are young ones too.

Work today…finish all the things. Do all the things. Get the kids to do all the things. Find all the things. Grade all the things. Get all the things ready for next week. ALL OF THEM. At least my observation is over. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been teaching, they stress you out. So that’s done. Just a shit-ton of grading and planning left. Art meeting tomorrow that’s a potluck…these also stress me out. I am not a good potlucker. Some people are. I’m not. Ironing tonight. Hopefully stitchdown tomorrow. Need to deal with the house, clean floors, get a quilt to another stitcher (but I need to get thread for that too). Yeah. Crazy busy. But Friday.

Not So Quietly…

Hey. This week. Yup. It took 4 hours yesterday to read through 2 classes of claim/evidence/reasoning (CERs). And it was pretty disheartening. It’s OK. I’ll hammer them again. And again. We’ve reviewed twice. Doesn’t seem to stick. Must be doing it wrong. Try again.

The Man actually comes back today after hiking all over Catalina. It’s good, because I’m tired of being the only human in the house. Maybe someone else can cook or feed a cat. Wait. We’re not cooking cats. Cooking food for humans. THEN feeding cats. That would be nice. The dog has been such a weenie about my being the only human that he is the Boofy King at night. I started playing white noise on my phone to try to drown out whatever he was thinking about barking at…it seems to have worked. Anyway. He’ll be a happier dog tonight.

I’m still ironing, but I’m so close to done, I can taste it. Monday night, I worked on the flag…

And the coathanger. Here’s the side view of the whole top…

I have one background fabric for the whole thing, but I’m not sure it will work in the justice section…it might need something lighter, but not too light…so I might be doing something there. I’m not sure yet until I get it all onto the original background and see what it looks like. It’s always hard to judge here because I iron onto a white teflon sheet and that is a very different look than when I usually use a dark background. Those black robes may need something different. I have some ideas in my head for how to deal with it…might need an all-new color, but my local quilt shop closes at 3 PM STILL, even with COVID long gone. Super frustrating.

Then last night, I ironed Ruth and her wings, plus that diploma.

I’ve got two relatively small things on the end and then that’s it. I’m done. Well, the background needs to exist. I’m debating stopping at another quilt store…it doesn’t have a massive selection of fabrics, but I have an idea of what might work instead of what I have, and it’s near pilates…wait, no, it closes at 5. Sigh. Working quilting people…what do you do? Buy everything online? I find it really hard to buy fabric online effectively. And it won’t get here quickly enough. Sigh. I might have to wait until Saturday. Ugh. You don’t wanna know how cranky I’ll get with no art in the evening. And I’m already pretty cranky this week. Too many adults doing stupid stuff. Copier issues. Lesson material issues. More things piled up…I realized last night when I was trying to fall asleep (good timing, brain) that I had 17 little stupid things that needed to happen this week and I had done maybe 1 of them. And I will probably forget them today.

Just losing my mind over here. Not so quietly. And the weekends are chock full of places I need to be, things I need to do.

Foggy this morning. Makes it easier to see the giant-ass spider webs before they are all over your face.

Grumble. Not a fan of all this right now. I want more time, more help, more support, fewer things I have to do, more time for art, someone to change the damn lightbulb in the bathroom because I forget until I’m trying to take a shower in the dark. Maybe someone could vacuum. Maybe stop asking me to do more things. I want the other people using the copier to realize they are not special and their copies are not more important than everyone else’s. I want time after school to go for a walk. I want a quilt store that realizes some of us work during the day…just one day a week, stay open until 6 PM for goodness sake. Or even 4:30. I could probably get to the other one by then on a good day. Today is not a good day for that. SIGH. Yup. Cranky.

Bread Dough…

It’s Friday at last. This week is like bread dough that overflowed the bowl and then blooped down the cupboard and is stuck in all the cracks and will take forever to clean out. Three months from now, I’ll still be finding dried-up dough bits in the cupboard cracks. Of course, that’s if I make it through the day. I will. Of course. Hoping for no fight after school today to break up. Hoping kids actually try on this project and don’t just speed through it. Yesterday was actually pretty chill once I got them started. I need to get all of next-week’s stuff ready to go, so I need today to continue to be chill. I am completely exhausted and kind of over-emotional because of that. Sigh. I just want to sleep for three days straight. Not happening.

