I Worry As Much As I Hope…

It’s the middle of the week. I think this week was supposed to be easier than last week. I may have been clueless about that. I got home yesterday with a plan to go to the gym, but with a headache and level of exhaustion that said no. It was a relatively easy teaching day, but I felt like I was running around all day. I didn’t have my prep period and I fed three classes nachos…by the way, some middle-school kids are so entitled. Drives me bonkers. Say thank you for the food. Understand that I need to feed two classes after you. No you can’t have seconds. Leave enough for the kids after you. Sigh. I should know better on that one. It’s OK. It’s done. It’s cleaned up. Let’s move on. Try for no more absences from class until…the next literacy one. Or the MRI I need to have. Odds are I’m just dealing with osteoarthritis in the knees though. Which sucks, because my left knee hurt like crazy yesterday for no apparent reason. It’s part of why I didn’t go to the gym, but really it was the headache and tiredness. Ah well. Pilates today.

I had my pre-evaluation meeting yesterday, which went OK. Boss wanted to know what day to observe me, and I was like, whatever day, sure that works, I have no clue what I’m teaching that day, but it’ll be fine. No worries. Seriously, it won’t matter. It’ll be fine. Although I’m going to feel better if I get the next few weeks planned out. I’m working on it. I needed to get grades done. Now I can focus on planning. This feels a lot like last year.

Artwise, it’s a struggle some nights to get an hour to iron. Monday was OK; I finished grades at 7 PM and refused to do any schoolwork after that. Oh wait. I did work after that. Had to create a writing assignment for the end of the stations I’m starting Friday. So it was kind of necessary. I had an idea, anyway, and it’s better to go with it than forget what I was thinking.

I got in an hour that night…did Kavanaugh’s pedestal…

Oh yeah, and the snakes. I did OK that night. Last night, though. Ugh. I finished my book club book, but needed a nap in the middle of it (headache), then had to make dinner, plus more school stuff, got on a roll, but then distracted by details. So many details. The literacy program is a challenge…how do I fit this in with everything else we’re doing? I need paragraphs that are science-related, so I spent too long on a skate park paragraph with these specific suffixes, and then word counts, and how many words in a minute, and in reality, I’m not sure what I’m doing.

So I gave up (it was almost 10 PM by then) and went and ironed for a whopping 32 minutes. I didn’t finish Thomas’ column, but I got a healthy start on it.

Chained slaves. I wonder if Thomas thinks he is doing what is best for those he serves. I don’t think he thinks about it at all. I’m sure Coney Barrett thinks she is. I don’t know what Kavanaugh thinks at all except about how he likes beer. So there’s that. I realize we don’t really know the personal thoughts of these people who are our justices, but when I was drawing this, I read a lot of their statements and opinions on issues. So that’s where these drawings came from.

Anyway, I have pilates AND book club tonight. Not sure how much ironing will get done, but hopefully more than last night. It’s frustrating to come home from working all day and not feel up to doing the thing you love. There are things I love about work too…but the not-loved parts are heavy duty at the moment. It’s getting better. Slowly.

This is where I’m at right now…maybe this is my retirement goal.

Hey watching politics lately? WTF with Matt Gaetz. Who let him be in charge of anything? Man is a nut. I guess we have a lot of nuts in charge. I hope more for next year’s elections. But I worry as much as I hope.

The Man and I feel the same way about the engine revvers…

Although we usually diss penis size. There’s a lot of fancy sportscars around here that somebody’s daddy bought them.

Also, the Allied Craftsmen show at the library is only up through this week, closing the 14th. Vallo Riberto wrote an article about it and mentioned my piece, Doctor’s Orders.

He said nice things about it. Much appreciated. I did make this piece especially for the show, Waiting Room. I’ve got another deadline for Allied Craftsmen coming up in January, so it’ll be the next one I do after this one. Probably have to let my brain rest a bit on slave ships and missing indigenous women. But those are in my head. I need to be reading about space so I can plan a better space unit this year. Too much, y’all. Too many things in my head.

OK it’s supposed to be 90 degrees today, so we’re doing an outdoors lab with balloons that I’ve never done before. I’m probably going to be really tired, huh. Then pilates, then home, then book club, then ironing. Maybe collapsing will happen too. Hopefully yesterday’s headache will stay away. Losing my prep to another meeting. It’s fine. It furthers something useful. Hopefully I’ll get what I need out of it too. More time for art? Probably not, but I can hope.

