Hokay. Wednesday. I’m a little tired, I must say. Not sure why. Rejiggering my lesson plan for today, I think. Some catchup, some kids finishing stuff up, instead of starting the next thing. I may do a piece of the next thing, but I have two classes that need to finish yesterday’s thing still. It’s OK. It’s fast. But I hate having classes on different things. It’s just easier when they’re all in the same range of stuff. It’s Back-to-School Night tonight…set for 5 PM, which makes more sense for parents, but it means I have 90 minutes after school where I’m just there. I have grading to do and will do it, so I don’t have to bring it home (the first batch of progress reports are due next week, which seems really early). I have a lot of work to get through. I really just want to finish my book though. And finish another one by Monday for book club. I had to finally buy that one, because it was still 5 weeks out at the library.
Artmaking is going slowly. I am not giving myself enough time because of grading, unfortunately. It sucks. I hate it. I guess I lose Sunday afternoons? I don’t know any other way to do this. I feel like I lose half the Saturdays too. UGH. So I traced the two little pieces onto Wonder Under, which took almost no time at all…
And last night, I cut them out…
Superfast. Hopefully I’ll have the energy tonight to iron them to fabric. I’m not holding out much hope, but some.
Monday, I worked on glazing the mug still…
Anybody who’s thinking, oh, Nida will make a bunch of these and sell them…HA! My god, they take so long. Which is fine. I’ve always been more about the process than having a product to sell…obviously.
This already has 10 hours into it.
Consider time, materials, firing fees…
Completely unaffordable. Sorry y’all. This is not going to be a second (third? fourth?) income generator for me. And I’m OK with that.
Enjoy the video in the round.
That long thin quilt is going to this show…
In Miami, Florida. As soon as it’s back from the photographer. It still needs a name, but I think I had one somewhere. I just need to figure out where.
OK. School. Ugh. Redo plan for the day. Get the kids working independently for at least half of class time. Grade things. Prep for next week. Try to figure out how to efficiently grade the thing the other teacher fucked up. Sigh. Spend more of my prep time not prepping. Yesterday started badly with a last-minute switch of two resource kids who need support into a class with no support, literally 2 minutes before they were supposed to show up to my class. They needed seats, they needed to be added to my Google Classroom, they needed to be told not to delete themselves out of the other classroom until I graded things. FUCK. And no support? So that put me over 20% resource kids in that class, so after my complaints and reminders of how shit should work, I have support in there today. But the long string of emails leading up to that last one? I could have been included. So I would’ve known. But no. Not important. So my mindset during prep was to put on loud music with lots of swear words and grade all the makeup work so it was off my plate. Pro? That last bit.
Anyway. Today will be better. I command it. And I don’t have to try to cook after pilates, like last night, cooking after 7:30 PM. Tonight the Man cooks and I collapse. With my book, hopefully.
Hey. Yo. It’s Friday. I’m tired. I have survived the first day of actual school with kids. It was fine. Too much talking. I have a new prep period; kind of adjusting to that. It’s earlier but not by much. Definitely had a pulled muscle yesterday, but I think it was from pilates on Wednesday. After school, I did a 1-hour round trip (rush-hour traffic with accidents as a side) to drop another quilt with my photographer. That’s three. It’s cool. I feel like I finished some stuff this year finally.
I traced the last two nights…
Either Bowie is slightly better at listening, or I’m better at picking kitten sleepy times to trace. I had to move him off the light table to be in zoom with stitching friends and trace, but he was so tired, he just curled up again and went back to sleep.
And I managed to finish tracing…
Small quilt, small pieces, not very many of them. Compared to the bigger ones. And then I started cutting them out. This is where small is not so fun.
I started. I will continue. Probably tonight, but who knows? I’m missing the Man’s show tonight…
The girlchild is here, I’m exhausted, the boychild is home from fires. I just wanna hang out. Watch, they’ll both just disappear and I’ll be home on the couch with all the furry beasts. That also might be OK. The Man has a ton of weddings coming up in the next 6 weeks…wants to sneak me in. I don’t mind crashing like birthday parties and stuff, but weddings are dress-up things. Not doing it. So lots of Saturday nights coming up where I will just have to sit around and make art? Hmmm. Pros and cons.
Ceramics-wise, I know two of my things came out of the bisque fire fine…the base of the world figure is there on the right.
The top part is still drying. And the sgraffito thing I made for the garden stake thing they’re doing…it’s there in the middle bottom.
