Still Need to Iron Glass…

I thought I would be done with the ironing last night. I just had that relatively smallish pile of Wonder Under pieces. It looked like something I could bang out in an evening. Well, if I didn’t deal with grades first. I went through an entire assignment where fully half of the kids didn’t scroll down to the second page. It’s like not turning the page over and looking at the back. And I know I told them how many questions there were and to scroll down, but as you know, the words of adults somehow bounce around inside the brains of teenagers and fall back out without resonating.

I tried to order materials from Staples so I wouldn’t have to go in…didn’t have time, free shipping, blobbity blah, but it always took like a day to get stuff from them, until this order. It still hasn’t shown up from last Thursday, and when I track it, there seems to be no movement at all. Troublesome since I needed that stuff today…I have some I can use for the kids who are fast, but I may be at Staples tonight after all. So much for being reliable people. And now their website isn’t even coming up. Interesting.

Anyway, I did iron…I ironed hair and a heart and blood vessels and a clock and a uterus, but I forgot the ovaries (they’re there…I just need to pick a color). I used to always make uteri bright pinks with fish swimming through them, but as I age, my uteri age (the fabric ones and the one still inside me), so now they are grayed-out purples. Still pretty but not as alive, not so vibrant. The figures have cracks in them…have for a few years. Wonder where that came from. No I don’t…suspect I will carry the cracks until the end. They will get smaller and more filled in, but they’ll still be there. She’s still crying because I have to say that these perimenopausal hormones are fucking nuts. I cry at such stupid stuff…although the book I finished Monday night, it was a legit cry. The Man Called Ove…good book, by Fredrik Backman. But you will cry at the end.

Here’s the pile of stuff I still need to cut out…

It got bigger. Mostly because I didn’t cut any out recently and I keep ironing stuff.

I still need to do the ovaries, the eyes, the lungs, and that damn wineglass…this pile…

I’m over 10 hours in right now for less than 800 pieces. That’s a lot. Not sure what’s up with that. Slow ironing at the moment, I guess. The problem with the wineglass is that it’s transparent, but it fucks with what you see through it. And then the part with the wine in it, it fucks with it even more. But you can still see through it. The part with the wine is a little easier, because you pick your core wine color and then some shades past it, however many it might take, and you construct the section with the wine that way. The glass part is a little harder, because technically you know you should be able to see flesh colors etc through it, but then it gets harder to see the glass in the actual piece of art, so reality is that you have to fuck with what the eye perceives to make the glass obvious in the quilt. There are some amazing quilt artists out there who make quilts JUST of mostly transparent or reflective things, and they do a great job with it. I just have one glass here though. So it might not be amazing. I am totally leaving it to the end though, because I can’t be super tired when I do it, but basically I will be tired no matter what, because that’s the way this week is.

I did vacuum the kids’ rooms yesterday and finished washing the girlchild’s bedding. I’m ready. Well, except there isn’t enough food in the house. Can’t do much about that right now. Apparently we’re driving through In ‘N Out on the way home from picking up the girlchild. Amusing since she would barely eat it when she was home. I guess the food at Brandeis really does suck…which is sad.

Anyway, with any luck I’ll be done ironing tonight and I’ll move on to the long period of cutting stuff out. I’m hoping to be ironing down by the weekend, but who knows. Maybe Monday…no school and all. Looking forward to that.

The Disk Shouldn’t Be Full

This time of year seems to force retrospection, looking back at previous holiday seasons, nearing the end of the year, where are you at and all that. Is it where you wanted to be? Well, if it isn’t, then here’s where you look forward and try to figure out how to get there. Again. Because life seems to be a constant rewriting of expectations. Some things are better, some are worse, and some just are. Personally I’d be much happier if I could figure out how to get the new Windows to backup disk space in a manner that made sense. Because I’m fairly sure that damn disk shouldn’t be full.

