Zebras Rule the World

Middle day of a weird overfull week. It doesn’t chill out this week. I think ever. It’s just full. I get my head around one day at a time. Then last night, I didn’t sleep because my brain was wandering into next year and that’s just a mistake right now. Pros! Yesterday, I got to buy lunch away from school and sit outside with a bunch of co-teachers I don’t get to eat with because we have different lunches. I might get to do the same today! And today does not have a meeting on top of interviews on top of other things that had to be done.

I came home after a meeting and 5 interviews, 2 on Zoom (weird but understandable, although am I old? It’s hard to hear and my principal sneezed during a very important answer.). I had to edit a letter to be sent by multiple staff about next year’s principal choice, then find some other stuff for the current principal. Then I made chai tea and finished my book. I refused to work after that. I feel like I did all the hours. Plus testing is exhausting. It’s walking around the room 700 times and trying to focus on anything (cleaning? organizing? grading? planning? The last two are harder in this situation.). For 3 1/2 hours. Trying to keep the kids from flipping out for 3 1/2 hours. Most of them are fine. Lots of sleeping. I’m good with that. Puzzles! That was a blessing from my math teacher. They were engrossed. I had to make a puzzle board (well, I pulled one of the bases for roller coasters so we could slide it under the puzzle). It was fine. Today it will be less of a novelty and the test is harder and shorter, so it will probably be more difficult to keep them chill.

Today I also have a union meeting after school and then book club (that I just finished the book for), so full, but ending on a good note. Although it’s a murder mystery. So is it good? I just don’t know.

The other good thing (I’m really trying to get out of the mud brain here) is that I am on the stitchdown phase of the quilt. It won’t go fast, but it’s faster than the ironing was. I got the background pieced and the whole thing ironed down on Monday night…

She’s big, beautiful, and complicated. Love it.

Last night, I set everything up so I could start the stitchdown. I listen to podcasts or music and just stitch. I should probably remember to stand up more, but I don’t.

I got a healthy chunk of the bottom left corner done. The machine is behaving; that’s a plus. There’s just a lot that needs to be stitched down. I’m guessing 6-7 hours. Based on my evening plans for the rest of the week, um, yeah. Hopefully by the weekend. That would be good so I can sandwich it over the weekend and start quilting. Can’t guarantee it though. That’s a lot of stitching after meetings. We’ll see. I can only do what I can do. And I can only blow off the day job so much before I’m not prepared to do the things I need to do to teach. My brain wants to be on vacation, but I’m not yet.

There was a comment during the interview process yesterday about teachers who are referral factories. I feel that way with a couple of my classes. It’s been a rough year. I meditated last night, reflected on what to change for next year, felt some bad stressful shit, tried to sleep after that. Hmmm. That’s a no. OK. Well. It’s funny, I’ve got the science down; there’s still revising and planning changes for next year, but it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as it was for this year. This year was just bad. I’m so burnt out that the thought of doing a weeklong training during the summer made me completely shut down. I want a long expanse of time where I don’t have to work this many hours, fall asleep worried about planning or behaviors. And that’s the other part. This year has made me feel like I’m a shitty teacher in so many ways, and I know I’m not. I check in with co-teachers and we are all struggling. Phone behaviors, computer behaviors, lack-of-work behaviors, post-COVID behaviors, parent behaviors and attitudes. It’s exhausting. One of the things I have to do right now for one of my students is take a photo every time he falls asleep in class and send it to mom. Because she doesn’t believe me? I don’t know. I’m just tired. Very very tired. And today? Sad. Overwhelmed sad. I do love most of teaching. I have not loved it this year. Well, even that’s not true. Some of the teaching/learning has been awesome. So focus on that today. I suspect crying during testing is not preferred. I’m not testing…the kids are. I really shouldn’t be crying.

We did Natural Selection Comics to show understanding. I do have some absolutely awesome ones that I’ll share later, but these two…honestly, they both made me laugh, and the zebra one did OK on his grade. The other one? Totally off topic. But still made me laugh. And then hold my head.

Zebras rule the world. Even better, inside is white. I know he means the outside between the stripes, but I really really wanted to write, nah, inside is red, full of blood, dude. Still giggling.

This one though…

Does he have a pet snake named Fluffy? I just don’t know. Certainly there’s some interesting things going on here. None of them on the topic of natural selection. None at all. Nope. Gonna have to ask him some questions tomorrow.

