Stop the Breaking…

I got in the car on Saturday after finishing that post, ready to run errands and buy a dryer. Ms. Efficient, totally handling everything…completely laughed off the repairman’s death sentence on my Maytag. Yeah. I guessed. Because you know. The universe. Whatever. My mantra for the year. What-the-fuck-ever.

I got in the car. And it wouldn’t start.

So I sat there for a minute, because it had done this twice before this week, but the kids’ car is already in the shop, so I don’t have a backup. I was waiting to see if it happened again (and fatally, because the car eventually started the last two times with some tinkering…and it’s not the battery, and my car guy hates it when I bring in the car for nonreproducible problems) and for the Honda to come back.

I tinkered like the last two times, trying my solution and my ex’s solution (it died in front of his house earlier this week). Nope. I call him, hoping he did something I don’t remember. I try it and it doesn’t start. And I guess that was the straw…the one with the camel, you know? I started crying. But my brain’s already a step ahead, trying to figure out the car situation at my parents’, realizing they must have a car there, and I need to go over there to get their Consumer Reports anyway, so I bum a ride over there, grab the book, steal my dad’s car (I did call first but they didn’t answer). Run my errands. Come home and buy a dryer online. Do a ton of grading work, input grades (which is why I have 20 panicked student emails this morning), and then go off to watch not-horror movies.

Mischief managed. Hey, I’m not saying I was calm and collected all day. I was pretty irritated at the universe. I cried quite boisterously for a while. Then yesterday I got the damn thing towed to the fixer guy and left it there. This morning I’ll drive over and give him the run down and the keys. I still have dad’s car. If he needs it, he can come steal it back. Maybe it’ll be something easy, instead of fatal error (that’s what the repair guy called my dryer issue).

I also got everything back in the closet with the hot-water heater, cleaning out years of junk in there. Then I cleaned the cupboards above the washer and dryer, making room for all the crap that’s been stored on the washer for way too long. Then I installed a plastic-bag holder and hooks for the dog’s swimming towels (this swimming habit of hers is killing me). Finally, because all the pantry stuff had been stored in the kids’ bathroom, I went in there and cleaned it. It’s freakin’ spotless (well, don’t look too closely at the tub…I was getting tired). Now I just need to put the studio back together with the same zeal.

I graded for a little bit more last night, until I was sick of it…and came in here and quilted the second heart…well, first I had to negotiate chair space with Kitten.

She allowed as I might have her claws in my butt. Then I quilted it…

And started the owl, before realizing that the clocks had in fact changed already and that was real time.

Dammit. So it’s outlined, but not quilted yet. Tonight. And then I can start trimming and binding…not my favorite part, but the almost-done part. So far, the simplest one has taken 27 minutes to quilt and the most complicated one has taken 61 minutes.

Then before I went to bed, I found all the drawings I’d enlarged so far. There was one I’d forgotten about, so I think it’s next. Maybe. I’m still debating. There’s the one the owl above comes from, but it really needs more on the bottom. I guess I could enlarge it and then decide. Because last night, I thought the decision was made, and this morning, that other drawing is still talking to me. Guess I should listen.

Got a busy day. Hopefully nothing else breaks or stops working or gives up on me completely.

Just About Drawing…

Adjustments. I’m constantly making adjustments. To plans, goals, routines, lesson plans, curriculum. Last night, I made it to an art opening and Costco (kind of an incongruous pairing, but it made sense at the time), then came home and made dinner and ate it, and then that was it. And I was sitting on the couch, trying to figure out why I was SOOOO tired, why I was almost falling asleep. You know, it really doesn’t matter why. I needed to sleep. But I felt bad going to bed early without getting anything ELSE done. I mean, I only ran a huge gel electrophoresis lab all day with 150 kids and then sorta cleaned up after school and carved a pumpkin for the school contest and then came home and dealt with animals and then drove halfway across town for an opening and then traipsed through Costco, hauling 42-pound bags of cat litter in and out of the car and then into the garage. And then standing to cook from scratch mostly cuz I’m kinda crazy that way, so much standing and walking. I think maybe I earned that tired.