So my tree is up. No, I don’t have a picture of it. It’s still crooked and has nothing on it and is much bigger than I remember it. I got home and graded last night, because I’m back to that crazy (I only took two days off). Then I predictably headed in here to iron, but got sidetracked by the kids’ rooms. The boychild’s room is now clean. Needs vacuuming, but the bedding is on the bed and everything else is straightened up. The girlchild’s room is in process…needs a serious vacuuming (she didn’t do that before she went, and no, neither did I) and all her bedding is in the wash, because the cat keeps sleeping on it and depositing hair. Her dog was quite sure I was doing all that for her, so she wanted to climb into her mom’s bed, but I wouldn’t let her.

THEN I ironed. I did well, but I should have started earlier, because once you’ve started picking flesh fabrics, you can’t stop until you are done, and done means they are all ironed down. Yeah. So that was a couple of hours…and I started too late.

It took 15 minutes of rummaging through the flesh drawers to come up with this run…

And in the end, I replaced the last one with something darker. I wasn’t sure there would be enough of fabric 2, but in the end, it was fabric 3 that was the small one. I used about 2/3 of what I had on the pieces ironed on it. Fabric 2 had plenty. You can see them all laid out below…

So that was at about 11:45 PM, and I needed to iron them all down at that point. Eh. Who needs sleep? Especially when you get cranky with not enough sleep and you’re teaching 12-year-olds, and they make you cranky anyway. It’s all good. No one will know the difference.

I didn’t cut anymore out last night, but I’m getting close to the end of the ironing…that’s all that’s left…

Eyeballs and heart and lungs and weepy bits on the face. A uterus. It looks easy, and most of it is, except there’s a wineglass in there with stuff showing through it, and that’s just about 50 pieces of pain in the ass. So I have to think about how to iron that. Maybe tonight. Except I have to grade as well. Maybe I’ll get some grading done today at school. I got none done yesterday because I had to help students make phone calls home about the F assignments they needed to get signed and had forgotten. I got through 25 of them, but there still a few to go. They get all upset about calling, tell me that they’ll bring it tomorrow, beg me. I guess I’m pretty heartless, because I gave them all last week and they forgot all week, and I don’t have faith that all of a sudden they’ll remember, unless they feel the pit of fear in their belly about calling home. Tomorrow I send packets home with all failing kids. I’m pretty cranky about all that too, but not half so cranky as I am about personally counseling all these kids and then having them turn absolutely no late work in.

The art is what I want to spend brainpower on…not all this school and stressful stuff. And the work stuff starts to eat up all the spare time and mental space. There’s a moment of reflection for you. I don’t know how I did it the last two years, but I know I spent less time and energy on school. I think. It feels like I did. Speaking of which, somehow I got roped into a meeting this morning with a student I don’t even have (special ed meetings require a general ed teacher), plus a meeting with crazy tomorrow morning…so I have to leave early two mornings in a row. Ugh. Survival week. Seriously.

It’s Time to Get Out of Here…

I made no art in the last 36 hours. I did nothing except some social stuff and grade crap. I went through three weeks of emails from students and Google Classroom, searching out all the last-minute work kids have been throwing at me. On Friday, I got through most of the F counseling, but there is very little change in grades so far. I will have to clarify that handing me stuff on Wednesday, when I have already printed out the list of special students who need additional work to prove they know what I have been teaching since August, well it will be too late.

It makes my neck and shoulders tight. It makes me grind my teeth. I’m going out to about 5 art openings tonight to make up for it. Of course, it’s dark and bloody freezing out there, and I don’t have my regular gallery companion with me tonight, so it will be a little weird. But I need to get my head out of my job for a bit. Because tomorrow I am going back to the endless grading and checking Google Classroom for their late assignments. (Dear Google…)

And hopefully I will be ironing tomorrow as well. Although my day is already looking semi-crazy. As always. The week before break just kicks my ass on a regular basis.

