Exciting Piles of Wonder Under in My Future

‘Tis early. My brain is fog. Or oatmeal. Not sure which. Oatmeal is stickier. So that.

Yesterday’s lab was much mellower than the previous two days. Maybe that’s because I’d done it before? Or because it was more like direct instruction instead of their reading instructions. Reading is always an issue for us…so many language learners.

Calli had to go to the vet yesterday, more pee issues, but at some point, the boy decided the little one needed some exercise. There’s playing that happens when Katie’s not here, but Katie has toy issues and Calli has jealousy issues, so we hide all the toys while Katie visits…which sucks for Simba.

He likes toys.

Calli isn’t allowed to play because she’s a bully. She gets sticks thrown for her outside. Katie doesn’t actually fetch anything…she just tries to herd everyone who is fetching. It’s a pack of dogs…not just two.

After dinner, I didn’t do any grading. I figure I will do a bunch today. I took the day off to sit in a waiting room hopefully for not too long. But it means I’ll have some wait time there and here at home, so I can get a chunk of grading done.

So I started tracing pretty early last night. I was starting to think I was totally OK on time with this, but then realized I’m going to Boston and I don’t know what’s happening with Thanksgiving. So I panicked.

I traced for about 3 1/2 hours and got two yards mostly filled…and another one started.

I’m only in the mid 200s though. They were fussy pieces to trace. So I’m a quarter of the way through and it took about 3 1/2 hours. So another 10+ to go? I’ll do some tonight (maybe today? Although right now, a nap sounds lovely) and some tomorrow night, but that won’t get me done. We’ll see.

Anyway, gotta get out of here. Exciting piles of Wonder Under in my future.

With All These Things That I’ve Done*

I just completely freaked out because I was checking all my art exhibit entries for the last few weeks, looking to see what notification would be next, and I noticed a double entry. That’s incredibly unprofessional. My stomach dropped. I never do that shit (OK I accidentally did it once a million years ago when the kids were small and I was newly divorced, but luckily, I only got into one of the shows I double entered…which is how the odds go anyway, usually even lower odds than that, honestly). But it’s OK. One of them is only in print, so I don’t send the piece anywhere. Deep breaths. Panic over.

I did get into the Power of Women show that will be at IQF Houston, so that’s good, since I made the piece for that show…not that I wouldn’t have been able to show it elsewhere, though. God knows I do that often enough…here’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Lots going on in there. Wish I could go to Houston with her, but I’ll be in Boston the following weekend and Chandler, Arizona, the weekend after. Seems like enough travel. Plus Houston is pretty expensive. So she’ll travel without me, like most of them do.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at some of the people who friended me on Facebook recently. I do actually scroll through their feeds and make a decision, like if there’s nothing there, I assume they’re a bot or a Russian spy, so I don’t accept. And if their politics are out there, well and truly not gonna get along with mine, I don’t accept. I’m not always sure why they’re friending me, except maybe to get me to like their store or their quilting or whatever, but then you’re posting pictures of guns and kneejerk Trumpisms, and I’m like, I don’t want to see that on my feed, plus you’re gonna hate my vulvas, so why are you clicking friend again? Such a complicated world.

Anyway, that’s two shows that have notified in the last week, and both were acceptances. Good odds so far, but it’s guaranteed they won’t all be.

I had a long work day yesterday, and all I wanted to do when I got home was walk the furry beasts, so we grabbed them and ran. Well, only a little running, just to see how tired the little one was after 2 1/2 miles.

It was a lovely temperature. We went down this hill we never go down, but then we had to go up it as well. Funny, the picture does not convey the real upness of this hill at all.

Then I made dinner and did some stuff to get my printer to work again, which involved a cable, because our internet is super bad at the moment, or maybe it’s just mine on the computer, but the (previously wireless but now wired) printer was refusing to work. And I needed it to work. So it was late when I started ironing.

Cherries…I started with cherries…

And then I did the rest of the fruit bowl, plus ironed the dirt from yesterday.