So I made another cup of tea (those don’t keep me awake, amusingly enough. I think my blood might be caffeinated.) and took my sketchbook (and the dog and one cat) to bed. Now really, I could have just gone to bed and that would have been OK. I was certainly tired enough. But I drew instead. And then slept.

Goofiest totem pole ever. Heart in pieces. Lotsa details…the stuff I love. This is the medium-sized sketchbook, about 9×12″? I usually enlarge 250%, so it wouldn’t be huge if I made it into a quilt. There were a couple other drawings in the book that would make good smaller quilts. But I really want to do a bigger one next. It took about 30 minutes to draw that. And no, I didn’t finish quilting the little quilts, and I probably won’t finish them until maybe Monday, and then they still need binding and sleeves. So a week later than I planned. Oh well.

Really, this was just about drawing. Because I just wanted to. And then I put the sketchbook down on the floor, took my last sip of tea, and fell soundly asleep. Probably a good thing, because today is Halloween at school, and that takes a whole ‘nother level of patience. An extra hour of sleep will probably come in useful. A coupla shots probably would too, but that’s apparently not allowed.

Losing Myself in Art…

I did this DNA extraction lab with my students yesterday and it barely worked. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I assumed it was me, that I was fucking it up somehow, water too cold or hot, chemicals in wrong order, something. It wasn’t until the end of the day and an email to the people who supplied the kits that we tracked the problem down…a new supplier of wheat germ that didn’t break up easily, so the DNA wasn’t being released in those nice long snotty clumps…it was just little tiny blobs. Frustrating to say the least, but my co-teacher has the benefit of my experience now (and maybe the supplier will make some notes for future users). Someone asked why I didn’t test the lab out the day before, but we’ve done this lab for quite a few years, albeit usually with a lot of help, and it’s always worked. I had no reason to doubt it. And honestly, here’s the kicker, I didn’t fucking have time to test it the night before. My prep is usually trashed by stupid stuff, I stay late some days but often have meetings or appointments (chiropractor on Monday). I could get up earlier and go in or spend hours on the weekends, but then I get crankier and crankier, because my body really doesn’t fall asleep before 12:30 and that’s on a good night, and I would like to stay away from school on the weekends. Last night I stayed and made sure I mostly knew how to do today’s lab, because I couldn’t remember how to use the micropipettes, but I didn’t go through the whole electrophoresis process. And I don’t have a prep before I teach any more, so I won’t have a chance probably to do that today either. Maybe I can.

Meanwhile, the dryer stopped working. It had to dry all those towels from the water heater experience, and it just died? I’m not sure what the issue is. Checked the circuit breaker, found the book on it, doesn’t seem to be something I can fix. But it’s 10 1/2 years old. Average life span of a dryer is 10-13 years. Life has gotten a bit frustrating in the last week and I’m not handling it well. I think I was already at my stress limit and this stuff is just over the top. I’m also trying to clean up post water heater, go through stuff, throw some out, recycle some, clean up and organize the rest. It’s overwhelming as well. I made it through one pile of damp papers last night. Amusing what some of it was. Don’t know why I couldn’t find time before to toss it. It’s gone now. But some of it was important. Now that it’s dried out, I can find its home.

I know why I couldn’t toss stuff before. I make art. In the moments when the rest of the world is cleaning house and straightening up and organizing and tossing stuff, I sit down at my sewing machine and make. And there’s no one else here to pick up the slack, to straighten that pile up or deal with this issue or that mess, so it just becomes a task I can’t handle. I’d like to say I’m going to spend some time this weekend…or even tonight…dealing with this, and maybe I will, but grades are also due in about a week and a half. And they were totally sidelined by all this water damage etc.

Whatever. Do what you can. Keep making. Because I paid the second kid’s college payment last night, and I still need $8100. More than half of it by March 1. I know where $1500 of it is coming from…and there’s another $100 I know will come in. $6500. Yikes. Dear colleges…

So that was last night. It only made sense to sit down at the machine and lose myself in some quilting…here’s the cat that resembles a fox…

Two things: first, I didn’t quilt in the gap in the middle because I forgot. I did go back and do it later when I realized…and I realized because the second cat is the same cat, so it reminded me. Second, I was aiming for a cat we used to have, Rusty. He came to us because a friend’s daughter brought him home from the store…a woman out front had free kittens. And then their landlord said no. He was a coyote dinner at some point, because my ex was determined that cats should be able to roam free. Rusty was the first one we lost. When Kiwi went, I closed the doors and put my foot down. Rusty was probably orangier than that, but hey, it’s art.