New Babies…

OK. Mondays. They are just hard. I’m awake. The alarm took care of that. And the shower. And the first half of a cup of tea. Plus it is daylight. Some neighbor is already making gardening noises, so if I weren’t back to work, I’d be irritated by how early it was. But it’s supposed to be hot today and right now it is overcast and cool, so I get it. I’m an evening gardener as opposed to a morning gardener. It’s just my thing. I’ve been planting cuttings from a few succulents that have gotten too large and fallen over in the last week. One yielded about 15 large cuttings; the other, only 4. Plus I think there are two more floating around somewhere. I love succulents for their ability to regrow, to just lie around for a while and then find the dirt. Some I had just lying on the ground, ready for transplanting, but I waited too long and they rooted there. Whoops. Makes it easy for those like me who are not GREAT gardeners. I water. Sometimes I fertilize. Sometimes I forget to water, although I find it meditative to wander around the yard, checking on plant status, looking for caterpillars or new growth.

Like this one…broken off the main cactus, which was grown after I carried a piece back during COVID, filled my hand with stickers because it LOOKED smooth. I put this little piece in a pot months ago and it curled over and broke and I’m like, well that’s it, it’s going to rot away now, but NO. The joy of new babies.

Check them out. That’s exciting. One of my weird old lady habits now.

So. I know, I just posted, but I wrote that Friday morning. Then somehow walked away from the computer (probably panicking about time) and didn’t post it. It was missing a title and a photo and that was it. So here’s Friday and the weekend.

A 3-hour staff meeting…but I forgot my sketchbook. I meant to drop it in my bag, but no. And they logically made us put our computer lids down. So we could answer questions and talk to each other. OK. Well I don’t function well under those circumstances, so I drew all over the question paper.

With the only color I could find in my bag.

These would make cool little quilts. I don’t have time for that right now, but someone remind me later, eh? Because I don’t have a million little drawings lying around. Ha! Here’s the one from Saturday night, which I started last week somewhere…

It’s still not done. I don’t draw fast enough or they bring the food too fast. No, I don’t know if they’re being shot out of cannons or planted in toilet paper tubes. Hard to say. Is that grass or fire on the right? Unknown.

Friday night, I finished cutting all the Wonder Under.

It took 11 hours and 38 minutes. I stayed up too late to do it, because I had an opening to go to before. Then Saturday night, I sorted all the pieces…

That was 2 hours and 11 minutes. And 21 boxes. Significant.

Then last night, I picked my background (luckily I had enough of something that worked, because I forgot to go to the quilt store) and cleaned the studio, putting all the fabric away from the last quilt. I laid out the first 100 pieces and started with the volcano.

I hang the drawing up so I can see it. Yes there’s some chaos going on below the drawing. I don’t know what to say about that except I need more storage or to clean up what I have, but time for that takes away from time for this.

And I have limited patience for that. Barely a start there, but a start. Looking forward to the next probably 25 hours of ironing these…hopefully more than an hour a night, or it will take me until September. Ugh.

Friday night’s opening was at the San Diego Downtown Library, in their 9th-floor exhibition space, which is very nice. My crooked photo of the blurb.

And there’s my piece, Doctor’s Orders…

Plus me! After a very frustrating day at work managing a lot of other people’s stuff instead of my own. I came home, showered, changed, and left again. With more tea in me. This show was mostly Allied Craftsmen, but a few other people added in.

I made an Instagram reel of this video of me rolling around my very undone room. It might be better with the music.

Many people were like, it looks great! Good enough! The only thing I had done was open/unlock cupboards and move the tables and chairs. Literally nothing in the eyes of what needed to be done. All those boxes needed to get OUT of the prep room so we can use it.

It’s OK. This was after three hours on Saturday…

I also went in Sunday and mopped the prep room floor because it was disgusting. Plus made a bunch of copies because they needed to be made. Today, I have two meetings and hopefully I’ll get a big chunk done. Hoping. Saturday, I was feeling very stressed about all of it. I’m still having issues. Also, the A/C isn’t working. So it’s warm. Not great. Supposed to be in the 90s this week.

And I also did a reel of this, so you could see what 2 hours of sorting pieces looks like. The plus of the reel is not listening to whatever I was watching I guess.

For each one, I’m looking at the number and finding the box with that number. Sometimes with the little pieces, I put them in my hand and pile them up by number, which is a little faster.

Sunday, I also cut out pieces for a revision of a tattoo quilt I’m doing.

We did a short hike.

The Man’s back is bothering him.

