Portrait of a Cat…in My Way…

‘Tis painfully morning. The old lady dog woke me up just as I was falling asleep, adamant that she needed to pee THIS time (unlike at midnight, when she refused to do anything but smell whatever that thing is over there in the dirt that has fascinated both dogs). I take her out. She’s scared. She goes to the top of the slope and sits down. Nope. Not doing it. Does she need water? I try that. It’s like having a baby. WTF does she want? I don’t know. She goes back to bed, so do I, inserting myself between cat and human. Dude, it’s 100 degrees in here, you furry beast…why are you curled up next to me, flicking your tail at me. Deep breaths. Meditating myself into…almost sleep, as the dog comes back, go lie down, no, insistent this time. Fucking a. I’m up. I’m walking her out. This time she means it and goes over to pee, after trying to sniff Very Exciting Patch in the Dirt yet again. I think all that happened before 2 AM. I’m not sure. I just know I feel groggy this morning. That should go well.

It is supposed to be cooler again today…so yesterday’s 100 degrees in the grocery store parking lot? Hopefully not happening again. Well. Until it happens again. Two of the three things I was supposed to grade this weekend are done. The third is half done, completed at the gym in the morning. I was hoping to do a bunch during meal prep, but it turns out that meal prep was pretty labor intensive, so no go. I think I watched three videos after getting 30 or so done at the gym. Oh well. 34 to go. It could be worse. I could have one from every kid. At some point, they’re going to realize that their grade is based on what they turn in, and they’ll start turning work in. Or not. There seems to be a disconnect there. Maybe that should be a warmup question…where does your grade come from? The sky. God. You give me a grade based on how much you like me. Giant Ass Sigh.

Frustration aside. I made it through the Wonder Under this weekend. I wanted to be done tracing Saturday night, but at midnight, I still had 50 pieces to go and I knew I wanted to be up early to go to the gym, so that didn’t happen.

I spent a lot of Saturday, like 3 hours, tracing…some even during daylight.

Saturday night we went to a bunch of art stuff down in Barrio Logan, but afterwards, I traced some more…Kitten was being decidedly unhelpful.

The plus of the glass top is that I can gently shove her to one side…she slides easily. Sometimes she gets pissed off and whacks me, but mostly I think the glass is cool (the lightbulbs are LED, so no heat, thank god…because it was warm) and she enjoys being in my way and flicking her tail into what I’m drawing.

Sunday was busy, lots to do, dinner at the parentals…but I finally got around to tracing again around 8 or 9 PM. Cat came back…

The 50 pieces took under half an hour to trace. So maybe I could have done them the night before, but I was tired. Total tracing time was 13 hours and 18 minutes. It was not a quick one.

There were maybe 15 pieces that weren’t numbered, but everything else went smoothly for once. That’s a plus.

Don’t worry, I had dogs as well…open sliding glass door with air coming in…Calli is lying right in front of the fan. It was warm.

I always lay the Wonder Under out to see how much there is…7 yards…

There’s a lot of bigger pieces…so they take up more space.

I started cutting stuff out for a little over an hour…that’s about one yard done.

Only 6 to go. Kitten is guarding them.

I have a bunch of pictures from the full moon exhibit at La Bodega, but no time to post them today. I did buy this print of a piece that was in the women’s exhibit there back in March? I think?

I really liked the piece when I saw it then. Of course, there’s no name on the print except for Joni…hang on…Joni Nunez. I can’t get the damn tilde to work on WordPress. Stupid. No idea where they’ve hidden the special characters dingaling in the newer version. Google is not helping. ANYWAY. I need to go to school. So full moon art pictures later. All week probably at the rate I’m going.

Darlin’, Now There’s Mutiny…*

So it’s Saturday finally. Some weeks, man…some weeks. I have too much to do, of course, but a lot of the to-do list, I did the first step and I’m waiting on someone else. I love waiting. No really. Ha! I’m listening to a podcast about small-group instruction (aka stations or centers). We use these all the time in science, just because it’s the only way to run labs sometimes without spending a million dollars on materials, but we’ve realized with the sizes of our classes that 6 stations isn’t going to do it this year…we’ll need at least 7. Eight would be better. That means coming up with new shit. I love huge classes. Sigh. Also, they are mostly incapable of actually completing work on their own in groups right now, which is going to make the next unit interesting. We are totally not ready for me to be able to focus on one group while the rest work independently. Not unless I’m allowed to use duct tape. Honestly, that’s only about 5-6 kids per nonfunctional class. I’m getting there. Working on them…constantly.