Then I decided I wanted a really brightly colored cat, so I used the same drawing…the color under the machine is apparently really hard for the camera to handle…

And I sewed this one last night as well.

It’s cute…kind of a counterpoint to the quiet cats I finished earlier.

So there’s one cat left, the really weird one with the eyeballs. Then there’s two hearts in hands and the owl. Those are all more complicated, so they’ll take longer. The second one, Cat 7, has taken about 2 1/2 hours so far to make. Still need to trim, bind, put a sleeve on, and maybe give her some whiskers. We’ll see how long that takes. These two are almost the smallest…Cat 1 is smaller.

So even just writing about sewing the cats and the thought process makes my brain in a better place. It pulls up out of the muck and handles life. So I guess that’s why I do that art stuff more than the cleaning stuff. Like I didn’t already know that. The way my brain works, it needs the art stuff to balance everything else out.

Issues with Starting…

So hi. It’s morning. We’re not friends, morning and I. Never have been. Although it feels incredibly bad to miss morning completely, because then it feels like I’ve wasted so much time. But OK. It’s here, brought on by the alarm clock and time passing and all that crap. I’m running two major labs over the next two days. Plus: kids will be engaged. Con: I might have to kill some of them. We’ll see how that goes. I’m sure teachers shouldn’t have to talk about killing students. We aren’t really. Everyone knows that, right? It’s just that consider the one point when your own child is at their most annoying and you want to strangle them, duct tape their mouth shut, and lock them in the closet. Well I have that kid every day. Sometimes more than once. So when I’m doing something in class that requires people to listen to instructions or there will be a giant mess to deal with, I get a little cranky when that one kid goes, “Wait, what are we doing?” Or makes a dumb joke and looks around the room for attention. Or is messing with the lab materials. I can be very calm. Please get up out of your chair, take all your stuff, and go sit outside. In 7th grade, brains are often absent. It’s a special form of senility.

So I’m hoping it goes OK. I prepped yesterday all day and I have more to do today for tomorrow. It’s just stressful.

Quilting is going slowly…but it’s going. I had to do some other stuff last night (always do) before I could start, so I only got one done. Plus I was tired, so I tried to go to bed early. Mostly I suck at that. That might have something to do with not liking mornings. They start too damn early.

Cat 4 in all his spotty wonder. His? Hers? Dunno.

Thread kept breaking. Probably I should change the needle. Always forget to keep track of that.

I have this one fabric I bought about 4 or 5 years ago that I really love. I love it so much, I’m down to about a 4×6″ piece of it and a bunch of tiny scraps. Of course, I’m never going to find it again, but I was trying to find a replacement. The top one is too yellow and I think the one on the right is too busy (I’ll still use them…don’t you worry), but I think the one on the left works as a replacement.

It’s still more lines than white space, unlike the other one, but it might work.

OK, well my car has been having issues with starting, and with my luck, this morning will be the one where it dies completely. A day when I have to get in early to get the lab ready, right? So I have to leave early enough that I can call for help if I need it. I really wish I could spend less of my life calling for help and more of it just living. Or drawing. Or quilting. Or something.

I spent all day yesterday trying to make these gels for the lab. The first batch was too hot so it melted the tape and went everywhere. Then I dropped one. Then at least 4 of them split down the middle, probably because I was moving them too early. They take so LONG to harden up. I guess the lesson is patience, which I suck at in the first place. I don’t have time to be patient. Unless it’s with cutting out a million tiny pieces, and that’s not even really patience. It’s just how long the job takes.

Speaking of which, I need to start the next big quilt. I just realized how much time I’ll be gone over Thanksgiving and how busy I’ll be with school up until then (and after, because of all the stuff due right before). And I have a baby quilt to do in December as well. Not enough time. Never is. I guess it’s all about having issues with starting! Quilts, cars, me. Taking on another large project…I’m ready but I’m buried with school, so it feels like a mistake…although I know the bigger mistake is letting school take over my life. Setting boundaries. Priorities. Knowing what you want but not knowing how to get it. Story of my life…

Good Things…

So lots of good news yesterday…the 8 exhibits of quilts that were missing reappeared (it’s like magic!), so they’ll be winging their way home. Lost out on two exhibits. Oh well. Then I found out that Work in Progress made it into ArtQuilt Elements, so it will be in Pennsylvania at the Wayne Art Center from March through May.

