In-Between Stages

Remember that quilt that got stolen and returned? I’m still salty about that. Makes me want to punch someone in the face. Well, that quilt got into another show, and in packing it up, I found some minor damage, proof that it went through some trauma. I have to admit to not looking very closely at it when I got it back…the stress of having sort of lost it was too much for me to process a lot of info. I pulled it out last night to prep it, and realized that when they yanked it off the wall, off the slat that was bolted to the wall, they put stress on the binding where the sleeve was attached…so a hole there needed to be resewn…

And on the other side as well…

I had to resew the bottom of the sleeve on one corner as well. Not a lot. Just a little. It would be nice to know what happened, but I guess I never will.

There was also some dirt on it, probably from being in the trash, so I had to spot clean some areas…

I think it’s OK. I’d just like the perpetrator to at least pay me back the angel money I gave to the wonderful woman who fished it out of the trash and called me. That seems fair. But life is rarely fair. I’m glad to have it back…it means it gets to go on to another show.

Back to the title of this post…the current quilt is in a real in-between stage at the moment. The plus is that I finished ironing all the Earth parts and everything around it. That means last night it was time to start ironing the fleshy bits…and there are a lot of them. I picked a run of 7 fabrics, but I don’t think I have enough of the lightest and second lightest, which could be interesting. I haven’t really dealt with that yet, because the flesh fabrics start in the 400s and go all the way to the 800s.

You can see there are some large pieces in the two lightest fabrics right there. But this isn’t even all of them. It’s the body and the head, but only one of the arms, because it was almost midnight and I still had 100 pieces to sort through and I still wouldn’t have had time to iron them all without staying up for at least another hour and a half, and that’s not a good plan when you’re still recovering from being sick. I managed school yesterday by sitting down and rolling around the room a LOT, and today will be even higher maintenance…so much so that I was dreaming about how to manage it (ugh, why do I have to DREAM about school as well as live it?), so I don’t need to overdo it at this point. I actually used the sentence, “This is your Come-to-Jesus Moment” in class yesterday. Multiple times. Yeah. I know. Apparently you don’t have to work when the teacher is gone.

Sigh. I sigh a lot for school. Anyway. Tonight I can iron. I can finish finding all the flesh pieces, figure out what other fabrics can work for the level 1 and 2 in the flesh, and then iron them all down. All that after finishing grading yet another assignment tonight. Yeah. Yes. OK.

When I’m sorting through and finding all the actual flesh pieces, there’s all these left over for later…hearts and lungs and hair and whatever isn’t flesh.

There’s a lot of that at the moment. All that will need choosing at some point. Probably not tonight.

So I had to cover all this last night because kittens…

Would destroy this in an instant. I don’t like leaving it at this stage, but hopefully it will be OK. Hopefully I will be too. Meanwhile, I have a parent meeting this morning and a tiring day ahead. Lots of sitting? I don’t know how I will do that. But maybe I will. Based on yesterday, at some point, my body will make me whether I want to or not.

It’s Still OK (or Is It?)…

Signs of recovering delirium…the number of blog titles in a row that have the word ‘ok’ in them. The fact that I don’t know what day it is. Or the date. It’s still February, right? At one point, I duplicated a week in February for our science planning calendar. There was a good reason for it at the time, but I’m wondering if it’s still duplicated and now I will have to repeat a week in February because of that. I had to take a nap after the grocery shopping yesterday. Granted, I had already driven to Encinitas or Carlsbad or somewhere up north to pick up two quilts from a show, so I was already physically doing way more than I had in days, so the nap doesn’t seem so bad, right? Except today I have to go to school, and physically and mentally, that’s a lot more than the grocery shopping.

It’s OK. Really. I have a rolling chair. I can sit in it and maneuver all over the room. I’m sure it will be fine. I might need a nap at lunch. Also fine.

I really was better yesterday, despite the nap.

Saturday night, I finally got all these stitched down…

Now I can start doing random embroidery everywhere on it.

Really, it’s just a plan to use up all the thread in the house. Which will never happen of course. There’s just too much of it. But you can’t say I don’t have a plan.

Yesterday, I even ironed, although that was problematic at some point and I had to sit down.