Plus it’s hot. But check out that thundercloud! It did not make its way to us, unfortunately.

And Kitten this morning. 15 years old. Definitely slowed down. Poor old lady.

Yes, she has taken over that drawer of blue fabric.

Anyway, that’s it. And I have to be at school in 30 minutes. Need meds, brush teeth, etc. More tea! Totally more tea. One meeting this morning, then one this afternoon. Hopefully my room will be presentable by 1 PM for that one. Or not! Then home after a couple of errands, to maybe go to the gym with my book, definitely ironing to fabric tonight. Definitely.

Days Disappear

Well. I finished the drawing. And I numbered it. That in itself is a major achievement for the week. I’ve also been copyediting a teacher’s manual, which is different, but not. It’s work. I need the money to pay for the dog’s dental visit and the dryer fix, which both add up to much more than I will get paid for this, but that’s OK. It means I spend a few hours each day staring at this computer in this hot room and feeling like I’m getting nothing done. Which is fine. It’s too hot to do the other things anyway. I currently have two fans blowing almost directly on me, not on my eyeballs, because they get dry and weepy and tired if I do that. My goal is to finish the copyediting this week, around the other things I need to do, and then next week is mostly wide open, if I ignore all the appointments and meetings I tossed in there. Yeah. That. They have to happen sometime. I did get the referral to musculoskeletal for my knee…they messaged asking for days/times, and I ever so hopefully gave them all this time before school started, and then realistically gave them some guidelines for after school starting, and then said if it was more than a month out with those guidelines, to use these other guidelines. I have an appointment in October. They should have just said they were booking two months out. I’m glad I’m mobile and can get around…it just hurts. It’s workable.

So finishing the drawing happened in bits and pieces at night, when it cooled down. I can’t draw in the heat and make sense of it. This was near the end…most of the last bit was penciled in when I went to bed on Sunday…

And then I finished it Monday night…

It’s about 48″ x 56″ I think. Not as big as I thought, but still big. And complicated. Kitten for scale…

I started numbering it Monday night and realized it would take forever…

So I finished last night, very late…didn’t even start until 10 something…

I thought it was 2023 pieces last night, thought that was weird because that’s this year, but it was actually 2029, which is funny, because that’s the year I’ve set for retiring from teaching. It may slip a year or two, but that’s the goal, that’s what’s keeping me going with all the clusterfucks, and yes, I’ll still have to work, copyediting or something else, but it won’t be in the classroom.

I had guessed 2000 pieces, so that was a good guess. I knew it was complicated. It took 15 hours and 38 minutes to draw it and 2 hours and 54 minutes to number it. Big time. Tonight I start tracing. It’s good going into the new school year with a big project. I appreciate the meditative time to work on it.

I did a little of this while watching TV over the last few nights.

Very basic applique. All I can handle. I say that, and I’m reading two books at a time. Not sure why. Some sort of ploy by my brain to read twice as much because I haven’t read any of that book today, even though I spent an hour reading the other one. I’m going along with it for now.

I have work in this show, opening August 11 at the downtown library in San Diego.

I’ve never had work in the library gallery, so that’s cool.

I don’t want to be tolerated. True that. I also like my tea really strong.

This guy has been licking his leg where they shaved all the hair off for his dental visit. So it is time for the floatie around his neck.

It’s hot and uncomfortable and he keeps looking at me like this, please take it off, but sir, you have licked a sore onto your leg and we will not be dealing with infected leg sores. It is not on the Bingo card for summer. So there.

OK. Today. Sorting through clothes, found a white school shirt that I will never wear because it is white, so I’m going to tie dye it…it’s a good size and fit, so that’s why I don’t just toss it or donate it or whatever. Copyediting…hopefully going to get all these silly Lesson boxes done that all have to be formatted the same but aren’t. I know I’m a copyeditor because I pay attention to this stuff; I’m just amazed at the people who don’t pay attention. I shouldn’t be. I need to pack up a quilt for delivery to a show…I probably need to pack up two quilts, but the other one isn’t due until next week, so maybe I’ll delay on that. I have yardwork…ALWAYS have yardwork. And tracing Wonder Under later. A book to go back to the physical library. Strange that these days…almost everything I read is digital unless I own it. And reading those two books…crucial part of the day. Oh wait, I have pilates too. That’s nice. I should remember to go to that. Days disappear if you aren’t watching. That’s not entirely a bad thing unless you’re like me and you like to check off the boxes of what you’ve done.