I Especially Need…

I had plans for art yesterday, but in the end, my job and life got in the way. I let myself be OK with that because part of life was picking up the girlchild from the airport and another part was taking a long walk with small beastie…he can do three miles, in case you were wondering…he wasn’t exactly sure he could do it about 2/3’s of the way through it, but he did it. Although it had zero effect on his rampant hyperness.

I have to say, although he’s cute and all (everyone says it), he can be a handful. This morning, he finally was calm enough to come near Kitten without hissing and growling occurring. But even then, they are at an uneasy standoff.

IMG_6603 small

Hopefully with some more people in the house, this will get easier, because I’m pretty low on sleep right now with Mr. Barkypants getting his fluff in a huff every time a bird chirps or an animal wanders past my house (it’s a fairly frequent occurrence). And for me to say I’m low on sleep is something…since I don’t get much in the first place.

Girlchild is asleep down the hall, although apparently she’s driving me to work because we’re down to one car. She’s been out of school for a week and a half, but flew to my brother’s house so she could see her cousins, who alternately charmed her and annoyed the crap out of her (as all good cousins do). Tree climbing was one of the things she did…here she is upside down in a photo she liked, but I edited for her, on the fly, on the phone (yes, I know you can do better, but compared to what it used to look like, I thought this was pretty good).

FullSizeRender

Looks fun. I should try it some day.

So although I’m (as the girlchild says) a little salty that no art was made, there were good reasons for it. Although I graded and cooked dinner from scratch, so the first? Eh. It rules my life while I’m in school. The second? Good job.

It’s hard to explain to people what being a teacher is like on a regular basis while we’re in school when they just see your long “vacations” (we work through many of them or go to professional development, and summer is unpaid, so that’s not a vacation). Understand that there isn’t a single day when I don’t work…and I don’t get paid for those hours, any more than I get paid for the hours I do almost every single day after I get home from work. And even though I thought I was doing a bang-up job this year saving enough money to get through the summer, one big car issue just kicked my ass on that, much as it did last year…my cushion is now gone. Or it will be as soon as I pay that credit card bill. I do this every year, try to survive the summer. I don’t go on vacations anywhere. During the school year, we can’t take off for more than a few days without causing a ruckus. Every year, I have to rethink my plan for food and peeing during the day, as they move my prep period almost every single year. I’ve had 2nd, 3rd, 7th, and 8th, and this next year, it will be 4th with lunch following directly. Which sucks for a diabetic. It means I’ll have to remember to eat during class, and I can already tell you, I don’t remember that shit.

Anyway. As I get closer to my time off for the summer, for the time I need to recharge from a very difficult year, a year where the kids took months longer than usual to finally figure out the consequences of not turning work in (and some still haven’t figured that out), my brain is getting excited…not just for the mostly uninterrupted artmaking time, but also for being able to pee when I need to, for being able to have lunch out (things teachers can’t do), for being able to run errands during the week because the stores are still open, for not feeling physically and mentally drained by a particularly hard day…or week even. For getting my Sundays back! No lesson planning, no parent email, no updating the website(s) we use for school. No dragging grading with me to my parents’ house for dinner.

I’ve done other jobs. I know the difference. I deserve my unpaid leave in summer. Without it, you would have very few people returning to a mostly thankless job each Fall. Of course, we do it for the kids…not the money…not the time off. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need a break. I especially need a break.

Eighteen days and counting.

Stretching Past What We’ve Always Done

Hallelujah for the nice kid in Petco who helped me pick out and install a harness on the little beast yesterday. I wanted to try walking both of them in a nice wide-open area, but the leash was too short and the collar didn’t seem safe enough. Simba pinwheels around a bit on it. So a harness it was (never owned a dog small enough for a harness…so he had to show me how it worked). We only made it 1.56 miles…the big dog tricked me into a shorter path she knows (she walks with my ex and the kids too), plus Simba is a tiny baby really and if I’d gone further, I probably would have had to carry him for a while. So we’ll have to figure that out, because normally I do 3-mile hikes during the week. My SIL has a little dog and says 35 minutes…and that’s what we did I guess. Lots of leash tangling and bizarre walking behavior. The dog has sorta been trained, but not well or consistently.