Somehow in all that, I managed to record an hourlong video of who-knows-what. Don’t worry, Patreon followers…I know how to edit. I’m in the 400s at this point. Not halfway yet, because I got dizzy…and gave up…and went to bed early…but close to halfway. Progress anyway.

I finished the artist book and submitted it.

Can’t say this is my thing.

However, one of the reasons I’m in this group is because they make me do things that aren’t my thing. It’s called Ominous Nature. We’ll see if she thinks it’s too disturbing for the library. Since I have I think THREE more possible library exhibits in the future? It would be good to know what she thinks is disturbing. Sigh. Or I should just become a nature artist. Funny, I think of myself as a nature artist a lot of the time.

Oh yeah. All the fabrics I’ve used on the quilt so far. My brain is still on bouncy mode.

Wish me luck today. Wish my students luck too. And someone save me from a 2-hour staff meeting.

She’s cute, but this is after an hour of early morning rampaging, being kicked out of the bedroom, then let back in an hour later due to crying baby noises, then this is my laundry basket…

before she knocked it over. Uh huh. Evil. And yet, when asleep, adorable.

One of them was on my feet last night. Not sure which one. I can tell them apart by feel…their fur is different.

This one. This one got a water bottle sprayed in his face about four times last night for petulant barking.

Barking at coyotes is understood. It does not need to continue for 20 minutes past the coyote incursion into our sound space. He still likes me this morning apparently…

It’s questionable on my end.

OK, well seems like systems are mostly back to normal. I’ll need naps, I’m still in recovery mode, but there is progress toward normal function. Which means progress toward more art function.

For now? Progress to school. Where that rolling chair is. OK? OK. No more titles with OK.

Sometimes We Just Have to Be OK…

I’m like warmed-up tea you left in the microwave, a little chilly with that gross skin on top. Really you should just throw it out and start over, which is how I feel about this last week. Not an option though. I spent the last two days at home, mostly in bed or on the couch. Today I have graduated, albeit briefly, to the chair in the office, which is a little too upright for how I’m feeling at the moment. The fever has abated, though, and I’m eating enough food to keep a human alive, which helps when you’re a diabetic. I’m still weak, still stuffed up, still coughing up blobs of inhuman crap…well, it comes from a human, so it must not be inhuman. Outside, it’s raining, pretty heavily at the moment. The big dog is in here with me, because in her old age, weather is frightening. She keeps looking up at me like I can stop it. Like I can stop anything, sweet girl. I can’t.

Yesterday I was well enough to grade a whole host of minor stuff and stalk my students on their computers, shutting down games and stupid Google searches for stuff that had nothing to do with what they were supposed to be working on. Monday will be a Come-to-Jesus moment for all of them. I need to go to school at some point this weekend to pick up all the crap that’s there. Or do I? I have plenty here still to grade: the assessments that require brain power, of which I’ve had none for three days. Questionable whether I have any today. The job goes on.

I am better. That is good.

Wednesday night was a SAQA meeting in this library space that looks like a cell. I guess I’d be glad to have my fabric stuff if I were in jail.

Seems like it wouldn’t be allowed. I didn’t get a ton done, but I got some…

Just cutting stuff out. Got more to iron. Maybe standing will be on the agenda later today. I wasn’t feeling well then either…it was day 2 at that point…I didn’t know how bad it would get.

That’s kinda where my body gave up on this cold thing. I thought I would be OK the next morning. In fact, I felt fine until I tried to stand up. And that’s when I realized I couldn’t go to work. Luckily a sub picked up the job and my team printed all my stuff. I’m pretty sure I was delirious when I recorded a video (no face showing!) for my students, but then I went back to bed for 6 hours.

There were a lot of animals around…

Thursday night, my fever picked up again, after being gone all day, so I preemptively called off sick for Friday, something I never do…two days off? WTF? Oh well. The body isn’t going to heal if I don’t let it.

Lots of lying around with animals ensued.

Some sleep. I read a whole book. I graded stuff. I watched some TV. I spaced out for hours.

Coughed up buckets of phlegm. Bleck. But then Friday evening, I started to feel almost human. No fever. Ate some stuff. Not a lot. Managed to unpack two quilts that were just returned to me. One of them had this on one of the hanging slats. Hmmm. No notice of that anywhere else I’d seen. Interesting.