First I need to pack up and deliver two quilts for a show that will be at Liberty Station through January. The openings are every first Friday, so the first one will be October 4…I think it’s 5-8 PM. Then I need to enter another show. Either this afternoon or tomorrow morning, I need to go to the gym. I also need to grade two assignments and prep a couple things for next week. I’d really like to get all the tracing done too, but that’s a harder task. I did trace last night…but before that, we went to our local artwalk…these cat heads were cool…

Garden Dream by Carlos Castrejon.

A prize winner! Nora Clemens, Fish on My Mind.

I also liked these pieces by Laura Lehman…

Interesting how the arms are all pushing out…

Definitely cool work…

I also liked the work by Kenda Francis, although there were a lot of people in that space, so I couldn’t get in there to photograph easily…

I also liked these lifesize sculptures by Sara Duvall…

Hard to get photos through the glass…and this one included my legs…

Which actually looks cool the way it worked out. Totally unplanned.

I was pretty tired after all that, but I knew I wanted to work. First, saving yet another baby lizard from the house. We are Lizard Central.

He was so little.

Tracing can be difficult with cat butts involved.

Did I tell you it got warm again? Back into the 90s. I think it’s supposed to be 99 degrees today. Ugh.

I eventually traced around her until she left.

Asking for attention…

Really, she just needed to pee. She doesn’t really ask. She just stares at you.

This is my usual view…television on and sorta watching but mostly listening. Cat in the way.

Giant-ass light table in my living room. I traced for a couple of hours and made it to the late 500s. Progress! I’m in the body at this point, so all the background and foreground are traced. I really do just have the lower torso and legs left. I finished the ribs and redwoods.

Right there is where I stopped. It wasn’t midnight yet, but I was tired. And I knew I had shit to do today. So I think I have about 300 pieces left or so. I have found about 10 pieces that weren’t numbered, and a few where I split pieces because it didn’t make sense to stretch a piece out underneath everything as I had originally numbered them. So a bunch of a’s, b’s, and c’s. Nothing like last time though…no missed numbers and no double numbers.

I saw this when I got up…that’s my piece, Beyond the Concrete, currently in France with the traveling Quilt National 2017 exhibit. I love seeing them all staring at it.

She’ll be coming home after this, I think…although she’s so old, I’m not sure I can put her into any other shows. This QN group didn’t travel as much as the previous one, unfortunately. Oh well.

Oh yeah…this…

I’m the chick in charge of this. Scary! Wait, no, it’ll be fine. It’s really just a hang out. Come by if you are around.

OK, shower, pack quilts, deliver. Then moving on through the tasks. I have no idea what I’m doing tonight, but it’s probably more art. And air conditioning hopefully.

*The Family, Mutiny

Good Times…

Hmmmm. Friday the 13th. Full moon tomorrow. All teachers know what I mean. Today could be interesting. It’s been a long week. The weekend won’t be long enough to recover fully. Then again, it only is when it’s got three days, because we usually work for one of the two days. I’ve got 68 videos to watch…all less than 90 seconds (that feels longer than you would think). I’ve got some art to drop off. I’ve got some art to look at. Monday, I’ll have a new non-leaking kitchen faucet. These are all good things. Well, except for the videos. That’s somewhat painful, to be honest. I know, I bring it on myself.

We are 3 1/2 weeks into school. It feels like longer. I still don’t know everybody’s name. I have these three girls who all look similar (they don’t really) and I’m still trying to tell them apart in my head. They are very different. I’m not sure why my brain can’t get a hold on this name stuff. Today, I walk around doing name stuff. In my head. It’ll be good. Watching the videos will help too.

I got home after the first school day this week where I didn’t have a 2-hour meeting, talked to the plumber, and then went to the gym. Finished my book. Remember reading The Lottery in middle school or high school? That awful story? My book club read another book (We Have Always Lived in the Castle) by Shirley Jackson, the author. Guess what? She’s always disturbing. I guess I have to read The Haunting of Hill House next.

