War! What Is It Good for?

I was not very efficient yesterday. It’s OK. It happens. We can’t always go go go every minute of every day. I wanted to be done quilting, and I’m not. I need to go buy binding today though. I’m done with the outlining and I started the background stuff. I don’t expect it to take very long…

She has eyeballs! So I’m gonna finish that today and go get the binding fabric. Which means now I have to finish the other drawing. The drawing that has not fully coalesced in my head. The drawing that needs to come from somewhere difficult. Sigh. OK. So I need to find mental space for that. In between starting school and trying to finish up the bedroom and sending the boychild back to college. Hmmmm. OK. Yeah.

Drawing sounds nice actually. Sitting on the deck with some tea or wine and drawing. Music playing while the neighbor kids scream their tiny little guts out (oh wait). Turning the music up and making sure it has lots of swear words in it (I don’t actually do that…I just think about doing it.). Getting out the flamethrower…oh wait. Also not appropriate.

Right now I’m sitting here, reveling in the bird sounds, the sound of faraway dogs barking, the sound of my pool needing to have the filter cleaned. Aargh.

OK, I did some stitches around the hand, in between some of the buttonhole spiky bits. And lazy daisies in purple…still filling those in.

And then I went to book club to discuss a book I didn’t finish. And they forgot to bring my food. It was interesting though…I think of war as a distinctly male thing…even when we’re talking about the queens in the past who have started wars, I kind of think their upbringing was distinctly male in some ways, to make sure they would react that way if needed, or maybe they weren’t really allowed to make decisions without approval by all these men around them. Or they were raised to be leaders of a country and that meant they should automatically consider war, no matter what. Or they are just anomalies.

I have this picture in my head of a world run by women where the first thing we do is NOT bomb the shit out of people. And maybe that’s just my age showing, because the younger members of the book club were arguing that it is not just a male thing, that women want war all the time too (I don’t know any of these women…but I don’t know a lot of men who want war either…product of my choice in friends I think.). I also blame religion for wars personally, or at least for this feeling that something needs to be other and other needs to be bad. But maybe that’s just human nature, a leftover of the brain aiming for survival. I think of wars as being pissing matches, this power against that power, and that feels very masculine to me, very testosterone-driven. If I were male, would I feel more warlike? Maybe not. I know men who aren’t. Did women-run societies run toward war? See the queens might have been in charge, but those weren’t female-run societies in the long run. So you do what you need to do to survive?

Anyway. As we sit here on the West Coast with two male dumbasses waving their peni at each other and us in the middle, it’s hard for me not to associate war and powermongering with a certain type of person.

Honestly though, that’s not helping me get through what I want to get through today. So I’ll think about my assumptions and maybe read some stuff and try to keep an open mind. While I build a bomb shelter in the backyard. That’s a drawing right there. Aack! Don’t have time for all this in my head…OK. I liked. I just went and bought a book on war and gender. Light reading for the back-to-school set.

Now let’s go back in time to 2004, when the girlchild was only 7, and consider the fact that she is now 20…

And she’s still always hanging out with dogs…miss that kid.

This Could Be the End of Everything*

Ugh. Get act together. Mornings are hard. Yeah, I know it’s not early. I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing. Straight up, I’m not entirely sure WHAT I’ve been doing, so don’t ask me. There were maps and trails and boychild took over the mousing, and the girlchild called briefly, and there were dogs and cats and all that. Sometimes I think time just does a slippy thing and wanders away from me. Like when I’m quilting and I look up at the clock and go Holy Fuck. Gotta go to bed. But then I lie there and can’t sleep. Welcome to my world. Maybe I should have just quilted all night.

No, you know how with daylight savings time, they always tell you to adjust slowly over the next week, getting up a little earlier every morning so the day of isn’t a shock to your system? Yeah, well, I always try to do that with school too. I don’t like mornings and I stay up way too late normally, and during summer break, I stay up even later, but Friday I have to be at school before 8 AM, which is earlier than we actually start, but they key everything into the elementary schools, which start earlier than the middle schools. And there’s gonna be massive parking issues, because our lot is closed and there isn’t enough parking, so I don’t even wanna deal with that…to the tune of my considering riding a bike or walking to school (OK, it would take close to an hour to do that). Blaargh.

Anyway. Mornings. Nonfunctional. Not efficient at all. Art brain is completely offline. Seriously, do you ever hear me talking about drawing in the morning or making anything useful but a cup of tea in the AM? Fuck no. All you perky morning people, please just stay away from me. Until cup of tea number 2.