I didn’t get far. I was tired. I didn’t sleep well the night before, plus I walked a lot. So that makes it hard to want to stand and pick out fabrics for a long time late at night. Here’s the rest of the 100s, laid out, ready for me to iron tonight.

I get into the fleshy bits pretty early on in this quilt. She has a lot of decoration on her, so I have to decide if that will be in flesh color or different colors…probably the latter. This is not a political statement quilt…just a reaction to a poem I wrote years ago. It’s a nice break from the last quilt, which was difficult and in my head in a much different way. Last year at this time, I was doing the gun quilt. That was really difficult.

Anyway, art…make it often and in spite of all the other crap.

*The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

Hot Funk, Cool Punk, Even If It’s Old Junk*

It was a busy crazy weekend. Quilts were delivered…always good. Went to a show. Pix below. Made some art, watched a movie, graded stuff, dealt with the death of a phone (well, not totally dealt with yet, but hopefully today)…all that. Didn’t sleep well last night. Hours of tossing and turning and hot flashes and busy brain. Feel pretty braindead this morning. Lack of sleep is not the best way to start a week, unfortunately.

So we drove up to the Boehm Gallery at Palomar College for the show That’s What She Said, here with 3 other FIG members under Helen Redman’s work (the amazing woman in the pink scarf). This is here to remind me to put it on the FIG page as well.

Helen does some amazing work on wood and paper…

Michelle Montjoy also has work in this show…

There was no statement for this one, a bunch of marks covering a pillowcase, counting up what? I wanted to know.

As a mom and a teacher, living today, right now…this was particularly good.

There were many more.

Also in the show was the Sien Collective, the collaborative work of artists Meagan Shein and Siobhan Arnold. I particularly liked the cyanotypes…this is a uterus on legs.

And it was as tall as I am. This one is much smaller and unfortunately photographed crooked (there was an issue with lighting)…but very cool.

Meanwhile, in Springfield, Missouri, the Extreme Fibers show was opening at IdeaXfactory, with two of my pieces and some very interesting works by other artists. The pieces in the back are Fruits of Nature and Storybook Paper Dress by Hannah Klein. Mine is In Deep.

Then my work Untied, with Big Head by Shen Chen Hsieh, and the dress again in the background by Klein.

It’s always cool to be invited to be in shows, especially when the work is so varied.

Saturday night, we watched Annihilation, and I cut out the whole quilt. There’s the book I’m reading…book club is Wednesday, and I probably won’t be able to go, but I’m trying to read anyway.

Sunday was a chaotic day. Then we went to the parentals for dinner. Simba has to be on a leash, because he takes off into the upper regions of the yard and can’t be retrieved. In the far distance, my dad is explaining all the sprinkler issues to Calli…or maybe to the boychild.

Yes, I was grading. It needed to get done. Then we came home and I did some stuff for school…and then set up for sorting Wonder Under, which I’d really wanted to get done way earlier.

Sorted!

Then back to the office, where I had to clean up from the last quilt. Lots of trying to organize by color. There’s definitely a space issue in here…always has been.

It took about an hour to clean everything up. It was late then…but I did start picking the base fabrics…plus the background, that blue at the bottom.

I didn’t iron all of them though, because it was after midnight and a school night, so that means it’s bed time.

I have lots more to do on this, obviously. All week? Well, all week, I have meeting after meeting after meeting. Plus back-to-school night, which is exhausting. So I’m going to get some of it done, but I suspect it will take me all week to get ironed. Maybe not. Cutting out by the weekend? Sure. That’s doable, I think.

Kitten’s not sure…

Meanwhile, I need to go function. Unlike my printer at the moment. It’s not functioning. Or my brain. Annoying. The music is trying to wake me up, but the boychild says it’s fully apparent that I am not functioning well. Only half a cup of tea in me. Definitely still asleep.

