When It’s Out…

Long weekends are a blessing. I graded a bunch of stuff over the last three days. I’m not caught up, but I’m panicking less. I managed exercise three days in a row. As the school week goes on, that is less and less likely. So I did well. And I’m ironing. All good. Trying not to think of things I should be ironing or sewing or deadlines that are coming. Just doing the things when I can.

Friday night, I did more trees…

And I think I also ironed the hiker…

Could have been Saturday though. I ironed a bunch on Saturday afternoon…like this…

Starting up the mountain. Last night, I got part of the mountain in…

I’m hoping to get the mountains done and be well into the sky tonight, if not done. I might be able to do it. There’s about 270 pieces left.

I drew briefly on Saturday night…

I hiked this morning with the man…

Just Cowles Mountain…the original plan had Pyles Peak as well, but it was warm…

Although the valleys were socked in. Weird.

A view of one of my quilts behind the amazing Margaret Fabrizio…

We traded earlier this year.

And some pictures of me with my quilts at The Studio Door opening…

I don’t really like posing for photos…

Even with a mask on, you can probably tell.

Not even sure what I’m looking at in that photo…but here’s 1, 2, and 3 in one with me.

We missed a few. You get the idea. Check out the show though! It’s a nice area with many restaurants for lunch or dinner. Parking isn’t awful (but it can be). It’s open through September 25.

Every Friday afternoon, I’m here, waiting for my COVID test…

I’m negative again…it does make me nervous to have any possible symptom (stuffed up nose? sore throat?), so this is how I feel better about it. Stick a swab up my nose once a week.

Meanwhile, Texas politicians are idiots, so is the Supreme Court, I have incredible sympathy for Afghanistan, did I mention how stupid Texas is? Not all Texans, I know. Ida and Henri, sheesh, some people, an awful lot of them, really need help. This as California’s fires started well before the actual fire season.

Maybe there are just a lot of stupid people out there who believe they have the right to govern women’s bodies, even though we can’t do the same to them. I’m angry. I’m pissed off. I would just like to say that I called this 10+ years ago and got told it wouldn’t happen. My ass it wouldn’t. Feel like you’re losing control of the country? SLAM SOME GROUP INTO THE GROUND. That’s what we do. Fight back, y’all. Give money if you can. Yell loud and lots. Those rich white ladies won’t suffer over this idiotic law…it’s the ones who can’t afford to suffer any more than they already do. Yell louder.

Seriously, if you don’t don’t own a uterus, don’t tell people what to do with it. And if you do own one? You get to control YOUR OWN and nobody else’s. Because if y’all can own that, if you can pass laws about that, then it’s about time we took ownership of some dicks out there, and I can tell you, it’s gonna be ugly. You’re not making babies? You certainly don’t need sperm (vasectomies for all men over…um…I’ll give you age 50…at that age, the DNA is getting damaged and you shouldn’t be making babies anyway). And if you use that dick incorrectly? Like raping someone? Well you’ve proven you don’t know how to use it, so we’ll just take it away…starting with some rich old white boys.

Yeah. I’m angry. God damn it. We’ve done this already, before I even was old enough to understand it. Why the fuck do we have to go over all this again with you folks? Do you not listen?

I guess the next quilt is drawing itself again. I’ll let you know when it’s out.

That Lizard…

Well hello Friday. So nice of you to come. Appreciate it. Seriously, 13 days into the school year and I finally have my first documented positive COVID exposure at school. It’s OK. Masking is everywhere, I am in the room with kids, I do help kids, I walk the room and give personal attention, but I’m trying to be careful with time and handwashing and telling kids to pull their masks up etc. It’s all we can do. Probably there have been other positive cases in my classroom that I don’t know about. I do worry about the kids though. So far, no one has been really sick that we know of, but I suspect it’s a matter of time. It’s a tough balance…getting kids back in school so they’ll do stuff is important, but so are their lives.

Meanwhile, the state has decided to overburden teachers again with proof that we actually try to educate kids who are stuck at home on quarantine. This job gets little respect from many parents and politicians, mostly those who have never done this job, probably never stepped foot on campus. So we’ll see what that looks like. I’m teaching art and science, both hands-on curriculum, so I’m back to making a million videos a week to make up for what they can’t do in person. Luckily, what we’re doing next week already exists digitally! Yay! Thank last year’s selves for doing that. It won’t always be that easy.