Anyway, I came back after working out, ate some dinner, and then started tracing again. I’m about 7 hours in…

It’s boring as hell for you to look at, I know. But it’s so incredibly mellow and meditative for me. I like this stage for that peace. Then again, a lot of the quiltmaking is like that. The ironing, the cutting, the tracing. The quilting even, although it’s louder. The repetitive motion of the shoulders and arms…it’s really nice. Anyway. I’m in the high 300s…so not even halfway. I don’t think I’ll get much done tonight…I’m exhausted and we’re going out to an art thing tonight. My goal is tomorrow, around art delivery and hopefully another trip to the gym. We’ll see.

These guys…

They were waiting on the boychild to take them to the other house. The little one went batshit when the plumber showed up.

OK, plan for the day: survive it. Stay calm and focused. Get the shit done that needs doing. Enjoy some art. Then trace a little and collapse into bed. Literally collapse I think. Good times.

From Where, I Do Not Know…

Another long day. I’m hoping for a normal-shaped day today with a trip to the gym at the end of it. Luckily, I have nothing to grade yet…that’ll be this weekend. A bunch of videos to watch…that’s about it. School. It’s always a struggle in September. I’m really feeling overwhelmed. It’ll get better. It always does. But not today. Not right now anyway. I was so prepared when I left school yesterday, until I realized I’d left behind the two things I needed for the meeting I was going to next. Ah well. So be it. It’s fine. It’ll get done.

Deep breaths. Maybe a run around the block.

I got home late. Another 2-hour meeting. I was tired. I laid down. I stared at things. Someone fed me (best part of the day, maybe).

I revived. It happens. I stitched after dinner…I’m not sure why I keep stitching on this. I’m still not sure I like it. It may not matter.

I did email them yesterday and haven’t heard back. We’ll see. I’m not totally invested in this venture. This one is less cluttered.

I have one other I haven’t stitched on. Then maybe I’ll do something else after dinner. Something I actually want to work on. Sigh.

Oh yeah, so school. I can’t get anything done. I drew the cover page like two weeks ago…

No time to color it. Usually I can sit down with the kids in each class, moving around the room, and get it done. Not so in these classes. So it’s not done. At all. Sigh. I should do that. I should mail it to my daughter and have HER do it. Or my niece. Could happen.

Anyway. I started tracing early last night. I managed to find energy to stand, from where, I do not know.

I traced for about 2 1/2 hours or so. I’m a little over 5 hours in with about a 1/3 traced. So I guess I have 10 more hours to go. That’s gonna take a little longer than I thought. The plus is that I lost one event on Saturday, so I can trace for a while…maybe even while listening to the videos I have to grade? Maybe? But gym tonight and plans tomorrow night…so maybe I won’t be done until Monday. Yikes. Time is always tight. I work best with a hellacious deadline apparently.

Parse It Out Later…

Ah dazed and confused in the morning. Too much school yesterday. Back-to-school Night first, then came home and sent a bunch of stuff to our district print shop, because I realized yesterday that I needed stuff for next week (oh yikes), plus then remembered I’d taken all these kid videos yesterday so the kids who were absent could figure out the answers, so I processed all of them into a video and posted that. Then it was 10:30 PM. We had tried to watch a movie that’s been sitting by the TV for the entire summer, and then the DVD died. Right then and there. Second one this year. To our credit, they were both old. We both got our money out of them. Oh wait, I didn’t pay for mine. High five. New one is on the way, but meanwhile, we still haven’t seen more than 20 minutes or so of the movie.

Shockingly, after that long of a work day, I still wasn’t tired enough for bed. My body would go there, but my brain wouldn’t be ready. That’s why the art every night. It calms the brain. It’s meditation. It shuts up the school stuff and the life crap and lets my working brain relax. Especially this stuff, the tracing stuff.

Actually, I also watered plants last night. Another meditative act. Plus caring for things that don’t talk back. Hmmm.

As I was loading these photos, I realized what day it was today. Still makes me sad. I made a quilt block for one of the first responders who died in NYC. He had 5 children. I put 5 white birds on his block.

