Relief in Sight…

Workload increases…deadlines abound. I feel like I’m going to drop ALL the balls. I’m in the middle of printing out 25 bingo cards for graduation…we have the kids play graduation speech bingo. What words would you put in that? It’s kind of amusing. Plus plans for awards and field trips and all that stuff. It’s all whirling around in my head, as I dream of the Saturday AFTER all that. Even the Friday, because all we do is check out, although that’s kind of overwhelming in itself: room clean, books counted, technology signed off or out. Turn in your bandaids! God forbid we be trusted to hold onto those over the summer (OK, it’s more logical than that…they do refill all our first-aid kids over the summer…but all I used were bandaids). I might panic soon. Except there’s no point.

Lots of changes for next year…again, I could panic, but why? This is what three years of meditation and counseling can do for you.

I graded quite a bit yesterday, plus we took the dogs for a walk and saw the baby owls that have been growing up in a tree on that walk. It’s the first time I’ve been able to see them, so that was cool. See if you can find three owls in the photo below…

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And there’s one in this photo…

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The one time I don’t bring my normal camera. Sigh. And then this hawk as well…

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It was a wildlife-filled hike.

I ended up having to do dinner because girlchild was sunburnt…it’s interesting how many times we plan to have her make dinner and I do it instead, but it’s some weird recipe SHE was gonna do, and then she comes in and helps for the last bit, mostly to plate it, but whatever. So that was last night. And then I was sitting on the couch post-dinner, really trying to motivate myself to stand up, and I saw a show announcement, but it was due this week, and it has to be mailed (so old school), so I got up and did that. Entering online is so much easier than making CDs and packing them up, but whatever. And it’s a long shot, but why not try?

So it was still a late start on the tracing front, but I was efficient last night. This is my normal setup, although most times it’s tea, not wine.

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Phone (keeps track of time and distracts me when I get bored), drink, mechanical pencil, Wonder Under, drawing…TV is off to the top right. Another distraction.

I filled almost this whole yard with tiny pieces of tracing…

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Last night was…um…the crane, all of it, all 100+ pieces of it, and then a piece of seaweed.

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It doesn’t sound like much when I put it that way, but I’m almost through the 1100s now, so well past halfway. I did about 200 pieces in less than an hour and a half. Lots of feathers last night. At this rate, I would be done in four nights, but I also know that at least two of those nights might be a wash. Plus I still have to do student awards and those take FOREVER.

But progress it is. I’m looking forward to the week of the 20th, when I have no school and plenty of time to iron to fabric…plus I should be able to draw as well. What a relief.

Something to Point at…

The closer I get to the end of the school year, the louder my art brain yells about free time and summer days and being on vacation. It’s hard to focus on school stuff at all, because people around you are lazing around, leaning back, taking a break, when we have a run for another 9 days, a sprint if you will. I mean, you can do anything for 9 days, right? OK. I’m pretty sure I can come up with something that I wouldn’t be able to do for 9 days, but right now, I keep telling myself I can get through 9 more days of students and teaching sex ed and dealing with whininess and hyper behavior (oh wait, that’s kind of my household at the moment).

I did take Saturday off though. I had to deliver a quilt to Oceanside, but I got to enjoy some art there (more later) and bought some teeny tiny art, two by high-school students and one by an adult. Go ahead, you guess which is which…

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Top left is the adult (female) and the other two are high-school students (both male). Interesting pieces.

Then I spent a few hours roaming Art on Adams (more pictures later) and seeing mostly mediocre art with some standouts.

Sunday was a whole shit-ton of grading and school stuff (see that’s what happens when you blow it off for a day) and I think every day from here on out will be like that unfortunately. I did make it through all the makeup work, so that’s a plus. And my aide can input grades today and tomorrow.

I finally finished (well, got to a point of ending stuff and frustration) at around 9:30 PM and headed in to trace stuff. Midnight spent most of the time trying to lie on the drawing. There’s the girlchild talking to her…

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Simba is still a spaz, even with a cone on his head. Here he is trying to get me to play with his toy while I’m tracing.

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Girlchild was bored, so I handed her the coloring books I ordered from Jamie Fingal…I didn’t buy them to color, but because my art group is planning on doing a coloring book and I wanted to see what hers looked like. You can find them at that link. Girlchild’s been quite happily coloring while watching TV, in between job applications and brief spurts of cooking madness.