But this cat…

DSCN0180 small

She’s still incredibly unsure and runs when she sees him, and so he thinks that’s a game and chases her. She’s whacked at him once, but missed his nose. Not sure if that will mellow out, but I hope so. The other cat has taken another furry addition to the house in stride and doesn’t care.

That’s where I was grading by the way. Pens are there to fill out the gradebook I keep on paper, but everything else is online. I did go through the worksheet and the website I assigned them and filled it out myself, just to see what answers I SHOULD get. Holy moley, sometimes I wonder how some of these kids will make it through life. They just make up random shit…this assignment was so easy, I filled out my worksheet in less than 7 minutes. Granted, I didn’t have to go find pictures or write full sentences, but they should have been able to handle it easily in the time I gave them. And many did.

Simba is still trying to figure it all out.

DSCN0181 small

I’m looking forward to the kids coming home next week to help out with this puppy thing…because it’s a bit tiring. The timing could have been better. He does go to bed and sleep all night, except at 3 AM when he hears an animal in the bushes and thinks he needs to protect all of us. Puppy growling.

I have blood testing this morning, so I’m fasting (no caffeine, no food) and that’s never a good start to the day…especially since we have testing, so I have no prep, no bathroom until 12:15…unless I call admin. Which I may have to do today, after 40 ounces of water, or whatever it is. And they’ll still complain about my veins. Whatever.

I wanted to finish quilting last night, but knew I’d have to be up extra early for the lab tests, so I stopped before midnight and went to bed (see, I CAN do that).

DSCN0182 small

I’m almost done, though…dammit! Oh well. I’ll finish tonight, except I really should grade something tonight. I’m trying to get caught up, which means an assignment a day. And I can’t get through much while we’re testing. We’ll see. I’d really much rather finish quilting and get a binding on this thing than grade papers. Shockingly.

I’m also starting to process (in my head) a collaborative project I’ll be working on over the summer for the women’s group I’m in. Honestly, these types of projects kind of terrify me, because I’m not used to working with other people…in art. I work with other people all the time at school, and sometimes I know I don’t know enough to do stuff well, but I just research the heck out of it. This thing, it’s a little weird and I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out, and I guess I’m really an introvert/loner, because the socializing that needs to happen to create the project is really freaking me out. Whoops. I’ll be fine. My art brain is just having a moment. It will get over it, as my co-art person says, when I have enough wine and brainstorming to get past it. More on that later, but it starts with a $5 nightstand. Stretching past what we’ve always done is usually a good thing.

But now, now I need to drive to the lab and let the bloodsuckers have at my poor tiny veins. Then I can eat. And more importantly, get caffeine.

It’s Not an Empty Room…

Sleep, glorious sleep. Occasionally you get a night where your head hits the pillow and stays there, no flopping about, no weird noises in the middle of the night, blessedly snoozing through until a normal waking time, no alarm waking you out of a weird-ass dream that drops you into a waking world, unsure of reality. I got that last night. And part of it was the rain that came Thursday night and washed away that damn mockingbird. It wasn’t out last night either, so maybe it’s moved to warmer, dryer climes. I’m cool wit dat.

I’m posting late because I had two quilts to deliver this morning for a show that opens next weekend, Feminism Now, at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. I also picked up my copy of the catalog…they are only $20, cat-approved, and full of feminist art from the US and Sweden, which is where this show will travel in 2017.