I did a bunch of stuff yesterday. Some of it was final shit on the garage. I’m calling it done, even though there’s a file cabinet and some storage stuff that needs to be managed. Boychild and I made another trip to the parental dumpster (no, they really have a dumpster…I don’t just drop shit at their house), plus I sold another thing on Craigslist and then did some stuff, including school shopping and dog food and the library, because ALL the books you’ve had on hold for 17 months WILL SHOW UP THE WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS. It happens every year. I might have to give up on one of them. I’m desperately trying to read the book for tomorrow night’s book club. I don’t think there’s an Audible version of The Left Hand of Darkness. Oh god. There probably is. I don’t Audible though. I stop paying attention when someone is reading to me.

So dinner was late. Dinner is often late in these circumstances. There also were a lot of animals lying around pretending to be very hot and tired.

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That eyeball…

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I did quilt in the afternoon for a bit. Not much.

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I started legs and stuff…

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Garage before we started. That’s solid crap in the center section, taller than me. It’s been like that for years. The boychild has been complaining about it for years as well. It was just so incredibly overwhelming. I couldn’t even deal. So with his help, we did it.

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Now I should have taken one after this one…because the pile of storage stuff in the middle is piled up elsewhere, and the school stuff on the right and behind is all in my car, to be delivered to school this morning. So the whole center is pretty much empty. For now. There’s another shelf thing being delivered on Thursday from one of my parents’ rentals. There are a few empty shelves in there, but maybe not enough.

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I haven’t fully solved the art storage issue, but it’s all up off the ground and out of my closets. I was a screenprinter before I became a quilt artist. Much harder to store that stuff. And there’s so much of it…

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And that big table is available for screenprinting if I decide to go back to that. I might. I liked it.

No. I’m not putting a car in there. That’s just silly.

More little stitches, mostly French knots, in the feather stitching up top.

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Then back to the machine…cat giving me the Other Eye this time.

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And more quilting…

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It’s very meditative…even all the little windows…

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I got to the top of the rocky crotch. It was close to midnight thirty then, so I quit.

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I was wide awake, but see note above about trying to shift sleep cycle for school. Ha! So I did all the legs…I’m definitely past the midpoint on outlining…

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That was all after dinner. Of course, there’s all the background stuff, which will take some time. So I’m hoping to do another 3 or 4 hours today, but that means I need to get out of here and do the stuff that needs doing…delivery to school, plus thrift shop again and smog the car. Hopefully. I don’t FEEL like doing any of that. I don’t even want to go NEAR school, but I have to get this shit out of my car somehow. And please don’t ask me about the bedroom…I’m definitely stalled on that. The deadline for that is a little ways out (OK, really only about 2 weeks), so it’s easier to ignore it, I guess. I knew with the garage that once school started I might not go in there for a while, and I didn’t want the art down on the ground if rain started.

OK. Get it done. That’s my plan for the day.

*Keane, Somewhere Only We Know

To Sew This Hole Up That You Ripped in My Head*

Decision overload. I have a broken drawer of fabric. It’s been broken for three months. I can’t replace it exactly…those drawers are a good 20 years old. So either I replace one stack of them, which means everything on top will no longer fit, because the two stacks will be different heights, or I replace two stacks, which means less room than I have now, because the new ones are slightly smaller (but on sale right now). Or I have this new vision, might be a crazy one, of a shelf unit in that space that goes to the ceiling and holds smaller containers. Or even just shelves…the ones that slot in, a la Home Depot…because I could put more in and have more storage than I have now. But that sounds like a major time and work commitment, and now is not the time for that. Seriously. Four days before I go back to school? But I don’t have to DO it now. I just have to commit to a plan.

You know, sometimes people ask why I write this blog, and it really isn’t for you (sorry). It’s a brain dump, a motivational device for getting stuff done, a way to make decisions. It’s like once the words are out of my head I don’t have to worry so much about what was said. I think the shelf system is the way to go. It’s harder and more time-consuming, but it’s also the best solution to the problem. I think. Aargh. For now.

So it won’t get done any time in the next month probably, because I’m upending everything here still. But there’s a semi-plan in place. I just did that in my head. Well…in the part of my head that I just spilled out into the interwebz.

I kept stitching down on Saturday…

Sometimes I get antsy and I have to get up and walk around, sometimes dance a little in the hallway, yell out a bit, make another cup of tea or heat up the one I haven’t been drinking. I think my teacup is just an excuse to get up and move around…which is a good thing.