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Cleaning the kitchen is still not her forte.

I traced for over 2 hours. Girlchild had gone to bed because she was tired (I should have noted that as a clue it was getting late…because I stayed up way too late).

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I’m in the 900s now…still not halfway, but getting close. It’s 9 1/2 hours so far…I keep having to adjust my time estimates. It’s somewhere around 20 hours total, I’m guessing, depending on how fast I go. Last night, I was quite fast…250 pieces in 2 hours. I completely lost track of time, which is always nice. I traced cocoons and poppies and passionflower vines, plus a hand, some pine branches, and up the arm, minus the crane. That’s where I stopped: at the crane’s foot.

OK, so I plan to do some more, hit the halfway point even, tonight. Grading may get in the way, but hopefully there will still be time. Remember my goal to have it all traced AND cut out by the time school got out? Eh. It’s looking a little more difficult…but we’ll see. It’s OK…I set the goals with the realization that I might not meet them, but sometimes I’ll beat them. It gives me something to point at.

But Soon…

Oh wow. Friday tired and it was only a 4-day week. Can’t imagine how next week will feel. Puppy is behind me talking to Kitten. He has this funny growl that sounds like he’s talking and she is just staring at him, like WTF is your deal, dude? He still has a cone on his head, which means he bumps into everything and needs his head scratched on a regular basis.

I had my stitching meeting last night and finished another bird in the Sue Spargo thing I’ve been working on for like three years…there are only four birds left and then I can piece them together. Maybe I’ll get to that this summer. AND finishing the other one, which is pieced, but needs a flower, a stem, and a leaf, and then to be sandwiched and quilted. I really should do that.

I also got confirmation that I will be doing that little owl as a commission, so I’ll get working on tracing that soon. I pulled my Etsy site…nothing was selling and I suspect only my friends were liking stuff. So that was a bust. I’m honestly flailing a little this year on increasing income…I bid on a bunch of copyediting and proofreading jobs, but suspect there is always someone there who will underbid just to get the job. I can’t afford to lose time unless I’m getting paid the going rate, so I spend time preparing a bid and doing sample edits, and sigh. Maybe I just suck at it. Or maybe I don’t work hard enough at trying to get new jobs. Because I’m buried in school work. And tired.

So last night, I figured I had earned tracing time…I graded all day in class while students were watching puberty videos. Today they’ll be working on vocab, so I’m gonna keep grading…because hey! School’s almost out! And I’m going to sleep in a lot! Because I’m so tired! I always give my co-teacher shit for overusing exclamation points and there I used like four in a row. !

Last year, on this day, I was ironing the first bathtub quilt together.

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There are now two bathtub quilts. There are at least three more bathtub drawings, one of which is enlarged but needs some heads (seriously, both people are headless due to my drawing off the paper, which drove my 5th-grade teacher bonkers. She was an artist and kept trying to get me to fit ON the paper. But my vision was always bigger.) and one that will never be a quilt because it’s just too loosey goosey. But the other one, with its crown of thorns, it could be a quilt. HEY! One of the shows I’m looking at entering is about WATER. And bathtubs…they have WATER. Wait. !!!

Yeah. I’m a little punchy.

Puppy and I are equally NOT interested in our boring breakfasts today.

So I traced last night…Still filling up the third sheet. Most of what I’m doing now is tiny, filling in between the ribs.

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Last night, I traced some more grapes and grape leaves, and then a homeless woman with her shopping cart and her sign (which is bloody tiny, I must say), and then I did a butterfly. But I stopped when I got to the cocoons, because it was after midnight, and I really do try to go to sleep at a “reasonable” hour (I know my doc thinks it should be two hours earlier, but then I would get NO ART DONE and that is unacceptable. Plus it’s hard enough for me to fall asleep at midnight.).

See the tiny little pieces interspersed among much bigger pieces? Yeah.

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I’m at piece 714…with another hour in…at this time of year, slow and steady is about all I can handle. Not quite halfway, but maybe…well, tonight maybe not. But soon.