So that’s it for today. Finish the first round of state testing. Get lunch with friends. Try to be productive for the second half of the school day (ha!), then union meeting, home, eat leftovers, book club, stitching with podcasts, sleep. Actually sleeping would be nice, because I mostly skipped that step last night and now the other eye is twitching in off time to the first one. Very distracting. There’s stitching though! Getting this quilt done so I can get to the next one…since the world is sucking my free time away from me. Yup. Gonna grab that back somehow for next year. Gotta figure that out.

Sustaining the Unsustainable…

OK, I obviously made it back from Phoenix and QuiltCon, and there are more quilt pictures, but I don’t have time to mentally (or digitally) process them yet. I came home and went right into school/house mode, which is why I wanted to leave in the first place. We had a good time hanging out, which is nice. It’s been a long couple of years without much of that, and we definitely need more of it. Spring Break! Yeah that’s 44 days away. So is seeing my daughter again! Woo hoo! And hopefully some quilt stuff…then camping and hiking with the man. I think I planned all but two days of my Spring Break, so nothing else will get done…at all. Not a bad plan until I get there and the grading is not done.

Which is part of what I’m panicking about now (again)…grading and an upcoming field trip. Once we get there, everything will be fine, but right now, it’s just crazy.

So what’s been going on? Well here’s my QuiltCon guild in front of that same donation quilt…

A few were photoshopped in…I made it to Phoenix just in time for this photo, but some did not.

The man drove for a bit on the way back, so I got to work on those damn flowers.

Apparently a year ago I was cutting them out of wool, so that’s a year working on this. I am not fast.

That said, I am almost done with the 4th type of flower…then just 2 more types to go.

I’m also still doing Molli Sparkles’ Cut-It-Up quiltalong. This is block 4, can’t remember what it is…hang on…

X Plus…well that bottom one sure is busy. I like it. I cut out 6. They’re not hard to piece, just don’t have a lot of time at the moment.

They’ve already posted Block 5, so shockingly, I am behind. It’s OK. I will survive. As my copyeditor is emailing me about the next readthrough and school is imploding into a mushroom cloud of to-dos. Yeah.

I did come back to my own quilt, which has a deadline, that honestly, I may not meet. I took a picture of these fabrics to remind me what I used for this plant, because there’s another one that’s more complicated further up the body, and I didn’t want to find those pieces now.

I often reuse fabrics in a quilt for continuity. That’s why I keep them all together until the quilt is finished.

I also started working on the sky, which has a sunset in it. Or a sunrise. Nah, it’s a sunset.

Because why keep it simple?

Sunday night’s progress…

And Monday night’s…

I got all of the sky done except for those two and the things zooming around the sky…which I finished last night…

Well, almost. I need to do the actual meteor and the rocket. I did the clouds and flames behind them. Then I get to start on the body and all the plants.

Kitten has taken to climbing the mountain of batting to survey me from up above. She’s trying to get up into the shelves (I’m not sure why)…

She usually hangs out behind that crazy pile. I need to remodel this room: new carpet, pull out the wallpaper, get rid of the popcorn ceiling, new lighting, maybe new slider doors and a bigger, nicer window, plus STORAGE. It’s on my list. Lots of things are on my list, but apparently my septic system needs a new baffle wall, which is probably expensive and will mean I don’t remodel anything.

School is all labs this week. Exhausting but good for the kids. Not as good for us…

But if they are paying attention, this helps them learn.

This is true.

Hey! My owl box has an actual OWL…a Barn Owl. We were going to pull it down to see if it needed cleaning, but then an owl swooped out. I’m hoping it has babies. And the bunnies in our yard are annoying me by eating all the new green leaves so they will have to run fast. Sigh. Predator/prey relationships disturb me, but I also recognize their necessity. It does make me worry about trimming the trees though. It’s not like I can afford to do that right now anyway…not until the baffle wall is solved.

Anyway, the owl part is exciting. School today is an exhausting mess of move this, clean this, move that, listen to instructions (them, not me), then a meeting I really didn’t want but let myself get bullied into. Fun stuff! Do everything for your students! And then more! Yeah, it’s not sustainable…we keep saying that and then we keep on sustaining it. But more ironing tonight (after grading)…that’s a good thing.

Sexy Metal…

The alarm went off. In my dream, I was measuring out spaces for desks, but someone had moved my classroom outside, on cobblestones outside some very old (read, not found in California) building. There were sea lions nearby and a million places for kids to disappear into and a billion things for them to be distracted by, plus they were all coming from different places and we had to find room for all their luggage. Teacher dreams, man. Oh yeah, the desks had to be 6 feet apart, but ALL the school was outside, so I could only have this square of cobblestones and all the desks had to fit in that space. Ironically, I never had to do this last year, because I was in the hell they call Zoom classes, where all the desks are far apart or nonexistent and all the children are distracted.