DSCN0155 small

Midnight thinks it smells nice. You’ll have to show up to the opening to see the two pieces. I made the second one as a response to the first one, only 4 1/2 years later. And my life 4 1/2 years later is much different. New relationships, kids gone to college, making even more art than back then. I honestly think the art is my healing web, what connects all the broken pieces of me back together. I get lots of questions about how it feels to have both kids gone and then how does it feel to have both of them coming back…good, but temporary. I know it’s only 3 months, not even that for the girlchild, and this might be the last summer I see both of them. OR…like many of my friends, they’ll move back and never leave. But I doubt that. I actually had a conversation with my counselor about renting a room out to someone…what that might look like, and is it something I could even handle (as I’m sitting here in my office, getting ready to finally clean some floors a good month after they started needing it, and blasting music. Plus the house smells like bacon. And my parents’ dog peed in the hallway. That carpet just needs to go. That’s the second dog of theirs that’s peed there, and then there was Babygirl, who considered the space outside my door her pissed-off litter tray, because I wouldn’t let her in there at night.). But OTHERWISE, it sounds like an idea. I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but at some point, it might be necessary.

I didn’t make art yesterday. I came home from gaming and finished this…

furiously-happy

Great book. Hysterically funny and yet right there on top of mental illness and other crap that fucks with you. Sending it to the girlchild. She’ll giggle on the plane to her cousins.

“You don’t have to go to some special private school to be an artist. Just look at the intricate beauty of cobwebs. Spiders make them with their butts.” Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy (she says her dad said it though…)

Honestly, all I want to do today is sit on the couch and read. But I have to work my butt off…not to make cobwebs unfortunately. I’m behind in grading again. I’m not sure how, but it has hit a level that makes me start to panic. I keep a list of assignments in a task manager, because it helps me organize and remember to grade the online crap, but also because I really enjoy checking it off and watching it disappear when I finish it. Weird, I know. But whatever. I have another book I started reading this morning. I just want to curl up with it dammit.

Sigh. And then while I was driving to deliver those quilts…

DSCN0152 small

(here’s my packing up…dehairing and cutting dowels etc.) I realized what needed to go in the space of the torso in the large drawing I’m doing…and it’s not a cute animal or a nice plant. San Diego has an increasing homeless issue here, and the problem is not just the growing number of people who are living on the streets in tents (if they’re slightly luckier) or boxes or not even that, but also our responses to them, as a local agency fills a space under a bridge where homeless folks used to shelter with sharp pointy rocks so they can’t, or a government agency does sweeps to clear areas of homeless encampments, so they have to go somewhere, people. We can’t ignore it and push it out and try to make it invisible. We need to feed them and house them and employ them and clothe them and medicate them (when possible). We need to CARE for them.

And I don’t know how best to do that, because I don’t have thousands of dollars or resources or anything but a sense that we suck. Because we often do. Anyway, that’s what’s getting drawn in there, somehow. Haven’t quite figured out the how and specifically what. I just know what it should be. A homeless woman framed in an Earth Mother who does provide shelter…safe and clean and dry and warm. And then I go back to having extra space here, but knowing I can’t afford to feed and clothe, let alone care for any more people than I already am. But maybe that will change. Who knows. I’m just thinking, not doing yet. Realistically, what would that look like? I don’t come home from work with extra energy for taking care of more people. Yeah.

So I’m gonna go work for a while, and then maybe I’ll read. Because I should be allowed to do that for a bit…and not just work for hours each day, right? Or maybe I should just fill one of those rooms with foster puppies and kittens. Then go lie in there for an hour a day, letting them romp all over me. That would be good. Anyway, it’s not an empty room yet. So thinking…and drawing…

An Everyday Habit

‘Twas a long day, full of testing children and 78 trips to the bathroom, none of them mine. Full of kids who went to bed at 2 AM and wondered why they were tired. Kids that were done after an hour and had to entertain themselves silently for two more. Teachers who hadn’t eaten or peed for longer than normal. Then once we let the kids go, we had to settle down to a large chunk of time to collaborate…despite our brains being equally fuzzy from long hours of trying to keep kids focused AND quiet. It mostly worked. That was Day 1. Day 2 is today.