Plod on…

So when the kids are here, I can’t blast music in the morning. Well. I guess I COULD, but…it would be mean. I didn’t realize I’d gotten used to being able to do that whenever I want. To their credit, they tried to organize the kitchen counters yesterday, but there’s piles for me to deal with, and I don’t have time. This makes me laugh. Because that’s why the kitchen looked like that in the first place: Time. Not enough of it. Been the story of my life. Really, no. It’s just that my priorities are different. Probably most people don’t come home and grade for a couple of hours and then trace Wonder Under for another hour or two. Or iron a few thousand pieces of fabric. Or quilt around a uterus. Boychild wanted to know why I had expired coupons. Plus they found one of my reproduction folders (I was looking for that…it has the printouts of circumcision in there…I was trying to explain that the other day). And the girlchild’s senior photos (whoops. I’m pretty sure I should have handed those out to people like last year. I suck.).

Hey, I am not a perfect parent. For one, it’s just me here. For another, there’s no manual for how to fix this and do that. I’m winging it. After spending all day with 7th graders. I can’t be amazing Supermom. I can just be me.

Speaking of uteri, I am full on into teaching human reproduction now, so my days are full of explaining spontaneous erections and semen and periods. It’s tiring, but it’s easy enough, except my voice is not trained this year…we talk less now that everything is online. So it feels like a stretch to talk almost all period. There’s some minor behaviors to deal with this week, certainly, but we should survive it. It’s almost a relief to get to this unit, because I know they will pay attention and I’ve been teaching it so long that it’s second nature. I used to have to look up the answers to a lot of their questions (because I like to be accurate), but now I just wing most of it. I looked up some data on cervical cancer yesterday. None of today’s questions require more than a basic knowledge of how stuff works. Although there were a couple of boys yesterday that wanted to know when their periods would start. Oh my. Parents? Are you telling them anything? Or are you just fucking with them? Because with those two? I’d be OK with that.

So that’s the daily grind. Grades are due in about a week in a half, so I’m trying to stay on top of it, but it’s hard. I’ll get there. The hard way.

Last night, I managed to go to the gym, finish my book for book club…in July (seriously, I think I’m a month ahead? Plus I am totally Gaiman over Pratchett…Pratchett is funny at all and sometimes really good, but not like Gaiman. Sorry if that’s blasphemy to you.), grade a pile of science journals (not all of them though, because the couch was co-opted by college kids and I was forced to work in here), and finally persuaded myself to come out and start tracing stuff. I was really tired, but I always want to get some time in.

Luckily, I was pretty efficient. Got over 100 pieces traced in about 45 minutes…that’s the channel changer on the light table…the girlchild went to bed about 5 minutes after I went in there, so I got control of the TV! This is another thing that I have to get used to…

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I did the section with the giraffe and started the leaves and grapevines above it.

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I didn’t do a lot of the grapes though. Look at the clock. It’s midnight. You’re tired. But you can see a whole pile of giraffe spots on the right…

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I cut those out as one piece of Wonder Under and then iron that down to one fabric…it saves time. Then when I cut out the fabric, I can cut out each piece. I can’t do the same thing with the grapes in the lower left corner, though, because they overlap, so they’ll have to be a variety of colors. If I were really smart, I’d figure out a 1,2,3,4 range for those and mark them now and draw all the 1’s together, then the 2’s, etc., but I don’t usually like thinking that hard at this stage. So I’ll just have a million small grapey pieces of Wonder Under floating around.

There is no shortage of small pieces in this quilt…with the big pieces tucked behind. Most of the lower torso is now done and I’m moving up into the upper ribcage area. I think I’m in the high 500s now…yup. Checked my notes. So a third of the way through…6 hours and 16 minutes. So 19 hours? Not a bad guess. So much easier to meditate with Wonder Under at night than to do work. That damn mockingbird is still torturing me every night. I had one night last week when he wasn’t out there until almost 3 AM…and then he was further away. I could barely hear him. Last night? He’s back at it, loud as hell. I’m tired of sleeping with a pillow over my head. I tried earplugs, but they make me feel all clogged up (doesn’t help that my sinuses are being all stuffy with allergies).

Anyway. I plod on.