So many levels of weirdass trauma with this pandemic.

Anyway, my weekend was busy, but I did finish all my progress report grades, although sometimes I wonder what I’m teaching and whether I’m effective or not…

Sixth metal? I’m hoping. Although I still don’t know what he’s talking about. Welcome to my world. The assignment I thought was so easy last week was apparently more confusing than I thought. Ah well. So be it. One of the wonders of teaching a school that is 90% or more English language learners.

So what else went on? Well, I traced a lot…over three hours on Saturday night…

We went to a friend’s birthday party early in the evening, and then the man watched his show and I listened to mine. When I’m tracing, I really need something that is mostly listening, not much watching.

No closed captioning, no foreign language, no action without words. Last night, I only got a little over an hour in…more like normal.

I am a quarter of the way through, but as I was tracing last night, I found a whole section I hadn’t numbered, so now, instead of 1329 pieces, I think there are 1372. Stay tuned for more brain farts.

This weekend was also the start of the Surface Design Association online conference, which I signed up for, and happily listened (and watched) to many artists talk about their work, one while driving to pilates, another while finishing grades, and one while prepping lunches. I miss most of it this week, because it’s all during school hours, but they will be recorded. And Saturday morning will be another batch of webinars I can listen to in real time. Not ideal, but doable. When I wasn’t grading or cooking, I was doing the brainless stuff I can handle at the moment…tracing stuff for blocks of the month, which keep me occupied when I don’t have the strength or energy to stand and trace.

That’s all freezer paper for a block of the month on mushrooms. I’m fully a year behind and totally OK with that. It’s a time filler. I don’t make art every hour of the day. My brain needs a break from ALL the things. Hence working on this in the evenings…

Still not done with the 3rd version of the flowers. Time-fucking-consuming. But relaxing as well. Do this stitch over and over again on 4 flowers. Then do the next stitch.

I also worked on this a little bit…a different part of my brain.

Look at the pile of fabrics provided. What do you see? How do they all go together? She needs an eye and IDK what else. More flowers. Perhaps that is a hat and not hair, and she still needs hair. A bird on her head maybe. I think they’re all facing one direction though. We’ll see. This one is different than the other ones…an entire scene instead of just a woman. Interesting.

I didn’t go to Road to California, but one of my quilts did…the left one in that block of five.

I also had a meeting of one of my art groups (on Zoom). I miss that group in person, but it was a really long meeting too. We juried new members in, so I had spent time earlier in the weekend reviewing their work and their statements and taking notes. Usually we jury just from work, but it was nice to hear them talk about their practice. Definitely a plus.

I have another art meeting (on Zoom) on Wednesday. Busy week. Long week. We’re back to 5 days of school finally. I’m just so tired all the time. I go to bed earlier than I used to, per doctor’s orders, but I don’t seem to sleep well…probably because I’m rearranging desks on cobblestones. YES, I know it sounds like rearranging chairs on the Titanic. Fully Fucking Aware of that. It’s fine. This week in science is demos and labs and rock stars. It all makes sense. Art is oil pastels. Hearing that I might have to continue to teach an elective next year…I wish I had one that was less labor- and brain-intensive. Art is hard. Teaching art is harder. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. It’s not like teaching anything is particularly easy, but there’s this sense of talent/skill that plays in art and I just don’t have the energy for dealing with fixed mindset and art for only one period. If I didn’t have to do science as well? Maybe. We have an art teacher though and I don’t want to be her. Anyway. I get no choices on these things.

Yeah. That. You can’t tell that’s what I’m thinking because my mask is on. OK. Gotta go to school with pennies and magnets (lab!) and hopefully grade a bunch of things about balloons that don’t talk about sexy metals, and then meet with my team about field trips (what??? Finally!), and then come home and do more of that tracing thing. Plus bingewatch that show I’m listening to, because it disappears on January 31 and that isn’t that far away. Plus get enough sleep and exercise. Got it.

Full of Complicated Bits…

My calendar (a gift from the girlchild) currently says “It’s Almost Fucking Christmas” (legit), and then I realize it’s still on November and we are now in December. Yikes. This holiday always creeps up on me, mostly because it requires more thought than I have the the brain power for this time of year. I find myself driving home from school trying to think of a cool gift for (insert name of relative here) and flailing because all I can think about is how much grading I have to do or how I’m going to make this part of the curriculum work.