The clay is really light for the background. Wondering about getting some black clay for a sgraffito thing. I just don’t need 25 pounds of it. Hmmm. Anyway, I haven’t been able to get to the studio yet…maybe tomorrow. I also need to fill a tire with air, possibly get new tires, put oil in my car, and also washer fluid. All that popped up in the last week or so. Sigh. Couldn’t do that over the summer when I had plenty of time? Nah.
School! Here’s the 8th-grade team (minus the combo team). We’re back together after…um…2 years?
Yes, we have matching shirts, but science went for a darker gray. I would have gone even darker if there’d been an option. They like their super light colors. I do not.
Here’s my specific team, again.
IDK how many years we’ve been a team, but it’s been a long while. The principal thought about breaking us up because there were so many new teachers, to spread us out. I’m glad he didn’t.
Sometimes they drive me nuts, but that’s true of all teams. And no, I don’t get to be on the same floor as them. So they talk about stuff up there and think I know what they’re talking about. I don’t.
My district passed that stupid parent info thing that violates state law. And some states do this stupid shit.
There’s a local election in November. If it goes a certain way and the dumbasses are in charge, the next 5 years are gonna be shit for teachers in our district. Please vote intelligently. Research the stories you post and make sure they are the truth and not made-up-shit, because I see so much of that. And it’s exhausting. And if you’re trying to friend me on Facebook and we don’t have a personal connection, and you have a picture of Trump and his fist in the air with his tiny ear scratch as your main photo? Don’t friend me. I’ve been unfriending a lot. I keep some because of that personal connection, but I do sometimes question their sanity. Kids first. Your adult agendas need to consider that if your child tells their teacher their pronoun/name preference and NOT YOU, it is because YOU ARE NOT THE SAFE SPACE. You do WANT teachers to be a safe space, right? Well then don’t fuck with our ability to be that. And figure your own parenting shit out on your own time.
Welcome to my TedTalk. Oh, yeah, today is a chill day in science…some vocab, some cover pages, some coloring. I’m in for it. Plus trying to learn kids’ names (hard!) and get ahead of next week for once. Sundays free! Hopefully. I have a lot of hope for life-work balance this year.
Up early, another doctor’s appointment, this one to figure out what this weird thing I’ve been seeing in my eye since March is…probably not an optical migraine for this long. So that’s been worrisome. I’ve had one batch of scans/dilations/bright flashlights and look at my ear things, and they found nothing, but it didn’t go away (they never do, y’all), so I got leveled up! And it’s a 3-hour appointment plus some other thing, and I can’t take a whole day off at this point, so I’m going in to school for the second half. Hopefully the eye dilation will be toned down by the time I get in. Anyway, it means I have to leave in 24 minutes, so write fast!
It’s OK, all I do is work work work (8:30 PM last night, 6:20 AM this morning) and make art (hallelujah). I did work on the clay thing on Monday, but as often happens, I forgot to take photos…I’ll do it tomorrow. The quilt is just being traced…it’s big and complicated, so I guessed about 20 hours…
It all pretty much looks the same, day after day.
I’m still on the second yard of Wonder Under…that will change.
I found a numbering fuckup…I managed to skip backwards 20 pieces and had to add ‘a’ to all 20 because I’d already used those numbers.
Good times. Rolling toward 1700 pieces.
I’m just about 400 pieces in, so less than a quarter of the way through…and just over 4 hours, so that’s impressive. I do usually estimate 100 pieces an hour, but it’s rare that I make that. I figured 20 hours for this…we’ll see.
In house progress, here’s one old fix from the previous owners…
That wood has all been replaced…
Then we realized there’s about three different colors of brown paint. Ugh. Picked one. Suspect no one (but you) will ever notice. Certainly I haven’t for years and I live here. They are slowly moving around the house and getting this bit done. Putting gutters in will hopefully permanently solve the problem of the water damaging the wood down there…that and digging out a trench around the edges. Fun summer project there.
From The Hexologists, the book I’m reading for book club.
Not that my anxiety needs any support in that. It’s well-versed in arming itself.
OK. Doc. Uncomfortable eye things. For a long time. School…teaching lunar phases again…yesterday’s lab had me walking them through each step…the instructions say, for the lower grades, you may need to walk them through this. 8th grade, y’all…not so lower. It’s OK. It was fine. My voice is shot though. Then pilates, then sleep. Oh wait. I might have to do some other stuff first. Like work, eat, trace. All good. Not the work part. That can fuck off. I had my final observation/evaluation review yesterday. I did fine. Wasn’t really worried about it. I don’t have to have another one (unless I get a psycho principal…had those before) until the year I’m hoping to retire. That’ll be a fun one.