It’s nice to get into a show again.

And most important of all, so I don’t have to deal with 7800 wet towels and no hot water, I have a new hot-water heater…hallelujah. Yesterday’s shower was a little more intense than I like on a Monday morning.

And my morning starts with the dog at 5 AM finally figuring out that she needs to pee. Didn’t need to at midnight last night, nosiree. Now would be the time. Ugh.

So my evening was a little discombobulated by car trading, a car that was refusing to start, a plumber still installing a water heater, and dad wandering around the house. No walk, no gym. Unfortunate. Because then I couldn’t get motivated to do shit for a good long time. I cleaned up a little, started laundry, ate some food, tried to focus. I spent all day at school mostly unfocused. Not sure why. But I swear I have a kid who is stealing piles of paper off my desk. I know that sounds like an excuse, but these are piles of blank assignments, maybe 20 sheets, and this is the second time a pile has gone missing from that area after that class. That’s too much of a coincidence. So I’m gonna leave out a dummy pile and watch her like a hawk today. Yes, it sounds just about as crazy as it is. I’m pretty good with piles of paper. And I had just used it that period. I’m feeling a little nuts.

I finally gave up on trying to grade and came in here to deal with emails and bills. Then spent 20 minutes trying to sort through all the crap that was in here before and is now piled in the boychild’s room. It’s a little crazy in there too. I can’t move stuff back yet, because the water traveled under the whole wall and a little up it in places. It’s warm here, so it should dry out quickly, but I want to give it a fighting chance, so nothing goes back for a few days.

Then on to the quilting…except that’s where I sit…

I moved her back a bit and perched on the edge. She’s not interested in the other chair at all, because I’m not in it. This one will do nicely thank you. Eventually, she left, but not until I was on the second quilt.

This is Cat 2…

Yeah, I gave her something to lie on. I think if I redo that one, I will give her an actual fabric thing to lie on. Maybe.

And here’s Cat 3…which is so obviously Kitten.

She sleeps like that all the time. They each take about 30-45 minutes to quilt. I suspect Cat 6 and the owl will take longer, because of the outlining. I do that first with a darker thread, and then background quilt after. It makes the cats pop up off the fabric nicely.

So yeah, progress. And lots of good things happened yesterday. I’m OK with all that. So the universe kicks your butt with a leaky water heater and then rewards you for…for what exactly? Oh yeah. Because that’s not really how the world works. It’s all just random shit, partially predictable (like it was an old water heater; it was bound to do this some day).

I’m not looking forward to putting everything back. I just hope I can find a way to get rid of some of it…I already found some books I know I don’t want, but I couldn’t get rid of them before…maybe they just get donated. I used to buy a lot of quilt books when I was learning to quilt and finding my way in the fiber art world. Now I buy mostly catalogs of shows more than anything else, and a lot of those early quilt books are completely useless. So I should get rid of some of them. Might as well do it now, before I move them back into the room. Same with all the other quilt and fabric stuff. I found a whole drawer of my hand-dyed fabrics that I didn’t even know I had. Gotta remember that stuff. Access is part of it. This is a fairly small room and there’s a ton of stuff shoved in here.

Anyway. School calls. I think I need a lot more caffeine to actually DEAL with school, but that’s a whole ‘nother problem.

Even If I Suck at It…

So I think my head is exploding. Probably because I’m being so efficient. I’m sure that will stop soon. Surely tomorrow is a clusterfuck of scheduling, so I should remember that. I shipped all the Halloween stuff and birthday presents I needed to get out of here. A miracle. Four packages to four different cities…four different states even. Made it 16 minutes before the post office closed. It’s really NOT convenient to those of us who work during the daytime, by the way. I was at school until 5:30 last night with a parent meeting. I came home and worked. Then I did some more stitching down of things.

