Drink More Water

First of all…my math still sucks, but I also think I was possessed some time in February. I was done with piecing that background, so I went searching for the pattern so I could start ironing the piece. Didn’t take long to find…and folded inside the pattern was the background, already pieced. Seriously. All out of green. I don’t even remember doing it.

The plus is I now have the backing all pieced and ready to go. The minus is that I think I was possessed. I guess it is possible that I was so stressed by work in February that my brain filed that piece of information (you already pieced the background) somewhere useful, which means I never would have remembered. It disturbs me when I am that forgetful.

Yes, I took another 50 bad shots of fireworks again this year.

Secondly, I got incredibly good news on the tetanus/diptheria shot front: I may not ever need to have one again. The doc and  his compadre in the office next door had made an educated guess that mine was not an allergic reaction but instead was an incredible OVERreaction to the shot. They guessed that if they tested my blood for antibody titers on the tetanus and diptheria, that I might have incredibly protective levels even 12 years after my last shot. They were right and told me to test again in 10 years. Like I’m going to remember. Luckily, they sent my real doc an email that will go in the file that follows me everywhere, so they won’t harass me about it again until 2019. Yee ha! So I now have a superpower! Yeah, whatever.

I have been doing fabric things…I found backgrounds (which I will probably promptly lose) for two in-process quilts. They are both pieces I handdyed last summer. The first one…

approved by the kitten. And what you can’t see when the drawing is in the way is this…

Bright burst of yellow that will be right behind the head. Holly approves.

And the next one, which is about the same size…

The background for this one is not as fancy, but that’s because the quilt itself is pretty busy and needs a calming influence…

Which obviously isn’t me. I also started quilting Stump.

on Saturday, after a 2-hour nap. I’m wondering about all this tiredness. I think I’m dehydrated. I drink lots of water at school during the day, to save my throat from all the talking, and I forget to do that during the summer except when it’s really hot (which it’s not…yet). So yesterday when I felt tired, I drank a whole bottle of water and felt awake again. Duh.

I’m still running on ADD quilt brain. I started quilting Saturday and then didn’t do any more (will do some today). I am still working on the grapes…more better picture of that later. It’s actually almost done. Then I pieced the two crazy quilt challenges. I don’t think I like either one, but know that they will look better when stitched, so I’m trying to get them all appliqued down.

I think I will piece the sides on before I start stitching. Or maybe not. Can’t decide. Think I would rather see it as a whole while I’m stitching it, for continuity’s sake.

Not sure what to say about them, except you’ll see me working on them for the next few months.

My dad is working on my sprinklers…

There he is through the office window. He doesn’t even knock on the door in between Home Depot visits any more. He just wanders past the window, and if I’m in there, he says “Hi. I broke your shovel.” and things like that.

Kitten likes to hang out with me in the office; sometimes puppy is in there too. Mostly they sleep.

What’s on the computer? Well, a bunch of blogs I read had videos of their (lovely, quiet, clean, artistic) studios, like lovely little tours of where they work. So I tried to do one of those, and it’s um kind of loud and funny and messy. Know that my studio is actually much cleaner now, because I spent a few hours cleaning before I could start working, but if you wonder what my life is like and how I get any work done at all, you may enjoy the video…or not. My children were involved, and not in a good way.

OK, so I need to go drink some water, check for an old guy in the yard fixing my sprinkler line, hang another load of laundry on the line (saving electricity in the summer!), and try to figure out what I’m taking to stitching at a friend’s house. She also wants to know what I’m reading. I did start rereading Eragon, then I will reread Eldest, all so I can read Brsinger (hope I spelled it right). They are fast reads. Hopefully I will get all that done before my mom realizes we’ve had her copy of Brsinger since it came out, and she still hasn’t read it. I can’t really accuse her of Alzheimers or dementia, though, since I piece entire backgrounds and delete that info from my brain apparently at the drop of a hat.

Math Is Not My Favorite Subject

I finished choosing all the fabrics for a new small piece…

Most of the brighter pieces are only used once or twice and in a really small area. Not a lot of color.

And I even cut them all out.

It’s amazing how quickly I can get through each task on a small quilt. The big ones can take forever. So this one is ready to iron onto a background. Maybe today. Maybe not.