The pro is that it’s the opening weekend for Interpretations, so there’s an opening tonight at Visions from 6-8 PM (I’ll be racing to get to that from Day 2 of Sex Ed Curriculum, which hopefully will go better than Day 1 did). Then artist talks are tomorrow from 11-1, then there’s an artists’ dinner that evening. My lovely anxiety pops up for that, because I don’t know if I know anyone. And those situations always make me nervous. I’ll be fine in the moment, I’m sure, but right now, it feels like work. Here’s my piece Same As It Ever Was…

It’s a fun one. Born of a weekend away plus Roe V Wade falling.

Man is hiking the Trans-Catalina Trail this weekend, so he leaves today and won’t be back until Wednesday. So there’s stuff I’d normally get help with that won’t be there. I have my first school observation next week…the plan is mostly written, because I’ve taught it before, but the last bit needs some work and I haven’t had any time for that. Fun stuff.

I did iron the last two nights. Dragged my ass off the couch, my brain out of stupid cat videos, and stood in here and ironed. Wednesday night, I managed Coney Barrett…

She was somewhat complicated. Last night was harder, only 41 minutes of ironing. And I spent part of that organizing all of the 1300s. So only part of Brown Jackson got ironed down…

I gave the three justices who appear to remember they represent people brightly colored robes. Based in black, but not all black. All their arms are stretching down to hold an umbrella over the people, protecting them. Hopefully I can finish her tonight, but it’s not looking good. I have school all day, then duty after school, then a 2-hour curriculum meeting about reproductive anatomy, then a 2-hour opening, home probably by 9 PM. I suspect collapse at that point. I hope I’m wrong and I can iron her face, but it doesn’t look good. As it is, I need to leave in 10 minutes for a parent meeting that I hope goes well. But probably won’t. Sigh.

It’s fine…I’ll find time to iron at some point. And sleep. And finish my lesson plans. And get the room set up for next week. And and and. Getting closer to having all the justices done…that’s good.

Super Flat

I’m gonna just start writing. Nothing is downloading properly, so who knows when the photos will show up. Not a lot going on anyway, just some justices being ironed super flat, although I couldn’t really get Kavanaugh to flatten out. Damn him. Gave up on download and used email. Who the fuck knows why certain technology works sometimes and not the others. I don’t. But I do know lots of workarounds.

OK, so Monday night, I managed a healthy chunk of ironing time and got Thomas done AND Kavanaugh’s legs.

Well really just his shoes and a bit of his ankles. Fun fact, none of the justices’ feet are accurate. I kind of decided what kind of shoes I thought they should wear, even though, of course they’re wearing solid black dress shoes with their robes, so Kavanaugh has on some ratty blue tennies with dirty white socks. Felt appropriate. Alito is totally wearing leggings. I can think what I want. Thomas has some flash red shoes.

Last night, I got a late start…a combination of pilates AND trying to work AND make dinner AND actually have a relationship with the person I live with…which just means talking to him by the way. I am perfectly capable of not talking to anyone once I get home because the day has trashed me. So I had 41 minutes of ironing last night and that meant going to bed late and falling asleep while meditating and being woken up by the dog barking like a hellbeast. Woo! Not recommended. And I only got the rest of Kavanaugh done…

He’s got beers though! Next up is Coney-Barrett. Also all their names and ties (or accoutrement) are in rainbow colors, because I can and will fuck with them in that way. Especially Amy. She doesn’t like rainbows by the way. In case you don’t know.

Here’s a side view with Kitten…

Who has been hiding.