I made it through three of them. I was tired last night; I’m still tired right now. I know I slept long and hard, but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the week, I guess.

Here’s the black and white kitty. I could do any of these in black and white, I guess. Yes, these will be for sale, soon I hope. And I could take any one of them and redo it in another color scheme. Last year’s owl was done in grays, then in purples, and finally in browns.

This is the orange kitty…kinda foxlike in some ways.

And I think this is my favorite, because it’s so obviously Kitten. Plus curled-up kitties are just cute.

There’s two more to be stitched down, and then I can start quilting, binding, etc. Some of them will need whiskers and eye bits that will be hand-embroidered. I wanted them all to be done by Halloween, but I think that’s unlikely. I am going to go through my drawings and pick one for real soon, for the next big project. I think I have some already enlarged; maybe I should pick one of them. I’m hoping to get more grading done today and tomorrow. I have a meeting tomorrow, but I often grade right through it.

In other news, the SAQA Oasis exhibit that was supposed to be in Palm Springs and at PIQF in Santa Clara is lost at the moment. There were 8 exhibits on a pallet that all disappeared from the shippers’ warehouse before they left for the first show. It’s over a hundred quilts estimated lost. Insurance has been contacted, videos watched, people notified. All we can do is wait. They’re somewhere. I know that. Meanwhile, this quilt, Part-Time Oasis, can’t be entered anywhere though…

It sucks. I’m crossing my fingers. This shit happens.

Plus you can buy the book! From here! Currently $12.99, free shipping with Amazon Prime. I really do think these will have to show up at some point. They’re in a warehouse somewhere stupid and someone thinks they’re part of something else and haven’t even looked.

(Neighbor is up on the slope coughing up a lung…putting the music back on)…

If you didn’t know, I’m an INFJ…

Does not matter how many versions of this thing I take, I get Introverted Intuition Feeling Judging: The Advocate! Rarest on the planet! Less than 1%! Famous INFJs include Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa. OK, that kinda makes me laugh. Way to make me feel inferior, guys. But yeah. I’ve had people argue that I’m not an introvert before, and I’m like, wait WHAT? I totally am. I need to recharge on a regular basis. I unfortunately have a job that fully sucks up all my energy. In fact, I use this as my excuse for not doing lunch detentions at school. If I do those, I want to kill people. In fact, tutorial often makes me feel that way too. Sigh.

So I still want to draw. I keep running out of time to do the things I want to do, because NEED is such a fucking asshole. October has been just as much of a clusterfuck as September. I have not figured the whole balancing-time thing out, despite kids being gone. I seem to be more buried than ever. I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. I keep trying to get a handle on it.

I don’t know why Doctor Who is fucking around with Clara, when I obviously need his help, like now. Time machine? Really? Get your ass over here, Doctor, and help someone with some real time constraints.

So I’m going to go sit and watch some stuff today and try to bang out some major grading this weekend, even if it kills me. Plus finish a story, stitch down the remaining two quilts (two or three? There’s only two left. Did I say three up above? Damnit), get ready for school this week. Major crazy lab prep this week. And money is super tight, with two college payments coming up on the first, both of which I’m trying to pay, at least some of each anyway. Boychild reminded me that I always have a fairly well-stocked pantry though, and he’s right. I have frozen meat in the fridge and pasta and rice. I shouldn’t need much to get through the week. Milk and veggies I think…thinking it through.

Will draw. Even if I suck at it.

Not on the List of Have to Get Done

I’m having to be a nasty hard-ass at school. I’m asking kids to do a difficult assignment and their first response is to give up. Interesting that we have raised them to have that reaction. So I can’t be nice in class. I have to bug them and set these rules that makes me a cranky bitch by the end of the day. And then in the middle of it, the fire alarms go off. Not a drill. No fire in the end…just a science experiment gone awry (not ours!)…but the kids are distracted afterwards and can’t get back on task. They don’t want to get back on task.

At the end of the day, I can’t get back on task either. I can’t even remember where I’m supposed to drive after school; I automatically head home. Dammit. Drive in a big circle, remember the other errand. Do them both. Go to counseling. Sigh. Many things are much better than a year, fantastically better than two years ago. That’s good. There’s hope. Doesn’t help this morning when I’m exhausted, looking forward to another day of being a bitch, managing pre-teen lives. But I learned something from how I taught this last year. I’m going to do it better this year. It will still be mean mom teacher and hard work for me, but the product will be better. I hope.

