A Gopher Tale…

The dog (Calli) is staring intently out into the lower yard, worried-looking but not barking or crying. She looks at me when I slip out the back door, whining slightly and so excited that I’ve come out to see what she sees. I peer down into the weed-infested space (I really should do more yardwork. At midnight. On Sundays.) and see one of the 3-foot-tall weeds jiggling, like something is down there. I make the executive decision to walk down the deck on the back of the house. It will look right over that space, and then if it’s a skunk, I don’t have to meet it up close right before school. Calli follows me, thrilled that I know what’s worrying her. I get to right above the wiggling weed and peer down. There’s nothing there. Nothing’s even moving at the moment. I wait. Calli waits, whining quietly. The weed starts to move again, and there is a noise of teeth gnashing. I look more closely. The weed is not just moving; the entire plant is disappearing inside…a gopher hole. Oh. OK. That’s funny. I laugh. Damn dog is scared of gophers. I try to put her out later to pee, and she cries at me, protesting, scratching at the door, and then running back in, Golden Retriever vs Gopher a pure loss in her tiny little mind. I love this dog, but damn…she’s scared of gophers. So much for protection.

Girlchild says it’s because she’s afraid SHE’LL disappear like that. Huh. Silly dog.

So I had tons of crap to deal with yesterday, but I was damn efficient and tried to keep irritation levels at a minimum, hard to do when having to give yet another state-mandated survey on top of state-mandated testing, none of which works the way it’s supposed to work. Our theory now is that the adaptive testing actually refuses to accept wrong answers at some point until students go back and try to fix some of their bad answers. That can’t be true. That doesn’t even make sense…but I have to admit, despite the fact that I’m a teacher, I don’t understand how these newfangled tests are working.

Then I finally made it home for girlchild’s dinner-making extravaganza (chicken salad) and some quiet time (not…prom-dress worries with SVU in the background) on the couch, trying to grade some more (I really want to be caught up. It may never happen. Ever.) until I gave up and started cutting Wonder Under, because I remembered my mistake of the night before. Make Art Dummy!

The thing is…photos of cut-out Wonder Under aren’t very exciting…

(trash on the right)…not even to me. Although that box is almost full.

Here’s all I have left to cut…

Now THAT’S exciting. Just one piece left. That’s one evening maybe. There are a lot of little pieces, yes, but there’s also some big whopping pieces in there. (Big pieces take less time to cut out.). I’ve done about 2 1/2 hours, so maybe another hour, hour and a half? I did one whole piece last night in less than an hour.

Now I can start to get excited about ironing to fabric. That’s way more fun. Color and stuff. Making artistic decisions and stuff. And stuff! But I do need to clean this space out first, get some shit out of here and straighten up all the fabrics, put all the stuff away from the last quilt. I still haven’t done that. Sigh. Damn. I hate dealing with that stuff. I can put the fabric away, pile it up by color and straighten up. When I finished the last batch of financial aid stuff, I put everything in labeled file folders, because I didn’t do that last year and it was chaos this year trying to figure out what went where and where everything was. But I still need a home for all that. I still learn from my mistakes. Good thing really. I make lots of them. But I’m a hoarder genetically, so even getting rid of the rest of the upholstery scraps from that recycled quilt causes me issues. What if I NEED them? Really? Seriously? I won’t be able to find them…that’s what if.

And I got a bunch of fabric from a mom I grew up around, the mom of some good friends. She’s not quilting or sewing any more, due to a series of strokes. I’m glad to take in her fabric…kinda makes me feel good thinking some of my stash comes from Sandi, but I have to put them all away too! I know. My problem. I’ll deal.

So I don’t remember where on FB I saw this, but this video about the nipple is good…I didn’t even know about the no-male-nipple laws. This is probably NSFW for most workplaces, which is also an issue, because if I were watching a video with topless males, there might be an issue, but with topless females, it’s always an issue. Go home and watch it.

It does seem like we need to Free the Nipple, people (without the comma, that’s an interesting sentence times two). Certainly looking at my art, it would be nice if people were a little less dramatic about nudity. A naked woman does not equal porn. Neither does a vulva nor a nipple.

Leaving you with that. It’s a good way to start the morning.