*Billy Joel, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me

Sitting Untouched and Growing Cold*

You know how I like to make art every day? Well it isn’t always possible, but I do try to at least do something with fabric and/or thread every day, although I guess technically Wonder Under isn’t fabric, but it’s fabric-related, and same with drawing, damn, I just talked myself out of my own plan. Fuck. Anyway. I try. Something. But some days, especially Fridays and Saturdays, there isn’t time or energy or whatever to let me do that, and most days during the school year, I don’t touch anything art-related until after 9 PM. So yesterday was one of those days, and that’s fine, because it was gaming night, and while I am gaming (no we aren’t freaking done yet even though we killed the Prince of Ziinch holy crap it’s Tzeentch they never showed me his name and now I know why they were pronouncing it so weird or something I don’t even know who he was, but he had feathers and was way smarter than any of us and wouldn’t freaking die, I shot him 3 times and so did everyone else, and now I have all these crazy wounds and flea buboes and I think I have chaos gases surrounding me), like I said WHILE I am gaming, I stitch. Because my Friday brain would otherwise be snoring away, exhausted by the day…damn, the week.

In the aftermath of the game, where I stopped stitching, just before we started putting away 7800 chips, another 450 dice, and all our other crap, each of us sporting a pile of wounds. But no. We’re not done with this campaign. It’s OK…it’s just kind of amazing.

Slow progress on this. I finally finished the July blocks…at least, I think they’re the July blocks, by finishing the hippo’s ears. The August blocks are the three across with the rhinos, bird, and butterfly. So that’s what I’m working on now…

Then I think the other three that are randomly not done are the September blocks. Maybe. So there’s the rhinos. They still need more work. But I got most of the flowers done. The blue flowers are complicated as hell…

They have french knots in slippery rayon, drizzle stitches, outlining with more of that crazy rayon shit. I’m still outlining…

Petting small furry things…

The boychild is followed around by animals all day and sometimes he gets annoyed and brings me one or two. This morning, they followed me around, well, the cats don’t really follow unless the little one thinks there’s food and the big one wants pets.

So last night, after gaming, I graded stuff. Because that’s what you do at 11 PM on a Friday. I think I’ve actually made my life easier (eventually) with the new warmups. They take longer to make/plan, but less time to grade. And they’re still writing.

Then I got up this morning and finished packing up quilts, wrote 4 statement pages, found some nails…delivering in about an hour.

I did NOT cut any of this out. I don’t know when I WILL cut any of this out. Sometime soon, for sure.

I did get into another show yesterday, Futurecraft at the Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, with Allied Craftsmen, one of the local groups to which I belong. The openings are Thursday, October 11, from 1-3 PM, and Saturday, October 13, from 2-4 PM (that’s the one I’ll be at). The show runs through November 7. There’s also an artists’ talk on Thursday, October 11 from 2-3 PM. I won’t be at that either. I have two pieces in the show…Part-Time Oasis…

And Mammogram…

So that’s one acceptance out of eight entries so far…not bad. Then again, this was the one where I was guaranteed to get one piece in, so not so impressive.

OK, on with quilt delivery, then an art exhibit, then some drinks, then IDK what. Food probably. That would be a good plan. Art will come in eventually (besides the management and delivery of said art).

*Cowboy Junkies, Cold Tea Blues

Try to Catch the Deluge in a Paper Cup*

This Friday arrived just in time, although I’m pretty sure I was supposed to get some more shit done yesterday and just blew it off. There’s always tonight…maybe. I did finally get the tracing done last night…whatever exhaustion I felt Tuesday night has strangely gotten better. I could look at my daily step count and maybe account it to that. Seriously, Nida, sit down once in a while. The graph of steps related to evening exhaustion is very telling. Wait until next week…I have a school-related meeting/activity after school every day next week. At least two days, I won’t be home until after 6. It looks exhausting. I better rest up this weekend. And occasionally sit down next week.

That’s amusing really…I have quilts to deliver, an art show, grading, gaming tonight, who knows what else. And I have to get to school early today to discuss moving a kid out of one period into another, because otherwise WWIII is gonna start in there. Not something I’m a fan of…trying to explain to a 12-year-old boy why “pussy” is offensive. No, he didn’t get it. I ramped down the feminist rant. Although I did call a kid on the whole “girls are bossy” shit. No sweetie. We’re just confident and you’re not doing anything, so she’s getting your ass on task. High five the girl off to the side and then explain that yelling at him probably isn’t the most effective way to get him to work. She’ll be someone’s boss some day…a GOOD boss. Me? I check my speech so much more than I used to do when I was younger. Which is good.