I had stuff to do after school, plus got stuck in traffic. Stupid drivers during rush hour, cutting people off, not signaling, being assholes. It’s not good for me to be in that. I finally made it home around 6, tired, cranky, with a pile of work to do. So I did it. And then realized it was late. This is where living alone sucks…you’re too tired to cook, money is tight so you aren’t going out, but you need to eat. Leftovers are gone because you ate them for lunch. So I cooked. But it was late. Really I should have worked some more, but I was tired of it. I get like that. This job has so many hours of my life. I feel like after 9, that should be mine. We work to earn money to survive, yes, but at some point, it should also be so that we can spend time doing the things we love…hiking, art, reading. I want more of that this week.

So I didn’t keep working. I didn’t start grading the next assignment. I didn’t read yet another Teacher Appreciation Week email and wonder…hell…who is appreciating my being a teacher right now? Probably not the kid I harassed into sitting up and not falling asleep on the desk yesterday (thanks, parents, for letting him stay up late). It’s OK. I don’t teach for that. Our parents don’t send flowers or notes. They don’t cover our doors with big grateful signs. They don’t do anything, honestly. It’s enough that they are surviving.

I finished cutting out all the pieces for the new quilt last night…

It’s not a huge quilt. The pile of trimmed scraps looks bigger than the pile of trimmed pieces. I spent 3 relaxing hours doing this last night. I needed that. I stayed up a bit too late to do it, but at that point, I just wanted it to be done. That’s a motivator in itself, that desire to move on to the next step, to not leave a few pieces sitting in the box until tomorrow. To FINISH. I feel like I need to achieve something tangible each day, something that will take me to bed and murmur sweet nothings of achievement. Then the next morning, when I sit down to write this post, I can feel like I did something worthwhile…for me, anyway. I’m sure some people would say I should spend more time cleaning (and certainly, if boychild could see his room right now, I’d probably be in a bit of trouble…but I have 20 days until he gets home) or maintaining the house or yard, and sure, I could. But I wouldn’t be happy that night, curled up in bed, and the next morning, I’d have that empty feeling I get in my chest when I don’t make any art.

This really is an everyday habit.

Here’s today’s Artwalk artist: Victoria Alexander Marquez, also mostly a paper artist. Her work is delicate and beautiful, especially the larger landscape pieces.

I Labeled Stuff

My internet is strolling through the park this morning with a dog on a leash who wants to smell every leaf. It will be a miracle if I get this posted before I have to leave. I have no interesting pictures of progress from last night…it’s not that I didn’t do anything. It’s just that all I did was iron two quilts flat and then put labels on them and sew them down. It was very exciting (not) and took more time than I thought it should. Plus I didn’t get much sleep the night before (damn bird, silly dogs, crazy cat), so I actually went to bed before midnight…barely. I don’t get much done when I’m asleep, unfortunately…at least nothing tangible. But the labels needed doing, and now I’m ready to deliver the two quilts on Saturday…well, once I dehair them and cut a dowel or two. Nothing is quick and easy.

But I labeled stuff.

I had to grade stuff first…same with every day, I guess. I just blow it off some nights. Or it’s just too exhausting to look at it again. I’m always behind. Until the last day of school. Even then sometimes. I’m realizing I don’t have a good handle on some of the stuff I have to teach next year. I’m a life-science teacher…have been for years. I didn’t take much science in college, but I worked in scientific publishing and I read a lot, so I made it through the teacher tests. But I had a teacher in high school who seemed to do everything in his power to make sure I didn’t understand anything, so some things are just mush in my head. I feel like I need to read a good college textbook, but they’re hella boring. Maybe two…maybe chemistry and physics. For old people. With pictures. Seriously, I’m a visual learner. All about molecules and nuclear fission. Maybe a short stint on atoms. OK. Maybe a longer stint on atoms. Something to think about for summer I guess.