I don’t even have a picture for you. Hang on…

I was cleaning out the last of the stuff that was in the boychild’s room. I found some screenprinting drawings and mockups from probably the early 1990s…I think at some point I was considering making them into quilts…this one used to hang in the house somewhere…

dated 1994. Can’t remember the name…

And this one…this one started out as a Sharpie drawing on a 4×8′ piece of plywood that was partially painted in enamels (cuz that’s not crazy enough) and then I got rid of that, because it got termites. That painting was started in college. And then I drew it smaller and screenprinted it. This is the color mockup for the print…

You can see all the colors I was going to use on the left. This did get printed and hangs in my laundry room. It would make an interesting quilt. But you can see that I’ve always been a bit weird and the Christmas lights were in even then. The original was probably done in 1988 or 1989. It might even have been 1986. Actually, I just looked in the laundry room and it’s not hanging there. Not sure when that happened.

Well, and that explains the last ten years of my brain right there. Art openings it is. Now. It’s time to get out of here.

Today Is Under Control…

Oh man I’m tired this morning. Probably the staying up until after midnight thing is part of that, and the other bit is where I’m working my butt off. And the dog just threw up. Dammit. That’s one thing I just can’t deal with in the morning: dog vomit. Aargh. I’m not even awake, let alone competent. So yeah. Throw a paper towel over it and hope I feel better about it later.

I did get some fabric stuff done last night though, mostly because I almost completely blew off work. I say almost because I did spent 45 minutes posting an assignment on Google Classroom, watching the videos, looking up viruses, and making a document to attach. I’m not looking forward to the next three years as we implement entirely new standards that take everything I teach and throw it to 6th and 8th grades so I can come up with completely new curriculum with no assistance from the state or the district. Yeah. I won’t have a lot of spare time for those three years. Labs, materials, units, assignments. All new. Fuck.

Anyway, so I finished all the stuff around the outside of the bathtub and then cut out the fabric for the tub as well…there’s some tub stuff…

A lot of whites just added to the mix…

Plus I think I did a sketchbook and a cat and some rug bits. Now I have the faucet and handles, and then I go into the water, which is laid out here…

The water’s kind of a pain in the butt, but there isn’t actually that much water this time, compared to the last bathtub. Because I see flesh down there too…the toes are in the 80s pile.

I did go to quilt class yesterday and started cutting pieces out…

So things are progressing…more slowly than I would have liked, but whatever. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. And I got socks for going to class…knitted by Susan…

Very cool…or warm, depending on how you look at it.

I am feeling totally exhausted this morning. I am counseling every failing student in my class, personally…sitting down with them and going over their progress report and what they haven’t turned in…they seem legitimately shocked by that. “I didn’t know!” Um. So I guess I have to go through how to check if you’ve turned stuff in? I started talking to all of them yesterday, and didn’t come close to finishing. It means I can’t get anything else done (cleaning up my room for Winter Break, which has to happen at some point; grades). Some kids are just blowing it off and making excuses to me. Some are honestly asking questions and taking it to heart, which would be nice if they follow through. Some honestly…I feel bad because they really don’t understand and they probably can’t ever do well in my class…we are so overwhelmed at the moment that we can’t process some of the kids who probably need testing, and even that, we know that half of them (or more) won’t qualify because they’ve only been in school for three years, if that, and there is not a large enough gap between what they are doing and what they should be able to do for them to get services. So they will continue to flail. And there’s not much I can do about it. I can’t teach a child to read in 7th-grade science with 34 kids in the classroom who need to learn science.

The damn dog wants back in. I want a long sleep with no interruptions. I need more time. I’m not ready for the holidays or even next week. But I can get through today. Today I have all under control, as much as I ever do. Well, except for that pile of dog vomit. I can’t handle that right now.

Best-Laid Plans

Are often completely sidetracked by exhaustion. I have a lot of sick students at the moment, so when my body is reacting and is exhausted, sometimes I just listen and go to bed…with a really good book…which I then want to finish (I didn’t. But I wanted to…). I’m reading The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness…

Which is apparently for young adults (see, I’m still young!). It’s a different type of dystopian book, where the characters can hear the noise in your head and sometimes everyone’s noise spills all over the place…like here.

It’s the first book in a series, and so far I’m hooked.

