That Purpose Is Art

You know you’re in trouble on a Monday morning when you feel like it’s a Friday morning, the level of tired is sand in your eyeballs and your head is reeling like you were out drinking, but you know you weren’t. At no point in time over the weekend did you make up the missing sleep…in fact, you are now deeper in debt and you will have to pay the piper at some point. Damn body, requiring shit like nutrients and rest. I can’t wait until Spring Break…I mean, I can’t wait, because lordy, school is weighing on me, but I really can’t logistically wait two weeks to get more sleep. I need to figure it out now.

Well, maybe not RIGHT now, because in about 45 minutes, I have to race the rainstorm named Goliath out of here to school. Since when do we name storms like this? I remember growing up in Southern California, fishtailing my parents’ car across Los Angeles County roads with never any knowledge of that storm’s name, or I might have yelled it to the heavens. It rained more then. It wasn’t a news item.

What art have I made in the last two days? I’ve done pretty well, mostly because after I finished grades late Friday night, I blew off school pretty much for the rest of the weekend. I sent the parent email. I posted one thing on Google Classroom. That’s it. And once I finished rolling up all the quilts, I started tracing stuff again, at least for an hour or so. I had to drop off a piece for a show where they were confused by my medium. I said, “It’s a quilt.” She said, “like a blanket?” “No, a quilt, but it hangs on the wall.” Blank stare. Oh well. This show was kind of a crapshoot. At least I’ll be educating people.

So I had almost half of the current quilt left to trace as of Saturday afternoon…

But all the pieces are tiny, so it doesn’t take long.

I think this is one of the biggest pieces in the quilt…

I kept tracing on Sunday night, and finished around 10 PM or so I think.

It took just under 6 hours to trace 819 pieces. Except there were two I never found. Sometimes I skip numbers in my head, count pieces that don’t exist. Sometimes I go the other direction and start numbering backwards for a while. And I found at least 4 or 5 pieces that had never been numbered, so they get to be a’s and b’s of the nearest number.

I fit it all on one yard of Wonder Under. Normally it would be like 4 yards of the stuff with that many pieces. Tiny pieces man. I’m gonna be in pain later trying to iron them all down. It’s like the Babygirl piece I did except much bigger…

This is 12 x 18 and the one I’m working on is 16 x 24. OK, not that much bigger. But lots more pieces, that’s for sure. Crazy numbers actually. I’m actually hoping I get no more shows with themes and crazy deadlines for a few months. I know I have some stuff to deal with over the summer, but I’m gonna need a break after this last run…and yes, I put myself in this position by trying to make pieces for shows with very little lead time, but whatever. So far it’s worked.

Anyway, I was watching the last episode of Downton Abbey and started cutting pieces out. I actually got pretty far along. It’s not going to take long…

Although I’m having problems with the fusible web releasing again. Seems we have come full circle with their fusible formulas. Sigh. Whatever.

Cats abound. Sometimes they sleep with me…sometimes they curl up far away on the other couch.

So I may get to the ironing phase this week. Which means some cleanup time in the studio. Aargh. Sleep? Or get ready to iron stuff to fabric? I know which I usually prefer. Even though cleaning sucks, it’s always for a purpose and that purpose is art. Sleep? Eh. I don’t do it well anyway. Best to leave it to the experts.

I Suck at Sleeping

Ahhh tired. I never think about you at 11:30 at night when I’m thinking it’s time to start tracing. Even though I had to take a 20-minute nap last night before I found the energy to go to the gym. I’m not sure why our culture is so against naps for adults except for the elderly. I’m starting to think they should be a part of every day, based on my nighttime sleep habits.

It’s not that I hadn’t done art-related stuff before 11:30 PM. I had to iron, dehair, label, cut slats for, and pack up a quilt for a show. And make a label for UPS. So that was like an hour plus. That was the problem. And I graded before that. And gym. So it’s no surprise that I started late. I could have justified not tracing last night, but I want to get this thing done and that means working every night. Even though grades are due.