So I had my stitching meeting last night…and it took me an hour and a half (about) just to chain stitch around those damn rhinos. One and a half rhinos. With rayon thread. Pissy rayon thread. Such annoying thread…

I’ll be doing more of that at gaming tonight. I left the stitch book at home by accident, so I had to read through the instructions until I could find something I could do from memory. Chain stitch it is. Not Palestrina…haven’t done a million of them yet. I can do bullions from memory. I can’t do woven picot from memory…couldn’t remember what side to start on…top or bottom. Plus I didn’t know how many spokes, because it was the instructions from March again. DAMN. I don’t carry the whole notebook of instructions around with me, so that’s annoying.

Then I came home and I was still awake (miraculous), so I started tracing. I didn’t have a ton left, maybe 150 pieces. The dogs were gone with the boychild, so Kitten came out to clean her nether regions on my light table…

She spends a lot of time whacking her tail at me for disturbing her while this happens. I traced the head and the crazy hair and the tree with all its leaves and the cat and the bird…it didn’t take long…maybe a couple of hours?

There’s less than 3 yards of Wonder Under…and it took about 5 hours and 40 minutes to trace all 578 or so pieces (there’s more because I doubled up on about 5 pieces…but not a lot more).

So now I’m ready to cut them out. I might be able to handle that tonight. Well, the start of it. So I’m a little behind my plan. It’ll be fine. I’m not really expecting to get much done on it this weekend, but cutting it out shouldn’t take more than about 4 hours…so maybe I’ll be ironing by Monday or Tuesday night? I’ll have to think about what I want for the background…I don’t want to buy more fabric, if I can help it. Let me rephrase that. I’d love to buy more fabric…always…but I shouldn’t need to for this part. And I really shouldn’t. The house may be taken over by fabric some day if I don’t watch it.

This is a special portrait of Kitten and her frustrating gecko friend…frustrating in that Kitten is inside and gecko is outside, so much batting and banging of the window occurred.

There’s a gecko (is it the same one?) on this window most nights. It’s like cat TV. Now I really wanna know if its the same one or not. Need to catch it and mark it so I can tell. Yeah. That’s happening.

OK, off to work, more walking around in circles to manage kid work and behavior, plus all the other good teacher stuff that we do. And then a weekend. Looking forward to that, even though it will include grading 140 warmups and another 140 essays. Trying not to think about that part…

*Crowded House, Don’t Dream It’s Over

Might Have Known What You Would Find*

There was a quote in my head last night when I went to bed from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie, which I watched last night…possibly for the second time or maybe not, while I was packing up quilts). I wrote it down somewhere. It wasn’t the whale or the petunias who said it…definitely it was Marvin. Now I can’t find it. Perhaps I wrote it down in my sleep and dreamed the whole thing?

I got home yesterday and the plumber showed up to deal with the water pressure thingie and some other doodad wasn’t attached right (who knows who the hell did that) and all of a sudden, the place was jumping and water was flowing down the driveway quite boisterously but eventually everything got back in place and people could flush toilets again. Very important. Plus the boychild cooked dinner, which is always a wondrous thing. Somewhere, if I were smart and/or organized, I would keep track of all these random contraptions that get installed and then go bad with no warning. I need a house that thinks a lot harder than me. Or remembers stuff, because I can’t.

I have 4 quilts that have to be delivered Saturday so they can be installed next week up in Orange County. One needed a label, two needed slats and hardware, they all needed ironing and dehairing, plus I needed to figure out how to pack them up. None of that sounds like fun, because honestly, it isn’t. I have been putting it off. I forced myself to deal with most of it last night. I now have two rolls that need to be put in boxes…

And then I need to write (or find) statements, but otherwise, they’re ready to go. So that’s good. It took a while though.

Before that, during the dinner TV hour, which is more like 43 minutes, I was working on these. I think there’s about 15 more of the dark orange balls to go.

So that’s 5 or 6 nights of embellishing, but not the next 4 nights, because I won’t be home for any of those. Impressive, eh?