I originally went to bed with some warm tea and the book because I had been grading stuff and fighting Google Classroom on the iPad (I’m afraid they’re going to come back and say my iPad is too old…which is an issue, I’m sure, but it still fucking works and I’d really like to still use it to grade stuff). I did a lab at school yesterday, which was cool but exhausting…where else do I get to make kids smell a succulent…and what I really love is when I say “Smell this”…they do. No hesitation. LOVE THAT. Then on to a union meeting, not as long as usual, but still tiring at the end of the day. I debated blowing off book club, but I had read the book and I don’t talk to normal(ish) people enough. OK, these are all geek girls. Everybody at the table had see ALL of the Star Wars movies. I guess normal(ish) compared to me.

So I went. And it was nice to check in and see everyone and talk feminist smack and literary criticism. So I’m glad I went.

But then I came home and I’m still trying to grade one assignment a day until I catch up, but this is warmups and the damn Google Classroom app was crashing like a bitch on the iPad, so then I was on the computer wasting time in the forum, trying to find a solution, and updating the OS like that would help (it didn’t) and restarting the iPad and reinstalling the fucking app. I swear. Sometimes technology just kicks my butt. And I finally finish all that crap and Period 8’s stuff and it’s 10:45 and I’m exhausted. Fucking A. I can’t pick fabrics. I’m too tired to stand.

So I went to bed an hour early and got no art made (ugh) because I socialized instead of hermitted. I’m sure there’s some moral story there…artists can’t be social because then they’ll be too tired to get art made. And there’s some argument for that sometimes, but then my sanity depends on some socialization with people older than 13 years. Who think soap might be alive because it makes bubbles.

As far as the reward for kids turning in work, I’m not doing that. I have a few days in the next week where kids are working independently (for some definition of independent) and I’m sitting down with every failing kid. I’m going to set up a mini office for them. Or go table to table, I haven’t decided. I’m going to go over every missing and incomplete assignment with them. I may have to call home on some of them. In my spare time. That’s what I can handle and then I’m putting it back in their court. If they choose to blow me off at that point, OK then.

And tonight I’m making art. It’s already in the schedule.

Channeling My Art…

One of the biggest issues with being a teacher is that I often care more about my students’ grades than they do. I care more about their work ethic than most of them do, and sometimes way more than their parents do. I want them all to do well, and when they don’t, I go in my head and try to figure out why. Is it too hard? Do I expect too much? The thing is the only thing I’m really doing differently this year is that a lot of the instruction has gone online. That said, the huge assignment I just graded was all paper, all classwork, all things they should have been able to complete during class time. And no. They didn’t.

I could start making phone calls, but I can’t even imagine trying to find the time to make all the calls I need to, because there are that many. I’ve tried putting stuff in the weekly parent email, but it seems parents ignore that…or they care just as much as their student. I’ve never had this many kids not turn work in. I’m frustrated. My AP suggested an incentive (yes, a bribe)…those who got x% turned in got food. Nachos. So there’s two issues with that…money being the first one. So Smart and Final it is…but also, that means I also have to find the time to make sure I know what’s turned in. Whether it’s electronic or paper, someone has to log all that. So I’m trying to figure out a smaller subset I can check for the incentive. But honestly, I’m so tired and overwhelmed with the workload right now that I can’t even imagine finding the energy to try. Sad but true. I’m working way harder than they are.

So yeah. It’s with that weighing on me that I made the decision to stop trying to clean up before moving on to the next stage in this quilt. I’ve ironed a bunch, but the rest will have to wait. And I need to do another drawing for the next one. So even though I still have like 7 assignments to grade (and I might be able to kick those out this week), I’m not doing any more today. She says at 3:30 PM. Yeah. I know. I did cook a turkey this morning. Brined her last night. Pulled all the meat off, divided it in half, and got it into the fridge and freezer. That was helpful. And I’ve dealt with some holiday stuff and some bills that needed paying. So it hasn’t been a useless day…just a semi-depressing one. This job. Seriously.

Moving on. Making art.