Head down, getting it done. All of it. Whatever it is. Mornings are rough though. And tomorrow will be no different, as I have to be in early to take my show down. Sleep! It’s for the…sleepy. Ha.

I haven’t cleaned out all the photo files from last year yet…I have a weird system, and I’m not sure it’s a good one, but it helps me find the photos I need for art stuff. Anyway, the March 2015 files are mixed in with the March 2016 files, and I keep opening the old ones…what’s funny about that is I was tracing Wonder Under then too (I think for Earth Mother for Ventura), so the photos look the same…except that one had way bigger pieces. These are freakin’ tiny. As I keep mentioning…

The pieces are so tiny that they don’t take up much room on the Wonder Under. I’m only 3 1/2 hours in…and up to piece 476, which is the jellyfish in the larger figure’s hair. So I’m past the halfway mark.

You can see I group similar pieces together and then draw a line around them, so I cut them out as one piece of Wonder Under and iron them all together onto the fabric. It saves cutting time at this phase, and if they’re really small, like some of them, I’m less likely to lose them.

So maybe another hour tonight? If I’m lucky? Tomorrow is looking a bit hairy. So probably Sunday night will be the next tracing day…although it also has its challenges.

I feel like this every year about 2 weeks before Spring Break. Exhausted, overwhelmed, head down, trying to survive. And the girlchild is texting me about how shitty she feels and you can’t make an adult who is 3000 miles away from you go to the doctor. Luckily, there’s Google and she can just diagnose herself. And probably medicate herself.

Meanwhile, boychild has scored himself housing on campus again just by waiting it out. I know I didn’t want to have a roommate by my junior year, but it’s easier than finding somewhere else to live. And he possibly won’t come home this summer. Which is depressing. But again, I did realize they would go away to college and eventually they would not come back, and my future would be this house, mostly empty, a really annoying dog who is scared of the ducks next to the pool and cats and everything in the world sometimes, and two very needy cats who headbutt my hand while I’m trying to do stuff and lick me and want to sit on me and get annoyed if I don’t do what they want. And all the fucking quiet, even with Pandora and TV and Netflix, it’s just way too damn quiet and empty.

I guess it’s a contrast to my daytime job. I might sleep all Spring Break. Except I suck at sleeping. OK. Going to the job. The place that sucks up all my time and patience. Aargh. It’s chaos there right now. Too much.

Furiously…

I worked for 12 hours yesterday. I really wish I could say that I worked on ART for 12 hours yesterday, but I would have had to blow off my real job completely to do that. But wow, think of that. Getting up in the morning, having a cup of tea, then settling in for 3 or 4 hours of work, maybe go for a walk, have some lunch, another 4 or 5 hours…you can see how this day might go. Reality is that even when I have spring or summer break, I’m not that efficient most days. Some days I’ll pull 10 hours of artmaking, but never like I do with teaching. And it was stuff I needed to do. Yes, some was grading, but I have a project coming up for my students, and even though it’s probably the last year I’ll teach it because the standards are changing, I still felt a need to completely rewrite it. And I don’t know if that will help at all. It will probably still drive me crazy. It’s the nature of the beast.

But grades are due Tuesday, so there’s some of that stuff that just has to be done. I actually think I’m a little ahead of the game though. I have two more assignments that really NEED to be graded, and then a handful of makeup work, and then I’m done. Well. I still need to input all that crap. And take my show down at Grossmont. And deliver a quilt to another show. And pack up one for yet another show. So it’s not looking REALLY good over the next few days, but it’s certainly not as impossible as it seemed last week. At least I’m pretty damn efficient. Most days.

So I didn’t start tracing until late. In fact, I had a really hard time getting up off the couch. I didn’t even grade on the couch. I was just tired. I ran a lab in class yesterday with a ton of water, and the kids did really well with not spilling TOO badly. I had 20 towels in there and they were all significantly damp by the end of the day, but that’s normal. Last year was a lot worse. I should thank them for that…for not being as bad as last year.