Oh Hallelujah

The financial aid crap is finally done. After 20 minutes on the phone to somewhere, Ken, lovely Ken, confirmed that all the documents are there and processed and available to the institution (I keep thinking “mental institution,” which is more about how I feel). It’s out of my hands now. Bless them. I don’t need to worry (OK, that’s not going to happen…now I need to worry about how much they’ll award this year and whether I’m gonna be broke in a year). But seriously, I’ve been working on this for both kids since the last week of January. How can it take this long? So much time and energy. Sigh.

In other news, I cut out a little bit of Wonder Under last night. Mostly I did school stuff, because we are in the middle of testing and there is all this free time for kids after testing is done, and yesterday was a giant scheduling clusterfuck, and today could be even worse in terms of headaches. I ended up losing my prep, which meant trying to eat in front of kids, which I hate doing and I do a shitty job of doing anyway, so my blood sugar was off all day and the headaches that go with that were on Motrin number 8 at some point, which isn’t actually that much, but it’s because I kept thinking, “Ouch, I have a headache, I should do something about that,” and then forgot to do anything.

Whatever. I’m semi-prepared for two hours today and 17 kids with nothing to do…oh, to clarify, 7 of them have stuff to do…they’re just not going to want to do it. So we’ll see how that goes.

I have no pictures of cutting out Wonder Under. I do however have pictures of the big quilt I finished recently, Earth Mother for Ventura, thus called because of their requirement for no nudity, no politics, and no violence…

She’s not a small quilt, at around 55×66″. Plus she’s got 90 hours or so into her…

I talked to my photographer about how to best provide prints to those who want them, and he gave me some names of places that could do that.

Now I just need the time to go research that. Ha!

Might have to wait until school gets out.

It was an interesting experiment, making this quilt. Still sussing it out in my head. And there’s no guarantee it’ll get into the show! As always. Oh well. On to the next one, right?

The Cutting of the Wonder Under

Mothers Day: the only day of the year children will try to feed you and clean up for you. Well, apparently the girlchild last did those two tasks at Christmas, but I’m fairly sure I helped. She did good. Food was wonderful…we will miss her when she leaves. I just don’t pay close enough attention when I cook to do it well. I’m always trying to escape the kitchen to my studio.

I did a couple of drawings this weekend while watching the end of True Detective, which was good. At some point, I couldn’t draw because I was concentrating too hard on the show…always an issue.

But before that, there was this…

Which I actually want to do over…and this…

Which might be OK.

And the other 15 drawings are still roaming around in my head, creating havoc with my ability to remember how or when to do anything (or maybe that’s menopause…hard to say).

And then at night, after dinner and cleanup and exercise, I finally got around to this…

The very titillating Cutting of the Wonder Under.

Stay tuned for many pictures of piles of paper cut out with fusible web on one side. Très exciting.

State testing starts today, so I have to be at school early, because I have duty and I have to get my room set up and all my stuff located. I’m completely unprepared, unfortunately. My brain? Mush. Dammit.

This Mood

So many things achieved. I hate when my mood doesn’t reflect what I’ve gotten done…some of that is moody hormones, unfortunately, but some of it is getting bogged down by other crap that just won’t leave me alone. The little stuff is really getting to me at the moment. Need to dump that mentality. Must be getting to the end of the school year.

My two quilts are going to the photographer today…I dehaired and ironed them this morning, got up a little early to make sure I had enough time. Probably won’t finish writing this before I have to go, but that’s OK. I graded papers last night too. Girlchild and I were going to go to this art and music thing, but it was canceled for the rain (yes. we had rain. a miracle.), so she went off to dinner with friends, while I watched the series finale of Sons of Anarchy. Sheesh. Well, it’s done anyway. I think it’s hard to end a series well (Sopranos for example, not as an example of ending well). At least they got to make a decision about how to end it, instead of just not being renewed.

So I finished tracing the Wonder Under on Bathtub 2 last night…

And no, Kitten wasn’t helping. She mostly sat around on the papers I needed and then rolled around presenting her belly for petting. Then attacked. It’s nice when she comes out though.

It took almost 8 hours to trace this quilt, which is more than I would have guessed, but there are some whopping big and complicated pieces in the bathtub and water that took more than a minute or two to trace. I usually figure about 100 pieces an hour. Tracing big pieces takes longer than small.