I pulled that drawer out because someone (probably her) peed in it and I’m trying to get the pee smell out of the fabrics (it took some doing) but I haven’t put the drawer back because I need to refold stuff and I haven’t had the time (I need an assistant) and plus there’s a cat in it. So yeah. I don’t think she’s feeling well because she keeps finding holes to hide in. And/or to knock everything down. She got hair all over the blue drawer and now refuses to sleep in there. Also she threw up in there, so that’s another drawer I need to clean out. Also might be why she won’t sleep in there. Yes I have tried cat beds. She’s not a fan.

Man. Old cats. We love them, but they are not fun to clean up after.

OK. Today, teaching will be hard. I already know that. I had some insight as to why my kids this year were different. They are like sloths on anything that takes more than a day. Should be fun with the upcoming project. I don’t know what it means going forward, except that, as always, some days will be a slog. Hopefully this one will not be too bad. Ha! I end with the lowest class, worst behaviors. They’re not horrible, but they’re not great when it gets hard. So yeah, that’s today. Not really looking forward to it…girding my loins and all. Also a union meeting, so today is the first of three days in a row with 2-hour-long meetings after school. Which wipe me out, honestly. Not fun. But I’ll be ironing tonight. It’s nice to have this goal of a Justice a night…makes it easy to force myself to get to a certain point, but if I want to go on and iron someone’s feet because I have time, that also works.

Still wishing wars didn’t happen and innocent people weren’t being hurt by anyone else. Wishing doesn’t change anything though…so people are gonna have to do the work. Peace to the world.

It’s the Spider’s Fault…

So Saturday night, or maybe it was Sunday morning, I kept waking up and trying to puzzle out what day it was. Did I have to be up early for school? Was I ready? Had I planned? What the hell? It’s true I did absolutely no schoolwork on Friday night or all day Saturday, so I get the panic, but Saturday nights should be clear of most of that, right? It’s 2 AM and my brain is trying to figure out what clues I have for what day it is…no dog, so that’s one of three nights a week. What did I do the night before? Ah, there’s a drawing, so it must have been a Saturday.

There’s more in the finished drawing…it took a long time to get the food. Pro: more time for drawing. There’s little enough of that going on these days.

I had a quilt guild meeting on Saturday and worked a little more on my incredibly slow stitching from 2020? Or was it 2021? Can’t remember.

My brain thought about staying and doing the post-meeting activity, but I really just wanted to get back and iron the Supremes. So I did.

Well, this was Friday night…after a long semi-difficult day that ended with my 56-year-old self trying to figure out how best to break up a fight without getting injured myself. Fun times. I think I came home and slumped on the couch for two hours before I started functioning again.

I did eventually find the missing ‘C’ on Sunday night…

Then Saturday afternoon…

I spent a couple of hours doing the goddess’ legs and toes and all…

Then went for a 3-mile hike by myself…the Man was not feeling well.

Sunset is getting earlier. I was just about OK on time…

It was warm at the start…despite being October, it was in the 90s during the day. But by the end, there was a cool breeze…and this sweet little California Horned Toad/Lizard…

I love these guys. They’re hard to see, so it’s a treat to actually see one.

After dinner, I ironed some more…here’s Gorsuch.

His ‘O’ disappears later. Not sure where. I’m sure it’s here. There was a spider that I think dropped from the ceiling, right on him (ironic?), so there was some scuttling of things to catch it, then forget I had caught it under something and recatching it. I suspect the O succumbed to all that scuttling. I’ll find it. Or recut it. It’s the spider’s fault anyway.

The whole piece so far.

There’s a lot going on in this quilt. I also ironed a bunch of money that’s floating around all those justice’s heads…

Sunday there was less ironing time. Almost 3 hours on Saturday was delightful. Sunday was just over an hour…

The ‘O’ is gone, but there’s Alito. It takes about 70 minutes to iron a Justice. It’s mostly the fingers and the face…all the details. I iron the ears, then the eyes. Then pull the eyes off and do the rest of the face so I can place the eyes well. Stitching will help with the details too.

I’m in the 1000s, about halfway through them, so also halfway through the quilt. I figure a Justice a night…but I’ve got a hellaciously busy week. Three nights with 2-hour meetings. Today’s 1-hour meeting got canceled, and I get to be in charge of the department meeting, so I suggested grade-level was fine, get your stuff done. We don’t need to meet. We already meet Tuesday and Wednesday during prep.