I totally tense up while I’m doing this…

Anyway, I had a plan to go see some art afterwards, so I HAD to finish (I really do much better with deadlines)…

And I did. About 4 1/2 hours to stitch her down. Why less than I thought? Because lots of pieces means lots of time in the early stages, but not so much time now, because this is about distance more than quantity, and the distance is small.

I love seeing them from the back…

I actually look at the back to see if I missed any pieces. I found one and fixed it. There might be more. Hard to say.

Kitten slept the entire fucking time.

Then Sunday, the boychild and I went at the garage again. He was cutting things up for the dumpster/trash…and I was going through the last of the school stuff and moving all the art up and off the ground.

I forgot to take a picture of that…really I should do a before/after thing, but we’re still piling stuff that needs to get out of here.

Nighttime found me on the entryway floor, laying her out, ready for pinbasting.

I had a piece of fabric for the backing that was almost exactly the right size. I also had some batting that was the right size, but then I realized it hadn’t been washed. I use Warm and Natural, and it will shrink when washed. I have had to wash these before, so I always prewash batting. I got the leftover pieces from the community quilts, and that’s what wasn’t washed. So I pulled it all out of my stash and will put it in the bathtub today so it can go back in the stash and be ready to go.

I managed to find an older piece of washed batting that was the right size. And I pinbasted her…

I did all of the ironing and pinning while I was listening to the annual trainings that teachers have to do: Blood-borne Pathogens, Pesticide Idiocy, and the Mandated Reporter stuff. I love how they blamed teachers for abuse at school. OK. It’s OK. I passed. There’s one more we have to do, but they haven’t MADE IT YET. Because I can blow off stuff until the last minute. OK. I actually can blow off SOME stuff until the last minute, but not without repercussions. Like not sleeping due to my brain worrying about shit over and over again. But don’t make me deal with video trainings once the new year starts. I hate that.

I was behind on this. I did three strands of feather stitching on the top, and then for the fourth night, I did lazy daisies in one of the feather strands. I just wanted some different lines up there.

That’s 217 days of stitching. Yeah, I looked it up. So there are 148 days left (yes, I used a calculator).

Yes, I’m quilting today. Hopefully for a good chunk of time, although the shit is beginning to pile up…I want her quilted and the binding at least started or on before Friday. Seriously. I was really good yesterday and got almost all of the school stuff sent to the print shop, but I still have one more thing, plus stuff I need to do in the classroom, and the bedroom…holy god, the bedroom is still a freakish disaster. There’s So Much I got done and So Much I didn’t get done this summer. Nothing new there. The garage is a relief (I swear I’ll do a before/after photo thing). The bedroom will be a relief when it’s done.

But I need to start thinking about the next quilt. The drawing is barely started. I have all the ideas and concepts in my head, percolating, but an image hasn’t fully popped through. Hopefully it will some time this week.

OK. Need to get work. Enough thinking here. Need to do.

*Banks, Beggin for Thread

Infiltrating My Brain

Awww school. You’ve infiltrated my brain dammit and now I’m in panic mode. I keep looking at the calendar and reminding myself that there are hours in there and I will get organized at some point. My brain is unraveling. I haven’t bought supplies, I don’t have my stuff into the print shop, my room is a disaster.

Walk away.

So I had my stitching meeting last night and started the next month’s blocks. This is May though and not April. April is not sewn down yet. I did stems and legs and grass. The legs are awesome…two couched threads with bullion knots over them.

I have lots more to do on these. Obviously. And I should start sewing April down too.

When I got home, I finally started ironing more quilt parts together. I iron the eyes separately and then put them on the face.

There they are. The eyes are the most important part of the quilt, I think.

Aliens in my quilt, polluting my world.

Seriously. Alien ships give off CO₂, right?

Ironed the head/land to the rest. Most of it’s rolled up.

But then I realized that I hadn’t washed the background fabric in Retayne, and the dark fabrics, especially the batiks, bleed like a motherfucker. And then they say not to use the high-efficiency washers to do that, so I stirred for 20 minutes.

Which was good, because it didn’t bleed at all. Midnight did not fucking care.

Then I finally got her ironed down. She’s taller than I am. Not that that’s hard.

Head ironed. Woo hoo.

Now I need to stitch the whole thing down. Like today. Ha! Well. It will probably take 5-11 hours, based on the last two quilts. Probably closer to 5 hours. But I need to do school stuff too and deal with the bedroom and the garage, all of which are stressing me out.