I think this might be a baby caterpillar…

It’s certainly weird looking. I rescued a baby lizard from the kitchen last night. Actually, first it tried to run up my leg and I squealed and it got away behind a bookcase, but later I went back in to heat up my tea, and it was trying to get in the storage container cupboard (probably because it heard I couldn’t find all the lids and it wanted to help), so I rehomed it outside. Where it will figure out a way to come back inside and be on my ceiling, like the other day, or maybe on the floor and a cat will eat it. Circle of life here folks.

I got beets in my produce box and finally cooked them up…aren’t they pretty?

They were also tasty. But more carbs. My diabetic life is frustrating sometimes.

After all that work shit I did (thank you work brain for not shutting up), I wanted to trace for a while…so I did.

It’s going very slowly. I’m not sure why. Large and complicated pieces mostly so far. I’m still in the water/land section below the earth mother.

I’ve mostly filled up one yard and started a second one. The big pieces aren’t fitting together well. I think I spend more time staring at where the pieces might fit so I don’t waste Wonder Under…

Which is silly. I don’t waste much.

I’m only at piece 136 or so.

I got going eventually and then time passed and I looked at the clock. Fuck. It was already 12:12 AM. So yeah. I’m a little tired this morning. But I was going to be anyway. The plus is that I mostly fell directly asleep (I’m never as fast as the man. I always have to do SOME deep breathing and adjustment of the body parts. He’s like one deep breath and OUT. Jealous of that.).

Tonight is a union meeting (more work!). I don’t even have anything to grade during the meeting. Seriously, we’ve pulled a lot of things in terms of grading. I’m going to enjoy that extra time. When I see it. I’m not seeing it yet. I do have a list of things to do today during prep…because I spent time with the calendar last night. 7th-period prep is hard for thinking. I’m not an afternoon thinker. I’m a late-night thinker. Sometimes I can handle early-morning thinking, but it’s a jumble. Parse it out later. OK. Gotta go. To the workplace. The one I feel like I just left.

Why Do We Care?

Imagine asking a classroom full of 7th graders this question. Then telling them they’re not allowed to say they don’t. Most of them were up to the challenge of figuring out why they SHOULD care. Some were shallow and just said because of their grade. But some dug deeper. Good conversations.

Then later, I see this…

We’re teaching the states of matter. Here’s why they care…so they can fuck with TSA. I’m betting she didn’t win this one though. The government isn’t great with science.

It was a frustrating day. Reteaching what classroom discussion looks like. Why we don’t all yell at once. Why yelling stupid shit is not productive. I’m behind in the teaching content part because there’s so much behavior teaching. We’ll get there. We just didn’t get there yesterday. By the end of the school day, I was more than a little frustrated with what was showing up in my inbox. They added two kids to one of my biggest classes, making it a potential issue when we’re doing labs. And then fucked with our schedule. We’ll make it work, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t have known about this hiccup a month ago. That’s the frustrating stuff.

So after a 2-hour staff meeting that was mostly a waste of time (I thought), I needed to be outside, moving. So we walked the dogs…

It was our first test of Calli on a full-length hike since late June, because of her hips and leg. She did awesome…

They’re staring at the boychild. I’m not interesting.

There’s still blooming flowers, despite the very little rain…just one day a week ago.

Desert flowers like their sporadic water.

I did a little on this. Tonight I will send the email…I think.

I found out I got two pieces into a show that will be in Liberty Station through January. There’s a first Friday opening every month, starting in October. That might be painful for me. Fridays are tiring. But I got into a show!

Today will be tiring…Back-to-School Night. Ugh. Not my favorite event.

I did start tracing, but only got about an hour in. Maybe I’ll be finished by Saturday? I doubt it, but it’s something to aim for.

If I get an hour in tonight, that will be a plus. OK, off to keep kids from doing stupid shit with water and balloons. I know, it sounds problematic. Welcome to my world.

Making Art, Ignoring the Rest…

Well if you ignore most of the stuff on the to-do list, you get a lot of art done. Six and a half hours worth of it. Am I done with ironing? You’d think I would be…but no. Because I found more mistakes. I seriously don’t know where my brain was when I numbered this, and that messed up my tracing…because I trace by number, and I didn’t realize there was another double-numbered section, so I missed tracing about 20 pieces. It’s OK…I figured it out yesterday during that six and half hours!