Puppy helped. He’s three today, so no longer a puppy.

As you can see, turning 3 is exhausting.

So it wasn’t until 10:30 PM that I was ready to trace. Ugh. This was supposed to be faster. Oh well. Life does what it does. I got another hour in…

I am still filling up the second yard. I’m at piece 437, which is the neck. So I have the head, the tree, and the cat/bird…otherwise known as about 250 pieces. I have a meeting tonight, but maybe I’ll be able to trace afterwards. Gaming tomorrow, another maybe after…at some point, I am not as tired after school. I can’t remember when that is…October? Maybe. The weekend is getting busy too. But I’ll get there. Not as fast as my brain wants me to, but I will.

*The Church, Under the Milky Way

Some People Say I’ve Done Alright for a Girl*

I wake up in the morning and my brain is still heavily involved in a conversation it was having with itself last night before I went to bed. Like maybe it went on all night while I was sleeping (not that I slept all night; y’all know how that goes…it might be why my eyes are a bit twitchy this morning) and it will continue to go on while I’m teaching and maybe I’ll get reinvolved in the conversation some time after school. If it lets me. I wonder sometimes if I’m a little insane, because it really does feel like parts of my brain are over there discussing things without telling me until something is decided. And then I remember Art Brain. I constantly let her go wander around with drawings. She always comes back, sometimes years from now, like the most recent quilt.

This is Womanscape.

She’s big…54″ wide by almost 82″ high. I like to do one really big quilt a year, usually over the summer. Last year was a bit weird for that, because I finished the big one in January or so. There’s a lot going on in here…honestly, this is a picture of my brain having a bunch of mostly related conversations…starting with a drawing from 2012, tearing it up into bits, and reworking it into this.

I also finally photographed this one, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Yup. It’s me. Back when I was young and skinny. My kids are in this one too. Shadows. I just realized girlchild has what looks like a target on her uterine area. Whoops. She’ll love that. Anyway, obviously I made this one for the IQF Power of Women show, but if she doesn’t get in, she’ll get in somewhere. So that was the summer…two quilts. Nice.

I think I entered 8 shows in the last 3 weeks. Waiting to hear on all of them. It’ll take a while. Probably be a bunch of rejections too. I do have one where I’m guaranteed to get one piece in. That’s a plus.

So I finally finished all those pink bullion knots! A miracle. There were a lot of them for some reason. Now I only have one color left, this blush orange, they call it. And here’s why I left it for last. That stitch. It’s crested chain stitch. It’s not HARD…but I keep having to look at the book to remember what to do next.

Plus I’m not very good at keeping it even yet. Oh well. It’s progress. I always feel like I could embellish these Sue Spargo quilts forever, but then I remember I have more of them and maybe I should just finish it and move on! I know. Crazy.

I did finally get to tracing around 9:30 at night. I had tutoring after school and then went to Home Depot for wood slats for the quilts I need to deliver and then I was trying to book a hotel or AirBnB for the Chandler opening of Things That Matter in November. Yes! I’m going! It’s a long drive, and I may hate myself in the middle of it, but I’m going. We’re going. November will be a clusterfuck of travel. What’s new? Anyway, I traced for about 45 minutes, and then I was tired and nausea took over my brain.

These new diabetes meds are a constant issue. The positive is they’ve brought my blood sugar down. The negative is they regularly make me sick to my stomach. I’m not sure what to do about it. I thought it was getting better, but the last week wasn’t great. Patience, I guess. This is how they make you lose weight (it’s one of the side effects)…you can’t eat or you throw up. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I took a break for about an hour and then felt better and started tracing again. I don’t do well with nausea. But then it was late, and even though now I felt fine and wanted to keep going, I also want to survive a day with middle-schoolers, so I went to bed. I’m in the 300s somewhere. So much for being done last night. I’m just under 3 hours in. More than halfway.

Maybe tonight I will get more done and/or feel better. Some nights it doesn’t bug me…not sure why. And I get dehydrated but plain water makes it worse.