Well at least I got that, right?

I managed to finish the last little bit of this weird thing…

I’ll get some help photographing it later today. Need someone to hold a towel or something behind it.

Fancy-ass photography methods.

Otherwise, continue to recover. Continue to grade. Hope for enough energy and presence of mind to iron some fabric. If not, read another book. We can’t always be amazing. Sometimes we just have to be OK.

Be OK…

Hmmm. It’s morning. I’m ill. I’m tired, despite more sleep than usual. I read an article about three of my former students, one sentenced yesterday for 15 years for killing the other 2 in a car accident. Geez. As teachers, we hope we only see the good news, the kids going to college and being successful, and I do see some of those. This one, it’s a shock…but maybe also not. It certainly makes me walk into some classes today with a new lens. You want them all to be OK, to realize how to be a good adult, but they don’t all do that. Sad. Very sad. We really do care about all of them, mostly, even the assholes. Although there’s some I’m glad I’ll never see again. Those are always the ones who come back and tell me they finally figured it out. I do a lot of deep breathing sometimes with a few of these kids. Today will hopefully be easy. Yesterday, they were tuned out, still asleep from their 3-day weekend, shocked when they realized I was going to make them DO something by themselves based on what I just talked about. Oh yeah baby.

Today they will be researching in groups, so some will be motivated and some won’t, as always. But I don’t have to talk all period, like I did yesterday. I might even sit down, based on how I’m feeling at the moment. It’s not a good day to be out sick. None of them ever are, but this is the intro to the assessment, so…well, hell, I have a real hard time not coming to school. I come back and they’ve done nothing and it is just frustrating. So I’ll go and hopefully the meds will kick in soon.

I came home from tutoring yesterday (I sat all through tutoring, just moved from one kid to another) and laid on the couch for at least an hour, reading a graphic novel and trying to find my brain. It eventually worked. I ate a little and talked to the girlchild, but then was able to grade one class of last week’s assessment. I really didn’t want to go to bed without making art. It just sucks. So I rallied and found about 45 minutes of ironing strength.

Enough to iron the Earth together…

It’s not much, but it’s something. I needed something. Something creative.

Right now I need a brain. Some energy. Possibly someone to drive me to school. Nah. I’m good. Am I? Fuck. It’s not the flu…just some cold. I should be able to survive that. More tea. Sitting a lot. It’ll be good. A nap during lunch. Oh wait, kids are coming to take quizzes during lunch. Damn. OK. Well. Napping during prep. When we need to write an entire unit before next Wednesday. Minor issue. Yah. It’ll be fine.

Wherever It Works Best…

It was a hard day yesterday, lots of driving, lots of memories of my cousin. She was only 57 and really, honestly, the sweetest (yet still sarcastic and stubborn) of all of us. Church doesn’t do much for me (some of them are beautiful and all), but the priest did a good job despite all that, and spending time with family I hadn’t seen in years afterwards was a good thing. The drive was long, but being a holiday, it could have been much longer. I walked back in the door at home at about 3:30, and walked out 10 minutes later for MY church, the outdoors…

Although to be clear, I don’t do gods either. So really all those Mother Nature/Earth Mother quilts I do? Those are what’s in my head. She’s harsh, she’s beautiful, she’s uncontrollable, and we’re killing her. Or she’ll overcome all our stupidity and let the cockroaches rule next time. But the priest said one thing that’s true…my cousin will live on in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts. We debated some of the other stuff said on the way home, just the wording. They’ve changed the Lord’s Prayer again and I don’t know it any more. That’s probably OK. Anyway, may we all remember Jennifer wherever it works best for us.

For me, it’s out here.

With these sweet dumbasses.

We finally found the plant that makes the dogs smell like maple syrup…

California cudweed…it’s everywhere. And now we need pancakes. I don’t actually like maple syrup. At all.

The pond is back…there’s been enough rain for it to exist…

We don’t feel like we’ve had enough rain this year…I think it was all too early. We need more.