So in totally awesome news, even though we trimmed the shit out of the trees, the owls are back! I finally got the camera up and working and there they were! I was so happy. I thought I’d heard them, but not the young one I’d heard before for the last 9 months…that one left after the tree trimming. We would hear it every night, going out to hunt. This must be one of the original parents. Much quieter. The male parent last year was loud as hell too. But so far, these are quiet.
It’s the weird little things that make my days.
This weekend was rough…I don’t feel like I got enough of any one thing done, unfortunately. Crunch time for school plus a lot of art things going on. I got a little bit done on the piece I’m doing with a partner…just some tracing done on Friday and Sunday night…
I think I had a whopping 26 minutes last night…
I was speed grading before that. I’m in the 200s…just about 150 pieces to go. I could finish it tonight, but I have a baby quilt that needs to be done by Saturday. Ha! Well. Hopefully.
I put borders on it Friday, then pinbasted it Saturday morning.
I did a little quilting on Saturday after buying an insane amount of thread, because I didn’t have the right kind.
I didn’t get any more quilting done all weekend unfortunately. It won’t take long…I just need to do it. Hopefully more tonight. But grades are also due and that’s stressful. So yeah. I’m trying to do all the things.
Saturday was the pop-up opening of Collective Retrospective, a show with a current piece and a piece that’s at least 10 years old. It started on Instagram. I only had the old piece, and it will be 30 years old in October.
This is The Cold Cement Basement of Our Love from October 1994. It’s a screenprint that I then drew all over with Sharpie…some things never change. Lots of words and DNA and a cup of tea. And sciencey things going on in the body. Before I ever taught science. I did work in science though.
I absolutely sucked at pictures of this show…I do know this is Judith Parenio’s piece…
I got a picture of her speaking (there’s video of her rousing words on the Insta link above)…
Except this is before she actually talked. Cool things happened. But I was there for like 3 1/2 hours. Time. Sigh. There was a beautiful sky though…and friends came by to see me and my art.
The Man stopped by at the end to help me load my piece into the car and then we went to dinner…
He had a show the night before that I was supposed to go to, but he texted me while I was driving that they had stopped letting people in; the venue was full. So I turned around and went home and graded instead. He didn’t get home until almost 2 AM, so we’ve barely seen each other this weekend. Yesterday was two art Zoom meetings plus trying to grade.
Anyway. So I’m quilting this week, hopefully tracing, obviously grading and lesson planning. Listening to owls. Reading when I can. I’ve got my second ceramics class tomorrow…already have ideas. It’s coiling. I love coiling. Busy weekend coming up. Again. Lots of art going out, which is good. Wish I were making more of it, but it’s here. I’m getting there. After a staff meeting today, teaching pedigrees…actually, letting an assignment teach them. I did my part. It’s time for them to do theirs. Ha! Hopeful anyway. First full week of teaching since January…with holidays and COVID and doctors’ appointments. It will be weird.
OK. Self realizes last real day of Winter Break is upon us. The to-do list is heinous. The month is ugly. I’m still feeling burnt out from school…not a good sign after three weeks off. But it is what it is. What I can have in place is a giant pile of books to read as a reward for doing whatever yucky thing is that I had to do to earn the reading, a solid exercise plan that moves for nothing and no one (almost), an art project that has a deadline, so it cannot be shunted aside. It would also help if I had a cook and a cleaner, but I’m not holding my breath for those. Best I can do today is cross off a bunch of stuff. I’m dropping my school computer off this morning and getting a loaner so that I can actually use it in class. At home, I’ve been projecting it to another monitor, but I still can’t see the login box (I don’t need to see that to get in, luckily), and a goodly chunk of the doc and tabs are unavailable. So I’m glad they were available to get me a loaner today. I’m also shipping the Supreme Court quilt to its new owner. I made some videos before I packed it up, so I’ll be hopefully getting those processed and on the blog this weekend. I’m picking up another quilt from a show; I’m glad they were open today so I could do that. Trying to do all this stuff during a regular work week is really challenging…half of these places aren’t open late enough for me to even get there. Frustrations aside (is that even possible? I feel like it’s a daily occurrence to be frustrated these days…ask me after today.), I have today planned pretty solidly. Hoping to get a hike/walk in there, but we’ll see.