So yeah. Hello December. Nice to see you? Eh.

I’m still ironing this quilt together…and I will be for a long time, especially if I am only doing an hour a night…

Plus the figures are kind of tiny and full of complicated bits, so they take longer anyway. Last night, I didn’t even have a full hour, because I did counseling, then the gym, then graded one class worth of the latest assignment…so here’s 51 minutes of ironing…

Honestly, the little girl’s face was the healthy chunk of that…complicated. I’m on Figure 2, though…and the parts are bigger so they’re easier to fit together…hopefully. I am not finishing this any time soon, though.

One of my art groups is talking about themes for a show in 2022, and nothing has resonated with me so far. Same with their last theme. I think it’s just me, though. My brain is cranky about themes right now. They tend toward collaboration and I’ve never really had a positive experience with collaboration. We’ll see.

I did finish my cover page for the current science unit…

Which is good, because I didn’t finish the last one. And this is a short unit.

This is a kid version of a volcano.

No really. That’s a volcano. I’m a middle-school teacher, so I automatically see a penis, but it’s a volcano. It’s kind of like when people find penises in my art when they’re not actually there. The difference is that I KNOW I’m doing that and they don’t. It’s OK…no one’s censored me (that I know of) for a while.

Well, my brain is now processing Christmas gifts, a shooting in Michigan, the stupidity of some politicians, other states to add to my list of dumbassery (the current quilt is named “Fuck Texas” in my head, even though it’s just Texas politicians and I know that, but now I will need to add multiple states to the list of Fuck them? Probably yes.). Also I have to teach all the things today, including dealing with 23 stuffed animals and a lab that involves water, so that is chaos…and exhausting…but then I will exercise and make pancakes to freeze for breakfast (honestly I don’t know if I will get to that today) and iron some more. So that’s something to look forward to.

Scissors Cutting Wonder Under…

I feel like I should follow up the last post with It’s Monday! Like you don’t know what day it is. It IS Monday. Pros: It’s a new week, I finished grading all the science units AND projects over the weekend, and it’s supposed to rain here today…good for plants. Cons: Monday. Tired. Worked all weekend so I don’t feel ready or rested. Pros: All the stuff for school this week is copied and organized. Cons: We planned a week where we are ON for four out of the five days. Granted, we are ON with Oreos on 1 1/2 of those days. Y’all, I don’t like block schedule. Those periods are so LONG and kids check out unless it’s AMAZEBALLS the entire time. Which sometimes it is…like Thursday and Friday. That is exhausting though for the teacher. This week, I will be demonstrating tectonic plates with Oreo cookies…and magma with corn syrup. It’s cool, but it’s a lot of being ON all the time.

Other exciting things for this week: I need to find a Halloween costume in my stash that will not be too hot to wear in the mid- to high 80s. It should be Disney-themed, but I might just fuck that off, because I don’t have the will or the brain power. I’m supposed to dress like my opposite gender on one day, but I think I already do that every day. Maybe I don’t have to wear a bra that day? That would be AWESOME. Not an issue in middle school at all. I can totally get away with that.

Oh man. My brain is on a roll.

So on Friday, I finished tracing all the pieces…

That’s 6 yards, some with a ton of tiny pieces; some with some whopping big pieces. It took a little over 17 hours to trace them all…not bad for 1500 or so pieces. It’ll probably be at least 7 or so hours to cut them out. I didn’t start until last night…

The day job ran the weekend. That’s about 40 minutes of cutting stuff out. Expect to see shots of that pile growing each night until it’s done.

I really did grade most of the weekend. I had about 50 videos to watch with a smattering of slide presentations to check if there was no video. But they’re done. This is a good thing.

I took a break in between Periods 3 and 4 to go for a 3.6-mile hike…

I just needed a break…and some exercise. It sucks to spend a weekend this way, but if it means I can come home all this week and NOT watch videos, I’m OK with it. The end of the trimester is coming up, and I will be out of town the weekend right before grades are due, so I’m trying to get all the last-minute shit out of the way…because my art class will be slamming me with two projects right before the end of the trimester. So there’s that. I know…it’s my fault…but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ll figure it out. This school year is not low maintenance.

Cat forts…

They like them.

This lizard has moved into the camp chair I left outside.

It’s there every time I get home. The chair is mostly broken, which is why it’s out there…I guess it’s now a lizard home.