The next step is to cut them all out and then move on to the ironing. I need to clean up the studio first though. There’s some stuff in there that’s been there so long, I don’t know what it is. Time to get it out of the way. Summer cleaning is how teachers think. We don’t Spring Clean. There’s no time. Summer is when our brains like to get rid of stuff and reorganize and move stuff around.

So that’s on the list. Even starting now, I think. I can’t iron fabrics for the next quilt without some major cleaning in here.

I’ve had some conversations about smaller quilts I can make for sale this summer. I don’t want to do all cats, but I will do some. I’m thinking of a different owl and maybe a raven…and possibly one like the cancer donation quilt I did with the hands and the heart, but simpler. So I’m finalizing all that in my head and figuring out how to fit in at least three major quilts between now and the end of September. Ha! Wow. Crazy much?

Honestly, though, I’m kind of looking forward to putting some sort of plan together for summer work on quilts. It helps school feel less crazy. It helps quiet nights at home seem less lonely. It helps with the frustration of my job. It helps temper the teenaged mutant attitudinal beast who is currently on my couch, bitching about everything I say or do (walking away, my sweet. I love you, but I’m not in the mood). I’m crying at the drop of a hat these days, stupid hormones. Fuck. Going to draw today. Seriously. They’re whirring about in my head, causing strife and stress and nausea (oh wait, those are the hormones, right?). My photographer gave me some really positive comments about the quilts I dropped off…not that I didn’t like them, but I keep having this discussion about pretty versus significant. I prefer the latter. Most people like the former. I have to find the happy place between them for the stuff that sells easily and then keep making the big stinky stuff to keep me sane. Like sanity is my strong point! Whatever.

This mood. Sheeit. Dammit brain, I finished all this stuff. Would you back off for a bit? Sigh. We can engineer bridges, put humans in space for months on end, we know how to replace a lens in an eyeball without stitches, but we can’t find an acceptable treatment for menopausal crap? This world we live in. Don’t tell me it’s equal. It’s not.

Spiky Balls

Head is a stress mess, filled with tax forms and crazy requests from financial aid departments and school crap. Please explain how I should get a signature from a kid who is 3000 miles away? I should fly there? Gaarrrr.

It happens every year. Deep breaths. Couple that with trying to finish grades and girlchild starting her AP exams…she cooked, but I had to clean up after her. Repeatedly. Even her lunch stuff. When APs are done, we are having a (heated probably) discussion.

By the time I was done with everything (or as done as I could be, which felt pretty damn done, by the way, but surely isn’t, because I have to call New York this morning, except they’re only available for 4 hours today, and those are the hours I’m at work)…I didn’t have much energy for artmaking…especially when said artmaking required more standing.

There is just nothing exciting about pictures of me tracing pieces. Really boring looking. Except you can see that I have filled in many of the blank spaces now. I stopped there because the next piece I needed to trace was huge and would need its own piece of Wonder Under, and I didn’t have the energy to do that. To cut a new piece, to start tracing something really huge, like a bathtub. I like stopping somewhere logical, so I can figure out where I was the next day, and that was a logical stopping place. So I stopped.

Plus it was past 11 and I was still dealing with drama.

UGH. But I feel like crap this morning, and it’s not just because now I’m stressed about financial aid paperwork (I am) or the thing that happened at school yesterday that’s really freakin’ stupid but that I will still have to manage, or that I’m trying to get everything into their heads before we start testing officially at my school, or that I can’t possibly fit everything in, who the hell was I kidding, plus the headache? Plus maybe someone could tell me if this is really a broken bone in my foot, because I wore different shoes yesterday and holy ouch!

It’s morning now. I’m drinking tea. I’ve eaten my Cheerios. I made lunch. I printed all the stuff I needed for the reproduction unit, so I can get it copied for me and the other teacher. I will bully through Punnett squares for another 4 days and then we’ll be done (well, sort of).

Really, it’s better to try to think of the other things…I am tracing Wonder Under for a new quilt. I need to call the photographer about getting those two done…wait, now I’m back into stress mode, too many things to do, the headache is spreading!

I make lists. Lots of them. I put reminders on my phone. I have post-it notes everywhere. I put papers on my doc cam so I know I’ll see them in the morning.

I’M JUGGLING 50 SPIKY BALLS.