This is Kitten Television. She has pushed the slats over so she can watch the birds and the bunnies in the front yard.

And if she’s really offended by their existence, she bangs the slats and wakes me up. My cat is so weird.

*The Dollyrots, Brand New Key

Drive Until You Lose the Road*

It’s a shorter work week…normally someone would make me do back-to-school night this week too, but it’s next week for some reason. I actually might have some brains this week. Who knows? I’m feeling a little rough this morning, but I know I didn’t sleep well. The brain wouldn’t turn off and I couldn’t get comfortable, either mentally or physically. I’ve had crazy dreams the last three nights. Can’t remember what they are…just that they’re crazy and they wake me up and I’m lying there with hot flashes or shivering (make up your mind…), trying to remember why it was so bad in my head. At least if I remember the dream, I can parse it out, make some sense of it. Not remembering seems worse.

I’m sitting here, trying to remember what I’m teaching today. Oh yeah! I’m giving a quiz. It’s OK…it’s open note. They’ll survive. We’re still short computers, though, so that’s an issue. Everything online has to be printed out…ironically, I’m teaching digital citizenship and some kids will be doing it on paper. Sigh. Deadlines though! I have to get everyone in my homeroom through the lessons and passing the test by a certain date, and it always comes up faster than you’d think.

Anyway. School. So much mental energy goes there.

I’m still doing these. Who knows if I will ever finish? Well, I only have 1 1/2 of the pink balls left to embellish…

So there’s progress again. I have no idea what stitch I’m supposed to do on the orange balls. I left it last, so it must be complicated. Maybe. Who knows. I’ll find out tonight, I guess. After my prediction that I’d be done with these by the end of July, I’m hesitant to set another date…but end of September? Seems reasonable. So did the end of July, though.

Yesterday, after the hike, I basically ran around doing bits and pieces of things. I found the four quilts I need to pack up for Saturday. One needs a label. I pulled that one. I found wood slats for the quilts that didn’t have them. I’m one short, unfortunately, so that’s a trip to Home Depot after school…today I have tutoring, so I might be dead by then. I paused all that until the wood is purchased. I started using the new composter…the old one needs to sit for a while. There’s too much stuff in it. I’m going to let it go for a while, turn it occasionally, and then empty it onto the front yard dirt. The logistics of that might be somewhat complicated. How to get dirt from Point A to Point B. Through the house. I have a couple months to figure that out. I took my sewing machine over to my mom, so she can drop it off this week. I did some school stuff, setting up those digital citizenship lessons, at least through this week. I read my book for a while! I love being able to do that. It’s a good book too. It’s my book club book…and I probably won’t be able to go to book club for a second month in a row. Oh well.

And then finally, I started tracing Wonder Under. This piece won’t take long. I mean, it will be weeks, but I could probably finish tracing Wonder Under tonight. I could have done more last night, but the hike did my feet in. They were tired. Standing can be hard.

I got to piece 194, but that’s when I realized that there were two of them. I really don’t know how my brain skips backwards while I’m numbering. Maybe I walked away from it. But there’s duplicates from number 183-192. Hmmm. Thanks brain. Your dedication to your job is noted. So I’m about a third of the way through, with only an hour and a half in. I could easily finish tonight.

I keep track of all my time…last week, I only did about 4 hours of quilt stuff…compared to the previous week, with 15 1/2 hours. Then the week before school started, I got almost 22 hours in. Four hours is a little light, but that’s mostly because I was between quilts…I drew some, but I don’t count those hours until I enlarge a piece. Then any further drawing time counts toward the final total. Anyway, I’m not expecting a lot of hours this week, with gaming and tutoring and a meeting and who knows what else I’ve committed to in my head that I’m not remembering right now. I’m caught up on grades until Friday. But I think I can get the Wonder Under traced between now and the weekend…and I should be able to start cutting it out as well. So hopefully I’ll be ironing to fabric by next week. That’s the current plan anyway. You know how those change.