I have another large quilt where all the pieces have been cut out for a long time, like maybe since April. I suck at finishing quilts between May and June. It just doesn’t happen, which tells you a lot about my mental status for those two months…not only am I frustrated by not making art, but I can’t even make art because everything else is so much more mentally taxing.

Anyway, sometime in February, I mapped out the background fabric for this new large quilt, which is currently nicknamed Strata, but that’s a stupid name and it won’t stick. And if it does, don’t remind me of this post. Anyway, I have this little notebook where I keep track of quilts while I’m working on them, and by keep track, I just mean “attempt to do math and fail miserably.” Apparently, in February, I decided to go buy the background fabric for this quilt and another one…more of my attempting to work on art during the school year. Very commendable of me. So I sketch the fabric requirements out like this…

Actually, I only sketched out the larger top part and the one on the left that says 44″ by 126″. Now, the question is, where the hell did I get that 44″ measurement from? The fabric was barely 41.5″ wide. And on top of it, I needed it to be 46″ wide, so I should have cut it the way I have it mapped out on the right. Um. So I pull the fabric out and I had apparently cut it back in February. I don’t remember cutting it. Not only that, but because of how I’ve cut it, I can’t possibly make it work. The stuff at the bottom is my trying to figure out how to take all the random pieces I actually had and make it fit the size I needed. It continued on the next page…

Where I made it into the real world, realized I could piece my ass off and still not have a logically sized piece (plus I like my tops to NOT have all these fiddly pieced bits in them, especially if they’re all the same fabric). So. I walked away from it. And then I pulled another piece of fabric out of the stash, cut the center piece out of it, and cut borders out of the chosen fabric…

the stuff to be ironed should hide most of the gray…and if it doesn’t, I have all these funny little long bits I can fuse over it to save the day. Please file this under “what the hell was Kathy thinking?” Apparently my brain was on vacation back in February as well. What’s funny is that this isn’t really math calculations…it’s visual stuff, and I should be good at that. Oh well.

So now I have two quilts to iron onto backgrounds. I would like to spend some time today either starting that process, starting to quilt the piece currently known as Stump, or picking fabrics for the piece currently known as Ball. I would also like my brain to start coming up for replacement titles for the one-word nicknames I’ve been using. Actually, Stump is going to stick. The other two? Not so much.

The grape applique continues. Here it is after an hour and a half waiting at the kids’ dental appointments, plus another 45 minutes at piano lessons for the boychild.

And then after last night’s session watching the last season of Weeds on DVD.

Lots more grapes to fill in the holes, but progress is definitely there. No progress on All Around the Town. Sorry.

In other news, I took the kids to the Zoo at Night last week. We have zoo memberships and I feel like we should be able to go to the zoo for a few hours and enjoy it, especially in summer. They have a new elephant exhibit, which we unfortunately saved for last, and it was almost dark. Photography becomes more difficult in the dark…animals move, which makes them blurry, and flashes don’t necessarily project far enough. That said, the big cats were in attendance.

Yes, it would have been nice if he would have stayed still long enough FACING me for a good picture, but this is way closer than I’ve ever seen the tigers.

The puma.

I think this was the snow leopard, and it was standing on its back legs, with its front paws on the wire, looking across the zoo road at the porcupine. Maybe it was hungry.

The kids enjoyed themselves.

Mostly because I fed them.

Lots of animals were asleep or off display, but we still enjoyed what we saw. Next time, we will start at the new elephant enclosure and go the OTHER direction. Of course, our schedule for the next three weeks is already constrained by camp and meetings and a quilt show, but we will fit it in somewhere.

Calli (apparently there is no “e” in her name) has been running us all ragged, up early and not potty-trained yet. Even Ivy seems to have hurt her leg while playing with her (or I don’t know when).

Last night they were sleeping side-by-side, although the puppy kept repositioning herself, sometimes almost right off the couch.

Another sign that it’s summer? I’ve finished two books in the last three days. The Art of Racing in the Rain is Garth Stein’s third book…

I’ve ordered the other two of his books through library loan, so that tells you that I liked this one. The book is about a dog named Enzo and his race-car-driving owner, Denny. Denny marries Eve and they have a baby, whose name is escaping me at the moment (I had to return the book…Zoe!), but what you need to know is that the book is mostly from the viewpoint of Enzo, the dog, and I must have a soft spot for narrating dogs. It was good, and a quick read. I’ll let you know if his other two are any good when they show up here.