OK. Well I’ve got about a million things on the to-do list this week, but I’m hoping that art will happen in the form of scissors cutting Wonder Under every night. Maybe I’ll be done by the weekend? That would be nice…to be ironing onto fabric next weekend? It could happen. I’d need to clean up in here, of course. No Halloween parties for me…just fabric? Maybe. Oh yeah, it’s school photos today. I’m not in the mood. Think I have some animal snouts somewhere I could use for that…should find those. This week also includes reviewing my insurance because it’s open enrollment, plus a flu shot, book club, some exercise, some planning (hopefully a lot of planning), and a Zoom stitching meeting. Plus a chiropractic adjustment while in costume. Things to think about when choosing one’s costume. Hmmm.

Happy Monday thoughts, y’all.

Fast and Furious

Well I have about 8 minutes here to write. Fast and furious. It’s been long days at work, interspersed with some tracing and a little stitching with friends. On Wednesday, the union meeting went for almost 3 hours…I managed to get these graded before and during, as I was listening.

This is the only way I can grade art. Lay it out in the spectrum. So different than grading science.

I get an hour or a little more of this done every night…

I’m in the 400s…only 1100 to go or so.

I just have the head to do on the second figure. IDK how many more to go. There’s a lot of people in this quilt.

I managed stitching last night with friends…well I stitched and they crocheted.

It’s nice to hang out with humans who aren’t pre-teens. And cats…

Luna on her pillar. Yes, I had to cover the top because she kept scratching it. She doesn’t scratch the bottom of it. Ah well.

Unit 2 at school is ending Monday.

So there’s lots of panic on the kids’ part to get work done.

Or not. Some kids don’t get the urgency. It’s been a rough week. I’m looking forward to a couple of days off. Parent meeting this morning with someone who will probably be a major issue. Love those. Enable your kids’ behavior. Please. And then trying to get kids through the assignment. I’m tired.

Ah well. It is Friday. Fridays are often tired. Saturdays will be art and more art with some grading probably. Maybe not. That’s something to look forward to. And more tracing. Meditative. It’s good to do that right before bedtime.

How Did I Do This Before?

Well. That was the first day back with kids. Bam. I’m officially exhausted for the next 10 months. I walked over 15,000 steps on the first day, compared to about 3,000 when I was teaching on Zoom. So my body needs to get used to that again…not sure that’s a bad thing. Interacting in person is strange and somewhat difficult, although I will get used to masks and my glasses and not being able to talk loud enough and hot flashes in a warm classroom because the AC is on but the door is open. Yeah. All that. Sure. Plus the tech changes. Amusingly, our district emailed us last night that the science curriculum (all online) will be available ‘soon’. Not on the first day of school (it’s OK; we don’t really like most of it and/or use most of it). I didn’t even have my kids touch computers yesterday…today for Advisory only. Tomorrow, just for research for pictures. Maybe next week for an actual assignment. I had enough computer stuff last year to last me a long time.

Going back to school is always an energy suck. A brain suck as well, apparently. I don’t remember how to do anything. I even asked one class how to explain an instruction better to make sure I got the results I needed…because I obviously wasn’t! They were very nice and suggested some things. The pro of middle-school kids is their desire to help. Most of them. I stayed late last night to get ready for today…luckily, my first block day is relatively easy. Only one subject and a nice long prep period in between the first class and the last two. Hopefully I will use that prep wisely…as in, get my act together with art class, because yesterday I ran out of stuff and took them for a walk instead. Like puppies. We were all tired. It was legit.

Before I had any kids in there…this might be the neatest it ever is (and you can’t see the counters…I still have some chaos to control).

My team is very cool…our shirts confirm it…

“like a regular team only cooler”…

Ironically, it was muggy as heck yesterday. OK, not really, for those who live in truly muggy areas, but for dry, desert areas, this was ugh. And having to put on shoes and pants was hard. I didn’t wear shoes for 18 months.

We tried to do an after-school photo, and this is all we got.

Still smiling? Probably in shock.

Yeah. This.

Such a waste of money for these. The man never comes to our school and sees the kids. He just sends this. Dude. Send food. Or money. More useful.

Meanwhile, I’m still cutting stuff out, although not much…I think this was Monday night…

And Tuesday night, after another 56 minutes (can you tell? I’m not sure I can)…

I know I’m more than halfway, but there’s still a lot of pieces in there.

I’m also working on the Social Justice Sewing Academy block…

I finally marked the letters she wanted embroidered (had to find the right marking implements) and got some of it done after dinner. There are ‘does-not-equal’ signs going in between the words, in case you can’t see the incredibly light marks. (They are incredibly light.)