*The Fray, How to Save a Life

Is It Because It’s True*

I have no idea what I thought I would get done yesterday. I know I did some stuff, but it never feels like enough…although I’m sitting in my studio at the moment and it’s almost sort of clean. And I know I should go to the gym today, but honestly, I just wanna iron. Even though it’s hot today and the gym is air-conditioned, I want to get going on this quilt. I parsed out the time in my head last night that this quilt needs while trying to fall asleep (this is probably partially why I can’t sleep at the moment), and it’s going to be tight. I have people visiting and things I can’t take with me on trips and school starting and people gone and it just is too much. Plus art exhibits that need entering all over the freakin’ place. Deep breaths. It’s summer. Yeah? It is. Relax. Ha! Don’t know how.

No more political stuff today, no more worrying about censorship today…just going to make the art I make and then I’ll get irritated with the universe again when there’s time and space for it. Not today.

So after all the chaos with the portable air conditioner and trying to make space for it in here and justify the expense, and not falling asleep (again) because my brain was trying to debate its usefulness and what else I could do in here when it’s really only a problem maybe 10-20 days a year, a REAL problem. So it’s gone. We returned it. I say we, because it weighed like 70 pounds, so even moving it was a problem. Boychild is useful. Sigh. In the long term, it probably makes sense to put in a wall A/C unit in the space where the never-used TV is (I watch the computer now). But not in summer…in winter, when they’ll charge me less. So today we sweat. And you’ll remind me in the next few months, as this hellacious summer continues through October, that I decided against A/C in here. It’s supposed to be 106 degrees today. In July. It’s never this hot in July. Makes me afraid of August and September, when we get our worst heat.

Anyway, once the sun got full overhead, I went out and sorted Wonder Under in the other (much hotter) room…although there is more light in there now too, with the trees trimmed…we still need to go whack the shit out of the bougainvillea that went up into the tree, but that will require a chainsaw. And a cooler day.

Strangely, the guy hasn’t shown up for payment yet. I’m sure he will. I’m so glad he didn’t make lollipops out of my trees.

Properly laced, those are. Hallelujah. Now to save up for the next two.

So it took about 2 hours to sort all 1900 or so pieces.

With two fans blowing on me. Luckily, they are low enough that they don’t blow pieces out of the boxes once they’re in there, although I did have to chase after a couple that got blown out of my hand while placing them.

Time-consuming, but necessary in the long run.

Then after dinner, I headed in here to try to straighten it up for ironing. It looks packed because it is. But I put away all the fabric from the last quilt, plus straightened up in general after trying to fit the air conditioning unit in here. Really, this room needs a major remodel and culling. I do a little every once in a while, but it’s not enough. I have drawers of fabric I can’t even access at the moment, which is silly. But it’s worked for a long time…I just need more logical storage.

The drawing is hung. I’m almost ready to iron.

I sorted the first 100 pieces, but then I was too damn tired to start ironing. So that’s today.

Kitty standoff.

So I figure the ironing will take about 25 hours. My left foot is still bugging me, so I’m going to STRETCH like a good girl and wear my Crocs because they are squishy and not as hard as a concrete floor and I’m going to take breaks, but I want to be done with ironing by Saturday when I leave for the man’s show. Can I do that? I can. It won’t be easy. But I can. Honestly, I should be able to do it in three days, but we have gaming Friday night…so I’m giving myself that extra time. A plan! I have a plan! Which I will inevitably screw up, but that’s OK…that’s life. I find I do much better if I try to make a plan.

*Jem, They

Kept Alive by the Pouring of the Moonlight*

I’ve been listening this morning to Sue Bleiweiss, one of the organizers of Threads of Resistance, talk on the Just Wanna Quilt podcast run by Dr. Elizabeth Townsend Gard about the Threads of Resistance exhibit and the reactions at the Texas and North Carolina shows…very interesting to hear. Sue says something during the podcast about why we (sometimes controversial) art quilters do what we do…basically, we have something to say and we want people to hear/see it…to have those of a like mind have a place to feel validated and maybe motivated to make change or art in response, but also to have those who disagree see other viewpoints. I know I surround myself with people who think a lot like I do about politics, and it’s not a bad thing to hear other viewpoints. Hearing them doesn’t make me necessarily believe in them, but I think the conversation is important. To have a group like the Artist Circle Alliance put this show together and find venues and create and print a beautiful catalog is an amazing thing. I’m one person who mostly sits in her house and doesn’t talk to humans in person and makes art for hours on end…and I fully appreciate all the work they’ve done to make this show happen so my voice and others can be heard.