Anyway, so then I made dinner and graded a bunch of stuff, and slowly realized the tired spacey feeling I had was actual illness. I changed out of my pajamas and drove to the pharmacy for “the real stuff,” as the guy said, because I’m not going to make it through this week without medication if that’s the case. I know I sat by someone with a cold somewhere in the last 4 days (besides my students), so apparently being exhausted and stressed out let my immune system fall short. It happens a couple of times a year, unfortunately. So I didn’t make any art last night…I went to bed two hours early to try to make up for getting up too early yesterday and to hopefully give my body some rest to overcome this thing.

Hopefully tonight I’ll rally a bit, finish the book project, maybe do something else. I’m so behind on everything. I can’t focus. I want to be ironing fabrics, so maybe, if I have the energy, I’ll work on that. And more grading. Fun stuff.

Not My Thing…

‘Tis early and there is not enough caffeine in the world. And yet I rise. Not in a good way…just…I managed to get out of bed and get showered and dressed. A challenge met.

I’m driving to Long Beach today for my cousin’s funeral thing in a church. Not a burial, not a reception, just the church part. I don’t know when the rest is happening. No one does. I’m still pretty weirded out that she’s dead, but I know this shit happens, especially as we all start getting old. I’m starting to write this in my office in San Diego, but have to leave soon to drive the parentals, so that means I’ll probably either finish it up there, sitting, waiting (churches are really not my thing), or I’ll come home and finish.

Saturday we tried natural dyes…

The teacher prepped all the fabrics for us…

We did paper too…and a little stitching resist…

Some dye for that, logwood?

Pulling it out of the dye…

I unwrapped somebody else’s because she grabbed mine. I knew it wasn’t mine because I didn’t recognize the leaves…

These are still wet…

Drying at home…

The paper was more impressive…

Finished grading the projects…

Kitten cleaning kitten…

Saturday night drawing while watching a band…

Here it is…

Sunday pups…

And the old lady with Nova…

Sitting in a Starbucks…going to go to church soon. Not something you hear from me often. I’m tired…art tonight?

My Brain Needed Somewhere Else to Land…

Happy V Day to all! I want to say, well, except the assholes, but maybe they need a Happy V Day and that’s why they’re assholes. Now you see how I can teach middle school, although I already know (a) I didn’t get enough sleep because I got sidetracked by making things and (b) I’m missing one SECA today. So it’ll be a challenge, but I think I can do it. It’s not like I have a choice. But here are two examples of my day job. First, it’s the only place I can think of where the words “Then don’t smell the scissors” might come out of my mouth. Followed by this…

SIGH. I only have one period left of these to sit through. And there were some very good ones that restored my faith in humanity. And learning. And schools. And children. This was not one of them. This is what happens when you copy a bunch of shit off the internet that you don’t really understand and then you try to read it and instead of figuring out how to pronounce all the words you copied, you start each word nice and loud and then you are whispering at the end because you don’t have a clue how to say it. WIScon(si…).

I will hopefully be done with these tonight, and that will just leave a bunch of smaller things to grade and a pile of makeups, which will be even bigger by next Friday. Oh. Also an assessment they’re doing today. Shit. OK. Well. Hmmm. This weekend is a clusterfuck already. I guess it will be more of one.

This is why I stayed up way too late last night. My brain needed somewhere else to land or it would never fall asleep.

I did hang out with my stitching group last night, including one member who rarely shows up and another who had moved away for 13 years and came back. THIRTEEN YEARS. Wow. And we’re still meeting. That’s cool. I think I’ve been in this group since I was pregnant with the girlchild, and she’s 22 1/2 now. So that’s a thing. I got to work on Folk Tails, my Sue Spargo Block-of-the-Month from 2015 that might never ever get done…

The cheetah is almost done…but there’s some wiggy flowers that go in the block next. Then I might sew this to the larger bit? Or do I have to finish the other two October blocks to do that? I might. It’s not a fast quilt when you only work on it one night a month and then you didn’t do even that for most of 2019. It might travel to the National Parks with me in April…or it might be too big for that. Hmmm. Hard to say. We’ll see.