Sigh. I don’t even have time to go through my meditation program this morning. I have duty before and after school for the next two weeks. I hate duty. It’s just more stressful management of crap. Being an introvert and a teacher takes careful management of peace and quiet throughout the day…few and far between.

Deep breath in for four. Slowly let it out for four. Y’all wanna know how I get through it all? There. Breathe. And take Motrin.

Making Time

Grades are due on Tuesday, just progress reports. Really, in the old days, I would have started working on them Friday night and finished them Saturday, never leaving them until Monday night. Eh. Whatever. They’re mostly done. I did get some grading done yesterday, documented some stuff in the gradebook that I keep track of, more to force them to do it then because it’s super-important to understanding science…teaching kids good habits, those that will pay attention. But I’m not done. And sometime around 10 PM last night, I quit being a teacher and started being an artist.

OK, realistically, I never stop being an artist. My brain is always working on art stuff, even when I’m stuck in a 2-hour staff meeting on a Monday afternoon (ugh…today is Monday). It’s one of the things that keeps me going. Car drive, art in head. Waiting in line at the grocery store, art in head. Waiting for the X-ray technician, art in head. They did X-ray my foot on Friday to see if the pain I’ve been feeling is an unlucky broken or fractured tiny bone instead of just a sprain. I vote for a sprain.

So at this point in my life, I just have to make time for art…I don’t have to stand around, pushing fabric around my office, waiting for the muse to appear. She’s always there, waiting. I know I’m lucky for that. But it’s really not luck. It’s making sure that I’m doing something artistic almost every single day. Do that, and she will stay…at least most of the time. Significant depression or illness can drive her away, but if you’re lucky, she’ll stick around.

I went back and looked at the long skinny drawing to see if it needed more. I drew three different cats in pencil around the existing drawing, wanting to fit one in, but not sure if I should. One of them stayed…

Then I proclaimed it done, because honestly, I could keep adding stuff, but it would take longer to finish it, which will be an issue as it is, and I think it would actually detract from what I’m trying to say. So I stopped.

And then I started numbering it…

It actually had more pieces than I thought it would…partially because I drew it to size instead of enlarging it, so I kept drawing these stupid tiny pieces. And then while I was numbering it, I thought about adding some more cracks around, but I stopped myself…for now. Looking at that photo above makes me want to add more though. It currently has 543 pieces. Who knows what it will have at the end. I have some time to think about it, though, because it is not the next one on the list…it’s the one AFTER the next one.

So I started tracing Bathtub 2, which is the next one on the list…

I can’t remember how many pieces it has…hang on…this is partially why I have a blog: to document my own shit because I can’t remember it. (Kathy scrolls back through the blog)…595 pieces. Oh. Hey. Not bad.

Anyway. I traced for an hour, and now my right hand is sore…

Which is kind of pitiful really. Although I did use the same hand for numbering. I didn’t even get 75 pieces done. See the big long skinny tree pieces? Pain in the butt. And yet I keep drawing them. You’d think I’d learn. But no. This one is going to have some big bathtub pieces too.

I’m using the new Wonder Under. It’s very plasticky. It sticks to the paper when I trace, which helps in that the paper doesn’t move as much as it used to, but then it doesn’t let go of the paper either. Kind of different…but the paper’s not releasing from the fusible either, so that’s a good thing. I’ll probably be tracing all week. I’ve got a bunch of stuff on at night this week, so I won’t get a lot of art time, I think…although I do try every night. It doesn’t have to be more than 30 minutes though. Last night, while tracing, I got a thunderstorm running through town…thunder, lightning scared the animals, and then it rained heavily for a while. We need it. Plus it’s kinda cool to be awake really late and see the light flashing and hear and feel the boom…then waiting as the quiet pitter patter turns into waves of rain pounding down.

This morning, though, there are no such natural phenomena…today is just overcast and a bit humid, with sounds of hairdryers and water heaters in the near distance. And a job that calls me, kind of rudely, reminding me how I pay the bills.

She Got Legs…

Yeah so I finished the quilt. No final pictures to be posted until something…um…I think we’re supposed to wait a week or so. Plus it hasn’t been officially photographed. But it took me a few hours last night (ok, almost 3, because I was really slow apparently) to finish the binding and sleeves. I debated putting only one sleeve on it, because it’s not huge, but figured it would still hang better with two, and it’s easier to put it on now than later. All these practical things that flutter through my head.