But in an hour, I did manage to trace about 350 pieces, so I’m still going faster than I normally would. Because those pieces are tiny. Seriously tiny. Aargh.

This part is never very exciting to photograph. But that’s what 350 tiny little pieces look like on Wonder Under. I’m about halfway up the second torso, having finished the first one, which was only her butt and up. I don’t think the girlchild is thrilled that she’s naked in another quilt of mine. The second one is a full torso, so it will take a little longer. I’m almost at the halfway mark. So if I figure another half hour to halfway, that’s about 3 hours…so 6 hours total? That’s not bad. I might be able to finish by the end of the weekend…because this weekend is kind of a mess. I might try to start cutting them out on Friday at my meeting, although they’re pretty tiny and I don’t usually like to trim Wonder Under away from the house. It’s too hard not to lose pieces.

I’ll have to think about it. Speaking of thinking about it, I’m deep in my head at the moment. Reflective I guess. Trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be, where I want to be. How.

I stare at this every day…

The computer screen and then that crazy raccoon behind it from The Bloggess. Furiously Happy is Jenny Lawson’s new book (Lawson being The Bloggess) and no, I haven’t read it yet, because I don’t own it yet and maybe I should see if my library has it, because they bloody well should. They DO have it…and holy crap, it has 75 holds on it. OK. I can handle that. I requested it. I might be reading it over the summer. But I can read her blog while I wait. The real point is that phrase “furiously happy” because I really do think I don’t do happy the normal way, that I’m just not one of those happy perky people who can just BE happy with things, but I also think that’s what makes me good at the art and teaching and crap, because I’m never satisfied with what’s done or what’s out there. I need it to be better, to make more, to try this, to draw that, and if I were just normally happy, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. So I’m gonna get FURIOUSLY happy about some things, like mailing two quilts out in a week for shows that are a long way away and getting an article published and almost getting on top of my grading. And then Ima gonna (like my students say) get some of that furiousness (way better than furiousity) and channel it into making stuff. And maybe even cleaning the house and doing yardwork, but honestly, that’s more furiously irritable than furiously happy.

So if you live near me and you see me out in the driveway yelling like a banshee, it’s OK. I’m being furiously happy. About the dead leaves piling up. It happens.

Quiet Meditative Tiny Little Fucking Pieces

Some nights I think I’m going to get all this artmaking done, no constraints, and then that just falls apart. Sometimes it’s for a good reason, like your kid face-timing you from college or taking the dog for a walk, or both…like last night. Sometimes it’s your brain…it’s tired and can’t deal with even getting off the couch. It’s easier to stare at distractions on the TV or the phone. It’s too hard to stand up. You know you have to clean up first before you can start. Most people have already gone to bed. What is wrong with you? Don’t you know lack of sleep is unhealthy?

I guess that’s the part I’m pretty good at: getting up and starting, no matter what. I have grades due in a week, so I can’t really take a break and blow off grading, because I need to get caught up, best I can. So I’ve spent the last two weeks basically making myself try to grade a thing a night, although sometimes “a thing” is one class’ worth because it’s a time-consuming assignment, or more common, their answers are so off the mark that if I grade more than one period, I become so incredibly frustration and convinced I’m the worst teacher in the world, until I come to one where the kid did it right, and it’s not the smartest kid in the class, and I say to myself, “Well if JOEY got it (there is no Joey, just to be clear), then everyone could have understood me.”

Yeah. Those are not the best nights. Except it means it will only get better. If I do something else afterwards.

Last night’s grading session wasn’t hard, but there were head-banging-on-the-desk moments where I thought the cats might call 911, because I was a little frustrated. Talk about ignoring simple instructions. Anyway. It’s done. I’m getting down to a reasonable number of assignments left to grade, if I don’t think too hard about the last unit that’s piled up at school.