I also read Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care.

It was good, but typical for her, with the right amount of medical and legal hoohaw and a tricky ending. Another quick read. My kids teased me because I apparently ordered the Large Print version of the book from the library. You can hold it a really long way away from your face and still read it! Wow!

Not sure what’s next on the reading list. Am considering a kid fiction book, but it means I have to go back and read the first two before I read the third book. Not sure I’m up for that yet.

OK, so it is the 4th of July, and there will be fireworks tonight. Although the kids go to their dad in a few hours, I do join them for the fireworks every year, so I’m not sure I’ll get much else done. I don’t seem to function well in the midday heat (shocking!)…evenings and night are so much more comfortable. Enjoy the 4th…may there be plenty of corn on the cob and barbecue for all.

And Now the Fabric Part of My Day

OK, now I can talk about fabric, now that all that is out of my head and into the web.

I finally started picking out fabrics for an actual ART quilt (instead of all this other-people’s-patterns stuff that occupies my hands but not my brain).

Oooh. Aaah. I know. Doesn’t look like much. I’m using some of the flesh-toned fabrics my mom tracked down for me last year. This is a small piece with not many parts to it, and at the moment, it has not a whole lot of color in it. More later on this one.

The grapes are also coming along.

Yes, that looks like a big purple Africa…it’s actually just the purple BEHIND the grapes, so I only have to sew like 40 grapes instead of 100.

And then, because I’m insane, I signed up for both of Evening Star Design’s 2009 challenges. What’s interesting is that I was expecting the ocean-themed package to talk to me first…

but it was the Grandmother’s flower garden package that told me how to piece itself first, and almost immediately…

Now have I done it? Hell no. I’ve had the sore throat from hell for 4 days now (can we say Strep? OK, probably not.) and it’s sucking the energy out of me.

I really enjoyed doing the crazy quilt challenge last year…worked on it all summer and into the early fall. It may not happen this time around…I certainly can’t do two of them and finish them without dumping the art-quilt component of the summer, which is not an option. I’ve only finished one art quilt this year, although one is close to done…so if I want to get to my goal of 6 per year, I need to get my butt in gear. And although I am perturbed that today is July, not June (still feels like the time off is slipping out of my hands), I know that July is a very long month and I might be able to get a lot done.

Might.

Reflection

Yesterday I went to an allergist to figure out if I’m actually allergic to the tetanus shot. He decided I was not allergic; I had an adverse reaction. He then full-on admitted that from my perspective it probably didn’t matter whether I was allergic or adversely reacting…I was paranoid about having another shot. And then he told me that he’d never heard of anyone having a reaction like mine (my lymph nodes swelled up like balloons and I ran a high fever). So he and his colleague put their heads together and came up with a plan for me.

The most interesting part of this doctor visit was not that he actually listened to my freakish issues and came up with a totally reasonable plan, but that he and his kids had just returned from Nicaragua, where he had been on a medical mission, treating people who make less than 50 cents a day and may have never seen a doctor in their lives, and he told me he thought all kids should have to go live somewhere extremely rural and poor during the teen years…I have long thought that there should be some sort of national education plan that requires middle-school kids to spend a year abroad, so they get a better concept of reality. I have a friend who thinks many middle-school kids aren’t capable of anything but ditch-digging for most of puberty. I’m not THAT radical, but I do think having a world mindset would be helpful, having a bigger experience than the space between their home and the school. The doctor told me that the elementary kids go to school in the morning (and then probably work the fields illegally in the afternoon), and the high-school kids work the fields in the morning and then go to school in the afternoon. They’re not playing video games. They’re not watching 6 hours of television. They’re not coming up with all these excuses to not finish their homework. They’re not hanging out at the mall with their friends…they may WISH they were doing all of those things, but those aren’t choices they have. They may still not like school, but at least they have a better idea of what the alternatives might be to doing well in school. I’m not sure when my students will get that.

No, that’s not Nicaragua and they’re not picking coffee, but they are kids.