I worked from about 2 PM until 9:15 PM, with an hour’s break to make lunches for the week, and another hour’s break to make dinner and eat it. I didn’t finish. I never do. I did get some major stuff done, though, so I can at least get through this week and the start of next week. I think. Not quite. Gonna use my prep and after school today to make more sense of it…and to make copies. The Man will be gone for 6 days to hike the Trans-Catalina Trail this weekend. AND it’s the Interpretations opening and artist talks and artist dinner at Visions this weekend. Super busy. Two weeks behind on grading homework, but I should be able to get through that this week…we’re doing stations, plus writing a CER (that’s high-maintenance), and then doing a project. So I should have some free time in at least SOME of the classes to get work done. Using time efficiently. Sit next to the kid(s) who need help, but grading at the same time. We all do it.

Hello Kitten. She’s still here. Older by the minute.

I had a drawer of fabric that she (or someone?) peed in so I spent some time this weekend trying to get the pee smell out. Not quite there yet. Frustrating. They’re usually really good about that…which is why I think it was her. Losing control a bit. Giving her lots of love while she’s still here.

OK. Donuts and voting this morning. Teaching. Collisions and momentum. Tried to find a good simple video about conserving momentum that wasn’t too mathy. Wasn’t successful. Could be problematic. Almost done with my book, so suspect I will be doing that tonight. Hoping anyway. And ironing. Thomas is next. He’s complicated…in more ways than one.

Hearts and love to everyone trying to survive in Israel right now. More wars. Do we need them? More death? Sigh. Religion and hate make such a mess of things. Sending good healing and loving thoughts in that direction, hoping it helps. Maybe if we all do it, the warmongers will get hit so hard by the blast of good feelings that they’ll just stop. We can hope. I certainly don’t have any better solutions.

Building It in Pieces…

Hi world. This week has been rough. Lots of busy moving crazy racing. Not a lot of relaxing. Ironing every night though. I did much better the last two nights. Because grades were done. That helps. It does mean I’ve been ignoring school a bit (except when I’m there). It’s OK to do that. Not forever, because it will catch up and hit you upside the head, but just a bit.

In quilt news, I’m still ironing. I’ll be here for days. But it is progress, much easier to see than when I’m tracing or cutting things out. Wednesday night, I finished two pedestals and started a third…this was after finishing Thomas’ and starting Alito’s…

Finished Alito’s and started Gorsuch’s…

So you can see the progress on the whole thing…

Building it in pieces. Last night, I finished the Gorsuch pedestal and carefully removed the ironing sheet from behind that bit (I only have three big ones, so they need to be reused)…

So much detail that needs to come out in the stitching.

Then I started on the other side with the stuff below the pedestals…

I lost both the N and the C for a bit, but found the N (it was numbered strangely). I’m sure the C is hiding somewhere. Or I sneezed at the wrong time and it’s under the couch, in which case, I’ll make another one. Here’s the big picture at the moment…

I have the sky folded over so I can iron down all the stuff that goes under it. Y’all, this is tiny fussy fiddly work…and I love it. Seriously, this is one of the best parts of making the quilt, watching it come alive with color. So I enjoy it, even though I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I do look forward to doing more of this than I am at the moment. More art, more quilts.

I got great news yesterday that My Body. My Choice. tied for Best in Show at the No Boundaries exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum. The show closes tomorrow. That quilt was last year’s hard-to-make, hard-to-live-in piece. I guess this is this year’s equivalent.

Yesterday, in an attempt to return to pre-COVID art shenanigans, I went to a friend’s opening at the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery. This is Grace Gray-Adams and a piece from 1972 that I loved…

That’s underwear and this is the period…

Love this show, Glimmers of Grace. Definitely worth a trip out there, even if I looked ‘shell-shocked’, as a friend described me. I was tired. I came home and worked on school stuff until I couldn’t anymore, and then I ironed.