I’m glad I’m at this point though. She’s good. I’m good with her good. But now I need to go do shit so I can stop panicking.

For a Minute There I Lost Myself*

School today. Not the start, just the prep. The stuff we do every year that no one pays us to do but that has to be done. Sometimes I only do this stuff alone, at home, staring at a computer, but we’re trying to finesse what we built from scratch last year, and that takes both of us. Next year maybe we won’t have to meet beforehand. You miss the people…not the workload. Well. And not ALL the people. Just like any other job.

I wanted to be done with the ironing yesterday…COULD have been done, but ’twas not to be. I started well…doing all those stupid little windows in the morning…see how small they are? How many of them there are?

Can you find the two cats? It’s hot and humid here. Cats don’t like hot and humid generally. At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

Then I had a good visit with an artist friend but when I got back, it was apparent to me that thunder had happened. Calli doesn’t like thunder any more. At all.

She tried to dig out the hat tree in the corner of the entryway, she tried to go under my desk, and in doing so, knocked down the ironing board with the quilt and 17 thousand safety pins on it. She also tried to dig through the couch, in my bathroom, and on my bed. Poor baby. There’s more possible thunderstorms today. I’m debating bringing her with me to school, just in case. Not that she’ll be better there, but at least she won’t be alone. And destroy the house. I debate the thundershirt idea every year, but haven’t done it yet.

So she was semi-frantic when I got home and needed about 4 hours of petting and sleeping to get over it. Meanwhile, the internet disappeared, and then so did my time, because fixing that took about 4 1/2 hours and a trip to the not-so-local cable services store for a new modem. And four different guys. The last one was named Lloyd and he promised to fix it in three minutes and he did. That’s all I really need folks. Follow-through and accountability. Or something. Thanks Lloyd.

I did this while I was waiting…

The white lazy daisies up on the top right plus the fern stitch. I also sewed 4 eyeballs down, but that’s not documented photographically. Just imagine the elephants from a couple days ago, but with no pins through their eyes.

Oh yeah, and I stopped by to see my exhibit, because it was near where I was visiting…just sat there and stared at it for about 5 minutes or so. It’s funny, because I walk in and start to explain who I am and they’re like, “We know who you are.” Oh. OK. Hi.

It’s still weird to sit in there and see all my stuff.

Before I left the house, though, I had finished those windows…

And ironed the arm from the night before on top of it all…

Then after the internet fiasco, so many hours wasted on the phone and otherwise, because then the phone was not working once we replaced the modem…I went back to ironing and finished up the torso…which looks ever so strange without boobs, quite honestly.

And then did the last bit of land…and a rocketship, and the wind behind her head. It’s a cheery landscape? No?

Eventually I will iron these two together, once I finish the head.

That’s today’s goal…along with stitching it all down. Hopefully. I have my quilt meeting tomorrow afternoon, and I might have nothing on this to take with me if I don’t catch up. There aren’t many pieces left, but it was enough at 12:30 last night that I was too tired to keep going, plus I knew I’d have to be up early for school today. Ugh. That phrase. Damn day job. I need another month. Seriously. Finish the quilt, the cleanup, the organization. Need more time. Always.

*Radiohead, Karma Police

It’s More Likely to Happen if I Talk about It

This happens every year. I get close to the beginning of the new school year and I decide to just make art nonstop. Like screw the housecleaning and the to-do list. Probably I should be more mature and get the car smogged and the bedroom out of chaos mode (I have two drawers and the hope chest still…just cannot deal. Cannot.). But no. I need this quilt done. I’m irritated that I’ve finished no quilts in months. This one isn’t even that big…although it does have a ton of pieces.

The last week before going back…it just sucks. You realize how many hours you’re going to lose…not just the hours at school, but it’s back to daily grading and planning, to kid problems that never leave your working brain, to adult drama (seriously), to stupid professional development that aims to teach you what you already know (some day they might differentiate…but it hasn’t happened yet), to endless meetings. UGH. I need to change my mindset. Somehow. Maybe if this summer had been more of a recharge and less like hard work. Reminder for next summer, eh? Then again, LAST summer at about this point, I was getting kicked out of an AQS show for an invisible penis. So. There’s that.

Anyway, I had another dental appointment in the morning, but then came back and refused to do anything but art. That’s not true. I moved a few things into the garage. But the humidity is killing me at the moment. Ugh. So I started ironing. Which isn’t hot at all. Stop laughing.

I did the rest of the hills…hard to see it all in this picture. We got oil things and a dam and a cracked highway and a volcano. Like you do. Some power plants.