So I’m on the speedy track with the first quilt of 2024. Why? I have a collaborative project I’m supposed to be doing in the next few months, and I also need to (want to!) make a baby quilt for a good friend having her first. Also there’s a deadline and I don’t have anything at all for it, which is weird and frustrating (there’s that word again). So I traced the whole thing in just three nights, I think…
Spending more than an hour a night, obviously staying up too late, sigh, those are the hours I am most efficient, but also the hours I need to be asleep so I can get enough sleep so I can get up at ugh in the morning. It was less than two yards of Wonder Under. I started cutting it out Wednesday night after finishing the tracing…
Didn’t get far, but did the rest of it in a couple of hours last night…
Today, I’m going to sort it, make sure I have a background, buy one if I don’t, and start ironing to fabric, which means putting everything away from the last quilt first, and honestly, I need to put the borders on the other friend’s quilt I have had for a over a month first, because I need the ironing board and table for that. So do that first. Realistically, that’s a lot, considering everything else I need to do today, but we’ll see how it goes. You know me; I’m all about progress.
OK, I’m going to have to write the rest of this later; need to book. *** Time Passes *** So I wrote that at around 8 AM and now it’s 12:15. I’ve been productive. I have a loaner computer and mine is winging its way (well, probably driving) to Apple for repair. I copied all the papers needed for the first two weeks of school (one copier is already down, so I stole paper from it and went to the office copier, so that reduces my Monday stress). I picked up my quilt from Visions, because the show ended. I shipped the sold quilt with insurance, which is why I had to drive into a part of town I never go to…it has to go to a customer center, not a UPS store. Annoying because they’re not open past 2 PM, so doing it during the school day is impossible. I might even have partially solved the insulin shortage problem; we’ll see about that. Why am I short insulin? Long story involving a defective pen months ago that still isn’t solved. Yet.
I also washed my storage bins that I use for sorting fabric and Wonder Under. The pencil had been transferring off of the pieces onto the boxes, and I didn’t want the fabric to get dirty. To be honest, I only washed the first 6…because that’s all I need right now. So later today, I’ll be sorting fabric. I also checked my background stash and I have something that will work well for this quilt, so there is (unfortunately) no need to go shopping. Wah. But also, that’s probably a good thing. I’m waiting for the loaner computer to finish updating so I can go lesson plan for a while…not my favorite thing to do, but I have a chunk of time when I’m not super tired, so I should do that now. My future self will appreciate it.
I’ll take a break while lesson planning to put the borders on that quilt and clean up the sewing room, so I can start ironing to fabric later today. The Man and I have a date night planned, since he has a show tomorrow night, so we’ll be going out to dinner and to see some music for a while. Tomorrow, I’m planning for more lesson crap and more ironing joy.
Last night, during my quilting-friends Zoom, I made wontons from scratch, to provide me with three days of lunch joy (and last night’s dinner). It’s too time-consuming to make during the school year, but it’s one of my favorite meals, so I make it once during break if I can. Then I started pinning the snowflakes on the borders of mom’s Tinsel quilt. Oh, I put the borders on the other day…
We changed the snowflakes to two different sizes of circles…
And then changed the borders from the pattern, only using 6 of the snowflakes Sue Spargo planned.
One of the other participants did it this way and added a bunch of different embroidered snowflakes randomly throughout the border, and I liked the way it looked better than the original. So my job is to applique down the 48 circles. Then I hand it over to mom and she does the embroidery. Then back to me to sandwich and quilt…she could probably do that, but that’s OK. I’ll give it back to her to stitch the binding down by hand. Then it’s hers. And when she’s gone, it’s mine. Unless my SIL or some other close family member wants it more. Then it’s theirs.
So those circles are my evening stitching after eating dinner. It’ll be a week or two to get done.
Here’s where I’ve been lesson planning. It got dark last night while I was working.
It’s kind of chaotic, but it works better than sitting on the couch. I did finish grading that last academic assignment, so that’s good. I have progress report grades due in a couple of weeks, and I don’t want to stress about it. I don’t have TIME to stress about it. Every weekend from now until February 10 has stuff on it. Some of it is art or music, but that doesn’t make it any less busy (there’s also tree trimming and mammogram, so it’s not all fun and games). I’m eyeing February for camping or something, because I’m gonna need it.
Kitten is such a good baby. Fifteen and a bit. Definitely likes the sun.
And to be near me. Sometimes annoyingly so. But sweet here.
The composter in the front yard has a visitor.
Probably rat. Need to put more water in there. They don’t like it when it’s super wet.
Also, she’s touching me. Make her stop touching me.
Anyway. Coping mechanisms in place. I’m on some new supplements and hoping they will help with sleep and energy. And hot flashes, which may never go away. We’ll see. But for now, I’m going to eat happy wonton lunch and plan for a while and then not plan for a while. The art is what saves me, on a daily basis, y’all. Without it, I’d be bonkers, seriously nuts. I’m so glad I have that.