Oh wait, this is also hers, from 2010. She found this paint-by-number Mary and then replicated it and had her friends paint them.

So beautiful.

Sometimes my students are hard, although this year is much easier on that front than last year. My advisory is so quiet, only the mouthy ones speak up, so I made sure the vote was unanimous, on a Google form, so everyone’s voice got heard. We had to create a class vision (I have a hard time with these), but after all the yelling about money and cars etc, this is what they voted on for why they go to school…

And I swear, every time I read it, I get tears in my eyes.

I can do this year. I can. I may not always be graceful or happy or calm about it, but that’s maybe just how I roll. Today? Oh today is chaos. Assembly day, so short periods, with stations, one of them a lab with balls. And collisions. Yeah. Could be bad. Plus standing for the last 90 minutes of the day watching the assembly. I already have a headache. Should go take meds, hydrate. Loud noises coming. Then home to iron and read and sleep. And maybe relax.

I Worry As Much As I Hope…

It’s the middle of the week. I think this week was supposed to be easier than last week. I may have been clueless about that. I got home yesterday with a plan to go to the gym, but with a headache and level of exhaustion that said no. It was a relatively easy teaching day, but I felt like I was running around all day. I didn’t have my prep period and I fed three classes nachos…by the way, some middle-school kids are so entitled. Drives me bonkers. Say thank you for the food. Understand that I need to feed two classes after you. No you can’t have seconds. Leave enough for the kids after you. Sigh. I should know better on that one. It’s OK. It’s done. It’s cleaned up. Let’s move on. Try for no more absences from class until…the next literacy one. Or the MRI I need to have. Odds are I’m just dealing with osteoarthritis in the knees though. Which sucks, because my left knee hurt like crazy yesterday for no apparent reason. It’s part of why I didn’t go to the gym, but really it was the headache and tiredness. Ah well. Pilates today.

I had my pre-evaluation meeting yesterday, which went OK. Boss wanted to know what day to observe me, and I was like, whatever day, sure that works, I have no clue what I’m teaching that day, but it’ll be fine. No worries. Seriously, it won’t matter. It’ll be fine. Although I’m going to feel better if I get the next few weeks planned out. I’m working on it. I needed to get grades done. Now I can focus on planning. This feels a lot like last year.

Artwise, it’s a struggle some nights to get an hour to iron. Monday was OK; I finished grades at 7 PM and refused to do any schoolwork after that. Oh wait. I did work after that. Had to create a writing assignment for the end of the stations I’m starting Friday. So it was kind of necessary. I had an idea, anyway, and it’s better to go with it than forget what I was thinking.

I got in an hour that night…did Kavanaugh’s pedestal…

Oh yeah, and the snakes. I did OK that night. Last night, though. Ugh. I finished my book club book, but needed a nap in the middle of it (headache), then had to make dinner, plus more school stuff, got on a roll, but then distracted by details. So many details. The literacy program is a challenge…how do I fit this in with everything else we’re doing? I need paragraphs that are science-related, so I spent too long on a skate park paragraph with these specific suffixes, and then word counts, and how many words in a minute, and in reality, I’m not sure what I’m doing.

So I gave up (it was almost 10 PM by then) and went and ironed for a whopping 32 minutes. I didn’t finish Thomas’ column, but I got a healthy start on it.

Chained slaves. I wonder if Thomas thinks he is doing what is best for those he serves. I don’t think he thinks about it at all. I’m sure Coney Barrett thinks she is. I don’t know what Kavanaugh thinks at all except about how he likes beer. So there’s that. I realize we don’t really know the personal thoughts of these people who are our justices, but when I was drawing this, I read a lot of their statements and opinions on issues. So that’s where these drawings came from.

Anyway, I have pilates AND book club tonight. Not sure how much ironing will get done, but hopefully more than last night. It’s frustrating to come home from working all day and not feel up to doing the thing you love. There are things I love about work too…but the not-loved parts are heavy duty at the moment. It’s getting better. Slowly.

