I Need Coherence…Not Gravel

I don’t usually write on Sunday, but I feel like I actually achieved things yesterday, so writing about that makes me feel better. Hey! I achieved things yesterday! OK, that’s it…I’m done. Not really.

I did grade a lot yesterday, lots of school-related stuff got done…for instance, we’re doing this landform project and we have these cards we are going to use, and for some reason, we decided coloring them seemed like a good idea, so we started the teacher’s aide on that, but she was taking forever, so then we tried to speed-color them on Friday and failed miserably, plus apparently I don’t know how to color, ironically, so I brought the rest of them home and speed-speed-colored them yesterday, so I can deliver them to print shop Monday morning to be laminated. For Wednesday.

Don’t ask why we do this shit to ourselves. It just happens.

Then I had an art meeting, and art meetings always include food and wine, and this was the wine I had. I love the label. It kind of reminds me of the coloring I was doing.

Maybe next we should graduate to wine labels.

This vehicle parked at the art meeting.

These are my people.

Came home and graded more stuff…Simba doesn’t lie like this naturally. I’m pretty sure the boychild was pulling things out of his fur and then just left him there.

That tail is a disaster. He won’t let us comb it, so I just cut knots out when I remember.

So I graded until 9 PM or so and then I was done with that assignment, so I went in and finished quilting…it was about another hour and a half…lots of thread breaking, or it would have been less. Quilting in between the tree branches was kind of a pain.

It took a little over 6 hours to quilt her. Then I swept the floor and laid her out to be trimmed.

It took a couple of tries to get it right, but there she is, all ready for binding.

That should happen tonight, I suspect, or maybe this afternoon if I am really organized (I don’t feel organized at the moment). Oh yeah, and we walked the dogs in there somewhere too. After art meeting with wine and food and before dinner.

This was Friday night, when the boychild kicked all the animals out of his personal space, so they invaded mine.

Well, except for Kitten. She doesn’t like the others. Sometimes I don’t blame her. And I bathed the Golden as well. Busy day, really. Today will be another…more grading, groceries, school stuff, and hopefully some quilt stuff at the end. I need to start getting my act in gear on the next drawing. It’s rolling around in my head like a destructive boulder that keeps losing small bits. I need coherence…not gravel.

The Words That Would Mend the Things That Were Broken*

I’m desperately trying to be efficient these days, and mostly sucking at it. I listened and slept a lot (well, as much as I could)…it means very little art is happening, which always feels bad, but work is burying me at the moment and that also feels bad. And somehow the new iOs is screwing with my photos uploading to the cloud. Annoying. So it’s almost noon and I was up at a reasonable hour, I’ve made about 5 dozen cookies for a social event later, I sent all the files and info for the Surface Design Journal’s Exhibition in Print, which I got into (cool!), and now I’m trying to write this before bathing the dog in special shampoo, taking my own shower, and grading some shit. Later today, I plan to eat Indian food, because the main man has two shows today that I’m not invited to and can’t crash, and the boychild and I like Indian food. Then I hope to finish this damn quilt with the thread I bought, and then put a binding on it with the fabric I bought after school yesterday. The binding is the brown on the right…the others are impulse buys. Wait, no, they are useful additions to my stash.

Don’t question it. I keep my fabric contained in here. There’s no reason to panic until I start to take over your living space.

There are more pictures I want to put in here, but iCloud is holding them hostage. Or my phone is. Hard to say. I’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, I got stuff to do. If I see you later today, cool. If not, here’s the announcement for the next show I’m in…you can see me at the opening next Saturday…

I have two pieces in the show.

OK. Off to the races. Get it done. Maybe eat some lunch. That would be smart. And yes, the sketchbook and my Sharpie are screaming at me. I’m listening!

*Maroon 5, Won’t Go Home Without You

The Slowest Heaving Night*

No, I don’t have stomach flu. It’s just Peter Gabriel in my head.