When I was done, I wanted to draw. Probably (based on how I’m feeling this morning) should have gone to bed, but I’m not sure the brain would have shut down last night. School was a stress ball, not because of kids (well, a little because of kids), but now it’s done and I really don’t want to think about it. It’s my job and it sucks up too much energy. So I headed for the drawing in progress…

Which was being inhabited by a very black, hard-to-photograph cat. Hi Midnight. She’s the same cat that was trying to lie on the quilt earlier (if you’re on my Instagram, you would have seen her). Basically, she wants to be all over my stuff. Like cats do. Clean clothes, the papers I’m grading, the quilt under the machine, the book I’d like to read. Yup. You know if you have them what evil beasts they are, and they love someone who works with fabric and paper. This is not a light table…it’s a cat staging area.

Anyway, I pulled the drawing out from under and she stayed there and I drew around her.

And this is where the shitty day went back to OK, because dammit, I rocked those legs. I did exactly what I wanted to. I am incredibly happy with the damn legs…

Can you tell? And then I stopped, because…well, I could stop there and be done. But that’s unlike me. I want to add stuff to it, like cats and cups of tea and trees growing out of weird places. But I don’t know if it needs it (and she already has stuff coming out of her head). Maybe it’s OK to just stop there and make that quilt.

I don’t know though. So until I do, it’s still in progress. Which is fine, because I think I have to do grades tonight anyway. UGH. OK wait. You keep having these epiphanies about Art Good and Work Semi-Bad, certainly don’t let it take your sanity…so maybe grades yes, because progress reports are due, but maybe also something else. Maybe I’ll pull out the big drawing and work on it tonight. I seem to be on a roll with that.

I’m also considering a new batch of smaller quilts, a la the birds of last year, except maybe cats? I don’t know. I’m also looking around for a summer job, part time, one that doesn’t suck up my brain too badly. Ha. So not teaching. Sigh.

With all that cheeriness in mind (fuck! no! You drew awesome legs last night!), I need to go to work. It’s Friday. I can survive that.

Bound…But Not Done…

So I was a good girl and followed the plan yesterday. I came home after haircuts (me and girlchild), actually made it to the Giant Box Store of Long Line Hell before that (needed to go for the last month, but couldn’t bring myself to drive into the parking lot), unloaded everything, and started cooking dinner. Girlchild walked in the door and pushed me out of the kitchen (I love it when that happens), so I came in here and started finding the stuff I needed to get done before I could bind the quilt. All of that was done and taken care of before dinner, and I managed to get back up off the couch after dinner (oops, now you know we don’t eat at the table…which only happened when the boychild went to college and there was only the two of us), clean the kitchen, sign the girlchild up for college housing (is it OK if I clicked all the music-preference boxes that she hates?…it’s OK, I changed them), and then kicked her out of here so I could iron and trim the quilt and bind it.

The girlchild does actually on occasion resent the time I spend making art. Sigh.

I did actually go through the boxes looking for the bindings Mariah had already cut, but she cuts 2 1/2 inches, then folds in half and I cut 3 3/8 inches and fold in half. I debated it, using hers anyway, but then the fabric I wanted to use, it wasn’t long enough to go around. This quilt isn’t actually tiny…it’s about 22″ x 33″. So I rummaged around some more and found a dark blue, but I didn’t have enough to go all the way around, plus I liked a dark purple near the base, where all the purply triangles are, so I found a purple (ssshhhh…this one is from my stash, not Mariah’s), which made up the missing part.

The camera has totally washed those out…

So I pieced a binding and put it on…

I only spent 2 hours last night working on this…compared to 4 the night before. And another 2 or more on the drawing on Sunday and Monday nights. I figure I work on art somewhere between 10-20 hours on art on a school week. Much much more on a non-school week obviously. It really is a second job.

Anyway, I pinned all the bindings down…

You can see the purple on the bottom…

I wasn’t perfect about where it lined up, because I didn’t want to be. Plus the piecing isn’t perfect either. Also OK. I like it though. I’ll hand sew it tonight at quilt class, and will hopefully finish today. Otherwise it will have a May finish…although that might be good, because I could enter it in shows a month later than if it’s an April quilt. Not that it matters much.