Seen on our walk on Monday…

It’s hard to get good flight pictures sometimes, especially with a phone camera. Beautiful bird.

This is the girlchild, amazing kid, but also…that’s the dress I fixed.

I appreciate the boots. Evidence that she is my child.

I saw this and was sort of horrified, and then realized it was satire (it was the ‘asshole’ comment that clued me in).

Some local music venues are now requiring vaccination cards or recent COVID tests (yes!). Teachers will need both. I taught yesterday and felt OK, until a co-teacher said something about not taking her mask off even when the kids weren’t in there, because their air was still in there. Fuck. I didn’t even think of that. Yes, I’m vaccinated. The odds of my getting so sick that I have an issue are very low…but I teach a bunch of unvaccinated kids…because they can’t be yet. Some have major health issues. Some have family members at home that have issues. I don’t want to be the cause of anyone else’s illness. And we have staff who are not vaccinated. So much anxiety over all these pieces.

Anyway. Today we do a lab! Yay! I missed labs. They are exhausting and a pain but a real joy to watch and experience the kids doing the things. We’ll see how it goes. And then I have pilates (have to remember all my gear…how did I do this before? It’s been 18 months since I lived like this) and book club and then I will just collapse. We’re back!

Fading Into the Landscape

Well I missed blogging yesterday. Not sure why. It was a Monday. Mondays mess with my mind even when I’m not even sure that it IS Monday. Blogging schedule is sort of half-assed right now. I slept like crap last night too…heat? sore? brain on fire? Not sure. I’m currently sitting through another 2-hour diabetes webinar. The last one was mostly unhelpful…all stuff I knew. This one might help more, but honestly, it’s more a pathway to the nurses so I don’t have to make appointments to talk to them that take three or more weeks to get. Frustrating process. All this because my numbers don’t make sense. Ah well. At least I am doing something about it.

So I’m tired…this is when the to-do list helps. I can just look at it and pick the things my brain can handle. Later, I’m going to the gym…it’s air-conditioned and I can read for part of it. I’m still on Summer break for a few more weeks. I need a routine I guess.

So Saturday, we went to a local art show. It was OK. Nothing really reached out and slapped me hard, so there’s that, but we also did some walking in the area.

Not a ton…

then stopped to hang out for a while…

We wanted to sit in the sculpture garden, but there was a private event, so no go. Damn those private events.

And then we tried a new restaurant for dinner.

Trying to find a routine for Saturdays again. The man can’t hike, but I can. This makes stuff complicated.

I have to admit to having two days of feeling tired and braindead, maybe a reaction to being out of town?

I did finish all the stitchdown on the May Homegrown Sue Spargo blocks…

I just keep doing these. They are brainless. Because I finished all those other quilts, I need to start something new, and while I’m getting to the brain state that allows that, it’s easier to just stitch stuff down like this. I also traced all the pieces for the June blocks, so today I’ll iron them to fabrics and keep doing the simple stuff.

Although eventually, Sunday night, I managed to cut a big piece of paper and process something that’s been in my head for a few months. Usually I draw in the sketchbook and then enlarge it, but for some, it’s just easier to start at full size on a big piece of paper.

I did start with a pencil sketch this time, just to put things in the right place. For the hiking man, I used a couple of photos I took while he was hiking away from me.

Inking is the next step. Last night, I couldn’t get my head into the next part of the drawing. It might not have helped that Nova was sitting on it.

But eventually she left and everyone left the room and I started to draw out what I had sketched.

I spend a lot of time staring at the drawing, at the blank spaces, during this stage. What’s weird about the drawing stage is that everything has the same weight…it’s just black lines and no color, so in just looking at the drawing, you can’t see what’s in my head. That’s where the female figure is fading into the landscape…in my head. That won’t show up for y’all until I start ironing it to fabrics. So yeah, the figure will fade into the background. Hopefully. If I manage the color well. It’s all colored in my head. Sort of.

Luna has been having some paranoia issues…

Not even sure what she’s staring at.

Kitten just wants to be close to us.

Lots of pets. Lots of squawking. We left for 2 1/2 days. How dare we.

I finally went back to the bird quilt…I got the borders on months ago with all the flowers, but I hadn’t done the embellishment. I finally started last night.

It was just overwhelming at the time. I needed something simpler. There are I think four of every flower, for a total of 24 of the damn things. It’s gonna be a while before I finish this thing, but my stitching group is starting to meet in person again, so this is a good one to take with me to that. Am I nervous about meeting in person? Yeah, a little. My friends are vaccinated, but we meet in a Barnes & Noble and I haven’t spent much time sitting inside anywhere. I figure I can stay masked if I feel weird about it. And maybe I’ll finish this thing.