So no artmaking for real last night…but hopefully tonight. I was even going to put up some of the Artwalk artists here today, but I can’t get them to pop up, so either my internet needs to fix itself while I’m gone, or I’ll need to restart some routers and crap when I get home. Wish that stuff really could fix itself. Or at least tell me what it needs.

I do have a piece that will be in Sandy, Utah, this weekend at the Sew Original Quilt & Creative Expo show. This is Part-Time Oasis, part of the Oasis show put on by SAQA and traveling around…

I made it last summer and it’s been wandering around, getting lost at one point.

Ah, the internet returneth, prodigal son and all.

One of the Artwalk artists was Sue Britt…from a distance, when I was walking up to her booth, I was sure I was looking at quilts, at fabric, but her work is paper…and sculptural.

Here’s a video of her inspiration about one of her pieces and her work.

It’s short, but you can see how she makes her work. She’s local and has a studio at Spanish Village in Balboa Park.

I don’t have time for any more, but I’ll get back to them. And for me? The goal is art tonight. Stuff I can photograph and write about, instead of boring old labels.

It Won’t Take Long…

So here’s what I know now, after last night: at 4:35 AM, the mockingbird shuts up. Totally quiet. Asleep even. Me? Not so much. That was a clusterfuck of not sleeping. OK. It’s all right. It’s Monday…always a rough day. I’m just gonna roll with it.

Grades are due Tuesday. I spent some time this weekend dealing with stuff that needed to be graded and then filling in all the the secondary grades, behavior and effort, then all the comments. Sometimes I don’t do comments for progress reports, but I want parents to know why their kid has the grade they have. And so many of them are one or two assignments from passing, but they don’t make the effort. Frustrating on my end. Maybe on theirs too. But seriously, if I’ve been telling the parents, in one case, for 4 weeks that she has two missing assignments and what they are, and those assignments still haven’t shown up, then hell, she deserves the damn F. I just don’t understand it.

So that frustration over, I considered grading some more and then slapped myself around a bit (seriously, enough is enough), and thought about what I needed to get done this week in the art arena. I have two quilts to deliver to a show on Saturday. One needs a bottom sleeve…it’s big and I made it before I automatically started putting bottom sleeves on. Then two need labels. Huh. Well, there’s a quilt under the machine that’s almost done…I should just finish it so I don’t have to switch machine foot and thread more than once. It won’t take long.

Last words of crazy people…it won’t take long.

Two hours later, I finally finished.

It took about 5 1/2 hours to quilt this. I’m not even sure why it took so long. Thread breakage maybe. It needs ink, embroidery, and a binding. I might deal with that this week. I might not. I really only needed it done so I could use the machine for the other thing. But hell, if that gets it done, then so be it.

Here’s the next two things hanging around…the one on the left needs quilting. I’m cutting out the pieces for the one on the right.

I just haven’t done anything with it since Thursday. I’ll get there.

First this beast needs a sleeve. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any more of the brown or enough of the binding fabric, which is what I used for the top sleeve, but I think the gray will do well enough.

I only really care because we’re hanging this one in the center of the gallery, so there won’t be a wall behind it. So it’s best if the back is not too chaotic. Hence the need for the second sleeve as well…it will hang much better with weight on the bottom.

So I made a second sleeve and pinned it on, and now I get to sew it on. Some quiet hours poking holes in my finger…unless I remember to put those plasticky protective pads on. That would be smart, wouldn’t it? Let’s hope I remember. Then labels for this one and the little one that goes with it…which also needs dowels. By Saturday. Plenty of time. Let’s hope I get more art done than that this week.

I also went to Artwalk this weekend…saw some good art and a lot of schlock, as always. I’ll post about some of it when I get my act together. Or sooner. Whichever makes sense.

Why Now?