You know, just when you give up on ever hearing back about something, you inevitably get some weird voicemail about it. Guaranteed. So that’s one fuckup in 2023 solved in 2024. May there be more. I had a defective insulin pen. It only took them 4 months to issue me a voucher.
I’m getting lots done each day; it just doesn’t feel like enough. I started tracing Wonder Under for the new quilt, which has an insane deadline, on Monday night…
I spent more time than I usually do on a daily basis, because it’s break, and I’m allowed. Plus I cleaned and organized beforehand. Pay-off. I did the same thing last night, but that’s because I stayed up too late…
That’s not something I should keep doing, because sleep is one of my major focuses of the new year. Sleep affects blood sugar. And stress. Also stress affects blood sugar. And sleep. Annoying really. There should just be a button I can push to fix all of those. ANYWAY. I’m in the 400s…planning on finishing today. Then trimming the Wonder Under. Fast fast.
Unfortunately, this is the part of Winter Break where I panic about not getting shit done. I took the dog back to the eye doc today; his eyelid is healing fine and hopefully the growth will not come back and his eyes will not deteriorate super fast. We’ll see. He’s a good boy. I have a haircut later today, after a COVID-related rescheduling. Works for me. I have pilates today. That’s normal for a Wednesday. I started lesson planning yesterday with a little grading on the side. I still have one assignment that’s not done. Well, two, but one is super small. I should plan to finish those. I wanted to lesson plan first, though. I have a hellacious January, with 4 sex-ed curriculum meetings that weren’t supposed to exist (ah fun) and a whole host of other meetings, plus progress report grades are due. So I’m trying to preemptively get my head above water through February. Ha! Yeah, I know. I’m trying. I managed to get through 7 days of plans yesterday, but they had already been sort of roughly put together, so it was just finessing things and making sure there were rubrics and due dates etc. That’s almost the first two weeks of school, because of holidays and the like. So I’ve got another 9 days to get through for February, and they mostly don’t exist…and I’d really like to get a rough draft of the whole genetics unit, if I can pull it off. I don’t think I can, but I often set goals that I have no chance of achieving on time. I also need to ship some stuff today, write a blogpost I keep talking about writing, and do some organizing for a class I’m taking next week. NOT school related. Plus the quilty stuff for other people that I haven’t finished due to a shortage of time to do all the things. As always.
This was in the grocery store parking lot yesterday.
Chainsaw animals…always fun.
OK. It’s raining here. That’s a good reason to stay inside. I was up way too early. I need to put a label on a quilt and make sure I have hanging slats for it. Then head out for haircut and random errands. Busy day. Not enough hours. Always.
I’m trying very hard to eat my breakfast, type this, and babysit a rambunctious puppy before I go to school today. I’m not ready for school…mentally. Physically, I can do today. And then I’ll think about the next day. And the next day. Which makes it hard when your boss wants a lesson plan for some Thursday and he probably wants it earlier than the morning of. Or the night before. Which is where I’m at right now. I have stuff planned out in order, but no clue how long most of it will take, so who the fuck knows what I’ll be teaching on the day he wants to observe. I mean, I’ll know on the day. I hate not being planned better, but it’s physically impossible right now to get there. Again. For the fourth year in a row. So completely done, y’all. PRO! I finished grading things, so I have a few days of leeway before I have to get back on that. I really wanted to be fully planned out for the next three weeks, but it didn’t happen. I have a rough plan for two of them…some decisions need to be made, and otherwise, I just need to let it play out to get the timing right. Absolutely no help on that from anywhere. Sigh.
Moving on. So I finished tracing the quilt on Friday night…
It’s been really fast compared to the last one. Then Saturday night, I cut all the pieces out.
Luckily Annie slept through all that, although she did just about knock an entire box over when she woke up to Simba’s barking.
Yeah. All of them. It was about 4 1/2 hours. Delightful. Last night, I sorted them all…
It took a whopping 18 minutes. So funny. The last one was over 2 hours. I do love a big complicated quilt, but sometimes this is a relief, to do a smaller, less complicated one.
Then I started trying to clean up the studio, putting fabric away so I can start ironing to fabric tonight. I’m not done cleaning, but I’m not cooking tonight and I have no grading (just planning) to do, so hopefully I can spend a little more time in here tonight and actually start ironing to fabric. We’ll see.
Friday was also our Thanksgiving dinner, with my family…just the parents and the Man. The kids are still in the UK…actually, I think the girlchild is back now.