All I can do is hope.

Then a parent meeting late late late. Ugh. I’m already tired. But ideally this will solve some problems with a kid…they lie to us and parents until we all get in a room together, and then they realize we talk to each other. Sometimes I wonder how smart teens are. They think they can copy each other’s homework and I won’t notice the same awkward phrasing in two different assignments? They think I can’t hear across the room. They think I don’t know that staring into your lap and grinning stupidly means they have their phone out.

Yeah. So that’s my day. Yesterday was fire engines and helicopters. Hopefully today will be calmer.

I had a 2-hour-long conversation with the boychild, a shorter one with the girlchild, and side conversations with a high-school friend who took girlchild out for food and solved her boot problem in Boston. All of that via text, of course, so all at the same time.

And then I managed to get up off the couch (so tired) and come in here to keep going. I stitched down three tops and repinned them…

It was less than an hour I think. I was just tired. I actually went to bed early.

I’m going in backwards order now. Did the owl, the two hearts, Cat 7 and Cat 6…

So five cats left for tonight. Then quilting. Except my grading workload is huge and out of control. Still. But grades are due in two weeks, so I have to decide how that’s going to roll. Sometimes I push assignment grades to the next trimester; sometimes I bust my butt to grade them in time; and honestly, sometimes I toss a graded assignment. One isn’t going to make or break any kid, not at this stage.

Still looking for a possible vacation option in the next few months…doesn’t have to be a long one. Just a few days away from everything. Seems impossible most days. Walking away from the list of things to do. Thinking about that throws me back into the depressed place.

I’ve said all week that I want to be drawing. If I can get the teacher part of my brain to shut up, maybe I can do that this weekend. Give myself time to do something that’s not on the list of things that HAVE to get done. We’ll see.

What You Yelling At?

It’s weird how teacher irritation seems to move through us like a virus. You think it’s just you, that you’re having a bad day, but no, you talk to your coworkers and everyone’s frustrated, on the edge. Except it’s October. And there’s a lot of the school year in front of us yet. But maybe this is just what it’s like when the kids are in a mood, the moon is swinging one way or another, and then next week, there’s a confluence of stars and student work ethics and it all mellows out for a few days. You take a careful deep breath and try not to disturb the universal peace too much.

So I came home and went to the gym. After I wrote a bunch of emails and tried to make phone calls where people don’t answer and I leave messages and then they call back and it’s not a good time, because hey, I teach during the day. The gym was a good choice. I’m reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula though (book club selection…even though I missed the meeting…I’m trying to force myself to finish it). I don’t think it’s a good choice. I may give up soon. I’m just not in the mood for all that plodding old classical stuff of diaries and Renwick’s bug-eating tendencies. Yick. I think I need to NOT make myself work at reading unless I’m enjoying it. And I’m not.

Then I made dinner from scratch. Crazy that. What amuses me is that the recipe is supposed to be like 20 minutes or LESS! Fuck me. Am I cooking-stupid? Because it was 50 minutes. And I’m sure there’s a trick to grating onions, but I don’t know what the fuck it is. I’m pretty sure there’s grated finger in there with the red onion. Whatever. It was good and now I have leftovers. I really try to only cook from scratch 3 times a week and then I eat leftovers the rest of the time. It’s not lazy…I just don’t want to use up that much of my life cooking. I like to eat good fresh food. I just don’t really enjoy cooking that much. It’s definitely work.

Then I graded. I am so freakin’ tired of grading things. I know I came home last year many nights and graded nothing. How the fuck did I do that? I think technology is really cool, but I’m not sure it’s helping me grade…I think it’s slowing me down.

And THEN. See I still didn’t make art. Some bank donated backpacks (cheap nasty backpacks, you assholes) to our school for needy kids, and the stitching is shit, so they’re falling apart. So I took two of them home (and there’s a third one in my mailbox at school apparently) and tried to fix them. But I don’t think they’ll last forever because the fabric is shit too. Might be better just going online and begging LLBean to donate to us. Then I know they’ll last for two years, even with middle-school abuse.