So I set up my smaller light box and wandered back to it a couple of times, traced the missing pieces, then cut those bits out, and then put them in the pile of to-be-ironed pieces. What a pain.

I did manage to get well past the fucked-up sections though…while watching/listening to the mandated videos I have to get through for school. I get tested on bloodborne pathogens, sexual harassment, mandated reporter duties, and integrated pest management.

Three hours’ worth. Fun stuff. But it’s done. That’s worth it.

These guys…

Mom is ironing. We must sleep. It was hot.

The big girl went in the pool…

She uses the pool the most…supervised, of course, and she can’t swim as well with the back legs any more.

After dinner, there was more of this…seriously down to the last line…a word and a half, plus signing it and dating the speech itself.

Soon.

More sky ironing. Cat has moved. Sky is dark. I’m still listening to work crap at this point.

I’m not really good at listening, honestly. I space out. But I’ve seen the same stuff over and over again and know most of the answers already. I’m not good with Audible books or podcasts though. I totally zone out when people are talking to me. Just so you know.

Nighttime…she’s still sleeping…old lady.

She’s a good girl. She did move in between, I swear.

So I’m at almost 13 hours of ironing. Sigh. So slow.

I’m much closer to done though…less than 100 pieces, I think…

Just need to finish some of the body parts and the hair, and then decide what to do with the pieces around the edges. Should they all be one color? Should they be different values of one color? Should they be all different colors? I don’t know. Maybe black and white, but then what do you do in the middle? Alternate or find a fabric that is both (that’s not hard…my black and white stash is massive). Anyway. That’ll be a decision for later today hopefully. First I’m going to the gym. Tonight I have a birthday party and a show…so that should be cool…but not really artsy. I was trying to come up with a drawing for the last embroidery last night while I was attempting to fall asleep (a really bad time to be thinking about such things). I think I came up with one, but I need to actually draw it too. OK. Outta here.

Part of the Story

So apparently evil gnomes numbered this drawing. Because there are so many double numbers, I have no freakin’ idea what happened. I must have been really tired or stressed (or both, thinking about what night it was). I screwed up multiple times. I’m like 150 pieces off. I have a’s and b’s to tell the numbers apart for like a stretch of 150 pieces. I’m hoping that after I got to wherever I stopped last night that I caught all the mistakes. One issue was that it’s round and I usually number from the bottom up. But that should have been fine because I did one half first and then the second half. I found one batch of lost pieces…I had numbered one side, started on the second side (with a completely random number…am I losing my mind?), but then realized I never numbered the arms on the other side, so I went back and did them. That does not explain the clusterfuck that was the rest of the numbering in this piece.

I didn’t finish last night. I was too busy trying to find all my mistakes and make sure I traced everything. I’m betting I still missed something. Aargh. Frustration. I don’t need things to take more time right now. I need everything to be very efficient. Fuuuck.

OK. Well. It’s done. The mistakes. They will be part of the story. The crazy story that is me and my art.

So I was at the gym yesterday, reading a book that was recommended to me by someone somewhere that I don’t remember anything about, and I get this…

Yeah. I don’t think the lack of estrogen makes us calmer. Laughing really loudly at that.

I had a stitching meeting in the afternoon…we old ladies chortle about crazy things and discuss how to overthrow the government. You think I’m kidding.

Susan spun, Kelly knitted, I stitched. I finished Earth Mother 8…

Now that’s two that need baths and ironing. One more to go.

And I started the Tiny Pricks project. I thought about how to transfer text and finally said fuck it and started stitching.

I don’t need no stinking markings. The text is from a speech he gave last weekend. It’s a rambling clusterfuck, so I’m just gonna stitch it all until I run out of space.

By the way, this is my country. I belong here. Well, the natives may feel differently, and I am sorry for that. I’m not fucking leaving. That said, if you don’t like us talking back to you and telling you how fucked up racism and sexism and genderism and all the other stupid shit y’all come up with to remove people’s rights…well then YOU can leave. My family’s been here for a good long time, but the reality is that the majority of us are immigrants here. Our families did not start here. We need to accept real life history and stop using this shit as an excuse.