Mom is not fazed by dogs…even very in-your-face dogs.
She’s ripping borders off a quilt duvet she made so she can turn it into a king-sized duvet instead of a queen. Pain in the ass…
Dad also had a dog…
They were very patient with my turkey issues…it turned out fine, but took an hour longer than I had planned. As usual.
Kept it pretty simple. Yes, the dressing turned out great. Second time.
Small group. Lots of cooking and cleanup, but nice to see them otherwise.
This is a first…Nova and Simba on the bed together.
It didn’t last long. It’s like the bed is neutral territory and anyone (but Annie) can be up there together. Weird.
Also weird that we still have caterpillars on milkweed that is still blooming.
We’ll see if any of it survives to next year.
OK. Three weeks of school until the next break. That’s 15 days. Fifteen days with 1 assembly, 1 observation, 1 literacy meeting, possibly 4 sex ed curriculum meetings, 3 staff meetings, 1 union/principal meeting, at least 3 parent-teacher meetings, at least 4 labs, and who knows what else that I just don’t know about yet. I think I can do that. Maybe. Also a quilt to finish, hopefully sooner rather than later. We’ll see how that goes.
Ah Black Friday…when I rarely leave the house. Mostly because this is the day I do MY family Thanksgiving. At least this year. And last year. Anyway. So I’m cooking. And recooking, because I fucked up the first time. Send thoughts and prayers. It’s OK…I was making a half recipe anyway, so I had all the stuff to do over.
I don’t have a second turkey though, so let’s hope I don’t mess that up. I’m missing my two foodie children, who are much better at reading recipes than I am. It’s OK. I kept it simple. The stuffing/dressing just fucked me up a bit. The recipe actually has ‘simple’ in the title, but I was trying to rewrite an incomprehensible (not simple) electromagnet lab at the same time, and that didn’t help. Right now, everything is in waiting mode, although in 15 minutes, the turkey needs to come out of the brine and get rinsed and ready. Remind me next year to do a dry brine instead. So I might not finish writing this before I go womanhandle the bird.
I did finish grading everything, even the redoes, although most of them were absolute crap. I wonder sometimes why I talk in class or make videos, because no one listens to me. I meant to finish lesson planning on Wednesday and then not do any more schoolwork until Sunday afternoon. Yeah, that’s fucked. I didn’t start lesson planning until yesterday and the lab today is not even half written or rewritten. Some things on Teachers Pay Teachers are so convoluted and yet missing the most important crap. Much like my coteacher. Sigh. It is what it is. If I think too hard about it, I’ll lose my mind. But I do need to plan some more this afternoon so I won’t be too buried in the next three weeks. Because those weeks already look so bad.
I have been tracing each night…staying up way too late. As usual.
Annie checking out what I’m doing. I think she’d climb up there if I didn’t shoo her away.
Then last night, I got close to the end, but realized I hadn’t numbered one section, so I guess I have about 80 pieces left to trace. I couldn’t stay up THAT late. But I should be able to finish today and start trimming them.
There’s a dog in that picture too. Then I can go buy background fabric tomorrow. Finish trimming in a couple of nights, start ironing to fabric. In between lesson planning and too many meetings and trying to figure out Christmas. Ugh. Chaos. I did manage some of the chaos in the last few days: I planted all the baby succulents that were hanging out on the kitchen counter, I switched compost bins (it’s been on my list since September…welcome to the day job fucking up my existence), I got a bunch of pine needles and leaves swept up into the recycling bins, I moved the old trellises against the fence to keep the dogs from slamming into it to ‘greet’ the boxers on the other side, and I cleaned out the freezer (stuff in there from 2020 y’all…bad deal). I also cleaned off the table so we can actually eat there.
I still need to sweep and find appropriate dishes and finish the damn lab instructions and a bunch of other stuff. Mostly food related. But the quilt stuff is in there too.
We walked the doggos yesterday…
The weather was supposed to be cooler but there was a definite warmish tinge to all of it.
Then we went to the Man’s family’s house for Thanksgiving 1.
The food was good, and they decorate! They had Xmas up already. Oh my. I can’t deal. Nice people though…
They have more variety of foodstuffs than we will…more people too. More vegetables. I appreciate their gatherings because they are low-stress for me.
We came home and napped off the turkey and the hike.
She’s half in my lap.
The kids and their dad are at the wedding in the UK now…I think…
I mean, I know it’s today. They might still be at the festivities. They clean up well. I do miss the kids, but they’ll be here at Christmas, so that’s not too far off. And my Thanksgiving 2 is about 6 hours off. In fact, it’s turkey time. Wish me luck. Send more thoughts and prayers. I’m gonna need them. And then art time. Maybe more napping. Only three days left of break before I am back in the grind. Not ready. Never am.