Next on my list? Finish the Oasis drawing, maybe finish the big drawing, then trace the first bathtub…which needs to be done by mid-July, but I’m really aiming for end of June. Then Oasis by mid-July (OK, now we’re sounding crazy again), and the big one by the end of August. That’s the plan anyway. I’m good at that long-range stuff. I’m even good at breaking it up into smaller goals, although I can’t do that at the moment. Progress report grades are due Tuesday and I don’t even have that in my schedule. I’m kinda thinking tomorrow night, even though I’ll be tired…because progress reports don’t have to take as much time as the end of the trimester, and my TA can input stuff today, and maybe I’ll get all the warmups graded today (um, maybe? That might be crazy talking again.). Sigh. See, even in my real job, I have to project out and try to figure out if I can get stuff done. I still have two online assignments I need to get through, but that means I need my prep period (lost today to admin) or my computer…which I could do today, I guess. Sigh. Too Much Crap.

And the stuff that makes me feel better in my world? Making art. Making connections with a few people, troublesome at the moment. People I care about are not happy with me, and it makes me feel like a lame person…although it shouldn’t. It’s all about my putting my foot down on the line between work and the rest of my life, and that has upset some people, because they think I didn’t put it far enough out, but I know it’s what’s best for me. And there aren’t a lot of people out there looking out for me at that level, so I have to do it. And I feel the criticism (hear it even), and I’m just not in the mood to deal with it. I do not know really what it is like to raise kids in a marriage, so I don’t assume I do, but I do know what it’s like to do it without that…and sure, if it’s not a good marriage, that’s a whole ‘nother nest of problems, but I still know you can’t imagine what it’s like to do it alone. And I’m lucky in that their dad is still around, but still…it’s not like doing it alone.

Besides, I think I’m just a strange little beast who feels things differently than most. It’s not easy to explain the artistic drive to those who don’t have it. And mine is strong.

Anyway…binding tonight…here was the dog last night when I was trying to find somewhere to put the ironing board so I could get to the sewing machine…

I really need to clean the office out this summer…that pile of papers and notebooks and boxes near her does not need to be in here.

I’m starting the day feeling a little lost, but also happy to be finishing this quilt. I found out that the other one for this show will be in the summer issue of Fiber Art Now in an article on my art group and the show we’re doing over the summer, Diverted Destruction, so that’s cool. Keep looking at all the good things and let the bad things just fall away. Don’t need them.

She Be Done

I finished it.

Last night. Actually early this morning. After midnight. Almost 90 hours since the end of January. But it’s done almost a month earlier than I was hoping. I need to finish the other little one so I can call the photographer. Because y’all probably want to see nice pictures of it, instead of all I can get, which is this…

Because it’s kinda big and I don’t have anywhere I can lay it out right now, without cleaning a floor, and I really don’t feel like cleaning fucking anything at the moment.

How do I feel about this quilt? It’s nice. It’s pretty. Sigh. And people like it. Maybe that’s all I have to know. I hope it gets into the show for which I made it, because that would be really annoying if it didn’t. I only have one quilt I can enter in that one, because of the silly restrictions. The reality is I might need to make more of these pretty quilts, although probably much smaller if I want them to sell, because this thing ain’t cheap…you can’t put 90 hours into something and sell it for a couple hundred dollars. I mean, you CAN, but it’s fucking stupid.

But I’m telling you, the next three quilts all have fucking uteri in them, so I will feel much better about them. You have to understand that I am currently being ruled by my uterus. It hurts, it bleeds, it is a crazy mess, and all the hormones it and my ovaries are producing so haphazardly are running my emotions all over the map, fucking with my sleep, my brain, everything. Really, I should do…oh shit, I just had some amazing ideas for uterus quilts. Huh.