This reminded me of the few years we had of flat-earthers in class…

Amusing. There’s always some wacky science misconceptions we deal with in class. Well, wacky makes it sound like something that doesn’t really matter, but since a lot of what kids come into class with comes from (1) family or (2) the internet, and we’re trying to teach them to think critically, it’s probably more important that we teach thinking skills than anything else. Maybe if we start every unit with all the misconception memes for that content that we can find…like a pretest? It’s an idea.

OK. Well if I’ve gotten anything from this webinar, it’s that I need to start tracking everything again and maybe even more than I was. I had to drop some balls during COVID teaching, and the diet app lost out to the meditation app. It’s time to go back. Teachers do their reflection over the summer and so we often set annual goals then instead of that New Year’s resolution in January. Back to monitoring…that’s mine. For now. Might be more resolutions later. I’m debating not tutoring this year. It drives me nuts. I’ll probably cave on this one though. Best for kids and all.

Otherwise, today is about doing some yardwork, cleaning the girlchild’s room (because she’s showing up tonight and probably wants clean bedding and maybe my shit off her bed), working on that drawing, and I don’t remember what else. Finish reading my book. School is coming for me. I can feel it. OK, the constant emails and texts from the district and the union are not helping my vacation mind frame, but some exercise will hopefully help with that. When it’s hot, that’s hard. I just need to get off my ass and do it. That’s true for everything, yeah? Get off the ass and do it.

Mornings Are Loud…

Oh man, apparently a 5-day week is at least 3 days too long at the moment. I will be dissecting frogs today. I did a demo yesterday for a video and completely fucked it up, forgot what the heart looks like, missed a bunch of stuff, said some random stuff. So I deleted it. I’ll try again today for realz with the kids, hope I don’t mess this one up too badly. I’m going to go watch a video of some people who are way more awake and with it than I am. Not that it’s hard to be that. I’m going to bed at a reasonable hour…just can’t fall asleep or apparently stay asleep. Mornings are loud, y’all…really loud. The birds, the sun, just damn loud.

The plus in all this is that the next quilt drawing is coming along, mostly because I’m using the drawing I did in Tehachapi, all stream of consciousness while hanging with the man and watching weird stuff on the telly. Apocalyptic Love, Death, and Rockets, yeah? No, not Rockets…ROBOTS. Oh my. Hello brain. You want a scalpel today? Seems like a mistake, but sure…we’ll give you a scalpel. WTF. ANYWAY. I cut some paper to the right size and added the elements I needed for this theme, and then traced a goodly portion of the existing drawing…

I got the existing drawing transferred onto the new page, which is longer and skinnier, and now just need to do some filler and the sky tonight hopefully. Yes. Too many small pieces. It’s OK. I’ll be OK. I’ll complain about it later, but I’ll be OK.

This is why size of quilt isn’t as relevant to me for price as number of pieces is. I have one smaller piece with over 800 pieces in it that is really expensive…but if you think that each small piece needs to be drawn, traced, ironed, trimmed, and ironed down to the backing, you can see how number of pieces adds up. It’s OK for this one. Just when I get to commissions, it becomes an issue. Keep it simple! The quilt I just finished had 800 or so pieces in it…and it’s much bigger, but the cost will probably be similar to the small one I did a few years back. We’ll see. I haven’t calculated time yet on the new one. I’ve had no time to calculate time!

Anyway, it’s progress. It’s good.

I’ve hiked the last two days, Monday with the boychild and the dog…

The man will hike with me on Saturday.

He’s in recovery mode, which means going to hang out with a bunch of people and eating a lot of sugar. Funny stuff.

He’ll be back on trail next week, and then I’ll see him on the other side of Kearsarge Pass. Somehow. I’m debating hiking part of that, but acclimation could be an issue (starts at 9200 feet above sea level. I live at 400 feet above sea level). We’ll see. It’s supposed to be gorgeous though. I’d like a gorgeous hike or two this summer.

Here he is giving Luna some love.

He was afraid the cats wouldn’t remember him. They did. Right away. Even with all the smelly hiker clothes.

Because I’ve been hanging out with him at night, I’ve been embroidering on the Sue Spargo Homegrown blocks…finished another one of the March blocks…

Crazy little houses. One row of the roof shingles is the wrong thread. Not changing it. Nope.