Oh hey. Hi. School dreams every night. Can’t fall asleep for a good two hours, even though it’s midnight. It’s not even that hot. The dog is in the bed, my body hurts, my brain won’t shut the fuck up. All good. It is August. So school is on my mind. Heavily.
Yesterday was the first day I didn’t have copyediting. I had to deliver some art, but it was trouble-free and relatively quick (come to our opening at the downtown San Diego library on August 11!). Today I had my eyes checked (all good). I try to keep the last few days before school starts relatively open, so I can introvert myself into a pillow fort coma before all hell breaks loose. The to-do list might kick my ass. So yesterday, I had about 3 1/2 hours of online training for school (sexual harassment, mandated reporter, pest management, blood-borne pathogens…was that it? Nah, forgot cybersecurity…ironically.). I still have 45 more minutes on active shooters (as opposed to inactive shooters?). I also panicked about the planning calendars for this coming year. My co-teacher sent an email out and I thought, oh shit, newbies are gonna look at these, and I hadn’t touched them since June, so I touched them. Fussed a little with 7th grade just for the first few months…I’m not teaching it this year, but there were a few things that needed fixing. Then took a look at 8th grade. Oh yeah. Fuck. So I fussed with January through June. I’d done some stuff with December already and then stalled on August through November. I had COVID last year for the first 8 days of school, which was a clusterfuck, and the calendar reflects that. I’m hoping the new 8th-grade teacher is ready and willing to plan. Most of the issues are in February and on, but the 2nd unit needs something. I think. I have more to do on Unit 1 today and tomorrow, but I now have a better handle on what I need to do. Maybe. Until I don’t.
So. School. Need to order some supplies. Need to do some stuff with documents. Need to be ready for next week…going back. Not ready. Nope. Nuh uh. Never am.
So I also traced yesterday and Monday…progress! Still fucking slow, y’all. But I’m getting there.
This is what it really looks like when I trace. I usually have about 2 yards of Wonder Under out, one for big pieces and one for filling in with all the little pieces that need to go somewhere. I hate to waste Wonder Under. I blame my grandmother, my raised-in-the-Depression grandma who saved everything. And my mom who was raised by her. Hence the pile of hard, cracked rubberbands I tossed out at work back in June. It’s a thing. I always have rubberbands somewhere that should be tossed. And I never toss a paperclip unless it breaks. Or it’s inexplicably sticky.
I’ve been going through my clothes, trying to be way more organized than I have been. Thrifting some, sending some to a recycler, organizing the rest. We’ve banned the cats from the closet because they cause so much damage. I have clothes with holes from Luna catching them on her kamikaze way down from the top shelf and everything is covered in fur. So I washed a lot and will hang them back up and leave the doors closed. She doesn’t like it. Oh well.
This tracing stuff is hard on the eyes…
This was me tracing through all the trainings…
See tiny computer? Yeah. Well. I’ve heard some of these videos so many times I can ace the test the first time through. I feel like if you pass the test, you shouldn’t have to sit through the videos. Whatever. How about just a brief update on what changed? Nah.
I’ve got 4 yards mostly done and I’ve started the 5th yard of Wonder Under…
I’m 15 hours into the tracing and on piece 1199. So more than halfway. About 830 to go. I’d like it done. But IDK if it will be before the weekend. I have most of the rest of today, but need to do school and yard and house stuff too, tomorrow is wide open (I think? Oh wait, no, have a concert to go to and we’re leaving incredibly early), and Friday is a clusterfuck. Same with Saturday. Ah well. We’ll see. So it will probably be 8 or 9 yards of Wonder Under and 22 hours of tracing. That’s my semi-educated guess.
As part of cleaning out clothes, I tossed a few of my old school shirts, put three in a pile to take to school (I never wear them…one is just the wrong shape for me, so uncomfortable, and the other is polyester, and we are not friends). But I found this white shirt that WOULD fit just fine, unlike the new one I got at the end of last year, but I don’t wear white. I just don’t. I don’t even own bras that won’t show through (they’re all black, what can I say), and I just don’t like white. Ugh. Stains. Makes me even pinker than I already am. SO. I put it in a pile to tie dye and yesterday I decided not to wait any longer and did it on the dryer.
This is the before picture with the one glove I found (yes, the other hand has two blue fingernails right now). I’m letting it percolate and will pull it later today. I’m hoping for awesomeness.