Crap. I have so much stuff to do right now, and about 25 ideas for drawings just popped into my head. Which makes me want to cry, because my job…the one that pays the bills…it’s really sucking up some major time at the moment and I’m trying not to think about what that might look like next year. Because I’m trying not to assume the worst. I’m trying to just step back and say, yeah whatever. Just tell me what you want me to teach. I’ll come to school every day and maybe I’ll just suck at it. Because I don’t want to spend another 10 hours a week working at a job that really just would take everything if it could. I want those extra hours for art. I might need those extra hours for another job. And it needs to be a job that I don’t take home with me, because I can’t take on anything else at the moment. The emotional crap with having both kids gone and being alone here in this house is bad enough without letting me make art in that time. I need that time in my head for peace. I really do. As I get older, it seems to get worse. I think I spent so many years pushing all that away and doing mom stuff and job stuff and managing everything that after the Big Depression of 2013 (that is still going on some level), I really can’t go back to that. I can’t be that person any more. And honestly? I have a 19-year-old and an almost 18-year-old. I shouldn’t have to be mom at that level any more. And I have enough years into teaching that I shouldn’t have to be working like a first-year teacher. Ha! As we add technology, which I am doing like a crazy person, and change standards. OK. So there is still a major learning curve. But I don’t get excited when you ask me what else do I want to be teaching…I DON’T want to be teaching anything else.

Fuck. I’m a mess. Maybe I should just blow everything off and draw.

Sigh. No, one of those things is financial aid for the boychild. Need that. Another is food and meds for the animals. I need to take care of them. They take care of me. And food for the week. Can’t really blow that off.

Fucking responsible adult brain. I wonder about Picasso. Did he blow off everything else? Probably.

Last night…

I’m watching DS9 on the righthand computer, the cat is sitting on my lap demanding pets, the school laptop is behind her, where I’m grading assignments on Google Classroom, and three teenaged girls are eating all the pizza in the world in the living room. I don’t even use that TV any more…let alone the VCR. If I ever remodel this room…probably there will be another computer monitor up there. I did get one assignment completely graded though. I’m getting better at doing these. It’s hard in the classroom though, because often the free time I have is when kids are responding to something on my computer, so I can’t grade at the same time…and the app for tablets fucking sucks at the moment. The tablet the school gave me won’t even respond at all, and the iPad, if you click on a student, nothing happens. Same with the phone (not shocking, probably the same app). So I just stand there, trying to figure out what to do with my “free” time. I mean, really, it’s about 10 minutes per period, but yes, I’m that fucking efficient. I can grade 6 or 7 warmups in that time period. I can get through 5 assignments on Classroom. Every 5 counts. So I’ve been bringing my school computer home every weekend instead and trying to make sure I get through an assignment a weekend. SUCKS.

I saw this fabric online somewhere and it poked at me for about three days before I decided I couldn’t live without it.

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Plus I want to draw some more stuff like that, right? Tula Pink. Interesting. So then I tried to find it and found it on sale, and that’s when this happened…

I can’t really explain it. But there’s Adventure Time and Walking Dead and wooden rulers? I don’t know. Don’t ask. It’ll end up somewhere. I cannot explain my fabric stash. They were all on sale.

By the way, Earth Stories (or most of it) just opened on Thursday at the Kennedy Museum of Art, University of Ohio, Athens. It will be there through early September. So if you want to see my piece and you’re at Quilt National (where my work will NOT be…can I get a high 5?), then head over there in a free moment.

Because not only do you get a uterus, but it has a fetal skelly in it. That sucker was a bitch to make.

OK. I’m getting some shit crossed off my to-do list right now.

Tip the Balance

Usually I write my blogposts in the morning. I used to write them at night. I’d meditate first and then I’d write. Often it would be 1 or 2 AM when I posted, because I wasn’t sleeping hardly at all for about a year. Now it’s easier to go to bed earlier and write in the morning. I suspect the writing is different because of that, but maybe not. Plus I get a few more hours of sleep…not a lot.

I’m writing tonight, knowing I probably won’t post it tonight. I’m kinda hoping that what I do tonight will modify my mood so that tomorrow morning sounds better, feels better, and according to all the happiness mythology, IS better.

It was a difficult day. Kids were not in the mood to do work, and I was asking them to do work. Not particularly hard work, and the ones who know how to do work and like to do it, or at least know that they have to do it, they were doing it. The others were not. My patience was incredibly thin to start the day (lack of sleep? stress? I don’t know. No art for days?), and by the end of the day, our minimum day, I was at nothing percent. Nada. Nichts. Ain’t nobody home. We had a meeting after school that was incredibly depressing…worrying even. And I know I’m not supposed to worry about future events, because there is no point. I’m not supposed to assume next year is going to suck dingdongs because maybe it won’t. I’m supposed to take one day at a time and not think about the future.