Yesterday was interesting. I gave a test. I’ve given a few tests this year. I always give the kids a study guide (required) with all the test questions and then they can use an index card on the test, with anything they need on the card. I’ve had so much apathy this year, from kids and parents, that it’s truly been one of the most frustrating years for me ever. I’ve questioned everything I’ve done all year, and finally sort of gave up on them. I couldn’t persuade them to turn work in, to prepare for a test, to give a shit. Until today. And I swear, I did nothing different, but today, almost every single kid turned in a study guide, most of them complete. Almost every single kid had a card. It’s like lightning hit them and their brains lit up with “OH YEAH! That’s how you STUDENT!” I was boggled. I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic that they finally figured that shit out, or annoyed that it took them so long, or just fucking confused because WHY NOW? Why not all the other times? What was different?

I think I just input those grades and hope to heaven the test grades improved as well, and never think an entire year is a failure…know that it might happen in the 10th month of the year that they finally figure it out. This is the stuff that bugs the crap out of me when people talk about making teachers accountable. I did nothing different in the first few months of the year, then started noticing the failing trend, the inability to turn work in…and I tried to figure out how to make things work better, worked MY ass off, honestly, worried myself, stressed out, blamed myself, had a really hard year. I’m not sure anything I did made a difference. Or they just reacted to all my work so slowly that I couldn’t see it happening.

I’m boggled. Still. I hope their test scores match up with the work they did…because then they’ll see the connection.

I was exhausted when I got home though. I walked the room while they tested…you don’t think about walking all day, how tiring it is, until you get home and sit down. There were things I wanted to do, and I was just too tired. I finished up some grades on an assignment, input all the stuff from today, and then made dinner. Then I did seating charts, because it’s time to move them around again to try to deal with some behavior issues.

Next step in the artmaking process? Trimming fabric pieces or finishing the big drawing. I know I’m going to quilt class tonight, which is a good place to trim stuff, so I decided to try to fit a giraffe on the drawing instead, because it had been in my head since last week sometime.

I found a picture that worked in the space and made the decision to have her standing in front of the rib she crosses over. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the others…maybe it will be a rib-by-rib decision.

Then I had this small blankish area to the left of the giraffe, under the uterus. Tulips! Of course. I can’t really explain how things pop into my head as I’m staring at these blank spaces, but they do.

This is actually a pretty large space to fill…even with the ribs drawn in.

It was after midnight by then, so I stopped. I’m not sure what to draw next. I have notes about bees and lizards and cactus, although I already put a prickly pear in. I already put in a cat…there’s always a cat. I always have birds too…I think the crane counts for that, although there might be more later. I’m debating a raccoon, after watching Guardians of the Galaxy while grading last night and staring at Rory from Furiously Happy for so many days. Probably putting a furiously happy raccoon in there won’t fit, but a real one might. I’ll think about it.

Turns out my Celebrating Silver quilt Awakening the Crone will be traveling to China, once again having a way better vacation than I ever do. The whole show will be at the 2016 8^th Asia Quilt Festival in Shanghai, China, from September 21-23, 2016.

I keep waiting for the organizers to email me and say all of them are going except mine, but that hasn’t happened yet. Cool beans.

Apparently I Have to Sleep at Night

A relief this morning…finding out all the financial aid documents have been processed. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems that will come up down the road, like last year, but at least we got past that hurdle. It’s a fucking miracle. A massive relief as well. Now we wait.

It’s Reach Higher Day today, Michelle Obama’s program to encourage kids to go to college. At our school, if you ask them right now if they want to go to college, what they want to do, a lot of them say yes, and they want to be doctors and lawyers and other educated professions…and some of them make it, some of them get full scholarships for sports or academics. We get little blips of info from them as they become seniors in high school. But most of them get bogged down by life, grades, the lack of support…no one knows how to fill out these damn forms (they take persistence and a little crazy, honestly). So today we are supposed to wear a t-shirt from our college (oops. I don’t own one…but I have my kids’ shirts) to help kids realize that almost every adult around them at school is walking around with a college degree…or in my case, like three of them. There’s so little parent support for this year’s kids…and there are plenty that would do well in college and should go. I hope they figure it out.