So when people demand that the show be canceled or they boycott an event where many other things are hung and vendors are selling stuff, solely because of one piece of the show that they object to, it is a way to silence those voices…to shut down parts of the country that have valid opinions and beliefs. I understand, for example, not wanting to be part of the Women’s March because you don’t agree with what it stands for…I don’t understand trying to shut the march down so no one can voice their thoughts. The United States has a history of shutting down certain groups, of not listening, and I had hoped we were moving into more open communication in the last 10 years, but it seems all those thoughts and feelings will not be allowed. That is unfortunate. It’s not what’s best for the country. As a teacher, I always have to consider the child, each one of them, and decide what is best for my students…as a whole and as 150 or so individuals. It’s difficult. No, sometimes it’s a rancid pain in the ass. I do it anyway, because it’s right. Same here. We need to allow discussion, expose misconceptions, shine light on some of these thoughts in order to come together. It doesn’t mean we have to agree…although agreeing on some basic human rights would be nice. If you just shut down discussion, though, no change can happen.

Anyway…it’s hot here in Southern California…not as hot as it will be tomorrow, but hot nonetheless. Heat waves in July…no climate change, yeah? Right. This was me and Kitten for a good chunk of yesterday…resizing pictures (Kitten is useless at this)…

Watching videos about installing portable air conditioners (still useless, Kitten)…

I’m debating this thing…it’s huge in here, but it does cool the room off. But it’s gigantic and loud and this isn’t a big room and I have to have the door closed and then the animals can’t come in and I’m not sure if I like it or not and I don’t know whether to keep it.

Sigh. The air conditioner is causing me stress.

Last night, I cut stuff out for over 4 hours…Puppy came and went. There’s a fan to the left of him, so I have to place the box appropriately so all my bits of Wonder Under trash don’t fly all over the room.

I changed to a bigger box. I knew I had to be up early to deal with tree guys, so I went to bed…well…not really very early, honestly. Oh well. If I’d stayed up another 30 minutes, I would have finished the Wonder Under cutting extravaganza.

‘Twas not to be. Many people (OK, only two) thought my scissors were onion rings. Now I’m hungry for onion rings. I’ve never made onion rings before.

Nope. Just my beat-up old scissors. Seriously, they are puppy-chewed. But they are the best for this. No drag, comfortable for hours of cutting. Strange, I know, considering their non-paddedness.

This is all I had left…about half a yard.

I finished this morning before 8 AM. Ugh. I don’t like before 8 AM. That was 12 hours and 20 minutes total of cutting…on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Well and 23 minutes on Tuesday morning. Not bad.

Here are the trees in question. Not the best picture. I have two giant ficus trees right next to the house, and as they have grown and grown and grown, they now pose some branchy issues for the next storm. Yes, I am dreaming of storms.

A view from the backyard…over the house. They are a bit rampant. And the bougainvillea has grown into them. I have lots of trees. I love trees. I’m hoping this guy is good and not a lollipoper. I hate when they lollipop trees.

Because I’ll use his business again if he’s good.

Anyway, now I’m ready to sort Wonder Under into 19 bins by number. But that’s the eastern side of the house and it is currently in full sun. So maybe I’m in here typing and then cleaning up and trying to decide about this damn beast of a cooling machine. I think an in-wall unit makes more sense, but that isn’t happening any time soon, is it? Nope. It’s not. Aargh. Heat makes me a little crazy, I have to admit.

There’s the bins, waiting for the sun to hit its zenith. Plus I have to take Calli to the vet this morning. It’s gonna take a good 2 hours to sort those.

So sometime this afternoon for that, ironing by the evening, I’m hoping. I need a background (hoping I already have that too). Cleaning for now. Oh. And I have a copyediting job that just popped up. Ah timing.

*IAMDYNAMITE, Stereo