So after a 3-mile dog walk/hike hybrid, cooking dinner from scratch, face-timing the girlchild, and grading homework about hiccups, I almost just went to bed. It was late enough. I was tired enough. But it really feels like shit to go to bed, wake up the next morning, and realize I did no art stuff at all the day before. Especially when I’m working to a deadline.

So I spent about half an hour doing art stuff…because even a half hour a day counts. Some days that’s all I can do, but it’s better than nothing. And it got me started on the next task for this project, so that’s a good thing. I cleaned off the cover on the light table and then moved that off the top and got started with the tracing.

I am a whopping 50 pieces in. Of 819. Yeah. It’s gonna take me a while. But I got my butt off the couch and did it, so yeah, I feel better this morning than if I hadn’t. I actually find the tracing process very meditative. I look forward to it. Some of the artmaking tasks are more heinous, like trimming Wonder Under, but this part is nice. It’s just following the line and deciding what overlaps and drawing that in. Finding the next piece. Doing the same thing over and over again. I know it sounds like it would be boring, but it’s not.

So that’s what’s in my future for probably the next 8 hours of artmaking…quiet, meditative, tiny little fucking pieces. Yup.

Moving to the Next Step…

The next project is already moving…good thing, because I only have a short period of time if I’m going to get it done. Five and a half weeks, to be specific. It might not be possible. But so far, I’m doing OK. I finished cutting out Wonder Under last night, with just over 5 hours into that. Trash on the left, pieces on the right.

It was still early when I finished, so I sorted them…missing the two boxes on the right in this picture.

Apparently I have the brain power to sort pieces late at night but not the brain power to take a decent photo of them. They’re in boxes by 100s, so there are 10 boxes total. Well, that’s not true. Here’s box 11.

The Wonder Under is separating again. Sigh. It’s OK. As I iron, I go through this box and find the piece of fusible web that’s the same size as the paper piece. Or retrace. Whichever is easier. And that one piece is missing a number. I don’t usually do that…forget to write the number down. But it does happen.

I’ve been using WU for so many years and been through so many chemical compositions for this material…this last one has been the best. It releases well, but usually only when it’s supposed to. I do keep it “sealed” (not really sealed) in a bag when I’m not using it, which is supposed to help. Oh well. It makes my life a little more complicated, but it’s not a lot of pieces that released.

The next step is to pick fabrics…AND to quilt the baby quilt. I have a mostly free day on Saturday I think, but grades are due as well, so I need to deal with that. Too many things. I did not do any schoolwork last night (well, not true…I emailed myself some stuff and answered some email), because I spent all day helping kids call home about missing work. And that’s frustrating. Tiring. Even annoying. Plus watching kids do the interactive stuff on the website and then yell out, “I’m done!” Done with what? Playing around? Awesome. Go back and answer the questions and write the paragraph. What paragraph? The one I told you about in the beginning of class. But I already did the whole thing? No you didn’t. You did the playing. Now do the work.

SIGH. We have two parent meetings set up already, working on the third. A fourth is coming in with a possible meeting time today. I hate parent meetings…hate scheduling them…hate having them because 80% of the time, maybe more, nothing changes after the meeting. The kid continues whatever they were doing before and if I call the parent NOW, they get all irritated because Insert Reason Here. They’ve already come to the meeting. Why am I still bugging them?

I really need to walk away from the school stress…hence the art when I get home. The most I can…because I do have to grade things…but try to come home and be a real human instead of a teacher.

Kitten agrees. Apparently I finished that other traditional quilt so she and Midnight could fight over who lies on it every night…

The other thing I’m doing tonight is tossing some other small quilts I found up on Etsy.

Not that anything’s happening there, but it’s a place to stash the smaller things. They might sell eventually.