This one. She’s stressed. She’s sad too, but she can manage it all. Presumably if I channel her a bit this week, then I will be able to as well.

Whatever Works…

Sometimes I look at the search terms people use to find my website. I usually find that it’s a mistake. It makes me want to search through all my posts for that particular phrase, which maybe I used, but I don’t think so? Because it’s not in my vernacular? I remember once many years ago when I was teaching in a different district, a parent accused me of saying something to their child that would have been (1) incredibly inappropriate (if I had actually said it, which I didn’t) and (2) grammatically incorrect (which is why I knew I had never said it). In fact, I was fairly sure I knew which kid had said it (a second-language learner…hence the grammar issue), but all they really wanted was an apology for something I’d never said. I tried to explain why I wouldn’t have said it, but the parents weren’t having it, weren’t understanding the grammar part. Whatever. Sometimes the hardest part of my job is dealing with parental expectations…for me and for their student and for the world in general.

So after a perfectly delightful meeting at a quilt store to drop off a cat quilt and (honestly) buy some more fabric because I needed stuff for the bathtub (in the quilt…not the one the dog and cats were in), I made it to the gym and home, mostly exhausted, but with a post-it-note list of things I had to do for school. Post this, print that, and then magically come up with shit for kids to do who for some inexplicable reason can’t be in the classroom with all the other kids. Pain in my ass. Because the stuff we’re doing isn’t actually do-it-alone stuff. I still teach, people. I put a lot of stuff online, yes, but it’s only after listening to me and watching me and asking me questions that kids are doing some of the online stuff. They aren’t good readers, in general, and I act out processes and they listen (well, mostly) as part of their understanding. So if I assign two articles and tell them to read and annotate, and then do this other assignment over here based on that…a ton of kids will just make shit up to avoid doing the reading. I had to make up a week’s worth of stuff for one kid. The other kid is leaving next week and won’t be back until January, and I know where he’s going and probably why, but can’t think of any job where you can just up and disappear for over 5 weeks and expect to still have a job when you get back. Meanwhile, I have to plan curriculum day by day through January, and I’ve barely got December under my belt. It would have been done, but my coteacher has been gone (good reason) and she and I have some coordinating to do.

All that, as far as I got (because I didn’t finish the kid who’s gone for a month) took until 9 PM, which is when I finally made dinner. And sat and ate it with a dog’s nose under my armpit (the house is cold). And then I should have finished grading Per 8’s tests and started grading Per 4’s journals, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Too Many Hours on my job. I had a plan for what I was going to work on last night, and I didn’t get to any of it because of other people’s shit.

The only way to deal with that level of frustration is to make art. But I was really tired by then and felt like I should be cleaning out boychild’s room (his return gets closer every day, I hear), so all I did was sort the Wonder Under…

Yup. That’s some exciting art stuff there. The color! The interest! Eight boxes of Wonder Under, sorted by number. If I could just get my studio straightened out, I could start picking fabrics. Maybe that will be tonight. I just don’t know. I’m not holding out much hope.

I did wash the fabric I got yesterday, but did not even have the energy last night to pull it out and fold it…

I do love my new dryer though. It’s trés efficient. Yes, lots of grays and whites and a little black. I needed bathtub fabric. I also think I need a donut. That’s stress talking. Ironically, it’s the same stress that drags me to the gym. Whatever works.

Back to Semi-Normal…

Back to school! Whoo! Oh my. Some frustration. It’s hard when you’re explaining they have to work hard for three weeks and they’re already focused on the next holiday. “Wait, we only have three weeks until Winter Break? Cool!!!” Crap. And then I was supposed to be meeting with my department, but she’s driving back with a hurt puppy from far away. BUT, we did the whole meeting via text. I’m on the computer in Google Drive looking stuff up and figuring out an app that will let the students annotate PDF files, with the help of another teacher, and setting up lessons for the next three weeks as she’s texting me what to look for and whether or not we should print everything. No, she wasn’t driving, but we did meet. Impressive.