Countdown

There aren’t many days of school left. I’m trying to get caught up, but little things get in the way. Yesterday I bid on a proofreading job…which meant a sample edit…plus some other stuff that needed editing…so I got no grading done. I’m behind. I need to focus today during prep, which is often really hard for me. Here…teach hard for about an hour and a half and then STOP. Then focus on grading stuff. Then teach again. My brain doesn’t like that, so it often refuses. Whatever. Plus I have yard duty before and after school for two weeks, which is a giant clusterfuck to my organization and schedule. Plus the kids emailing me about their grades. Please please give me a giant extra credit packet to fix my grade! I wasn’t gonna deal with that. Bloody hell.

School is making me cranky. Said every teacher the last month of school. Plus other crap. Think I’m gonna just crawl into bed and come out in July.

When I’d finished all the tasks at hand (and I’m sure there’s some I forgot), I did trace stuff. The first thing I did was a full trace of the owl that’s in this drawing…

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I think this is Owl 3.0. He was originally under a rib bone and a uterus, so I drew those bits out.

I’ve done two others (one of them multiple times)…here’s 2.0, still available.

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And 1.0 (although I didn’t think of him as that)…which I made three times in three different colorways for three different people…

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Yeah apparently I have an owl obsession. This new one is small…fits on an 8 1/2 x 11″ piece of paper, but has about 100 pieces. That guy up there has about 26.

Anyway, from there, I went on to the real business of tracing…apparently very slowly, because I only got about 60 pieces done in an hour…

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I traced a uterus and some tulips and the background stuff behind the giraffe. And then I looked at the clock. Time flies when you’re staring at a light table apparently. I’m on my third yard of Wonder Under, although I’m still filling in smaller pieces on the other sheets.

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Told you this wouldn’t be a quick one. That’s all three yards laid out on the table. You can see I just started filling in the third one on the right.

When I shut down the tracing, I sat down on the couch for a quick moment…just to relax a bit after standing all day. Midnight was looking for attention (I guess puppy got most of it this evening)…

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So there was some attention given.

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I spend a lot of time petting furry creatures. It makes up for being yelled at and dealing with teenaged crisis. And trying to bid on jobs when I have to BE at my other job. And getting left alone a lot when I really don’t want to be. Rough night. So today I go on to teach puberty (because that’s an easy thing to teach to kids who are going through it)…and tonight there is exercise on the calendar (yay!) and I will trace some more. And pet more furry beasts. And count down one more day until summer break.

Recap

Three-day weekend recap: Sleep? Not enough. Art? Not enough. Grading? Not enough. Exercise? Not enough. Glad I got an extra day off? At this time of the school year, absolutely. I start teaching human reproduction today and I don’t feel ready. It’s time-consuming and challenging, even though at least I have their attention…not a small thing for the last three weeks of school.

So I spent about 6 hours yesterday putting together a post about the Feminism Now exhibit I’m currently in…if you want to see the whole show, you have two choices: go to the FIG blog here, or come to the closing show Saturday, June 11, from 6-10 PM. The owner might open up for appointments…I’m waiting for an answer on that and will update the blogpost on FIG when I have one. So that ate up a lot of time, but I’m glad it’s up there to document the show.

I did manage to get in some tracing time last night, but late…I did trace the owl…you can see him on the right.

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Lots of wing pieces. The bigger pieces you see are mostly the flesh background behind all the tiny plant and animal pieces. I’ve done one whole side under the hand, which is just above the belly button, plus the middle section. Tonight (assuming I get to it) will be the giraffe and whatever else is on that side.

More big pieces from the earth at the bottom and little flower pieces filling in the blanks in between.

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It’s faster now. Smaller pieces. I got just past 400 last night (only 1550 to go, right?). So I’m at 4 1/2 hours…catching up. Sixteen hours to go? And school calls.

Support

About 4 or 5 years ago, I was coming to the realization that my work doesn’t necessarily fit in the quilt world, that there are shows I can get into, but there are also many that I can’t, because the imagery is too challenging or controversial or hell…it has boobs and a vulva and those things aren’t allowed. Because 50% of the population needs to have their parts hidden away? Well it’s not like there’s a bunch of art out there with penises on it, unless it’s the oh-so-acceptable sculptural types from the Renaissance. I was in a few quilt groups that ran on the art side of things, but I was looking for local groups, places where I felt less isolated and out there in the art world. I wasn’t in the San Diego art world at all.