Ah yes, and then there’s the unnamed quilt…

It’s actually Bathtub 5, but it will need a real name…and it’s number 5 because I numbered the drawings, not the quilts. The first one is Bathtub 2. Confusing? Only to you. I know exactly what I’m doing…

She dyes her hair by the way, like the majority of women my age. The next one will have white hair. Here’s where the second owl came from…

I’m also really happy with the wine glass, although it was a heinous pain in the ass.

And those toes. Love them.

Oh look, there’s the glass. I love my photographer. It’s like he’s psychic.

And the sewing stuff. Because I sew in the bath. Don’t you? I would sew in the bath.

Maybe. Anyway. It needs a title in the next week. No, I’m not asking for help with that. It’s in my head and percolating. First quilt of 2016 though. Should redo all the pages so Recent Work is recent. Later. Not now. Now I have to go teach Punnett Squares. Then I get to move to the next step…art…not science.

So Obviously a Dream…

I’m typing this while gulping down my first cup of tea for the day, the one that makes me legal to drive and interact with humans. I’m putting food in me as well, because it’s a day of moving and lifting, helping someone out. I’m tired, but I’m not exhausted any more. Last night I got a burst of energy and ironed about 5 quilts, cutting slats etc, and then bullied through the rest of the tracing of the Wonder Under…

Honestly, for a quilt with almost a thousand pieces, I didn’t use that much Wonder Under…two full sheets and about 2/3 of another. Of course, that’s because all the pieces are fucking tiny. It took a little over 9 hours to trace, with over 2 hours of it last night. I did exactly what I said I would…spent a little time vegging out, then packed up the girlchild’s Box of Forgotten Things (more like things that wouldn’t fit in her luggage) to ship to her, ironed some stuff, ordered pizza for dinner (had a coupon), and then traced until I was done. I even graded a few things last night, though it was nothing major.

I can start cutting all that Wonder Under apart on Sunday, once I have all the quilts ready to go (kind of a scary thought in itself). I don’t think the cutting will take long, because I clumped similar pieces together (all the fingernails on one hand, every other tooth…that kind of crazy thing). Less cutting until the very end, when I iron them down.

My parents’ dog Katie is back to visit. If by visit, I mean sort of stalk cats and roll over for a belly rub every time someone walks by. It’s actually really hard to get a good picture of her, because despite her roly poly affect, she’s a hyper little sausage beast. I call this “Katie with Red Toy.”

But this is really mostly what I get…

Spaz. I’m off now to make the second cup of tea for the day, the one that makes me not only legal, but somewhat competent, although arguably so. I dreamt last night of sitting on a couch in the evening, no pressure from work or kidlets or anything else, just drawing. Happily drawing. Uh huh. Oh yeah, and I was well-rested. So obviously a dream.

A Room with a View

This has been my view every night this week…

Although often there is a cat butt or dog face right beyond it. One night there was a fire in the fireplace. The TV fare has been a wide variety of sci fi and drama and action thriller, with an occasional foray into vampires or cooking shows (girlchild, not me. When she’s not here, I don’t watch cooking shows. Or Criminal Minds. Or any of those not-mean girl shows like Awkward and Faking It).

In the other room, where I’ve been ironing and dehairing and cutting wood dowels or slats all week, I’m watching zombies.

What’s interesting (and possibly stupid) about this quilt is that the pieces I’m tracing are all pretty small, so it hasn’t taken much Wonder Under so far. I’m only on my third piece, which is about 3 yards. And I haven’t even come close to filling the third piece yet.

Yesterday, I traced the central upper torso and the last arm (of 5…of course) on the left side, and then just started the last arm on the right. So I have that arm and a uterus (it’s floating in air…like they do) and then three heads.

I made it into the 700s yesterday, so there’s less than 300 pieces to go. I did a little tired flailing last night, so I didn’t get started on the tracing as early as I wanted. And that’s lame, because then I get into it and I’m all of a sudden not tired any more, and it’s really relaxing, who needs meditation, because I’m tracing all these pieces out and I can’t really focus on anything but that and the sound from the telly and it’s all very nice.