I believe the internet issue in here is solved (knock on wood, lots). If it’s the computer, we told it to shut up and gave it ethernet. It seems pleased.
I want my rain dammit. You promised rain last night from this crazy little ex-hurricane we have streaming past us to the east, but no. No rain. I’m sad. I miss rain. I don’t miss it enough to move back to where it rained 300 days out of the 310 I was there, but I do miss it a bit. My plants miss it more.
Didn’t we say October would be less tired than September? We lied. At least so far.
When you think you have enough of the right thread to quilt all the background, you will be wrong…not because you read the numbers wrong, but for some completely stupid reason, you have 40 weight AND 60 weight, and you can tell the difference when you quilt with them. Hopefully I can find the same thread after school (and 2-hour curriculum meeting), so I can actually finish the quilting tonight.

I think that’s all the list I have in me. I should go find some pictures. Words are better with pictures. Well, is that true? I have to say that I almost always prefer the pictures in my head over what people do in movies or TV shows. Then again, when talking about my quilts, people say the pictures don’t do them justice…they like them in person. Me too, actually.

Anyway, long day again. I gave a test and screwed something up in 2nd period (it was online), but fixed it by 4th period, so 4 classes are fine and manageable and one is gonna give me hives. OK. At least I know ahead of time.

Then I had a failing filling…so they fixed that. Ugh. At the end of the day. It was pretty trouble-free, but tiring. And then I did the fussy little bits of test grading, the stuff the computer won’t do for us…but I only got about a third of the way through before I gave up. I think that was 9:30 or so.

I really wanted to finish quilting last night. I probably wouldn’t have finished, even if I’d had the right thread. I got about 3/4 of the way around…maybe a little less than that…on the partial spool I had, and then I picked up the other one I had pulled and figured out why it hadn’t been in the same section of the box. I almost always quilt with 40-weight rayon, and I had obviously accidentally bought one spool of 60-weight…which would have been fine if I’d started with it and used it for the whole quilt. You might ask if one can really tell the difference. Yeah. I quilted a little bit and went, NOPE. Not gonna work.

I guess the plus is that I finished all the outlining…that was the darker blue thread.

Even with Calli lying right on the chair legs so I couldn’t move much. The animals rule this house. We let the old lady do mostly what she wants, except not eat papers if possible.

So I started quilting under that arm, did the whole right side from her face down, then the whole bottom (where I was in this picture),

And then partway up the left side, past the cat. And then ran out. I’ll try JoAnns after the curriculum meeting. I will have no brain power left, so I will have to be very careful about NOT picking another spool of 60-weight in my evening post-school exhaustion.

There’s Simba. Because he’s cute. I combed him. Cut a bunch of knots out (easier than having your hand bitten off…he understands the scissors are for helping, but the comb hurts sometimes)…

And Katie guarding Satchemo. Mostly Katie has been chill this time visiting…not as much cat chasing and harassing as normal. Probably she’s wondering if her parents will ever come back…and maybe she doesn’t care, because she gets lots of pets here.

Satchemo is just trying to decide with remote to use.

So remember when I wove my strip for the Women’s Voices project? There it is, sewn into the project…third strip from the left. All blues and purples with a thread explosion in the middle.

Nice. OK, so I’m buying thread, coming home, and (realistically) collapsing for a while on the couch, preferably with a book. This is reality, folks. I know how tiring my job is. I also know it’s not just me. We’re all tired. Then at some point, I will find the energy to make dinner. Hopefully (sometimes I don’t…I just do cheese and crackers and a glass of milk. Done!). Then also extremely hopefully, I will finish quilting, so I can buy binding on Friday after school. That’s my plan anyway. I think it will take me about 30-45 minutes to finish quilting, if that. I can do that. Can’t I? Morning self (which is really tired) is predicting what evening self (which will be even more tired) will be able to do. This is how I get myself to do anything honestly. Including grading.

But first, yet another morning meeting. Whoo! Oh my, the internet is so blessedly fast in here. I am very happy about that. I can even play music while I write again. Yay!

*Peter Gabriel, Come Talk to Me

The Perfect Cup of Tea

This morning’s tea is perfect. It’s brewed exactly the right amount of time (not that I ever pay attention to that at all), it’s the perfect temperature, not so hot that it burns my tongue, but not lukewarm and blah. It has just the right amount of milk in it. I’m so happy with my tea this morning. It makes up for whatever crazy thing I did to my overnight oats (from two overnights ago, which might be the issue right there). It’s like eating shoes. With berry seeds.