The background of this piece? The signing of the Declaration of Independence…from the country we left. You know, when we immigrated.

Ahhh. Sigh. Just stitching his words pisses me off. I’ll be glad to be done with this. I have a month. I’ve done 10 words.

OK, so here’s one of the numbering mistakes…

That toenail. What the freak was I doing? I just don’t know.

The word of the day is frustration. Followed by breathe.

I traced for three hours last night. I’d like to think I’m more than halfway done, but I just don’t know how many more mistakes I have in this thing. I have to do part of the sky on one side, one whole figure, and the outline pieces. I’ve been tracing for 9 hours. I really should have been done by now, if it weren’t for the clusterfuck that was my brain. I’m on piece 439 of 727 (except there’s really 150 more than that)…so MAYBE there are 300 more pieces. Three hours? Or so. I want to be done today. Not sure I can pull that off, but I’ll try.

OK. Do you ever have a conversation with your brain about how you really need the best behavior from it now? Like please pay attention and function properly? Because sometimes it just wanders off and leaves you with a skeleton crew. Anyway. On to the day. Hopefully my brain will come along.

Double Numbers…

I’m trying to get my butt to the gym this morning. I need food first, and my brain is very discombobulated, and I’m on the phone with the girlchild in Boston, and I’m reading this weird book. Wait. I’m not reading the book right this minute. All these things do not stop me from going to the gym. The food is in the toaster oven and I’m wearing my gym clothes…that’s a start. I might not finish writing this before I decide to leave, but I’m starting it at least.

Focus is an issue. I really need focus. That’s why I make to-do lists, by the way, so when I’m wandering around the house, trying to figure out WTF I’m supposed to be doing, I can look at the list and go, oh hell no, I don’t wanna do that. Ha! And then I do it because it needs to get crossed off. I’m very motivated by crossing things off the list…by not having to move it to the next day. At least I know how my brain works.

Well, so someone gave me this to do the Tiny Pricks project and it’s a little stretchy, plus it’s not a solid base for stitching, and you can’t really see it unless there’s something behind it. So I had this fabric lying around (thanks to whatever person gifted me this, because I just used a chunk of it), and I pinned it down and stitched it…

Not a lot…just enough to hold it…

I ironed it after this. Now it’s ready to stitch. I don’t think I can transfer letters onto it, though. I could write on tracing paper and pin that on and stitch over it and then pull out the paper, but that sounds like a pain in the ass. Sigh. Not sure. I will need to figure that out before 1 PM today, I think. Maybe.

It was hot and humid yesterday. Not as hot and humid as it COULD be, but enough to make that big dog turn over to cool off.

Ugh. I ran a lot of errands yesterday. My doc is on medical leave and we’re still trying to find an answer to the weird pain/discomfort I get randomly, so this substitute doc, who is old and jolly and tells jokes about gall bladder stress tests with pepperoni pizzas, he ordered a bunch of tests and I get to sit around waiting on those. And then I went to JoAnns, which is hell on a good day. So they don’t carry my batting any more, which sucks, because I can’t buy it by the yard locally now. I can buy like a king-size batting and just cut into that, or I can buy a 40-yard roll and store it somewhere. Boychild wanted to know how long it would take to use that up. I usually buy 3 yards at a time, about twice a year, so 6 or 7 years. Nope. That’s silly. Annoying and silly. Then I went to Costco and you know how that goes. It’s just full of people who don’t know how to drive their carts. But I crossed off a big chunk of stuff on my to-do list, plus we have three bags of Ancient Grains now, so that’s good. I’ll deal with the batting later. It’s still on my list, but…I don’t know what to do about it. Make a decision.

I cooked. I exercised. I traced. Kitten is following me everywhere. It’s sweet.

So I was tracing and it was midnight and I’m realizing that I got to piece 323, and I’m looking for 324, and I’m realizing there’s a whole ‘nother set of pieces that’s got the same numbers as what I was just tracing. Seriously? I double numbered 280-323. There’s two pieces numbered 280…two pieces numbered 281. Ah sheet. So the second set all get ‘a’ after them. Plus this thing has 43 more pieces than I thought it did. So much for brain power, eh? Not sure how I did that. But I did.