So I didn’t make art until 11:35 PM. Crazy, right? And frustrating as hell. I got one done.

Unpinned it. Stitched it down. Pinned it back together. Whoo! Eight to go. Maybe I’ll get more done tonight. Giant ass sigh. Some nights just suck.

This amused me. Cat sleeping on mouse. Ha!

Simple pleasures. While I was grading, I had both cats. One was half on my lap, lying on the red pen. OK, I’ll use pink then. The other was lying on the pile of ungraded papers, and every time I’d reach for a new class section, she’d attack me and bite my hand. Sheesh. That’s how I feel about them too, Kitten. I gave up after two periods because it was so freakin’ frustrating reading answers to questions they obviously hadn’t read. If I’m pissed off, it makes it hard to grade and be fair, so I stopped. But seeing as how I didn’t even get dinner until 9, it was late and I was justified in stopping.

Plus I’d finished the second episode of Elementary. Good time to break.

It’s probably a good thing I have counseling tonight. When I burrow between the couch cushions and yell, she’ll know what to do. Oh wait. I do that here too and all the animals just stare at me. Like really. What you yelling at?

I know. What’s the point. Mantra for the school year…whatever!

I really want to draw tonight. Remember that.

Medium-Sized Clusterfuck

It feels giant. Like a huge fuck up. But it’s really not. It feels that way because I’m overwhelmed…and overwhelmed is a place I don’t like to be. My counselor says I must like it, because I spend a lot of time there, but I haven’t been able to figure out how NOT to be there. She doesn’t have a map to get out of it.

So it wasn’t a small clusterfuck. I pinbasted 9 quilts and then finally got into my studio last night to do the last one and hopefully start quilting. I even sat down at the machine, all set up for quilting, and then put the owl quiltlet under the machine, and stopped. Fuck. Seriously? Where the hell is my brain? I don’t even know. I have to say that I always have some issues this time of year because it’s the anniversary of my marriage falling apart…after 13 years, I still can’t erase that date from my mind. Which is one of the things about my brain that I don’t appreciate. Can’t remember what I did last week, but 13 years ago is fresh, like it just happened. I could do without that. My anniversaries are all nasty ones.

Anyway, so I hadn’t stitched any of the pieces down. I iron, then I stitch down, then I pinbaste. Somehow my brain decided that completely skipping that middle step would be OK. And yes, I briefly considered a variety of options, including going to bed, having another glass of wine, sewing them down while sandwiched, or quilting without sewing them down. I also went through the pros and cons of each option, and then unpinned the owl. I stitched him down, ironed him again, and repinned him.

There. Done. So was that so hard? Nope. I can handle that. I’m more pissed at myself for spacing out. The fix isn’t bad, not too time-consuming. It was only another 5 minutes. Not the end of the world, right? But frustrating at 10 PM. Frustrated with my own brain.

Then again, I had a weird day. I didn’t teach yesterday. A local youth services group came in to talk about suicide and depression to my kids, so I sat off to the side and graded papers and tried to keep track of the kids who needed reminders of good behavior. And by the end of the day, I was reacting to all the talk and videos and listening to the kids. I could tell. I actually don’t remember this day from last year at all. It’s a total blank. This is like the second trigger event for me this year at school. I guess it makes me relate to my students. One of my weird ones was having an issue with the video. I could see her curling up into herself so I made a face at her. She giggled. Then the instructor (who was getting tired, I could tell…even teachers get crankier as the day goes on) got all snarly about her giggling and lectured us on feeling uncomfortable and not laughing (for whatever reason, because if you’re uncomfortable enough to laugh, that lecture just made you more so), so I gave her the giant scared eyeballs and she started to giggle again (I am evil), but muffled her mouth under her hand. I got that kid. She’s working for me now. Not a lot, but a little. Better than the I-Don’t-Care attitude I got for the first month.

I know I appreciate all the people who checked in with me repeatedly, sometimes annoyingly so, while I was going through my depression. Because it was bad. And it’s still there, the remnants of it. It never really goes away. It makes me question everything I think or do some days. Some of the mood this week is trying to visualize a future, a place where I have everything in balance, semi-under control (because I don’t think my life will ever be beautifully under control). I know some of the things I want, but getting there seems pretty impossible most days. I know I’m working my butt off at the moment, and I need that to loosen up a bit. So fucking up the quilting process, something I’ve done for years, doesn’t help me feel like I have a handle on things. I mean, I know everyone’s needs are mostly being met, but I need to get my head up and over this pile of crap, both the work stuff and the mood stuff.