So I started looking, and I found two groups that I’ve been a part of since then, one juried and one not, and between the two of them, I’ve been in about 10 shows in Southern California and beyond (one is traveling to Sweden next year), but more importantly, I’m growing this support group of people who know my work and support me and have no problems with fabric inhabiting the art world. I can have a conversation with almost anyone in either group, and I’m starting to find other opportunities because of belonging…my 2-person show in January absolutely came about because of my membership in one of the groups with the curator. I was just juried into another group and members from both groups voted for me…hence more opportunities to show work.

Being in local shows doesn’t seem like a big deal…I get work into shows all the time and it travels all over the world. But it is a big deal, because the local shows are where I meet people in person who are looking at the work and talking to me…giving me tangible support to keep making. Not that I will stop…not that I know HOW to stop. This drive does not slow down for exhaustion or my job or other obligations. I hear it in the back of my head all the time (Make Make Make). But now I have people I see at shows, people who have my back, people who talk to me about my work, their work, work in general. People who push me to do different work, like the 17-foot woman from last year and the nightstand I’ll be doing this year. This is all good.

We had an artists’ talk for my women’s art group yesterday at our show Feminism Now. Amusingly, someone actually did some mansplaining for us, telling us how the problems we think exist don’t any more. Say what? But it was a good discussion anyway. I got to hear a few artists talk about their work, artists I hadn’t heard from before. As our group grows, I’m finding it hard to make sure I can place name with face (we need to work on that as a group), but I do know the group serves to support female artists in a city that is known for ignoring or even censoring our presence. This discussion of what is a feminist, what is feminism NOW, and especially to us…it’s important and our group isn’t going to let it drop.

Here’s most of the women who were in the show (there’s a chunk of women who weren’t…it’s a big group now).

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Wirework outside the gallery…suspect Spenser Little at work…

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So most of my day was picking up work from being juried and spending time at the gallery for the talk and trying to get better pictures for an official group blogpost of the show…but I did eventually (after grading of course) come back and start tracing again…

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This piece is slow going, but it will be worth it. I’ve got about 3 hours in and I’m only on piece 220. The first 115 pieces were large and kind of convoluted, so they took longer to trace. Now I’m into the tiny pieces mostly, with some background stuff in there.

This is what it looks like from the back when I’m tracing…

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Except the light on the light table is on. But the numbers are all backwards, which takes some getting used to. I did the left thigh last night: a raccoon and some flowers and leaves. I stopped when I got to the owl, because it was 100 pieces (at least) and it was after midnight. I was tired. I stayed up another half hour to let my brain relax…don’t know if it worked, but I zonked out pretty fast. Good sign.

Apparently I have to trace the owl twice…although I think I will redraw him so he has all his parts first…because he’s missing some parts of his tail I think, and part of a wing. I could do that today as well.

I do have two more classes of the last unit to grade today, plus making new seating charts…very exciting stuff. And groceries and laundry. It’s nice to have an extra day for it though. It would have been hard to deal with going back to school today with everything I was trying to get done over the weekend. Trying to keep up with my job and live life and make art…it’s a lot, and I’m totally looking forward to a break in a few weeks with summer vacation (I’ll still be making art…just not trying to juggle the job in the middle of it). I’m looking forward to sitting out on the deck and relaxing with my sketchbook. I’m looking forward to having the time to reconnect with my art brain in a less stressful way. Also eating and peeing when I want…those are pluses. And fewer demands on my patience (only 2 kids instead of 155 and mine are adults, so hopefully that will help).

Listen to the Body

Ah the challenges of the end of the school year, and your college-aged kids coming home, and a puppy in the house, and all the things that need to be done. The puppy now has been neutered…although it was problematic. Poor guy had one undescended testicle…I wonder if that’s why he hadn’t been neutered yet…they were waiting or they realized it was more expensive to do? It’s done now. But he’s not a happy camper…

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He does have plenty of people around to love him and help him maneuver with the cone, although all he really wants to do is lick his butt, and he’ll have to wait 2 weeks for that joy. He mostly slept last night…a very different puppy to the one we normally have.