OK, frogs today. Yup. Gonna go watch that video and make another cup of tea and keep creating random instruction for next week’s weirdness. Then do some exercise and draw some more. Try not to panic at any given time. Good plan.

Less Cottony

Dear all my youngish neighbors with your little children who have now all installed really bright motion-sensor lights: Do you know that things that MOVE make your lights go on ALL NIGHT LONG…on the other side of the house, where you don’t even know about it, and the things that MOVE are animals, birds, and trees, sometimes bats. Seriously, the wind makes your stupid lights go on and you don’t really NEED them because you’re not out there in your side yard checking out what’s setting them off, BUT THEY ALL SHINE IN MY HOUSE. EVERY DAMN ONE OF THEM. Plus the damn fairy light strings everywhere. Yes, they are nice and pretty, but they don’t need to be on all night. I think they’re still on now and it’s broad daylight. Have you never heard of light pollution?

I hear my parents have a BB gun.

Yes, I am the crazy old lady neighbor. But seriously. So much lighting of spaces where there are no peoples.

Hey, well, it’s Thursday. Somehow I got off my every-other-day schedule and am trying to write on the days when I don’t normally write. Today is a staff meeting day AND a lab day, so this will be hopefully quick. What have I been doing? Well, working on a quilt, of course. And I needed to dye some old quilt blocks for the background of this one.

So I don’t know about you, but I have all the dye supplies ready to go in the cupboard, and can start a small dye job at 9:38 PM on a school night. I don’t usually do this, but it worked. I picked some of the old (really old, because I got them on Etsy a million years ago, but they aren’t in that great condition) blocks and tossed them in a mix of dyes that I thought would approximate the background fabric I already had picked. Left them for 24 hours and got this…

What’s funny about this is when I did the first rinse out of the dye bath, they all were that purply blue color…and by the time they got out of the washing machine, you can see that three were less cottony than I thought. OK. And I’m not sure the one on the bottom left will work…I don’t really want anything that has a lot of contrast. The 5 that worked are probably not enough (although they could be?) so I will probably try again. I did get the subtle changes that I wanted in about half of them, so that’s a success. Sort of.

Then I’ve been picking fabrics for an hour or so each night…

I find it really difficult to stop, actually. I just want to keep ironing. But I need to stick to my earlier bedtime, even though I don’t seem to be falling asleep much earlier. I’m sure I’m getting a little more? Maybe.

I’m averaging about 10-11 hours of artmaking a week at the moment…

That’s much better than the month of March, when I did a lot of nothing on art quilts. No sewing machine? I guess it was an issue. Plus overwork and exhaustion. Now I’m using the art to distract myself from isolation. But it’s also the artwork…and I love that normally. It’s not that I don’t love it now…it just isn’t giving me the same hit as usual.

I’ve been ironing for over 4 hours and I only have 200 pieces ironed down. Not super fast, y’all. There are a lot of fussy little decisions in the stuff on the Earth in this piece. Lots of overlapping colors and bits that require thought.

I finished appliqueing all the bits down to the April Homegrown blocks during one book club this week…

On to May. During the second book club (yes, I did that this week. Nights are deadly empty time.), I drew my Patreon drawing for the month…

And posted it. Talk about multitasking. I do it all the time. It works for me. I know it doesn’t work for some people. Certainly things like sewing and drawing occupy a different part of my mind than the meeting part. So it works. It’s not as effective during staff meetings, when I actually work on schoolwork through them. Those are overlapping parts of the brain and it means I sometimes miss stuff, but since 3/4s of what they talk about right now in staff meetings doesn’t apply to distance learning, I don’t really fucking care. I ask my team when I miss stuff.

I created that slide deck during the last staff meeting for the lab we did this week. And that calendar thing is so true at the moment.

I don’t even deal with one day. It’s sections of days. Morning. Afternoon. Evening. Night. Rinse. Repeat.

Here’s the lab we actually did…cellular respiration…

I have to do it one more time, today. It’s a pain in the butt, but it helps them think about the different types of food. Although then they think that sugar and food are the same thing. Not quite. I’m having a hard time getting a good chunk of them to listen at the moment. Normally, this is almost where we start sex ed and I have their full attention. I think this year will be harder at the end. I guess I will just roll with it. I don’t have control over so much of what goes on with their home lives, their attention spans, and their Wifi.

These two are sweet.

When Luna is not rampaging.

OK, hours of Zooming today followed hopefully by a good long walk and an already made dinner. Then more ironing. I think. Maybe I’ll get through more than 100 pieces in one night.