This is where I’m at right now…maybe this is my retirement goal.

Hey watching politics lately? WTF with Matt Gaetz. Who let him be in charge of anything? Man is a nut. I guess we have a lot of nuts in charge. I hope more for next year’s elections. But I worry as much as I hope.

The Man and I feel the same way about the engine revvers…

Although we usually diss penis size. There’s a lot of fancy sportscars around here that somebody’s daddy bought them.

Also, the Allied Craftsmen show at the library is only up through this week, closing the 14th. Vallo Riberto wrote an article about it and mentioned my piece, Doctor’s Orders.

He said nice things about it. Much appreciated. I did make this piece especially for the show, Waiting Room. I’ve got another deadline for Allied Craftsmen coming up in January, so it’ll be the next one I do after this one. Probably have to let my brain rest a bit on slave ships and missing indigenous women. But those are in my head. I need to be reading about space so I can plan a better space unit this year. Too much, y’all. Too many things in my head.

OK it’s supposed to be 90 degrees today, so we’re doing an outdoors lab with balloons that I’ve never done before. I’m probably going to be really tired, huh. Then pilates, then home, then book club, then ironing. Maybe collapsing will happen too. Hopefully yesterday’s headache will stay away. Losing my prep to another meeting. It’s fine. It furthers something useful. Hopefully I’ll get what I need out of it too. More time for art? Probably not, but I can hope.

Swamp Thing

Whoa. Hey. Monday. I worked a lot this weekend on the day job. Probably 12 hours? Maybe more. Not ideal. Grades are due. Am I done? Um. No. I will be. Whether I’m ready or not. Seriously, I have a small pile of late work to get through and one class of harder thinky stuff. I got through a lot of the thinky stuff on Saturday and Sunday, but couldn’t quite get it all done. I ran out of time. And energy. And ability to think straight. I have a knee doctor appointment today (FINALLY an actual doctor after 11 months), so I had to write a sub plan for my afternoon classes, and that meant recording a video like I was teaching the assignment, then turning it into a video with questions so the kids couldn’t just copy, they had to think. Probably harder than I would have done in class, but it will hopefully keep them occupied AND teach them the lesson. A teacher can hope. It’s not ideal to have a sub in there after having one for the literacy stuff on Thursday, so I’m bribing them with nachos. Reality…teaching is expensive, for the bribes alone.

So I also managed to get in a hike (by myself…the Man was feeling off)…

I wanted to be sure to do all the knee-challenging things this weekend before the doctor’s appointment, so it would be at its worst. I only had time for 3 1/2 miles, though…

The weather was weird…warm but with a chilly breeze…

There was hardly anyone else out there. Sometimes I get freaked out by that. There was some big guy sitting in his car in the parking lot…the only other car there. He was also still there when I got back after an hour plus. I shared my location with the Man in case I disappeared. Seriously. It was creepy. But I love to be outside and wish it never felt creepy.

This rattlesnake was cool…stretched out along the whole path when I walked up…

Never rattled. Just slowly moved across the path as I watched.

I rarely see them like this…

So it’s fascinating when I do.

Yes, I ironed…for at least an hour a night. Because I do my day job and I’m allowed to do my art. I didn’t get far on Friday night…mostly due to exhaustion.

Saturday night wasn’t a lot better, but a chunk of the swamp got done…

There was a family party, so that kind of put the nix on doing any more schoolwork. Talk about no brain power left…

Then last night, another hour, finishing the top part of the swamp and starting one of the pedestals on which the justices stand. This is Amy Coney Barrett’s pedestal.

She’s not a fan of the rainbow. Someone said there was an owl in here, but it’s actually the Swamp Thing. Some politician who’s gone native. There are a lot of them.

So that was the weekend. Grade things, plan things, hike a bit, eat a bit, socialize a bit, make a little art. This week is a little weird, but not as crazy as next week will be, so yeah. I’m not looking forward to parts of next week. Not looking forward to parts of this week either. I’ve got some serious rewriting or planning to do for the end of this unit. Not sure when I can get my head around that. Gonna have to, whether I like it or not.