Then the girlchild is texting me about a party I’m supposed to go to and whether I have appropriate clothing (my nephew will tell you I don’t, as he quite rudely reminded me on Thanksgiving) and shoes. She’s sending me links and I’m sending her links and finally we have partial approval, and then I have to go get shoes.

BUT, in the middle of all this, I got a harebrained idea for a holiday card photo. Actually, that was in the car on the way home. I didn’t do cards the last few years because things were hard and I find it difficult to write the annual letter and send stuff out when I feel that way, but I think I’m out of that bad place, plus I’m not sending gifts abroad this year, so a letter has to go, but I don’t have anyone to HELP with a photo this year. In the early years of my marriage, we would spend an hour or so trying to get all the animals in one place. We’d put dog treats on a chair or couch or I think it was the hope chest, and the dog would jump up, all excited, and then we’d try to get the cats to stay there too, and half the photos would have a blurry, jumping animal or a human hand holding someone, until we got one acceptable photo. And that was in the days of having to print your photos to see if they were any good.

So I think, well, I’ll need to get them all in an enclosed space. Smallest of those in my house besides a closet is the bathroom. I find the big black cat and put her in there, meanwhile calling the dog and getting her in there too. Close the door. Kitten is right there, like, Mommy, what are you doing? Grab Kitten, go in there with camera.

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Spend 30 minutes trying to get all the animals in one photo. Midnight is not going along with sitting in a sink at all and Calli keeps lying down, because this is oh so tiring Mommy. Why? Actually in that picture, she’s scratching herself. And what’s a holiday photo without toilet paper in it? I just don’t know.

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Realizing that the bathroom is in pretty bad shape. We’ve spent the last 15 years pulling 6 layers of wallpaper off, but not actually ever finishing. That’s how I roll.

OK, this isn’t working. Look around. What can I do? Oh yeah. The bathtub. Doors on it. Persuade Calli to jump in, despite the fact that all I ever do in there is give her a bath. She’s a good dog. Then toss the black cat in there, who is by now yowling slightly and scratching at the door, much to the perturbation of the dog. Kitten lets me grab her and then scratches the fuck out of me (second time this week) when I drop her in.

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Oh yeah, that stings. Then I grab the step stool and take photos from above. It gets ugly quickly, so I take what I can get, then release them.

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I have to black out some weird light spot on Midnight. Calli’s paying attention though, isn’t she? Good girl. Yes, everyone got treats afterwards. I had to put Midnight’s treats just under the bed and then guard them from the dog until she came to get them. She is talking to me this morning. Actually, while I was working last night, she sat behind my head on the couch. Neck warmer.

I needed a picture of the kids as well, but stole one from girlchild. She’s a little pissy that they don’t rate the front of the card, but I remind her that they are now adults and pets are way cuter. I would have used the photo where the boychild is flipping me off, but think some relatives might object. One of the reasons I’m rushing to get all this done is they’re having a sale plus I have a discount card, so I pay very little for all this. Then I ask each kid for a paragraph for the annual letter and get a host of complaints until I explain that I will write it for them if they don’t provide. That seems to scare them appropriately. We’ll see what I get.

After all that and the shoe purchasing and making dinner (from scratch mostly, thanks to Trader Joe’s pizza dough), I grade some tests, which is more and more depressing as the night wears on. I can’t possibly finish them, because I have to put a label on a quilt that I’m delivering today. Which I do at midnight. Well done!

Do I make art? Fuck no. No time. Tonight I must make time. Somehow. I’m not sure how. But I did get some errands off my plate, so that’s a good thing. And I’ll be at a fabric store this afternoon. That can’t be all bad, even if I can’t possibly buy it all. Honestly, I can’t buy much at all, but whatever.

Back to It…

The week we get off at Thanksgiving has never been a relaxing vacation for me. Whether I stay home and do the whole deal here, or go to Seattle for four days, or what we used to do, which was go to Lake Arrowhead and hang out at my parents’ cabin…it was never relaxing. It was hectic, full of crazy errands and grading before, during, and after. Sometimes I’d manage to quilt or stitch down or cut out a bunch of pieces, but mostly it was tense chaos. And I’m not even the one who usually cooks. I support the cooks by cutting stuff up or whatever. This year, I barely did anything (thanks to my cousin and all HER hard work).