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I added some oil drums to the top right…

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Then ironed all the bottom stuff to that…

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It’s super long, so that’s harder than it looks to keep it all attached. Right now it’s all rolled up under where I’m ironing. Somewhat dangerous, as I might accidentally iron it all to itself. That would suck.

I did some of this after dinner. I think I was doing blue in the top, above the tree. Just filling in spaces with whatever makes sense.

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Then back to ironing. I did about 5 hours total yesterday…up to almost 14 hours of ironing at this point, but I’m much closer to done now. These flowers were a bit of a challenge.

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Then the body behind it, attaching it all to the bottom bits and building one arm. The hand went in front of and behind the flowers.

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I did some of the torso (the yellow sun thing) and then turned the teflon sideways to do the other arm separately. I numbered it before the torso, but the torso has to be finished before, because it’s behind the arm. Complicated much?

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Awwww. Tiny bird.

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Then I ironed the other arm where it belongs, although it’s not ironed down where the buildings need to go. I just wanted you to see everything I ironed yesterday. It was a lot of little pieces. I gave up when the buildings were next.

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It was after midnight, I was tired, and I didn’t want to deal with all the tiny windows. Although, now it’s morning and I still don’t want to deal with them. Huh.

So then I was trying to figure out how to photograph this thing. Finished, it’s 61″ long…I’m not finished yet.

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This is a slightly better view. You can see I need to finish the torso, the land above it, and her head.

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So I’m in the 1000s. About 320 pieces to go. That’s it. Then iron it to the background and start ironing it down. See now I can see an endpoint, a light at the end of the tunnel. So it’s really hard to NOT work on it right this second. I have about an hour and a half before I have to leave again. But I need to get the dogs. And really I should clean something (ugh I so don’t want to). I could be done with ironing today if I worked hard and if my schedule allowed. Hard to say if that will happen. Stitch down by tomorrow? Quilting by Friday? I don’t know if I can pull that off. Probably not. But I can talk about it. It’s more likely to happen if I talk about it.

I Feel Your Whisper Across the Sea*

I’m back! I know, you didn’t barely notice I was gone. It’s OK. I wasn’t getting much done. Well. That’s not true. I did manage to cut out all the Wonder Under for two quilts BEFORE I paddled a canoe a million miles, thus trashing both hands for a day. But it was for a good cause. And it wasn’t a million miles either.

So. You know I only put pictures on the blog so I can remember what I did…here’s a great shot of the boat trip…

And more puppy sleeping. He got pretty tired out up in the mountains. It’s gonna really suck for him when the kids leave…

I did walk the two dogs on my own even. Shocking. Calli is doing much better…we’re weaning her off her arthritis meds. I’m hoping to be back to my regular dog-walking schedule by the time school starts…

Which is Way Too Fucking Soon. I swear. More about that later.

I finished this, which is block 10. I sewed it to block 9 yesterday. More about those later too.

This was my starting set of tiles in Scrabble. I did use both the Q and the Z, but there’s still some drama over my use of the word zed. Whatever. Scrabble accepted it.

I didn’t win at Clue or Scrabble, but I was much closer at Scrabble. Mostly because of the word quips.

There was a lot of sleepiness.

But here’s one quilt completely cut out of Wonder Under on Sunday night and I did another Monday night. Pretty good. Yes, I had already started both of them. Minor issue.

After the bed disaster of Sunday night, I chose the couch (and this view) for Monday night. Much more comfortable. Well. Until dog incursion.

I didn’t get into the kayak, but the others did. I canoed. Here’s girlchild, waiting on us to get the canoe in the water…

And boychild the day before…

I like the open kayaks better, but this one is easy to control…way easier than that paddleboard (at least standing). See! Evidence I was up! It didn’t last long.

Oh well…no photos of my falling, unfortunately.

Simba likes the shade of Grandpa.

The weather was good, a little warm and sunburnt, but that’s my fault for not successfully sunscreening myself. Some people were smart and wore hats. I should be that smart.

Nah. He’s not spoiled.

I did this every night…mostly on the right side. Not sure I could tell you what I did. French knots? Some other stuff?

I drove home yesterday and was enthusiastically greeted by cats. I’m trying to prep the next month of blocks for the Folk Tails quilt (Sue Spargo). It’s one of those things I work on when I can’t work on my own stuff.