I have to tell you, it is a hard habit to break. But I’ve been telling myself that since the meeting, don’t worry, don’t think about the future (except I’m being asked to think about it, so that makes it significantly difficult), the meeting where I almost broke out in tears, and when I have to meet one-on-one later because I expressed my concerns, I will most definitely cry. Because it’s hard to explain to most people what it’s like to feel money stress hanging over you for years. To feel parenting stress solely on your shoulders. Those that have experienced it, they know. But when you then add the stress of trying to balance the parts of your life, and someone wants to add more stuff that you REALLY don’t want to do to a job that already sucks up so much energy and so many hours, and you have fought to keep your hold on the other part of your life, the art part, even just the part where you have time to do the dishes (I haven’t yet since last week), it’s like a tug-of-war game, but it’s not a game…it’s your fucking sanity, it’s your life. And I’m holding the rope and the knot is slipping over the center line, and everything on the other side of the rope (job, money, time, demands of children, demands of boss) is getting heavier and heavier, pulling harder and harder, yanking at me, pulling my shoulders out of their sockets, and I’d really just like to throw my hands up and let go of the fucking rope, let go and walk the fuck away, turn my back on ALL of it.

Yeah. So I’m meditating tonight. And I was drawing earlier. And I’m trying to at least get a tiny grip on some sort of strength to get me through most of tomorrow, because that’s all I need. And then tomorrow night, I can negotiate for Wednesday. And so on.

Tonight though. Geez. Universe. You suck. Walk the fuck away from me. I am not talking to you.

It’s the morning now. So much for my hope for today. I was apparently a horrible person this morning because I suggested watching Friends would not help learn Physics. Huh. What do I know? I love my kids, but going away to college is something they really need to do, not only for their growth and maturity, but for my sanity.

I drew this last night…

I don’t know what it is about sitting in a bathtub. It reduces stress, makes you feel calmer, but you’re naked, so there’s this vulnerability while you’re in there. You can’t get out quickly, but that’s supposed to be OK. I used to take baths all the time at the old house, prekids, predivorce, prewhatever. The bathtub in this house kinda sucks, plus it’s in the kids’ bathroom. I think if I got into a bathtub right now, I might never get out.

I liked the hand and wineglass in this bathtub drawing…

But wanted to try to make a better drawing…this was more of a quick sketch one night. So that’s where the second drawing came from (it’s actually the fifth). I don’t know if the other one is done. I have to think about it.

I did all that because my head was a mess. I meditated in the middle of it. I didn’t do anything else last night, because by the time I got home from school and did the grocery shopping that I didn’t have time to do Sunday (forgot the toothpaste, dammit), it was late. And then I was trying to pay the deposit for college and that was apparently too much stress for the girlchild, who admittedly is about to lose all her friends (try to tell her they don’t all go away, but she says I know nothing, because you know, I don’t.), because she went off. And I eventually got it paid, but decided that making dinner was not my problem. I was no longer hungry. I could eat a bowl of fucking Cheerios and I’d be OK. I had used up all my parenting dollars for the night. To her credit, she cooked dinner and fed both of us.

I went to bed and hoped that it would be better today. No comment on that. I can’t judge the whole day on the first 40 minutes. I can’t let the first 40 minutes color the entire day.

Here’s the two birds I almost finished over the weekend…

I still need to add some of the lighter green to the tailfeathers on the upper bird. I should have done that in the car on the way home on Sunday, but I don’t think I had the energy. I actually don’t remember the car ride back on Sunday. I know I was in the car, because I’m home now.

Seriously though. One of the things I hate about these moods is that I don’t feel like they are entirely situational…I think a big chunk is hormonal, and that is out of my control. My science brain wants to know what percentage is my hormones and what percentage is whatever other shit causes random sadness and depression. I need a mood pie chart. (I just spent ten minutes looking at semi-disturbing pie charts that either blamed moodiness on spilled gin or the genetics of your parents, both probably factors at some point or another.)

Fuck this. I drew. Tonight I don’t know what I will do, but it won’t be school-related. Sorry Mr. Bossman…you didn’t make me want to spend more time doing it. You just strengthened my resolve to keep the balance, perhaps tip it even further towards taking care of me. (In reality, I will find that difficult to do.)