I walked the dog yesterday…I love the post-work 3-miler we do. It’s incredibly relaxing, although then it’s hard to get up and make dinner. I have to plan so that gym and hiking nights have food already prepped for afterwards. Smart move, when I can pull it off.

I had grading to do as well…never-ending pile (except mostly it’s online, so it’s a virtual pile…harder to hold sway over you if you can’t physically see it). But I was in here ironing at about 9-something. I wanted to be done…but…apparently I have to sleep at night.

When Midnight does this (and she is always in the green drawer for some reason), I can’t get to about half of my green fabrics.

The drawer she’s in and the drawer directly above her…if I were smart, I’d move the drawers around occasionally so I wasn’t always pulling out of the top drawer. Or yeah, I could chase her out.

Kitten is more well-behaved and picks the chair…when she’s not trying to climb up the window screen to get at the lizards that keep climbing all my windows.

I ironed for a couple of hours…forgot to take any photos while ironing…but these are all the pieces I have left to do…not many.

I think there’s some cactus and a sunflower or two in there. And then I’m done. Again, a small quilt for me.

I ironed for about 2 hours last night. There’s probably less than an half hour left in there. Here’s the pile of stuff ready to be trimmed.

I have quilt class on Thursday, so now I have something I can work on there. That was part of my motivation to get in here instead of out there with the big drawing.

Here’s the growing pile of fabrics I used, completely disorganized.

It was late and I didn’t feel like making it all nice. Sometimes sleep is a goal.

I forgot…I am still working on going through the pile of crap I pulled out of the studio and piled up in the boychild’s room. I know it doesn’t look better, but I threw out another pile of stuff and recycled some more.

So it’s getting there. I’m a little afraid of that red box on the left…it’s chock full of I don’t know what. I emptied the yellow bin. I have lots of piles of stuff based on where it should be going. It was a little sad going through the school stuff, because I found out Friday for sure that most of what I have taught over the last 14 years is going away. So I have samples of stuff…and you just don’t know if you’ll ever teach that again, so in some ways, it would be a good time to just toss a lot of stuff, which I did when I went most digital anyway, but we do some stuff on paper still when it makes sense. So I was filing assignments I will probably never use again. Teaching body systems and cells and genetics has been what I love…and I will have to find a way to love the next batch of stuff.

OK. I’m running late…as always. But art tonight…finish ironing that batch and maybe go back to the drawing. We’ll see.

A Sparkly Clean Brain

First of all, I wrote this before school today. Most of it. And then chaos. Because that’s how it rolls at the moment. Brain overload. So it’s still sitting here when I get home and there’s no title on it and I don’t even know how I didn’t get this done. So here it is…

The plus is that financial aid is notionally done, except for one form that needs to be uploaded (just did that. Before I did this.). The minus is the hours I spent last night dealing with it. Still. Again. And thinking I would have to call girlchild’s financial aid department this morning and beg for forgiveness. The minus is the probably 5 years of my life that I will lose at the end due to financial aid forms and dealing with my ex over those. The plus is the kids are in college and someday will have to change my diapers and feed me applesauce with a bib on, but they will have college educations and will be able to afford the really good bibs and diapers.

Or not. Honestly, I don’t care at the moment. I want them to have a job that fulfills them. And I can’t say that mine doesn’t, because it often does, but right now it also tires me out. It wears me down. It makes me want to eat ice cream and drink wine (not a good combo on so many levels). I wrote two versions of a test last night and graded a bunch of stuff. Some kids are taking it seriously, figuring out that they need to step up their game. Some of them? Yeah. Whatever. And their parents too. I feel sorry for some of them, because I think if someone at home were paying attention, they would be doing better, and I do the best I can with those, but they are often the neediest and not in a good way. It’s like puppies. They’re cute when they’re playing and when they’re asleep, but they bite like motherfuckers. And pee on everything. And chew up your favorite stuff.