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We all went out to dinner at the Indian place…oh my golly, I forget how good that place is. I don’t go at all when the kids are gone, unfortunately (I should order takeaway)…and I usually get multiple meals out of one dinner. Yummy.

Then we came home and rallied around puppy for a while, until the kids went off to bed or room and I started tracing Wonder Under on the newest quilt…which currently is called Earth Mother 2016…I’m assuming I’ll come up with a better name eventually.

I didn’t get far in the numbers, because the whole bottom section is a giant half Earth and the pieces are pretty large.

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So I traced the entire Earth part and got partway around the edge of it until I thought it was pretty late…and I knew I had multiple places to be this morning, so I needed to sleep. I didn’t have the mental energy to do a lot else last night, even though I brought home a huge pile of grading for the three-day weekend. One of the things that sucks about being a teacher is that every single three-day weekend is during school and you end up grading through at least one of the days. Sundays are already trashed by lesson planning etc on a regular weekend, so it’s nice to have one extra day, because it means I will try to treat at least one day of the weekend as a real day off…no grading, no errands, no cleaning. Just relaxing and reading and hiking and hanging out. If that works.

But I do hope to get more tracing done on this over the weekend…around the grading and the artist drop-offs and pick-ups and artist talk and all the other stuff. And right this second? I need a nap. Sad but true. Massive headache plus tired. Not a good mix. Might be worth setting the timer for 20 minutes and putting a pillow over my head. Just a quickie. Listen to the body…it’s telling you something.

Attempting Wake-Up Maneuvers

So the not-sleeping catches up and whacks you in the face. OK. It whacks me anyway. I napped after work yesterday. That’s it…I’m officially an old person. What I love is the cats climb up on the couch with me, flanking me. I set an alarm, because I didn’t want it to be like last time, when I lost 2 hours to nappiness and then couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’m already having issues with that. So 40 minutes later, I was all groggy (hey, I set it for 25 minutes and then it went off, scaring all the creatures on the couch, so I went for another 15…then the girlchild was texting me and I attempted wake-up maneuvers). And I didn’t really feel like doing anything, which is too bad, because I always have stuff to do. And I didn’t feel like figuring dinner out either. I probably had enough leftovers for lunches and dinner last night, but the potatoes were MEH and I had eaten that for lunch and hell, what I really wanted was to be physically transported, no WAIT, I wanted the waiter at Himalayan to be able to walk through some sort of transport thing that put him in my living room to take my order and then to bring it to me. But not to wait around and stare at me, wondering why I can’t get my butt off the couch.

That’s when I got up and ordered more tea, because I’m running out. It took me a good two hours and some fakeout of a dinner menu (it’s always OK to have salad and Brussels sprouts), plus staring at my phone and the telly for a good long time before I could function. Part of that is what I taught yesterday, which was kind of a performance art, relay race of neurons and action potentials. I spent a lot of time running around the room yelling “DO IT! DO IT!” and “SEND IT BACK!”. So if you’re thinking teachers just sit at a desk (I don’t really have a desk for such activities), imagine the yelling and the running instead. Today will be a nice quiet video viewing of brain structure and function to counteract the running and screaming of yesterday. The one day you could have the superintendent walk in and you’d be totally OK with him seeing the real live crazy of Nida teaching science? Yeah. He didn’t show.

So when I remember that and the not-falling-asleep of the night before, I guess a nap is warranted.

After that, I finally got my brain to function and finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is temporarily called Fishface, just because I had three drawings out at the same time, and I needed something that would tell them all apart. The other two are Totemwoman and Spiralwoman. I already have a quilt called FishWife, so it could get confusing. She’ll have a different name at the end.

There’s all the pieces…about 2 1/2 hours of trimming Wonder Under.

Then I sorted them. This quilt is gonna go fast, I think.

Compared to the last one anyway. And I still wasn’t tired. Because I’d had a nap. So I sat down with the drawing from the weekend and tried to finish up the torso a bit so I can copy it. And I think I’ll toss it in the car today and go enlarge it and start drawing stuff for real.

Like real size. This is already big. And I’m not sure that heart is gonna stay. There’ll be a heart, but the chest/upper torso is off. So maybe I’ll cut it off a couple of inches up into the drawing and then redo the chest and heart full size. Usually I enlarge 200-300%, though, and this head is already considerably bigger than the last Earth Mother, so maybe I won’t? Or I’ll rethink the rest of the body? I’m not sure.