Today? Teach independent and dependent variables. Leave early. Buy nacho stuff for tomorrow’s kids. Go to doctor’s appointment. Come home and finish grades…hopefully in time to make art. Another pedestal or two? Oh, there’s two snakes in there. Gotta do those first. I will be thinking of my friend above when I do that, although one’s a King snake…can’t remember what the other one is. Same old same old.

My Bandwidth Is Low…

Well I’m feeling better about grades right now. I managed to get some serious work done in the last two days, at the expense of making art and reading books, but yeah, that’s how it goes. I’m down to two assignments (both academic and reading) and whatever late work I’ve missed so far. I’m not totally ready for next week; I need a pretty substantial sub plan for Monday afternoon. It’ll probably take me at least an hour to put that together this weekend, plus the grading, plus the pre-eval worksheet, which I can’t even get my head around. My bandwidth is low, much like my computer at the moment, which keeps cycling and cycling. I’ve got two websites up and keep bouncing from one to the other to see if they’ve finished loading yet. I don’t have time to restart the router. Ah well.

So I will be spending a huge chunk of the weekend dealing with school. It sucks. That said, I finally finishing sorting pieces into boxes…

Two hours and 16 minutes total. Not too bad considering the number of pieces.

And last night, after my stitching meeting, I barely started ironing…

But I started! That’s about 30 minutes worth of ironing. These are the big pieces down at the bottom. It just gets tinier and more detailed as we move up. I’m looking forward to ironing for the next two weeks…maybe more. I have some stuff coming up that will take up weekends…the Interpretations opening at Visions will be in two weeks. Plus it’s not like school will go away. I’m just hoping it gets a little easier. It’s unlikely to at the moment, but after this weekend, I’ve got a bit of a break I think. Maybe. Knock on wood. I do need to revise a project and an assessment, which I’ve kind of been ignoring, plus set up at least one lab. Plus start doing this literacy stuff in science, which is fine…I used chatgpt to write a paragraph for my part of the literacy. Use the resources y’all! Use them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading The Humanity Archive and have images of African fighting queens and slave ships and plantations and revolts in my head. Not sure where to go with that, but it’s percolating. I have a deadline in January for another show, but it may just get whatever’s available. I feel like this Supreme Court piece is going to take another 6 weeks before I’m done. I drew a small original of this in Seattle in July. I came home and enlarged it, then taped it together on July 13, then started the full-size drawing on the 14th. I’m 3 1/2 months into this. That’s crazy. I might need a smaller quilt as a palate cleanser before jumping into slavery. I don’t know. We’ll see.

I did make it out of the house for NOT work last night…stitching meeting with the friends. I finished this June Homegrown block (Sue Spargo).

It’s been sitting around for a long time, maybe since Seattle. I haven’t had much time for stitching. I save the free time for the quilt in progress. So I have four more houses to do and then the centerpiece. Should be done in 2026. Or 2027. I’m still sitting on the half-quilted Bird Crazy (not its real name). That was supposed to be over the summer. Didn’t happen. The day job is nuts, has been for too long, so I don’t get enough art quilts done and they all get pulled to shows right away, which is awesome, or sold, which is also awesome, but then I feel like I have nothing to enter anywhere. Which is silly…I know. But as I’m staring at this pre-evaluation for school, I’m just struck that what I really want is more time for art, and what they really want is for me to spend more time on school. MORE time. I don’t have that. Not unless I give up the hour a night for art, and I’m not going to do that. As it is, I’m supposed to be doing this decoding/encoding training online, and I’ve made it through the first 15 minutes of 5 hours, so I need to start doing that while I iron. Which I can do. Plus the shooter training for school is at least an hour…need to do that video too. Maybe. Maybe my brain needs a break from school so it doesn’t make me want to give up on it.

Thinking that through.