I don’t really teach puppies.

So I didn’t finish all the financial aid and grading until 11:09 PM. And I was half dead on my feet by then, tired and irritable and weepy and shit. But I had a random idea to fill in the arm between the crane and the octopus, and I thought I could probably do that…so I did…

Oh yeah. That’s kelp. It fit nicely. I also pencil drew in a ribcage and a bellybutton, but I haven’t decided whether stuff will go behind the ribs or around them, and I was way too damn tired to draw any more after that. I looked at a lot of pictures of giraffes, but that’s as far as I got. And Damn, they have lots of spots. I keep picking spotted animals.

I’m pretty sure I won’t get anything done tonight. And this weekend is already busy. It’s OK, because there’s no rush on this drawing. I’m just doing it because it was in my head and it helps me calm my brain down, wind down at the end of the day. It’s meditative. It’s like the spin cycle on the washer…flips out all the bad stuff down the drain and leaves a sparkly clean brain for sleep. Well. Sort of. Better than it was anyway.

I Need a Demonologist

I needed to get outside and walk hard, hike fast yesterday. So I did. With the dog. I had to wait for temperatures to go down below 90 first though, but it’s a crapshoot, because some hikes I don’t want to finish after dark. I wanted to be out out out, nowhere near houses if I could pull it off, far away from people. We had to drive a little, but then it was three miles with only one old guy and his old dog, who wanted to beat us up but couldn’t move fast enough to pull it off (arthritis), and then an old guy on a bike. And a dead snake…in pieces. But otherwise, nothing but bugs and plants and birds and clearing your mind and breathing in the dust and walking it off. Cuz you can walk a whole day off, you know. Harder to walk a whole week off, but a day? No problem.

Wilderness refuge near my house. It was still warm out, 86 degrees at 6 PM, but there was a nice breeze. Good pace. Tired the dog out too.

Then I made dinner, spaced out for a bit with a book, graded some assignments I needed to get out of the way, and then communed a bit with animals. They all followed me into the living room. Mommy! Mommy!

Pet the dog and the cats. Kitten settles down into her favorite place. On the drawing.

And the brain just spilled. Oh yeah, you’ve seen the eye in the uterus thing before…in the last quilt. The REAL third eye, the all-seeing one. The one that rules the woman’s roost.

I pushed and pulled and the drawing ended up still being under Kitten. I started on trying to fit a crane around an elbow. I look at pictures and try to imagine how to move the wings and feathers around where I need them to be. Kitten starts flicking her tail in the middle of where I’m drawing and that’s it. I poke at her until she leaves. Petulant beast.

I made it work, turn the corner. Then drew the hand and some pine-tree-like things on there. You can see I don’t have much left…just the main torso and it already has a bunch of stuff on it.

Closeup of the arm.

So I need to connect the arm to the shoulder with something and then do the rest of the torso. It’s going well. Peaceful brain.

This is from last night’s grading, where a student suggested a demonologist to test lung function.

I laughed a lot. A LOT. Because you’ll take anything humorous at this time of the year. Anything. Calling a demonologist to take care of my class.

More drawing tonight, although there’s always grading and I think I have to write a test. Not sure what I’m drawing next anyway, so it’s OK to let the brain percolate for a while. Like all day. I didn’t start drawing last night until 10:30 or so. I’m about 8 1/2 hours into this drawing. It’s time-consuming, but good. I write about the hours because I want people to get that it takes a long time to make art and even if some of it is standing around, staring at the piece, it’s still part of the making. I know some people can just whip stuff out, but I’m not one of them. This is big and complicated. But I think it will be worth it.