Long day yesterday…lots of trying to get through demos (and failing…part of the mental problem right there…could not finish). One of the demos failed. Actually failed…not because of something I did (although my co-teacher was considering that in the beginning until I showed her my failing can of soda that wouldn’t sink)…I guess that’s a learning moment right there. We’ve had to scramble so many times when labs didn’t work the way they should.

I had tutoring, where I explained density about 700 times. And then helped kids with barely any English put their thoughts about density on paper. That’s the harder part. Then the blessed chiropractor. I didn’t know my neck was bad until he fixed it. Home to dinner, which I cooked to perfection…no really…it was good. Which is nice, because I’m having it for lunch as well…I think I’m going to run out of lunches this week. I didn’t remember that stuff goes bad, so I didn’t eat things in the right order, so I’m short a meal, I think. I’ll figure it out.

While dinner was cooking (and afterwards), I was trying to set up the tests for today. There are three versions of the test and they’re assigned online. The easy way to do that is just assign the same test to the first 10 kids, the 2nd version to the next 10 kids (alphabetically), etc. But no, I decided to do it by seating chart, so no kid would have the same test next to them. Kinda crazy. Probably fucked it up. After dinner, then I tried to grade some of the essays they wrote a few weeks ago. I got through half of one period. I know we taught this. It hurts sometimes to read the results of my teaching and try to figure out what I did wrong. (It’s not always me.)

Finally in here, the studio…spent a little time on stuff for next week in class, but mostly I quilted. I didn’t feel well at first. Stomach can be iffy some days. Waited it out, felt better, had some more tea (I was tired. That tea wasn’t perfect, but it did its job)…and quilted.

Well, first I stared at this and tried to decide if I was going to do anything on it. I didn’t.

And then I stared at this, because the other chair had Kitten on it and this is my quilting chair, and it’s pretty uncomfortable to perch on the edge of this one while trying to sew.

Apparently Satchemo doesn’t like it when I do that either, so he left.

Quilting! I only broke the thread once last night…it was very easy to quilt last night, unlike the previous night.

So I did lots of outlining…

Fussy little bits, but satisfying to see them pop with the line.

It’s like drawing all over again. I really like it.

So she’s mostly done. I need to do her head and hair and the tree. I even checked my stash and I have thread that will work for the background. So after today (giving a test that has 9 stations of measurement that need managing, then getting a filling replaced), hopefully I will have the energy to finish the outlining and continue on to the background. Get it quilted by the weekend, trim it, find some binding (probably going to have to buy that), then have a do-over on the drawing for the next one…I’m looking forward to that one. Lots of things I care about going into that one. It’s not that I don’t care about this one…it’s just not an issue quilt, and I seem to like those better.

OK, work calls. Loudly. And my perfect cup of tea is now only lukewarm. Sigh.

Make Good Choices

I’ve spent at least an hour in my head trying to figure out when to set up my classroom for tomorrow’s test. I need some of the materials on the desks for today, I have tutoring after school, and then chiropractor right after that. I guess it’s tomorrow morning. But that was the 4 AM brain. Like shut up, 4 AM brain. I could’ve figured that out today some time. I didn’t need to waste sleep time on that. Make good choices, man. Make good choices.

Speaking of good choices, I raced home from work and grabbed the dogs and the boychild and headed out. We have the outside edge of a tropical storm, was a hurricane, hanging around, making it muggy as shit and only 3 drops of rain are allowed to fall, which is crazy stupid. But the clouds look nice.

We took yet another weird trail. Boychild doesn’t like to do the same path every time. He blames Simba. Maybe the dogs don’t either. They want different smells. Interestingly, if we’d done our normal path, we would have passed the coyote we saw later as well.

Instead, we kamikazed up this hill…and picked up part of a different trail…

But there he was, at the junction of the trail we’re normally on. I say he, like I did with the lizard, but maybe they’re both female. We just don’t know.

It’s closer than I like being to them (I’m sure they’re closer than that on a regular basis, but somehow it’s better when you can’t see them watching you)…especially with the snack we call Simba. It’s easier when I’m not alone though. He stopped and stared at us a lot. I waved and yelled hi.

Like you do. Hey Julie…does this belong out in the wild? There was more than one of them…the stem at back probably was the tall version before the flowers died. Lily-like.

Probably doesn’t belong, but who knows. I’ve seen stranger things out there.