But then I decided to sort Wonder Under pieces for the Long Skinny…with or without Midnight’s help. Because it has 1320 pieces, I need a box for each 100 pieces (that’s 14 boxes. Yes. I math.). Most of them are numbered already on a small piece of tape, but I often am using boxes for something else, so sometimes I have to renumber them. Fourteen boxes is easy to find…it’s when I go up to twenty that I have issues.

No, I don’t own stock in Rubbermaid. Anyway, here they are all laid out. I had to keep pushing Midnight over. I was watching King Charles III, which was interesting. A prediction of how it might go if Charles becomes king when the Queen dies. The verse from the original play is in this adaptation, which makes it reminiscent of Shakespeare in many ways. I was intrigued.

So then I started sorting. It took over an hour to sort them all. Some idiot (me) made a lot of really tiny pieces.

There they are all sorted, now ready to be ironed onto fabric, which hopefully starts today. Realistically? Tonight.

I have one piece with no number (bottom right), but I’ll figure it out. And I have to choose a background fabric. And finish organizing a bit in here. I was cleaning out DVDs and I need to finish that. Maybe 20 minutes? It’s not the only thing on my list for the day unfortunately. Because I’m freaking out about school, trying to prep for the first week or so, plus the first unit. I can’t remember what we did at the end. I know we copied stuff. I just don’t remember what. Sigh. My co-teacher was organized and did it already. But I had way too much other copyediting and art work the first three weeks after school got out. I’m still trying to get caught up on that.

So once it was all sorted, my brain was in stresslord overdrive (like a time lord, but Nida Powers version…and yes, they can all be female dammit). So I kept sewing things down. That’s my applique thread stash. It’s funny how long ago I bought all those…when I was doing hand applique all the time. So sometime about 27 years ago. Or so. Impressive that they last that long. I don’t use a lot of it any more, but the stash continues. I don’t buy more of it…not even sure where I could get it anymore, since that shop shut down.

Online, I guess. So here’s what’s done. Well. There’s one unembroidered block in there because it’s sewn to a finished block. So only 8 blocks are done. Let’s see. This is not how they fit together either. Blocks 4 and 5 are on the top left. Under them are blocks 9 and 10. To the right are blocks 20 and 21? I think? Then the bottom row is blocks 1, 2, and 25? I think? So I need to embroider block 5…it’s part of May, which is what I’m sewing together now. Blocks 14 and 15 are the elephants and tree blocks above. They go under 9 and 10.

But I haven’t sewn the April blocks together yet. I don’t really know why I did them out of order. Maybe because of the 4/5 combo. Whatever. This will take forever, and I’m OK with that. It’s a place to let my head be when the rest is too much. Plus it keeps me awake when I would otherwise try to catch up on all my missed sleep. And I enjoy the embroidery part. I have a wool quilt I designed that may never get made, but I think it’s all cut out even. Huh. I should think about that. In my spare time.

OK. I’m going to get going on something…SOMETHING that I can check off the to-do list. I literally finished NOTHING yesterday. Oh. Wait the sorting. But I didn’t put that on the list. Duh. Seriously, a to-do list with things you can cross off is such a useful practice. It’s incredibly motivating.

*Jason Mraz, Lucky

You Need Something Warm to Embrace*

Well all my problems are solved. I have $12.5 million dollars coming from some guy in the Netherlands who’s managing some dead guy’s estate. Of course, he had no living relatives, so I’m obviously the best choice for getting all the money.

Sigh. Morning email check is always a bust. Do you know how hard it is to fall asleep with 22 mosquito bites in unreachable places? Don’t eat outside, I guess…but it was way too hot Monday night to eat inside. Now we pay the price. Here’s Kitten demonstrating what cats do when it’s hot…they get LONGER and FLATTER.

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I can’t do either of those things.

So the good news is that I’ve made it all the way through the book I’m copyediting…one time. Well, more than one time, because I did a bunch of global changes that needed doing. But I only need one more clear read through before I can shove it off my plate (and get paid the rest). That’s a plus.

The other good news is that all of the community quilts are now pinbasted. Today is quilting day. Seriously. When I’m done with this, I’m going to shower and eat and then quilt until I die. And bind until I die. I want this shit done. Gone. Fini. Here’s the two I pinbasted last night…

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My block is in this one.

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My plan is to make it into it’s own small quilt when it comes back. We’ll see. Or I’ll make it again. Whichever.

I branched out with chain stitch last night…on the right…

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And then the girlchild posted this yesterday…

I do miss her.

So this is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to work on this drawing (well, honestly, it was more a matter of brain power). So I moved the damn cat. Multiple times. She was not happy about it.