I don’t know if I can finish tonight. I hope I can, but I’m already really tired from the first week back to school, and I have to be up early tomorrow. So maybe not. I’m going to try. I’m going to come home from work and get some tea in me and allow for about 30 minutes of sitting down and vegging out, and then I’m going to pack up the box for the girlchild that I was going to ship today, but now she wants shampoo and I don’t have any (I did go shopping yesterday). So that’s going tomorrow.

Less than 300 pieces. Less than three hours. Order pizza. Boychild won’t mind. Almost 7 hours into the tracing. Don’t think about all the shit that’s getting turned in today at school. Of course, I haven’t spent almost three hours working on tracing this piece all week…too tired. But I think I’m far ahead enough in the ironing that maybe I can do less tonight. Because I still have Sunday.

I definitely have drive. You can’t argue that I don’t. And I should think more about what I have traveling in shows…I forget that stuff is out there and in the world. Two pieces in People in Portraits are traveling with AQS Quilt Week, starting in Phoenix, AZ, February 11. Earth Stories is at the San Jose Quilt Museum in San Jose, CA, through February 28. My Celebrating Silver quilt, Awakening the Crone, will be traveling with the Original Sewing and Quilting Expo, starting in Atlanta, GA, March 10 (I’m wondering how this will go down personally, but whatever). My Part-Time Oasis quilt is traveling; it was just in Oklahoma and will be going to the Home Machine Quilting & Sewing Show, in Salt Lake City, UT, starting May 5 (another one I wonder about). And I’ll have pieces in the Artist as Quiltmaker and Art Quilt Elements coming up in the spring. Not bad for something I only do in the middle of the night.

In fact, I have some shows I’d like to enter and so much of my newer work is out or spoken for that I’m having a hard time coming up with work to enter. Sad but true.

I’m glad I have the art. My counselor asked how I was doing with one kid back to school already and the other one leaving in a week, and the answer is I’m sad. I mean, I don’t have to clean off the counter as much, but the house is a happier place with the noise of other people, especially my kids, and that’s a hard thing to lose. I know it’s what supposed to happen and I want them to grow up and move out and have lives, but it’s still hard on my end.

Girlchild at school…in the snow…

OK. Got to go to work and teach kids how to argue properly. About science. They already argue about other stuff all the time.

Just Keep Doing

The routine. Ugh. What did you do today? I got up, ate, went to school and taught all day, dealt with crazy stuff after school, came home, vegged out for a bit, cooked, then ironed and dehaired a bunch of quilts, and then traced some Wonder Under. Attempted interrupted sleep. Did it all over again. But then again…it’s probably that routine that makes all those quilts. Because it’s already in my head…what I’m supposed to do. Get up. Make dinner. Wash dishes so you have time and energy to make art. Do it earlier. Don’t start at 11 (although at some point, I have no problems doing that…not on the week school starts back up). Start early. Make it work. Blow off all that grading. You did enough work at school today. What is your life about? Being a teacher (a little) or being an artist (a lot). Yeah.

A frustrating hour with a parent issue and a bunch of kids who were dragged to detention by admin didn’t help. I’m about to give up on that. I’m about to give up on a lot of it. Usually we wait until April…but Spring Break comes early this year…and the lack of follow-through on the kids and the parents is just wearing me thin. Especially the little stupid things. There’s an answer key on a disk I have at home. I want to put the answer key on my school Google Drive, so I emailed it to myself. The school email rejected it because of the “type of file it is.” You mean a PDF from a school publisher? Because that’s what it is. And I emailed it to myself. Fuck me. So the parent that wanted me to make 14 phone calls yesterday in the very short time I have during the day that isn’t eaten up by everything else…yeah. Same deal.

This is why the art. So much of it.