I am exhausted. I feel overwhelmed by all the minutiae. I have too much to grade already, and it’s really just the basics. I am managing a little ironing every night though…my pre-meditation meditation. The slowing of the brain activity, the stress monkey part anyway.

Wednesday was fussy little hiking trail parts…

Plus that lizard…it’s really that color…

Then the next part, last night, I only had about 45 minutes because we were out, but I got a good chunk of trees ironed down.

It went much faster. It’s going to get fussy again with the man hiking through and with the face that’s hidden in the trees on the right, but that’s OK…because it will be the weekend by the time I get to those. I’d really like to finish ironing this together this weekend. I have a deadline I’m looking at and now it’s tight. It’s OK if this isn’t done by then, but it’s a goal. We’ll see. Time flies when your day job sucks up all the moments.

So we did go to the opening last night at The Studio Door. I only had an hour in me for that…I was tired.

I still really like this piece by Julia C. R. Gray. And mine behind it…they go together!

There were plenty of people coming in to see the work…lots of unmasked folks though.

You can see three of my pieces in this photo. The man took pictures of me with some of the work. I’ll post those later. For now, I need to leave early for school because we couldn’t plan science yesterday and there’s a new unit coming up and I know we can get it all together, but IDK if we can get it all together before I need to print a table of contents for the kids. Minor issue. We will all survive.

Three-day weekend ahead…artmaking, a hike (even though we can’t go up to the mountains like I wanted because they closed them 8/31 for fire danger), finish my damn book! And maybe get some sleep. We’ll see. Lots of grading and planning too…but hopefully just on one day.

Not Hard. Just Time.

Hello Friday! It seems like it was just Tuesday. I guess that’s a good thing. I have a ton of stuff to get done today, on Friday, and hopefully that will actually happen so I don’t have to do all of it in the middle of the night. I’m supposed to deliver 7 quilts tomorrow to a gallery…awesome thing that! Opening is this coming Thursday.

Good thing I’m reminding myself of that, because I thought I had another week. All seven quilts need to be ironed and dehaired and readied for exhibit. Luckily they are smaller and not particularly wrinkled, but it needs to happen before tomorrow afternoon. So there’s that. I think one needs a label and slats too. Not hard. Just time.

That’s the mantra right now. Plants need watering. Not hard. Just time. I really need to draw a stethoscope for this Social Justice Sewing Academy block. Not hard. Just time…plus getting the cat off the bag it’s in. That’s harder. She has sharp pointy bits. School…need a doc done, some posts done, papers copied, grading warmups and some other stuff. Not hard. Just time.

As far as the art stuff is going, really what I need is energy. I did a little stitching after dinner on Wednesday night on the SJSA block (got it out from under the cat for once)…

Then I managed to iron down all the fabrics for the Patreon reward piece…

It took about an hour and a half. I borrowed some fabrics from the one I just finished cutting out and then added more. It’s actually mostly blue in area…I think it’ll be cool. We’ll see though. I need to cut those pieces out. I was going to do that last night, but mostly I laid down on the couch and tried to keep my eyes open while the man talked. Then I went to bed.

Why? Usually I can do the things. Yeah no. I was at school early, then stayed late to plan science…trying to do it all in one day is hard. I’ll get used to it again, but it’s hard. We can’t get everything done and we don’t have the same prep periods, so I just don’t have the rhythm of it yet. I’ll get there. Maybe on Week 3? Maybe by then we’ll be shut down. So many kids out on quarantine or pandemic concerns (they have symptoms but haven’t been tested or if they were tested, parents didn’t tell the school the results…so they’re just out for 10 days)…trying to keep track of those and my head. Ha! Then after all that, I drove 45 minutes to the California Center for the Arts for the closing reception of the Allied Craftsmen show Crafting Memories…

There’s my piece. Hopefully I’ll be back here in January with California Fibers and more pieces. I did meet people and pretended to network. Not really. They all came and talked to me and that was OK. Then I Zoomed with my stitching group on the way home, picked up a burger, came home, ate it, and collapsed.