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And I worked on the legs…trying to remember to keep it simple, because this is not getting enlarged any more.

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I forgot I wanted a third landmass, so I added that. I briefly considered covering the bit of leg I’d already drawn, but then I didn’t. So this is how drawing decisions are made. Whoops! Forgot that. Damn. Well it will have to do.

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Not sure why one foot is so much bigger. Oh well. It is what it is. I’m not really a perfectionist.

I tossed it on the ground for a different view…

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Still have some leg bits to do, plus the stuff under the feet. But it’s almost done.

Here we are by section…

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I keep adding things up here.

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Even up here…although the top is mostly done. I’m still a bit bothered by the top left. Thinking about it.

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Why are UFOs the only thing that pop into my mind?

So I’ve put in about 2 1/2 hours of drawing once it was enlarged. Honestly, a lot of that is just staring at it and pushing the cat around.

I also had a great idea for the piece I started with the gun in it. So I need to enlarge just the guy and the gun (I started drawing more on there but it sucked). Maybe today? I have a list of errands growing again. Hate errands.

So does Kitten. She avoids them like the plague.

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Then again, she avoids a lot of things, like the grocery store and school and work and cleaning and all that. Speaking of work, we had a flurry of texts going back and forth yesterday as school released the schedule for our first day back, lots of useless professional development. Oops. I’m not supposed to be so cynical, except, Hey You Bastards…I haven’t started my vacay yet. Could you leave off reminding me that I have to go back for a bit? Really?

Yeah. I’m good. I did draw yesterday. That helped. I have to remember that shit when the other shit is getting me down.

*Gnarls Barkley, Smiley Faces

I Can’t Control My Brain*

Lost voice has upgraded into sore throat and lost gravelly voice. Well luckily I have no need to talk for the next 55 days.

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OK. Maybe the girlchild will want me to talk when she comes home. Hard to say. Sure that’s on there because I’m looking forward to seeing her…but also because all of my quilts that are currently NOT in exhibits are lying on her bed. And she’ll probably want them to move by then. So that’s a deadline.

I got to school yesterday just after 9 AM. These are in our school garden, managed by one of the teachers…the garden looks great.

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This is my co-teacher’s room…her homeroom was useful and helped her organize all the new materials we got this year by unit. (My homeroom was singularly not useful, but that’s OK…they’re not my homeroom any more.) Our plan was to catalog all of the new materials and old and organize them in cupboards or the prep room by unit, thus saving us headaches and heartaches next year. She’s sitting at Unit 1…my computer is at Unit 2.

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That took a long time. And then there was cleaning up our rooms and trying to decide what to do with a huge pile of old and mostly useless chemicals dumped on us by 8th grade.

The custodial staff stacked my desks and tables in this pleasingly symmetrical formation. Women did this…not men. Just so you know.

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My room as I checked out. Pitiful really. I don’t usually take everything off the walls, but we have been teaching all new standards, so I needed to redo from scratch, now that I know what we teach. Plus we’re going to do it by unit…so if you go back and look at the picture of my colleague’s room, she has fabric rectangles up for each unit.

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I do not have that yet. Hello, Ikea. Later, people. Boychild did help with the take down and clearing out of some stuff I’ve had in here for 8+ years, so that was nice. He might even be around to help me set up…he’s tall and works hard and fast. Useful. If you need someone who’s tall and works hard and fast, let me know…he needs a summer job still.

We were there for over 6 hours, sweaty, tired, exhausted. There were about 10 times when I just wanted to quit, and we didn’t even do the last thing we needed to do. But we had to be out of there at a certain time. I got home and showered and the boychild and I went and got Indian food for dinner. And then I tried to function. I filled in the space around Prosper with a woven stitch and some other stitches, the space between the “e” and the “r”.

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Then because I was trying to finish watching something in here on the computer, I worked on this guy…Palestrina knots all the way around. It seems like a pain in the butt until you get into it, and then it’s easy. I don’t know why Palestrina knots terrify me so much. I’ve done a million of them now.

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And then I finished tracing this one…5 1/2 hours total. There’s some huge and long pieces on the two pieces of Wonder Under on the left.

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Honestly don’t know when I really have time to cut them out. I should be doing so many other things. No really. Not kidding.

Puppy and boychild joined me for a bit…

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He likes to be ON people. Except it’s hot here. Ugh.

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Soon after this, the big dog started vomiting. Which continued for a while. I’ve cleaned up a lot of vomit this morning. I could do without that.