That’s 280a you’re looking at. And 281a. 282a. Fuck.

I filled one yard of Wonder Under (which JoAnns still carries, but I do buy by the bolt, because I’ll use it much faster and it’s not the size of a fat middle-school kid) and started on a second. I’m almost halfway through. All good things. If I just traced all day instead of running around and doing things, I would be done tomorrow. (not happening)

Oh yeah, if you aren’t a patron of mine and you aren’t on Facebook, you probably didn’t see this video…I posted this publicly so people could get an example of what I do for my patrons…

You can also see it on my Patreon page here. My patrons will get the next part of this sometime this week. I started editing it last night. It’ll be done soon. I’m trying to build alternate sources of income related to my making art, so I can spend more time making art and less time copyediting etc. As I take on a 100K-word job because I need to pay back some college loans for the boy plus trim some trees and that whole thing where you don’t get paid in the summer but you still have to buy supplies for school and food and pay the damn mortgage even though there’s no paycheck coming. That shit is stressful.

Anyway. Selling stuff here and there, trying to figure out whether I can retire ever; these are all on my mind.

Working on the second yard. Up too late.

Then dogs and trash trucks and the man and cats this morning there is no way to attempt real sleep. I should remember that at midnight. Honestly, I was going to stop tracing before I figured out the double-numbering thing, and then I knew it would irritate me enough later to possibly delay my tracing again, so I just did it to get it out of the way.

I ate while writing this. So off to the gym I go. Stitching meeting this afternoon. More tracing tonight. FOCUS DAMMIT.

As We Drift into the Zone*

It’s the weirdest thing. You turn in your last grades of the school year, and all of a sudden, you come home and you don’t have any schoolwork to do. My brain panics a little. Wait. What do I do after work? I don’t have more work? (I mean, I do, but not like grading stuff, which is a never-ending thing along with planning for the whole school year and part of the summer.) I joined this teacher group for the year to try to cut some of my work hours, to streamline the shit so I can enjoy the not-shit more, and so many teachers are already on break and wondering why they can’t get going, why they’re still sleeping in the morning, still in pajamas at 2 in the afternoon. It’s called recovery. And I’m not there yet. My classroom is still a disaster. I’m still teaching sex ed today, plus there’s a school teacher breakfast, so I need to be in early. And then I also have a field trip tomorrow and another award ceremony, and then the sweet horrible wonder of the last day of school. I’m almost done getting everything put away in the classroom. Today I’m typing up the list of hazardous stuff we need to get rid of, so hopefully it can get picked up before they put summer school in my room.

Yesterday was exhausting. This whole last month has been exhausting. Frustrating. Stupid people stuff. Dumb adult drama. Too much work. Soon. Soon it will be done.

So I went home and walked dogs…

We went to the more open space…

The plants are changing color…

It’s been dry and hot in the last week. I had to put the sprinklers back on at home.

They scraped the road…it’s a fire break, so that makes sense. Less chance of getting ticks too, unless you’re the little boy and need to pee by standing on a bush.

No sign of coyotes…although you know they were there.

I know there’s cleaning to do. I need to sew some stuff (quick) for a friend. I need to do my second Patreon video. I found the videos I already recorded and downloaded them. Then I got distracted by something else. Easy to do when the brain is still so overloaded. The men around us teachers keep asking why we’re so irritated, emotional, distant, whatever. Um. So it’s really hard to explain how much emotion and care we put into our jobs. We think about kids nonstop. Not always with irritation! With worry. With sadness. With joy. With hope. So this week, we’re kind of a mess. Come back to me in July and I might have recovered. Mostly.

But I didn’t grade after eating dinner. I worked on this!

I haven’t been working on this at all, because I’ve been doing the embroideries. Which needs to start up again, but I have to do drawings first. Maybe later this week. I have one I want to simplify already. He’s not done, by the way. He needs nostrils and eyes and something on his horns.

I also started cutting stuff out…

I actually did one whole yard and the smaller piece, so I’m more than halfway done. I might be ironing to fabric by Friday. That would be cool. This could be a really fast piece. Of course, that means I’m forgetting all the other stuff that is going to suck up my days in the next week or so. But it’s OK to forget all that right now.

*Weezer, Island in the Sun