I came home and was tired…we did more than we usually do, and I think I was already done in before I started. Lab days with water! Take your life into your own hands. Boychild cooked dinner…’twas good. Then I should have graded some, but I was too tired. Eventually I found the energy to come in here and start quilting…

But it took a long time to get the tension right, for some reason. I broke the thread like 4 times, re-threaded every time, changed out the needle, swore a bit, and finally got it functional…

After fighting with it for so long, I didn’t have much patience or energy for continuing to fight the quilt around the machine. I know I got in a little more than an hour though, so that’s progress.

My trusty quilting companions…

There was a cat in there too. And when I went into the other room, I had 4 out of the 5 with me…2 on the couch next to me. You cannot be alone in this house, not even in the bathroom.

Today is going to be a long day, but I’m hoping to get back in here and quilt some more. It’s honestly not very big, so it shouldn’t take very long. I’m not sure if I have thread for the background though. I should check that. Not right now, though. Right now, I need to get ready for work. Demo day…no down time. Fun stuff.

Reasonable Requests

OK, the internet is working but who knows how long it will hang out here. We have another solution we’ve ordered and is on the way. Hopefully it will solve the problem. But I’m actually typing this on my computer instead of my iPad, my phone, or my school laptop at the moment. A blessing!

So. Saturday. I finished grading a bunch of stuff and then went in and finished ironing. You can see I have Kitten as a companion AND the internet was working. I have no idea what I’m watching…either Luther or Maniac on Netflix.

It only took another 30 minutes or so to iron it down to the background. In total, this quilt ironed together in 6 hours and 45 minutes…

The wonder of smaller quilts. Then, since I was waiting around anyway, I started stitching it down.

I guess I could have graded something else, but like I’ve said before…I don’t like giving up my entire weekend to school. Kitten was happily ensconsed in my chair. (Dear WordPress..that is TOO a word.)

More stitching down…it took just under 3 hours to stitch it all down.

So I finished on Saturday afternoon…well, evening. Then a relaxed dinner at home with a weird movie and some stitching with cat paws on the leg…

After the movie, I drew for a bit. I’m skipping one of the shows I wanted to enter because I don’t have time to make something for it…really…I could, but it would hurt. I need to relax a bit. So I’m aiming a little further out. I needed to work out some ideas in my head, and this was a good start. It’s going to need a redo, but I took a bunch of notes to myself and I have a plan in my head now.

Sunday brought dogs. Some are more social than others. Simba, we’re talking to your cranky butt. He used to play with Katie, but he’s been cranky this time.

Just wants people cuddles. We had storm clouds come in and rain on us for about 14 seconds…the remnants of a tropical storm coming up through Mexico are going to just tickle us with horrendous humidity as they go by.

This is after Sunday dinner…got the road done in that section and started work on the butterfly, the last block in July. Then the tree and house, plus the giraffe and horned thing on the bottom are August. I have September sewn down and then was messing with October in here last night, trying to figure out what to do with all the bits and pieces…

With October, then I sew the whole quilt together. I’m not sure what happens in November? I think borders. I’m not sure where that bag is. It’ll take me some time to get there though.

See, I come in here and then they lie down all over the floor again. It’s like Twister getting around them.

Here’s our newest baby gecko. It’s hiding in a little hole in the sink drain down there. Can’t get it out. We should name him. Fred.

We’ve had a lot of them this year.

So after dinner, I did some school stuff, sort of finished progress reports. I have a few things I’ll update today, and then I’m done. So I pinbasted this one…

AND this one. Because once you’ve cleaned the floor and moved stuff out of the way, you might as well do all of them.

So that’s two wool quilts ready for quilting. Ha! Well I don’t know when that will happen. I guess I finished one over the summer that had been languishing for years. I seem to like working to deadlines at the moment, so they tend to take precedent over the other stuff.

Anyway, so I can start quilting tonight, if I have the energy. I’m running on extra tired for some reason. Still. Take the vitamins, eat the foods, get the exercise. It took a long time to fall asleep last night. I’m feeling it this morning. As always. May this week be less tiring than it looks when I stare at the calendar. May there be art every night. Those seem like reasonable requests.