Not my best moment. Today will be better. Today I will do ALL the things and finish them all and then go get tested for COVID because I’m just gonna do that every week or two to make sure I’m not infecting the world…and then clean up and pack up all those quilts and maybe cut some things out or maybe go watch the man’s band (outside…I think this is probably outside of my exhaustion level). And sleep. Because I have to be up early for the annual boob squeeze. Do it! Breast cancer doesn’t care that there’s a pandemic or that I’m exhausted.

Damn zebrafish. Yeah. Going to school now. Doing all the things. Caffeine is also my friend today.

It Doesn’t Look Like Much…

On to the next step on this quilt…I finally finished cutting everything out last night. Here’s Friday night, where I can tell I’m getting close.

Saturday night…some people would say, why not just finish that? It doesn’t look like much?

The man wanted to be in the photo. Yeah, it doesn’t look like much does it…that’s almost an hour and a half worth of cutting right there…because that’s what I did last night to finish…

Just over 20 hours…

This is a complicated quilt. It’s not huge; just complicated.

I also found the 7 quilts that will be in this show…

They need to be delivered Saturday, so I needed to make sure they had slats and all that. They do, mostly, except for the newest one, which was actually made for this show. The others are invited because not enough people entered. Ah well. That shit happens. I will be at the reception, at some point, I hope, unless my school is doing a back-to-school night that I don’t know about. Also, that’s a work night, so I’ll be half dead. But otherwise, yeah, I’ll be there.

Saturday was all about running errands and then a longer hike…

Marian Bear Memorial Park…it’s pretty enough, although the water is stagnant right now…

And there’s a shit-ton of poison oak…

Also, it runs parallel to a freeway and under major roads, so the noise is a bit off-putting.

The exercise was good.

It was definitely cooler than it will be this week. I keep waiting for summer to slap us upside the head.

Kitten is good. She could live with summer or not. Actually, she’s on probiotics (I did not know there were such things for cats) so we can see if her digestive system will stop being the way it is. I’m not sure she’s sold on them. I wonder if they put enough flora in the powdery stuff that I mix with her food so that if she is picky and only eats a little that she will get enough of it. Who knows.

Nova sat on me for a bit until I kicked her off so I could keep cutting things out.

Tonight hopefully I’ll get the pieces sorted so I can start ironing everything together. Getting closer to a time when my machine will need to be fixed. Not sure what’s up with that. We’re back to almost 6 weeks since I took it in. Ugh.

Am I ready for school today? I am not. I could not deal with my classroom on Friday so I didn’t do all the things I needed to do before today. I don’t have morning duty this week though (I think) and it’s short periods, plus I do actually get a prep period, so hopefully I’ll get through it all. I also get to do a staff meeting on my own, which is nice. I wonder if the Delta variant will let us continue doing staff meetings by ourselves…it would be nice. But unlikely. OK, gotta go to work anyway. Art tonight.

But It’s a Thing…

Well. It’s been a morning. And into an afternoon. I’m not sure where the days go sometimes. We got up early to hike and then the Man didn’t feel well but then he was OK and then we hiked, but two hours later than we’d thought we would.

The plus is that physical therapy seems to be going well. We upped the mileage to almost 6, but still mostly flat, road walking instead of trail. Slow progress. No pain. His plan right now is to finish the two pieces of the trail he missed in the desert section due to the boulder that is now gone in the Idyllwild area and a now-open fire closure near Lake Hughes. But with all the fires up north, it doesn’t make sense to try to pick part of the trail to do before weather starts to be an issue, so that might be it for the PCT this year. Next year, another 4 months will hopefully finish it. Sigh. I know he wanted to do it in one year, but he did the Desert section! All 700+ miles! So there’s that.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on the current quilt, although my brain kind of gets tied up in knots by it. Usually, let’s say I’m doing a dirt section that needs a run of 4 fabrics, light to dark…then I pick the 4 fabrics, lay them out, and put the pieces that will be ironed on each fabric on top of it, checking the drawing for what numbers go where. Cool, right? Easy peasy. But now I shoved the female figure in there. I want her to show up but not drastically. So I pick a second run of 4 fabrics that are similar but not the same, and then when I check the drawing for level 1 (the lightest), I have to do a second check on whether it’s the body or the ground. It looks like this…

Yes, there’s an extra fabric above…there’s a reason for that.