Last week did not break that trend. I did not shop on Black Friday or even Small-Whatever Saturday, mostly because money’s pretty tight right now. Property taxes are due next week and I need to be able to pay them and a credit card bill. Deep breaths. Then I will think about Christmas. I did hang out for a while on Saturday because I needed to do just that. Not grade more papers like I did Friday off the plane. Sunday was the inevitable catch-up day. Five stores later, I think I had got there. Although there are at least two more errands I need to do this week…I lied, three. Maybe more. And then I came home and worked until about 10:30 PM. I did make dinner in there somewhere. My SIL’s convinced I’m eating all this hidden sugar in my diet. She’s wrong. I know where all of it is. I mostly cook from scratch. Seriously, on a good day, I eat fairly healthy. I made kofta balls from scratch, put in lettuce wraps with a cucumber/yogurt sauce and a bit of brown rice. I do OK some days. And there’s leftovers.

I’m not ready to go back to school though. Then again, we never are…teachers. I’m sure the kids aren’t ready either, but they have it pretty easy. I have all the lesson plans done. I’m hammering grammar starting this week. I’m tired of reading their work with no spaces after punctuation, no first word capitalized, the word “I” never capitalized, starting every sentence with “And,” never putting in periods. The computer age may be upon us, but my students aren’t prepared. The English teacher is coming along for the ride. If I have to read all that stuff online, then they better be improving their practice. Meanest science teacher ever! Yeah whatever.

Meanwhile though, and I feel good about this, I finished cutting out the Wonder Under (finally!) for Bathtub 5, which got totally sidelined by the holiday.

It only took about 4 1/2 hours to do it, but I just didn’t have the time before I left for Seattle. I was determined to finish it last night, so I stopped grading tests (because that was kind of depressing anyway), and finished this instead. Tonight I can sort them and maybe start picking fabrics. Except I’m not sure if I have a background big enough. I’m pretty sure I do, plus I’m supposed to be at the local quilt store tomorrow after school to deliver one of the sold quilts, so I can manage that then. I’m hoping (moneywise) that there is something here big enough. I will need some blues and whites though. I think. There’s some really big white pieces in this quilt, and big is always an issue for me.

But the next part is the fun part…the fabric-choosing part. I’m going to need to clean more of this space up to manage that though. Damn. Forgot about all that. Sigh. So maybe NOT picking fabrics tonight. We’ll see.

By the way, if you’re interested in one of the smaller quilts (cats, birds, hearts), I suggest you tell me soon, because I’m going to put them all up on Etsy sometime this week, and I’ll have to raise prices to do that. Under Recent Work, Catching Cancer 2, Owl 2.0, Cats 1, 2, 5-7, and Heart in Hands 1 and 2 are all available. Also, Birds 7, 11, and 13 are also available…see below.

Bird 8: Purple Bird, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

Bird 11: Dove 2, 10“ w x 8“ h, $100 (no binding, no sleeve, hangs on rings).

Bird 13: Diving Bird 2, 10“ w x 8“ h, $100 (no binding, no sleeve, hangs on rings).

Just contact me on the website or in the comments. Shipping is included in the ones I did this year, unless it’s going international. The birds will need to have shipping added. I include hanging hardware. Think of the holidays…

Desperately Grading Papers…But Home…

I think that’s the longest blogging break I’ve taken in a while. I managed to blog the second day I was in Seattle, but not after that. It was a little busy, and honestly, any time I had with the computer, I was desperately grading papers…which I’m still doing, unfortunately. It’s all so time-consuming. I even graded in the airport yesterday while waiting to board the flight. I have a ton of pictures, but culled them down of course. And I just got off the phone with my bank, because my debit card number was stolen…but they declined the over $500 at a GameStop in Chula Vista. Little fuckers.

Anyway, guess banks are better at catching the liars now. I’m glad. Because I had to pay college and didn’t need them rampaging through my already troubled checking account right before Xmas.