Wonky Is Good

I dream of quiet mornings with no itchy dogs, no squawky cats, no groaning puppy (that’s the noise he makes when he wants out of the crate. If you’re anti-crate, feel free to sleep with him in your house for a while and realize what he does if he’s NOT crated. I’ve never had to crate a dog every night past real-live puppyhood.). I dream of sleeping until I naturally wake up, that means NOT my bladder or someone else in the house or a neighbor or one of those damn furry creatures who mostly I love and care for and pet and cut big tangly bits out of their butt fur and wash their putrid infected belly bits (hmmm…was this a good choice?). This morning? Not an option. So I’m awake but cranky about it. What’s new? I have a shitload to get done this weekend, not the least of which are blood tests before my doctor flips her lid (I told her all along it would be today…IDK why she didn’t believe me.). Also prepping and delivering two quilts to Palomar College, opening in two weeks…that’s first on my list after writing this and showering and eating. Then blood letting (need to drink a ton of water first and I’m not awake enough to do that). Then come back here and keep grading until the cows come home. I’d really like to iron my quilt together too. Going to figure out where that fits.

Yesterday was Picture Day at school. My co-teacher and I like to go all out. She brought the dry ice and the tiara, I brought the unicorn head thingie.

IDK why anyone lets us out of our classrooms. Or lets kids into them.

I made kids measure rocks all day. On Monday, we’ll measure blocks. They can only measure things that rhyme. It’ll be socks next.

Then off to the last session of Warhammer, after 2 years or so. None of us died. Only two mutated and one was reversed and the other one wasn’t so bad. I went insane from corruption…no biggie…I’m still alive, running my dwarven mushroom farm underground, back in the dwarf kingdom, managing some kingly engineering department. Where I should be.

Yes, I stitched. I was really tired. If I didn’t stitch, I would fall asleep. We’ll game again in 2019. We’ll do some fun stuff on and off until then, I’m sure. Managing a game around the schedules of 6 busy adults is not easy, but it’s one of the few regular social things I do these days. I work too much.

I have lots of drawings in my head right now about the Kavanaugh crap. I don’t want someone that angry in the Supreme Court. But reading a few high-school friends’ commentary about whether to believe Ford or not…it must be nice to be a white man and be able to make those decisions with zero understanding of what it feels like on the other side. I guess a lot of us are feeling a little battered at the moment. Speaking of battered, I’ve got these two male students who are talking to me, who are connecting, who are still driving me nuts with their work ethic, but they’re talking. So we chat about life and their weekends (both playing Fortnite) and their moms and it’s a step in the right direction. Because they have shit in their heads that keep them from working…I have a lot of faith in a 12-year-old’s ability to move past that and be awesome.

Here’s progress…working on the road, which is just a hell of a lot of stitching…

I like how wonky it is. I guess this one is my new post-dinner focus for a while…which is good, because without gaming, I don’t know when I’d work on it otherwise. There’s no shortage of wooly blocks of the month in my house. I really like the feeling of stitching and embroidering through wool. It’s very relaxing. I might need some of that today. Although I think it won’t happen.

OK, on to the next step to get my tired butt in gear…

Almost Ironed

Computer refusing to function again. Probably going to have to manage that soon. It’s frustrating. I’m not even sure where to start. It’s interesting how much we rely on the internet for our existence…for those of us who remember having to function without it. It was on the internet I read the statements made yesterday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, since I was at work all day. Very triggering stuff. I don’t know any woman who could do what she did and be lying about it. I don’t care that he was in high school…it’s a testament to his character, as was his testimony yesterday. He’s unfit to be in the most powerful court in the country. He already was, based on his personal bias. This country I live in right now? It’s ugly. It’s always been ugly though, big parts of it…racism, sexism. I guess it’s just more obvious now. In our faces. There’s white privilege showing. If I were a POC, the ugly would have been in my face all along.

Yes, my head is in a place. Knowing what’s wrong is one thing. Knowing how to make it right is the problem.

I got home early yesterday, but the boychild and I had to deal with the flea infestation at the parentals, so we did that. And then I tried inputting grades, but the computer refused after a while…so I went back to the school computer. Got those in (oh so slowly…10-key input is so much faster).