Then I came home and graded stuff, one more class of the projects. It was after 11 when I finished. But no way was I going to bed without something. The really lucky bit of going to my stitching meeting was my knowledgeable bookmaking friend, who gave me multiple solutions for how to connect the two pieces I’ve been working on. She was very helpful. So now I have to decide how to do it. Easy? Medium hard? Really hard? Sorta hard but kinda creative? We’ll see. I didn’t do that last night, though. More brain power than I had. Instead I meditatively stitched shit down…

Still working on just getting it all attached so I can take it off the cutting matt and do some more decorative stuff…although I guess I did a little on those leaves. Most of it is stitched down now, which is good, because something good should come of staying up too late. I just kept stitching, thinking “just one more” and then I looked at the time and went “oh shit, no more” and went to bed.

It’ll be fine. It’s Friday. It’s Valentine’s Day (makes middle-school kids crazy). It’s the day before another 3-day weekend. And we’re giving them an assessment that’s HARD. Well, unless you’ve been listening, in which case, it’s pretty damn easy. Gonna go buy a donut reward for the class that earned them, so at least one group of kids won’t totally hate me. Wait. The line at the donut store today might be hellacious. Sigh. We’ll see. I’ll do a driveby.

Most Definitely…

Sitting in meetings sucks my brain out of my head and spits it out on the floor. Especially meetings where I have to pay attention just in case important stuff is said and then someone is droning on and on about something totally irrelevant and my brain just shuts off anyway. I spend a lot of time in meetings…though not as much as I spend in the classroom. Yesterday was a frustrating day in the classroom. “Give us the answers so we can copy them.” “I’m not going to do that.” Well you can guess how that ended. It’s OK. I go back today after a night of semi-sleep (ugh) and I refigure how to make things happen and then they happen. Huge classes full of needy kids. Make it hard. And yet we still do it.

You’d think I’d come home and be done with all of it, but grades are coming up and I need to get stuff done. So I graded one assignment and input it into the gradebook, and then did another period of the longer assignment…and put it in the gradebook, and I’m seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, because I saw a few more A videos (oh hallelujah), which helps me think I didn’t totally flail (it wasn’t me!), and I’m more than halfway through the pile, so that is a good thing.

But there’s no way in hell I was going to get to sleep last night without some artmaking. I did put together my Patreon video for February first. Then I graded. Then I arted. I started at 10:30 at night. I had three to choose from, but one deadline is looming. So I decided I didn’t like one of the book ‘pages’ I’d made, the first one. It’s awkward, not well-thought-out. I could just use it, but I had a third page cut out that I hadn’t used, so I refined the first one into this…

I like it a lot more. I didn’t glue it together last night. First of all, it was late and sleep is a thing. Second of all, I’m not sure I’m done. So I’ll look at it again tonight and then decide, and then glue it together.

So the one on the right is probably a reject. Now I just need to figure out how to attach them together. And then photograph them without Game of Thrones in the background. Minor issue.

This morning is tiring already. But good news about a new show…that I can’t tell you about yet. But soon. I think.

Meanwhile…lots of furry love last night. This was while I was eating dinner and grading stuff.

They really do love each other. It’s sweet.

This one has been a barky asshole lately. Granted, it’s because of the coyote fest that’s going on every night, but sheesh.

He is probably the number 1 sleep disruptor, followed by my hot flashes and then maybe my bladder. No mockingbird at the moment…we can thank the owl for that, I think. I can sleep through the owl, who was in another backyard tree last night. I think he likes us. He? She? Don’t know. An owl box is on our list though.

These two old ladies…

Room for one human (maybe) on the couch. That is where I was sitting while I was grading. I was also playing fetch with Luna, who brought me the rattle mouse at least 10 times to throw for her. She’s a cat. Who fetches. Very cute.

OK, today I torture children by making them think again. I am pure evil. Then I meet up with friends…always a good thing, plus stitching will be involved. Then home to NOT grade another round? I think? Ugh. I think I need to do some of it today. I’ll figure it out. More art before bed though…most definitely.

Getting Loud in Here…

I have a lot of things in my head this morning. Too many things, probably. As usual. I’m having that issue artistically as well…too many projects going on at once. I do much better with just one at a time. Drawings are fine. They’re short and don’t usually require a ton of brain power outside of the actual drawing time. Right now, I have a bunch of projects talking to me and it’s getting loud in here.

So last night, I worked on two of them. It meant I didn’t grade anything. I input grades. I tutored earlier. I graded stuff in class. I just didn’t work on the projects at home. I wanted to art instead. It was late anyway…after tutoring, I had chiropractor and pilates, so by the time I was done with dinner, it was late.