As part of the yard work, I was trimming in the backyard, and was tugging on some ivy taking over one of my trees. I heard a ‘whoosh’ and saw one of the barn owls move to the eucalyptus.
It was STARING at me, like lady, that tree you’re tugging on is my daytime nest. Knock it off. And it makes sense, because we hear one of them vocalizing from the backyard and then around the deck almost every night. So yeah. I still have a barn owl in my yard. All good. There’s also a cat on the roof. We haven’t seen it anywhere else. I haven’t seen it at all. The Man is standing on the deck at night, hears a noise, looks up, and there’s a cat head silhouetted against the night sky. Twice now. Weird, huh? I moved my yardwork to the bougainvillea next to the bedroom window, where there is probably a skunk living, and at least two bunnies that I’ve seen, so that’s safe, right? The reality is that this yard is overwhelming on a good day. I’ve made some progress this summer, but not enough. It’s never enough. Pile of gravel is still there, although I’ve made it a little further around the corner. Ah well. Can’t do it all.
With that in mind, I have a list for today, and once this is posted, I will have done two of the things on it. Plus the eye doctor and Kitten’s meds because she’s not eating. Which I didn’t put on the list because they were on the other list. Hmmm. Don’t have multiple lists. Bad plan. So I’m going to go pee the ex’s puppy…all my wounds from her have finally healed. Then come back and eat lunch maybe and do all the other things on the list. Well maybe not ALL of them. There’s always too many things. Might be a mistake. Plus trace for a good long while. That’s pretty important.
This is the last full week of school. It’s a doozy, of course. Nothing like next week, but still a ton of stuff going on, both at school and in the evenings. Fewer kids turning in late work this trimester. A blessing for me; maybe not so much for their grades. No more lesson planning really though. That’s a plus. Spent so many hours over the last school year trying to do that. Desperately doing that. Can’t teach if you don’t know what you’re teaching. Glad that’s done. Mostly. Yeah. This week is pregnancy and STIs, plus bridge building and maybe breaking, plus a field trip, but coming back and teaching afterwards. Ugh. It’ll be fine. Right? It will? It will be something.
I did get some significant progress done on the new quilt…traced a chunk of time on Saturday…
Before a hike and after dinner. Made it more than halfway.
Then last night, I was going to grade another thing (I graded all afternoon), but then a kid, two kids really, cheated in a truly annoying assholular way, so I quit. Did not have the mental stamina to continue. So I traced instead, which may always be the healthier option.
There’s only 60 pieces left for tonight, and then I can start cutting.
Simba curled up on the couch. Yeah, I had hoped to be done with the tracing yesterday, but I did other things instead. Got a lot of things crossed off the to-do list, which is good. Feels less overwhelming at the moment.
The next goal is to be totally cut out this week and ironing to fabric by the weekend. Hopefully. Gotta put a lot of stuff away in the studio for that to happen, and I’m not sure I have a background fabric that will work. We’ll see.
I drew a little at dinner…
I don’t know if I posted this one, from the last two weeks of dinners…
Some places serve food super fast and I don’t have time to really finish a drawing. This sketchbook is almost finished. It’s a perfect size to fit in my purse. I probably have another one in my stash that will fit.
I went to my quilt guild meeting and worked on this. The never-to-be-finished scarf.
Almost got the body done. Still need to do the face and then decide what else I’m doing. I’m not covering all the black. I think.
We also hiked the dogs…mostly trying to tire out the puppy.
We tired the old man (the dog, not the Man) out pretty quickly…
But Annie was still zooming around at the end of 3 miles.
She was pretty good…a few moments of chewing stuff and she peed and pooped in the house in the first hour, but then figured out how to tell us she needed to go out. Good thing; she’ll be back in two weeks when the ex helps drive the girlchild across country. I’ll be off school, though, so hopefully that will help. Or not! Who knows.
Lots of blooming going on in the yard…
Lots of my chipping away at weeds, cleaning up the yard, trying to make it nicer. A little bit at a time. It probably needs more than a little bit, but that’s what I have time for. That and reading and making art. Lots of reading to do…looking forward to more of that. I do have a school training I have to do in July, and I really should plan things (but not sure how that goes…probably need to meet with my 8th-grade team at some point, but one is a newbie to our school and the other one is as burnt out as I am). Hmm. Not worrying about that right now. Maybe later this week.
Annie meets Kitten. Pretty sure I have scratches from this meeting.
9 days y’all. I might actually survive this school year…it felt pretty desperate last November…but I seem to have managed it. Not sure how. OK. Monday. Go to school.
Kathy Nida 