The good news is that I finally finished all the embroidery on those 96 balls. I don’t remember when I started this…late 2013? Probably 2014…

She Spargo’s design, stitched by me at every soccer game I went to for many years. Sat around for at least a year, getting the guts to put all those stems and balls on. Supposed to be done ages ago. Now I just need to quilt it, which is funny because I still haven’t quilted the one I finished before it.

Cat and dog and new keyboard (finally…most of the letters are worn off)…

Time to iron. I was super tired. This week…

Cat and bird…

Hair and tree done…fussy skinny pieces.

All the leaves ready to go.

So everything is ready to get ironed on the background…once I finish grades. Ugh. I like it so far though. I wasn’t sure in the beginning. Hopefully the background color works. I guess we’ll see.

I Killed Another Red Pen…

Oh my. Two early mornings in a row. I keep going to bed a little earlier, thinking it will help. It’s not. Of course, yesterday’s 11-hour work day did not help. I meant to leave work early, but we revised everything after school for today’s lesson, so I got home late and then sat right down and graded more of the science units. I finished the last class at 10:30 PM. Dinner was in there somewhere. I had help with that.

I killed one red pen…

Some kid shoved their homework (that they didn’t do) into the science unit. Good way to hide it, man! I’ll never see it in there. You probably think you turned it in! I did actually have kids turn it in blank. I guess it saves them in the moment, because I see 4 papers and don’t call them on it right then and there. I just hand it back with a zero on it though. So I’m not sure how that works.

I only got two balls done after dinner. Slow stitching. Or slow eating. Not sure which. There was a puppy though!

I think there’s only 3 balls left. Maybe tonight?

Kitten doesn’t really like anyone but me. They all scare her. Here’s boychild making friends with the use of catnip, rubbing it all over her face. She was a little drooly.

She does like the head scratches. My parents’ dog, Katie, is behaving better this year. Not as much cat chasing. Kitten has made it down the hallway without being chased. Guess Katie is getting old.

So yeah, at 10:30, I came in to iron, after packing up all the school stuff. I only got about 45 minutes in…too tired. I finished the belly and the breasts and that other hand, plus the neck.

There’s about 120 pieces left. One night if I weren’t doing other stuff. I might get it done tonight…it’s possible. I also have to find two quilts that need to be delivered on Saturday, though…make sure I have the hanging hardware, iron them, dehair them, roll them up. Meanwhile, my doctor is harassing me for more blood tests. I told her the weekend (I seriously can’t handle that after school right now…I didn’t even leave early enough yesterday…or Tuesday…or Monday even.). I will do it Saturday. Along with everything else I can’t get done right now.

Deep breaths. Caffeine. The patience of a saint (I don’t have that last one. Wish me luck.).

Planet Earth

I dunno what I did, but now I can’t even get on the internet on the computer, so I’m writing this on the iPad…it’s fine, although my pointer finger gets tired. I have a tiny keyboard for it somewhere, but that requires even more thought than trying to find the network security key, which is NOT the same as a password, despite the similar feel to the words.

It’s going to be short today anyway. I have an early meeting plus a packet to make for a kid who’ll be gone for over a week (sigh…so frustrating…parents just want a packet, but that means I have to find or make stuff to replace hands-on curriculum…at least this parent gave us a heads up. The other kid asked for work yesterday for the next week. No chance.).

Last night, I blew off everything and went to see Rachel Ignotofsky talk about her new book, Planet Earth.

She previously published Women in Science and Women in Sports, plus her Etsy site has all the prints and T-shirts I want. I am refraining from buying everything.

She’s fun and creative and perky and loves talking to kids, and her next book is Women in Art! I’m excited…plus the new book is all about ecosystems and biodiversity and saving the world, which I can totally get behind. And she merges art and science in an engaging and beautiful and fascinating way.

I think I just went all fangirl. I had her sign both my books. And then I came home and found out I got into Quilt + Resist at Woman Made Gallery…a gallery I’ve been trying to get into since I was an adult artmaker. Rooted in America is heading out again, this time to Chicago. Good news, that.

And I also got into the Surface Design Association Exhibition in Print, so it’s been a good week for notifications. I don’t know which one will be in the magazine. But I’m looking forward to finding that out.

Well hopefully when I get home, the computer will connect to things. Tonight I work on grades and art. Last night was cool and inspiring…now back to work.