Here’s the same idea but with the rocks…

I honestly don’t know how it will turn out. I hope it will be OK. Hard to visualize though…even for me, and I do this all the time. At one point yesterday, I had a run of 6 fabrics twice, a total of 12, and was trying to find all the pieces from the 100s through the 400s that were part of that section…meanwhile, pulling out all the pieces that were a rattlesnake, a Garmin, or a couple of deer. Confusing as hell. While on two Zooms…at least those weren’t at the same time. So I still need to do the snake, the Garmin, and the deer, plus a bushy stripe that went through the dirt areas, and then some water in the middle of it. It’s not going quickly, but the day is.

Here’s where I was Wednesday night…

And then, after 5 1/2 hours of ironing yesterday…

Lots of browns and grays so far. I’m going to do more today, hopefully get up into the trees. Which are mind-bogglingly complicated.

Meanwhile, we finally have a master schedule for school. Everything hurts my brain and we haven’t planned anything and we are back next Thursday. Yes. I am panicking. About everything. I did get some new masks that seem comfortable, although I haven’t worn them from 8:30-3:30 yet, so ask me how I feel in a few weeks. My neighbor finally is putting in a fence, and I’m not happy about looking at it or where it is or how it will block my light once they plant shit, or that they are considering planting bamboo (the clumping kind, at least) and I’m just irritated with all my neighbors. So there we are.

Tomorrow is a quilt guild meeting and an art group meeting…that one in person. And I got into another show, a SAQA local show, Domino Effect, which will be at The Studio Door in Hillcrest from September 2-26. The artist’s opening is September 4 from 6-9 PM. My piece is the recently finished A Losing Game…

Kitten was upset that I took away the blue fabric drawer, so I gave her the lid to the paper box…

In other animal news, Simba is a dork.

He had to have his teeth cleaned, and they put the IV/catheter whatever in his leg, which he cannot leave alone, so now he has the not-cone, but pillow of shame.

Yeah, it’s under his mane.

And Kitten keeps following me wherever I go.

She’s a good kitty.

I drew at dinner last night…

I don’t think it’s done. But it’s a thing.

OK, I’m tired. I need more caffeine. I need to not think about school for a while, because I won’t get any more info about next week’s schedule until Monday. They really are pushing everything to the last minute again this year. I’m still burnt out from last year. I do not feel the normal, oh hey! school is starting! This is cool and interesting! feelings that I would normally have. I have apprehension and panic from not having anything ready. Fun stuff. I’m going to quickly order some stuff I’ll need and then get ironing for a few hours. Meditative artwork.

It’s Light.

Pro: It was light when I got to get up. I woke up earlier. My brain was confused. So were the dogs. Plus the man gets up earlier than I do and that wakes me up. Con: I’m still tired. I sorta forgot about Daylight Savings and the time change because my phone did it for me. The clocks in here are still wrong. Whoops.

Saturday I talked to a solar guy…he’s the first one who didn’t say I needed to cut my trees down. He designed a system with the trees. A miracle. This might actually happen. I mean, I’ve grown this one from a tiny plant. It’s a volunteer. I love trees.

Yeah. I know. Trees can cause problems. So can people and I don’t cut them down. Well. Much.

There’s been a lot of dog sleeping going on here…

Lots of dogs too…

And lots of grading. It gets frustrating at times. Sometimes I feel like I’m just recording that they did stuff and I’m not even sure what they’re getting out of it…

Please don’t ask me what she meant by this. I really don’t know. Hopefully texture.

I don’t have any choice with quizzes and tests and projects. I have to grade them. This one amused me.

Physical change vs chemical reaction on scrambling eggs. Yeah. Sigh.

So my co-teacher and I keep searching for the solution to grades. I’m not a fan, but the kids don’t work without something to motivate them, although grades is not always a good motivator. I’m not willing to run a candy-based classroom.

Ah yes. More dogs…not my house, because that fluffy over-shedding one in the middle is not allowed on my couch.

That’s why she looks so guilty.

Meanwhile, Kitten has actually been playing.

She carried that purple mouse into the living room. Brought it right to me.