So I went to Seattle to have Thanksgiving with my brother’s family and my parents. I haven’t seen them in almost two years, so it was nice to be up there, despite the noise and argumentation levels. It made coming back to my quiet lonely house quite a relief…how ironic. I’m sure I’ll be tired of that by Monday, but last night, it was pure bliss. Except for the grading part. And the headbutting needy cats. And I must not have gotten enough sleep, because getting up this morning was extremely prolonged and somewhat painful.

Anyway, I guess this is like a photo essay of the holiday…well, actually, the first batch are my own kids. I flew girlchild to boychild in Ithaca and she cooked for him. I couldn’t afford to fly them both home for 4 days, and they’ll be home in 3 weeks anyway.

I miss the little bastards. Despite their obnoxiousness…

It snowed a bit in New York before she got there…

Yeah. So she’s back in Boston now at someone else’s Thanksgiving and he’s reveling in the silence. They hiked and went to an art museum and who knows what else. She made a decent Tday dinner.

Meanwhile, her mom did Seattle…here’s the middle cousin, my nephew…

We spent a few hours at a car museum…not my favorite, but I survived. I have about 700 pictures of grills and hood ornaments. I don’t know why.

We ate here. My bro and I are expert yelpers. It was good. And close to that car museum…

Plus around the corner from this cool bookstore where I could have bought everything on my Goodreads to-read list. If I’d had a million dollars. I bought one. There’s my mom, resting…

We came back and made stuffing and a Brussels sprout salad…two piles? Yeah, I did one and my SIL did the other.

Then we made mom over. OK, that’s a wig, but I don’t think it looks bad on her. She might consider a hairstyle/color change…

Then Thanksgiving morning was kickball in the mud, kids against adults. I should have stretched before that…

Mud yep. I brought some of that mud back with me in my suitcase. (p.s. do laundry)

Then we did Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house, whom I haven’t seen since she was a teenager. Now she’s married with 4 kids. Yeah, so that was interesting. They’re nice. There were a lot of kids. I had a long conversation with a Mormon feminist. It was interesting…didn’t I say that? It’s gotta be harder to be a Mormon feminist than an atheist feminist, that’s for sure. A good chunk of my family is Mormon, in case you didn’t know. It’s made for an interesting childhood.

Then on the airplane home, I did draw…

I kinda love that line. I knew exactly what it was going to be…

I was reading a book about dragons who can change into human form when it’s useful to them.

I did this drawing first…

I’m sure the people next to me were a little confused, but hey, they didn’t talk to me. So that was good.

Then I got home and made some food and sat on the couch and graded more stuff, mostly trying to finish out what I had done on the computer in Seattle. I still have 700 tons of grading to do…it’s not even funny. There are four piles the size of the one on the coffee table of science units that need grading. Then there’s the pile of tests on the right, on top of my work bag. Then on the couch, there’s the pile of warmups under the notebook. I did all the ones online in the Seattle airport, but some kids prefer paper, so those aren’t done…four more periods of those. The piles on the far left of the couch are all done. So it’s not like I didn’t do a ton. But there’s a bunch on Google Classroom too.

But I don’t think I can handle any of that today. I need to run some errands and hang out and be human and sociable with adults who aren’t stressed out. It was fun but exhausting. Thanksgiving is always a bit of that. I’m OK to be back where no one argues with me (until I walk into the classroom on Monday morning). My house is still a disaster, and now I have a deadline…boychild wants his room back in three weeks. I don’t blame him, but I’m not out of there yet. Not enough hours. At least I get to pick the music here. Oh yeah, and the bed needs flannel sheets. It was bloody freezing here when I got home. Funny considering I was in Seattle, but I got used to the cold there pretty easily. Their house was really warm at night, way warmer than mine. So unless you went outside, it wasn’t so bad.

So I hope y’all had a good feast and avoided the crazy shopping crowds. And you still have intact bank accounts. And you’re ready for the rush to Christmas etc. I’m not.