I got good news last night that two of my quilts will be in the Feminism Now show at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. The opening is May 14 from 6-10 PM. If you haven’t been, it’s part of the Barrio Art Crawl, so there are a few studios in the area of Gallery D, plus other studios, like La Bodega Gallery and the Bread and Salt Gallery, in the area. I’ll post a link closer to the time.

This is the smaller piece that will be in the show (currently out for professional photography)…

And the larger piece it connects to will be there too. The smaller one will travel to Sweden (date/location TBA) with the exhibit, and then hopefully there’ll be another exhibit in Los Angeles or down here in San Diego, once the Swedish exhibit closes.

Yeah. I really need to go to school. I had to meditate to fall asleep again last night, so caffeine will be a necessary part of the day today (it’s what’s for breakfast! and lunch! and dinner!). At least I’m making progress, even if I have to nap in between the job and my real life.

Gird My Loins

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I finally went and found the iPad at about a quarter to 1 and had to re-upload my meditation program, because apparently I deleted it somehow. And then meditated, confusing the dog massively. Even then, I couldn’t sleep. I even considered taking today off from work (wow. two days in, people. well done.). I remember in my old job taking a personal day every once in a while, just a day to clear my head and do what I want and not think about whatever it was that was the issue. But I just had Spring Break, I hear you say. OK. Well, that tells you a little bit about my job then, doesn’t it? It’s not even the kids right now…it’s the other adults and some of the situations. We live in an inherently violent and sexist society, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I can wish that all I like, but when it comes down to reality…it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon. And apparently I’m a shitty teacher for not just accepting the way things are. Wow. I’m so done with this school year. 51 days.

I also worked last night, which didn’t help things. A last-minute project showed up and ate up the evening, which is fine. I need the money. I always need the money. Dear college: Knock it off. Give me a break. The girlchild was shocked that tuition went up. I was not. I’m not happy about it, but it’s always going up. Everything is always going up.

I did a little art stuff…started cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt…

That’s about an hours’ worth. Halfway done. Ish. I’m not engaged with this project yet. Too stressed out. Too tired. Maybe when I start picking fabrics for it?

Maybe it’s just a matter of not having that deadline to work toward. Knowing that you only have X number of weeks to finish something gives you a drive you might not otherwise have. Then again, I come home from work and the last thing I want to look at is more grading, lesson design, or whatever. I don’t want to think about kids or what will be taught in homeroom or whether or not I will be able to work with my team next year. I just want to relax. Monday was better because I went out and climbed a big sweaty hill. I guess that’s a lesson in itself. I had a trauma training at school yesterday as well (because I don’t recognize trauma?) and they talked about self care. Gave us a list of self-care tasks. Oh yeah. That. I do that. And that. And that. And I still want to run screaming from my entire life some days. I guess we all do. And no, donuts aren’t the solution.

Making art for me is the solution. Drawing the pictures, trying to make sense of the world with a simple line, getting the morass in my head out onto the paper. Some people call it a gift, but it’s not. I worked my butt off to be able to channel that stuff out. And I can’t even draw fast enough. I can’t draw enough to clear it all out.

So each morning, I write this and I check how I feel. And I label what’s in my head: Thinking or Feeling? Lots of feels this morning. Too many thinks last night. And the feels are particularly hard right now, whether that’s due to lack of sleep, hormonal surges, an empty house, or whatever. They feel (ha!) overwhelming. So part of my mindful practice every day is to spill it here, then contemplate what the day might bring in terms of opportunities to help the feels, to spill them out in an appropriate way, to offer them to the Earth Mother, to Nature (those hikes save my brain!), to dribble them out on the elliptical, to shelve them between the pages of a good book, to cut them into tiny little pieces while I trim the Wonder Under, to block their effect with music or pictures or drawing or tracing or whatever the hell it takes.

With that in mind, I gird my loins, mount my trusty steed, Subaru, and venture into combat, looking past the inevitable strife and conflict towards an attainable goal of peace…tho temporary it might be. An evening with scissors.

Oh yeah, in case you don’t know how to gird your loins (again, where’s the female version…)