I had one pile on the left of stuff that was ironed and had slats or dowels, but then it was getting too heavy. It’s supported by a large flattened cardboard box on two chairs and a computer desk. On the right is now the larger quilts, with a couch and a coffee table and a cardboard box full of books. Trying to keep cats off…

And dogs for that matter…

Is not easy. But it’s worked so far. I have about 18 done…and I’m not really sure how many I need, and I’m still culling. I pulled one yesterday, and there’s one in this pile that isn’t going as well. In the first pull, I just grabbed anything that might work.

These are the ones that are still in need of ironing and slats/dowels. I don’t know how many are in there, actually. I just aim to iron about 5 a night. Some have more cat hair on them than others…if there were safely rolled up most of the time (which probably meant they weren’t going to shows due to age or just whatever), then they were pretty clean. It’s the ones that didn’t get put away after they came home that are the biggest hairy mess.

But there’s progress. And that’s good. And I’ll feel a sense of relief when it’s done, that’s for sure.

I did trace for over an hour and a half, and was way more efficient than I have been lately.

Believe it or not, less tired last night. Not sure why. But I’m in the low 600s now with about 5 1/2 hours in. Only about 400 to go, so if I can do 200 each night, I’m on track. I haven’t scheduled out beyond that. That might be an issue. Cutting out Wonder Under doesn’t take much time…ironing will be another 10+ hours. Cutting out those takes a little longer than Wonder Under. Then ironing. Yeah. I can’t see that far out. I have a bunch of stuff going on this weekend, a baby quilt to finish, grades due…all in the next 10 days. Then I can think more clearly. Just keep doing is what I say. I can handle that part. Last night I did well.

But I Like It…

It’s amazing how exhausting teaching is. You forget about standing and walking all day. And not being able to pee when you need to. And how your voice gets used so much more than at home. Plus I’m not sleeping well. Something keeps waking me up…besides my alarm clock. The heating goes on when the house is below 54 degrees…and it has been a lot so far this winter, as my gas bill can attest. The noise from the heater wakes me up sometimes. Ugh. Yes, I know it’s colder elsewhere…girlchild got snow! Now does she send me pictures of snow? No she does not. At least she texts.

Boychild is stuck with his boring, overworked parents (well one is overworked because of soccer, and that’s not me). And the animals. It’s probably quite nice here without all the people…I should know. I had that last night. Put a fire in the fireplace because I knew I’d be tracing stuff on Wonder Under and that room is cold at night when it’s cold outside…the thermostat is on the other side of the house, the warm side.

Anyway, before I traced, I got a few more quilts ironed and slatted. It’s looking like I’m bringing way too many, but I will probably cull again before Monday. I just want them ready. Then I can choose.

I only traced for a little over an hour yesterday…about 20 minutes in the morning before school (I never do that) and then late at night. I went to bed somewhat early for me (before midnight) because I was exhausted…but then something woke me up before 5 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I’m feeling groggy. Better than yesterday when I was groggy AND sad that the girlchild had just left. Perimenopausal hormonal woman with not enough sleep AND sadness. Not a good combination.

So yeah. I didn’t get much done. In the morning, I had a cat butt to contend with…

And past the cat, the dog snores on.

I know, Midnight. She’s a lazy dog. She tried to leave with me yesterday morning, because she’s used to going to my ex’s house in the morning because she’s been breaking out of my yard, but the boychild was here. So I left her. And her confusion.

At night, I had both cats in there with me, but curled up on quilts (not art quilts. Couch quilts). They like the fire in the fireplace too.

This is not a fast quilt to trace. It has little pieces. It has 10 hands in it. Hands are complicated. They have wrinkles and lines and fingernails. It’s not a small number of pieces. I’m figuring about 28 pieces a hand. At least. And then there are almost 1000 pieces in this quilt, so that’s at least 10 hours of tracing no matter what. I’m on piece 363. Only 600+ pieces to go. Actually. That sounds better. That’s about 6-7 hours. Wait. Six sounds better. I could do that in three nights…couldn’t I? If I don’t do anything else.