So I did some of the stitch down on this…

Then I’ll do embellishment…

This is just for fun. For something different. I like the idea of it.

I wanted to make sure I did some of the other art stuff as well…and there was no way I was finishing all the stitch down last night, so I timed it off the show I was watching. When it was done, I moved into the other room to work on the current art quilt. I’ll come back to this tonight.

This is moving pretty slowly. It doesn’t help to be gone for three nights. This coming weekend isn’t any better. But it works to iron for an hour or so each night. I think last night I managed 38 minutes before midnight…but it’s 38 minutes of progress.

I ironed an asteroid and some missiles and a volcano. That’s it. Not much. More tonight. So many yellows!

I finished the 200s and did some of the 300s. Only 600 to go! No worries. I also have an artist book I’m working on, but my brain exploded over that last night, so I’ll wait to post on it later, after I’ve made some more decisions.

I resized a bunch of pictures of art we saw in Joshua Tree, but I don’t have time to post them this morning, because I have to find the artists’ names and possible links, and that takes more time than I have. I will get to them…but I did draw while I was there…this was after hiking…the rocks inspired the woman…

This was the night we got there…full moon coming, bunnies in the yard…

None of those cactus anywhere to be seen…and this one the following night…

Inspiration comes from many places.

OK, school, then union meeting, then make Patreon video, and grade stuff? And then artmaking. Full day. As always. Looking forward to the artmaking stuff, that’s for sure.

My Brain Is a Time Bomb*

Oh hello, Friday. Thank you for coming. Can I offer you some tea? Sure, we all want donuts, but they’re not good for us. How about a healthy snack instead? Fuck healthy? Well, we all feel that way sometimes, but in the long run, I think you need to be making better choices than…um…Friday? Hello? Those donuts are for my students. Could you…um…Friday… WOW. OK then. Kids, I’ll bring you something next week. Friday has gone off the rails.

Oh yeah. I have a 3-day weekend. It’s cool. I’m even going somewhere and doing art and hiking and all the things I like. I’m not thinking about the 2- to 4-hour drive that might be facing me at the end of the day. It’ll be FINE. I’m not considering the shitload of grading I have to do in the next week or so. Also FINE. It will be. I’m sure. I’m also not thinking about the crazy I will have to deal with in class today…it’s OK, because by the end of the day, I’ll have like 10 kids absent in each period because their parents will have pulled them out of school early. I wish I could do requests on those. But no. Not appropriate apparently.

Yesterday, the boychild and I bought a couple of trees with a gift certificate I’ve had lying around since Christmas 2008. Yeah. I know. I’m slow. He’s going to plant them this weekend, so lemons and avocados finally. I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted a lemon and an avocado tree. This is cool. I’m excited. OK, so it’ll be 3 or 4 years before we get an avocado. No worries. Next a fence! Or a stream bed! These things are all good. No more grass in the front yard. No pictures yet either…after he gets them in the ground.

I graded for a while after that and then went to a late-night pilates class, which I think I will feel later today. Then ate dinner super late and did some art-related stuff…some really good news on the art front is coming. Sometimes the universe comes around and hugs you. Like a kitten…

Yes, that’s Luna’s leg under Nova’s chin. They rampaged before and after this. Luna is a real piece of work. She’s the most hyper and into-everything nonstop cat I’ve ever had. Nova is still a kitten, but way more chill…

Although she does beat the crap out of her sister on occasion.

After dinner, I tried to focus on art stuff. I tried to pack. I tried to resist sugar. I succeeded at that one. I sort of packed. I drew a little. Brain dump. I think I’m only doing two of these.

I might change my mind later and still do the third one, but it’s fine with two and I don’t need to kill myself for this show.

I didn’t iron. I didn’t do any handstitching. Both were things I wanted to do, but it was late and I was tired and I went to bed and slept and then couldn’t sleep because my brain started to worry about everything in the world. You know when that stops? When I’m making art and when I’m hiking. Both things I will be doing in a little over 12 hours. All good. So yeah, Friday. You’re a donut hog, but you lead into the good stuff.

*Robert DeLong w K. Flay, Favorite Color is Blue