So summer. Hallelujah. Need to make like 3 quilts. Seriously. And copyedit lots. And clean, toss, and organize lots. It’s frightening actually how much needs to be done. Right now, I’m still just taking it a day (hour?) at a time, trying to get some rest and find my brain. We’ll see how that goes.

*Weezer, Island in the Sun

I Feel Summer Creepin’ in*

I do have to be at school today…my room is a disaster and my co-teacher’s room is even worse, because we piled up all the new equipment and materials in there by unit, so we could try to organize it today. And plan a bit. We’ll see how that goes. My left eye is still twitching like a bitch (not enough sleep yet) and I have no voice again. But that school year is done. Out. On the ground. It wasn’t an easy one. With no state curriculum, we planned from scratch…and now we have to go back and fix it all.

I got home yesterday and the bank had shut down all my accounts again. It took a short while this time to get it all worked out, but I think the problem was Western Union, which we used to get money to the girlchild, because she needed cash for a car and her bank has no branch locally. But the bank has been remarkably unforthcoming and unhelpful. I finally got access to all the old statements (not sure what the issue was really) by filling out a Gallup poll about my experience that the bank sent me. Hello businesses…just saying sorry goes a long way, but it doesn’t fix stupid practices.

Usually after school is out, it takes me at least a week to be really efficient. We only get 8 weeks, which I realize sounds amazing to y’all, but I just got an email about the professional development I have to do…so if I do that before the year starts, that’s 7 weeks. Plus I’m working for the next two weeks, so that’s 5 weeks. I use this time to catch up on all the stuff I can’t do during the school year, because school sucks up holidays and weekends like a dehydrated puppy. Technically, including weekends, I have 55 days before I have to be back. It does not sound like enough. I know people with other jobs are completely jealous, but just come do my job for a couple of weeks and tell me how you feel about it then. Because it is different. I know that because I did your type of job for the first 13 years…and then I freelanced for a while…and now I’m a teacher AND a freelancer. Ugh.

There are days I wake up or go to bed wishing I could just be an artist full time. I know I can’t…I can’t afford it, obviously. But it would be sooo nice to be able to make art every day without all the other stuff. So the three breaks I get each year? I really try to carve out huge swathes of art time in them so I don’t go crazy. I figure if I’m going to work a job that beats you up so badly, I should be able to have the rest of the time for me.

Yeah. Mostly the first week I’m braindead though.

So I got home and the Threads of Resistance catalog was here with my two quilts and statements…really nicely done.

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These two quilts were made right after one another…I think that’s how the tree ended up in both.

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For those keeping track, I think there are 8 or 9 penises (penii?) between the two quilts. I will not be at the opening for this, because it’s the same day as my Visions opening…

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But maybe I’ll get to see it somewhere. Who knows?

So my mom has been amazing and has booked an Airbnb space for the boychild’s college graduation, which yes, is almost a year away.

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Ithaca is tiny…there’s not a lot of options. It will be my parents, the girlchild, me, and my ex, so it had to be big enough to sleep all of us. Now he has to graduate. (He will.)

It was my quilt class night, so I took all the blocks for the Don’t Shut Up community quilt I’m working on…so I could use Susan’s skills and ingenuity to deal with some of these crazy blocks. The wonders of dealing with quilt blocks from non-quilters…

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We tore some apart, sewed some together, and tried to trim others. Fun stuff. You’ll be seeing more of this over the next two weeks. I have a seam ripper injury from last night though…

I finally pulled this out…did two lengths of thread for the last two nights…on the left side again. A yellowish thread with French knots and lazy daisies in the cretan stitch, and then a pinky-purple thread that turned into green…I did lazy daisies and then some French knots around the other yellow stitches.

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Then I sat there on the couch for a long time, trying to be motivated to do anything. I finally got up and traced.

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I’m almost done. Another hour? At most. Lots of big sweeping sky pieces that use up large pieces of Wonder Under. Seriously, I think there are only 40 pieces left to trace. I’m glad I had this prepped and ready to go, because even though I should really be working on other stuff, I can’t get my head around any of it right now. I will HAVE to pretty damn soon, but I’m OK with yesterday and today being lost days for art and copyediting. Saturday though? Saturday I gotta get my act together and be a freelancer.

Midnight expresses her feelings about that. And being hot.

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Sweet fat kitty. OK. Going to school…but no kids makes that easier. I’m wearing my Ms. Marvel t-shirt on the off chance superpowers might help me today.

*Tom Petty, Mary Jane’s Last Dance