Anyway, because I like to make it hard on myself, today I’m giving my students a hard, really hard assignment…for like the next three or four days. So that should be fun. For none of us. You will hear my frustration probably starting tomorrow. But whatever. Sometimes things are hard, and you do your best, and if you happen to succeed at the hard stuff, the reward will feel that much better. Maybe I should start with that today. For them and for me…

Hearts in Hands…

Saturday came to me early and I told it to fuck off. I reminded it of all the Saturdays I’d been up early for soccer games, up before dawn, getting cranky-ass kids out of bed and finding their uniforms. Getting up early because kids were up. There was no such thing as sleeping in. Saturday reminded me that Kitten was hungry. I rolled over and told Kitten to fuck off, that there was dry food in there and she obviously could gnaw on my arm if that ran out.

It’s such a rare occurrence that my street is quiet and there are no other interruptions in the morning that I can actually sleep. So I did. Because obviously I needed to. Although I have a headache…but I think that is attributable to my need to go to the chiropractor (appointment Monday with a new one, because my old one retired) and possibly the weather. Or a lack of caffeine. Can’t fix the weather.

I graded papers last night. I know you’re shocked. I didn’t grade all of them. I left some for today or tomorrow or for every fucking day between now and the end of the school year. And then it starts again next August. Teacher hell. If you don’t grade it, they won’t do it. Sigh. So I’m buried. Underwater. In a metal tomb that says “She didn’t finish her grading before report cards” inscribed on it.

But then I got up off the couch…and I should admit that I took the dog on a glorious 3-mile walk before I graded papers, so getting up off the couch was a challenge…and came in here. I didn’t get all of them done, like I wanted, because now I’m ironing the more complicated ones, so they take longer. Well, one of them did. The other was pretty quick. I’m hoping to do some more today, but I’m running out of time. Always.

Earlier this year, I participated in a fundraiser for cancer research, and I made a small heart in hands for my donation. It was too complicated for the amount paid, though, so I tried to redraw it simpler…I think I succeeded with this one, but we’ll have to see what the final minute count is…

This was actually the second one I drew…

Because first I drew this one, which is twice as complicated…twice as many pieces and many of them tiny little fingers with tiny little wrinkles in them. So not a success in simplification. That said, I still like it…

And hopefully someone else will too…

So those two are obviously not cats. There’s two cats left…numbers 3 and 6 (the one I called 3 yesterday is actually 2…I think. Sigh.). And then the owl. So I’ll get one or two or maybe even three of those done today. After I eat and shower and consume more caffeine and I really should grade more papers. Stupid job. And I have another story I really need to write ASAP.

But after hiking last night, I had to just sit and space out for a bit. I read some stuff on Feedly. And then I went to ultra-space-out mode and tried to clean up my photo files. I moved all of July’s files into their appropriate homes, which took about an hour or so. And as I was going through those, I realized I really really wanted to make another big quilt…because there were all these photos of the drawing process and ironing of Beyond the Concrete. I really enjoy the time it takes to make a large quilt…the depth of the process, how it consumes you for weeks. These small ones are like potato chips. You get one done and you’re like, oh, that was it? Must have another. A big quilt is like a good piece of cheesecake…it will last for ages. The feeling of fulfillment will last a really long time. You’ll be immersed in it, enjoying it, dreaming about it, thinking about it while you drive. It consumes me. I like that feeling.

I guess that’s a good thing, because I have two larger ones coming up that I want to do. I just need to make a decision about the drawings I’ll use. With the second one, I think I will draw something new. Maybe. I do have this incredible urge to draw as well. I wish schoolwork would mellow out enough that I felt like I could spend a few evenings drawing. I am so buried.

Anyway. Large quilt on the horizon. As soon as I get these tiny beasts done. End of October. My Halloween gift to myself…a new big project.

Hope to see you at the Interpretations opening tonight. Now I have to worry about what to wear…