Good kitty. 6 hours of grading later. Ugh.

I did do art stuff…I went to another opening. This is in Hillcrest…

I think it’s time for another bathtub quilt. Not that my schedule fits that. Wait. A minute. Hmmm. I gots an idea.

I traced Wonder Under finally on Saturday night…see Kitten on her new perch? No fear.

Tracing is meditative. Not enough, because I’ve been grinding my teeth for a few weeks. But better than nothing. Working on that…took a pilates class for the first time yesterday. Gonna try three months. See how it goes.

Core strength would help. Plus my neck and back need it. Strangely, the only thing sore last night was my left foot. It’s better this morning.

I added a space cat to the quilt. I had a conversation with an artist’s spouse on Friday night about the cat in one of my quilts. And I realized this quilt didn’t have one. So I added one.

I guess I’m up to 872 pieces now. I traced again last night…I’m at piece 288. Not bad. I’m looking forward to some down time over Thanksgiving week to get a chunk of this done.

So far, my Thanksgiving plans include cooking my own turkey for December turkey sandwiches, getting my Real ID, going to pilates twice, going on at least one hike, and IDK what else. I guess I’ll figure that out.

Today is prep for a lab and a 2-hour staff meeting. Ugh. Well. OK. First I need to figure out what to do with all these dogs. Doing that now.

Especially the Breathing…

It’s such a quiet house without Satch. Kitten is still running around like he’s here, looking around corners, refusing to walk down the hallway with me for her breakfast (I’ve carried her to breakfast since we had Babygirl, so that’s a long time…hard habit to break, I guess.). I encouraged her, but she squawked at me and wouldn’t move, so I went back for her. She and Satchemo didn’t get along very well. There were some moments when he wasn’t chasing her and she wasn’t trying to whack him. It’s hard when you introduce adult cats. We haven’t been particularly successful with it. Unfortunately. I did manage to persuade her to come out last night, because the dogs were gone.

Like this is a safe place…she’s hung out here before…

Glowy eyes and all. Mommy’s light table is safe ground.

Eventually, she came down on the couch…a rare occurrence…

And she’s blurry because she wouldn’t stop moving. Of course, there’s already talk of fostering cats. I’m not sure that’ll work with her. She’s not the most tolerant of cats. We’ll see. We have a friend who rescues cats, so that’s why the conversation is happening. I think she might be OK with kittens…other adult cats, probably not so much.

Anyway. We’re going to be OK. We know we gave him good views of hummingbirds and geckos, and lots of pets and love. It sucks that his last week was so yucky, but it’s hard to know when to say goodbye to them sometimes. Probably true of people too, but we have fewer choices about when to stop trying to fix them.

I got another piece into a show, local this time. This is Finding Peace and it’ll be at The Studio Door in Hillcrest, opening November 2, from 5-7 PM.

It’s the Best of FIG exhibit…I had to laugh, because there were size restrictions, and I think my best work is larger than the size restrictions. And I told him that. I do love the bathtub series, though. So that’s OK.

I got home late last night, after tutoring and chiropractor. I watched Bat TV (the bats off the deck), I cooked dinner, and I graded science units for a while. After yesterday’s mood check thing, where I totally reamed the counselor on campus (this woman needs a middle-school reminder), but managed to get the principal to pay for a bunch of triple beam balances as a pay-off for my irritation (um, OK. I’ll take that). Seriously, how does an ex-teacher not understand how I do not need to be in charge of all the counseling shit? Because she only had 25 students and I have 164? That’s not a good excuse. I know kindergarten teachers work their asses off teaching all those subjects AND potty training etc. I do not know what this woman’s problem is. But it’s done now.

Last night, finally after all the grading (still not done), I started cutting stuff out again.

I’ve been cutting for 11 1/2 hours…not nothing. But I’m almost done…I can see the bottom of the box…that’s a good thing. Could I be done tonight? Maybe. Looks are deceiving. There are a lot of small pieces in there, landscape stuff. It might take a while. But maybe. I can do maybe.

Lab today. My co-teacher did it yesterday. Apparently there will be lots of confusion. Great. I love confusion. I’m gonna deep breathe all day and then sit at a meeting and then hopefully go to the gym. That’s the plan. Especially the breathing.