Meanwhile, my co-teacher, who I miss every day, is cleaning out her parents’ house (something I dread that will inevitably be in my future) and she’s been driving around with some recycling in her car for two or three days. She challenged me to get my thrift shop bags (which have been in the girlchild’s room since August and the entryway since she came to visit) into the car. Which I did…

There’s more in the garage, but I can’t deal with that right now. So now, whoever gets them to the center first is the winner? It’s certainly more likely to happen if they are in the car. She’ll probably beat me.

OK. Today we are doing a lab. It is a pretty fun lab, so I’m hoping it goes OK. I’m hoping I’m totally efficient today and get more grading and organizing done. Same with the weekend. It would be nice to have grading done a bit early so I could get ahead on the planning, but also maybe read my book and relax a bit. Ha! I’m pretty sure that’s not happening, but I will try. It’s almost October, usually one of my favorite months, despite the lack of days off. The weather mellows out, although it’s been OK this month (knock on wood), the chaos of the beginning of school chills out a bit (two weeks from now looks like hell on wheels; let’s not think about that). Not thinking about doing another two months (or more) without my co-teacher/planning person, but it’s good for her and that’s what counts. I’ve seen progress in one of the newbie teachers, and that is a good thing. Plus today is Friday, and that is always a splendid thing.

Unchaos

Oy. It’s Wednesday. That was quick. I’m getting not much done on anything. I mean, I must be doing something…I just don’t see a lot of progress on any of it. Ah well. I do like progress. I like to check things off boxes and cross things off lists. I like lists to get shorter. Probably shouldn’t have become a teacher then…they don’t get shorter until summer. At some point this week, I will get more efficient. Just not sure when. I got one lab set up, another one put away, then another one set up. I have sub plans for the literacy afternoon tomorrow, but not for Monday’s knee doctor. That could be problematic. I think I can do that one as an EdPuzzle, but it’s gonna take me an hour just to set it up. Grades still due. Evaluation paperwork still not done. Can’t even get my head around that one. Sigh. Whatever.

Art stuff has been limited this week too. I did finally finish cutting things out on Monday! A miracle. 21 1/2 hours of miracle.

I finished during book club. Like the Christmas socks? My feet have been cold at night. Nothing else is.

Then I set up the sorting chaos…

I guess it’s really the sorting unchaos. That box on top is all the pieces I cut, and then I sort them by 100s to make it easier to iron them together. Can’t imagine shuffling through a box of over 2000 pieces to find one. I spent almost an hour getting to this point.

Sorting the little tiny pieces takes forever. I put a pile in my hand and just sort one by one. This table is actually missing three more boxes sitting off to the side for the 1800s-2000s.

Last night, I went to the gym, which was good. I also finished my book and cooked dinner, and tried to grade a little, but yeah, was not efficient, so I didn’t start sorting until after 10 PM. Not great. I still have all these to sort.

It’s probably 30-45 minutes worth of sorting. So that’s tonight. I have pilates but I don’t have to cook. I do have to grade first. But I’ll set an alarm to remind me to stop. I swear.

Here’s a video tour of all the boxes except those last three…

This is boring, I must admit. I get tired of standing there and sorting. It does serve a purpose though. Makes the next step a million times easier.

So yeah. Getting there. Not there yet. Don’t see a big chunk of time in the next week to work on this. Will demand my Day Job Brain allow for an hour a night. Day Job Brain is freaking out about workload. Shhh. Nice Brain. Be good. It’ll be fine. We’ll grade like the wind. I just looked at Saturday’s schedule. Ha! Fuck. OK. It’s fine. It’s Wednesday. I could be super efficient between now and then.

Forgot this picture…when I got home yesterday, all the animals were in one room. It was weird. They don’t really socialize much. It’s usually one in this room, one in that room, and one that follows us all over.

I guess my homecoming was exciting.

Anyway, so I’ll be finishing the sorting tonight and then coming in here to the studio to try and straighten up enough that I can iron. I have two boxes of fabric I need to wash because of the cat…maybe I’ll start that tonight as well. Who knows? I could be amazing tonight. Last night? Nope. Was not. Not at all. Finished a book, though. That’s a thing. I’m allowed to do that. Should do more of it.