Sigh. That’s the problem. I have other stuff to do. Add the exhaustion piece when I get home, and it’s gonna be a slog. But I can do it. I think. Sigh.

I wonder sometimes why the art drive is so strong in me. I went to school with people, knew other people who were artists in school, and now they don’t do anything. They don’t draw or paint even for relaxation. It’s just gone. I can’t do that. It’s as strong as that maternal instinct. It’s right there, whispering in my ear all the time, getting me off the couch, standing for another 2 or 3 hours after standing all day at school. Sitting down at a sewing machine for hours on vacation. It’s crazy. It never stops, never lets up, never leaves me alone.

But I like it.

Whatever Works…

Sometimes I look at the search terms people use to find my website. I usually find that it’s a mistake. It makes me want to search through all my posts for that particular phrase, which maybe I used, but I don’t think so? Because it’s not in my vernacular? I remember once many years ago when I was teaching in a different district, a parent accused me of saying something to their child that would have been (1) incredibly inappropriate (if I had actually said it, which I didn’t) and (2) grammatically incorrect (which is why I knew I had never said it). In fact, I was fairly sure I knew which kid had said it (a second-language learner…hence the grammar issue), but all they really wanted was an apology for something I’d never said. I tried to explain why I wouldn’t have said it, but the parents weren’t having it, weren’t understanding the grammar part. Whatever. Sometimes the hardest part of my job is dealing with parental expectations…for me and for their student and for the world in general.

So after a perfectly delightful meeting at a quilt store to drop off a cat quilt and (honestly) buy some more fabric because I needed stuff for the bathtub (in the quilt…not the one the dog and cats were in), I made it to the gym and home, mostly exhausted, but with a post-it-note list of things I had to do for school. Post this, print that, and then magically come up with shit for kids to do who for some inexplicable reason can’t be in the classroom with all the other kids. Pain in my ass. Because the stuff we’re doing isn’t actually do-it-alone stuff. I still teach, people. I put a lot of stuff online, yes, but it’s only after listening to me and watching me and asking me questions that kids are doing some of the online stuff. They aren’t good readers, in general, and I act out processes and they listen (well, mostly) as part of their understanding. So if I assign two articles and tell them to read and annotate, and then do this other assignment over here based on that…a ton of kids will just make shit up to avoid doing the reading. I had to make up a week’s worth of stuff for one kid. The other kid is leaving next week and won’t be back until January, and I know where he’s going and probably why, but can’t think of any job where you can just up and disappear for over 5 weeks and expect to still have a job when you get back. Meanwhile, I have to plan curriculum day by day through January, and I’ve barely got December under my belt. It would have been done, but my coteacher has been gone (good reason) and she and I have some coordinating to do.

All that, as far as I got (because I didn’t finish the kid who’s gone for a month) took until 9 PM, which is when I finally made dinner. And sat and ate it with a dog’s nose under my armpit (the house is cold). And then I should have finished grading Per 8’s tests and started grading Per 4’s journals, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Too Many Hours on my job. I had a plan for what I was going to work on last night, and I didn’t get to any of it because of other people’s shit.

The only way to deal with that level of frustration is to make art. But I was really tired by then and felt like I should be cleaning out boychild’s room (his return gets closer every day, I hear), so all I did was sort the Wonder Under…

Yup. That’s some exciting art stuff there. The color! The interest! Eight boxes of Wonder Under, sorted by number. If I could just get my studio straightened out, I could start picking fabrics. Maybe that will be tonight. I just don’t know. I’m not holding out much hope.

I did wash the fabric I got yesterday, but did not even have the energy last night to pull it out and fold it…

I do love my new dryer though. It’s trés efficient. Yes, lots of grays and whites and a little black. I needed bathtub fabric. I also think I need a donut. That’s stress talking. Ironically, it’s the same stress that drags me to the gym. Whatever works.