I think that while Arne Duncan is trying to figure out ways to make me accountable for the test scores of kids who were in my class three years ago, he should be figuring out an exchange program that will persuade even kids from absolutely crappy family situations (that I can’t fix) that they have it better than many, and they should appreciate the opportunities they have and take advantage of them, even if it is only as a way to escape what they have now. I’m a white woman who did well in school. We weren’t rich growing up, but we weren’t poor either. I don’t blame my students for not listening to me when I tell them this is a way out, a chance to do better, a way to have choices. Why should they listen to me? What do I know? The hardest part of my job is getting the kids to care about their own grades, their own learning process, their own futures. They often don’t believe they have futures, or if they do, they think they will be a future Tony Hawk or Junior Seau or a rock star or an NFL football player. They think magic will happen and they won’t have to do any work to get paid. I wonder sometimes what their parents tell them…whether they are trying to protect them from their job situation or whether they are telling them that myth that they are special and can do whatever they want with their lives.

Hell, they CAN do whatever they want…they just need to start working their butts off now.

I know. My doctor is a bigger idealist than I am in many ways (ask him about the economy and its connection to high-school students owning cell phones), but when I’ve been spending time in my head REFLECTING (all teachers have to reflect all the time on whether kids learned and how we could encourage them to learn more better) on how to reach the kids who seemed unreachable, sometimes I come up with ideas that just aren’t going to happen in the real world.

I do have fabric stuff to post about, but it seems so unrelated to this that it needs its own space.

I Think It’s Monday

I’m up too early today. I’ve been up for an hour because of the puppy. She is a sweet thing, but she is a baby. I have choices. I can force the teenaged girl up to deal with her puppy, but then I deal with a tired teenaged girl all day (actually, I’m sending her to a birthday party this afternoon and evening, so it might not matter). I only have so much patience saved up for each day. Puppy plus girl means cranky mommy.

The good thing is that I think my brain has finally had enough rest (despite early morning risings) to get to the artmaking side of my time off. The studio is mostly clean. The quilts that needed to be shipped out are gone as of today. We still have three doctor’s appointments, a piano guild assessment, and a variety of other obligations this week, but it’s starting to feel more like summer. Maybe. It could just be the heat (which is still a good 20 degrees below what it will probably be in August).

We spent all weekend in soccer mode. The girlchild chose to play in a tournament with another team that she’s played with before…unfortunately, their new players…um…kind of…um…suck. Yeah. So they didn’t do well, but the girlchild had a solid weekend of practicing running around and playing with the ball. And even heading it, which she’s been practicing more now that they let them attempt brain damage during the game.

The ball IS in the picture…look at the top above the two guys in the red hats.

The weather was actually quite reasonable and nice and breezy where she played, and I did some applique (show you in a minute), so the heinously bad scores were sort of easy to forget.

Leg crossing while kicking the ball. Impressive. Anyway, four games makes up for missing soccer practice today for a birthday party (her daddy doesn’t think so, but he’s a little obsessed with the game anyway…she needs some time with her friends or she will drive her brother and I bonkers).

I’m still trying to finish All around the Town…I got both borders on, but it was too big to take to soccer games.

I like it even though I didn’t pick out the fabrics…I saw one online here on Susan Garman’s site that was done all in bright colors, and I really liked it (but I’m NOT doing it again!). Pat Dicker did the quilt in dots, but I’m not finding a website just for her…Anyway, I’m trying to finish up the stars and there are cars as well.

Plus there is a big sun in the middle that has all these rays coming out of it. The pattern recommended using one of those bias tape makers, so I bought one and it was incredibly easy to use…imagine me at 11 at night ironing these teensy-weensy quarter-inch pieces and being so excited, but everyone is asleep and they would think I was crazy to be so excited anyway.

The cats were excited for me. Of course, where am I going to put this little piece of metal so that I can find it the next time I need it? Knowing me, it’ll be somewhere in this room and I’ll still have to go buy another one because I won’t remember what I did with it. I should label all the drawers in here…yeah. Now THERE’S a summer project for you. Seventy-eight things in one drawer will make one huge label. Maybe I’ll stick with sewing.

So I needed something small enough to take to the soccer game, because this quilt is now like 56″ square, so I started another square in a quilt I’ve been working on since 2002 or maybe earlier, Simply Delicious by Piece o’ Cake Designs.

That is the official picture off their website, and they are now offering the patterns as an epattern, which is cool (and incredibly cheaper than buying the patterns like I did way back when).

My quilt is moving very slowly. It looks like this…

and I’ve done one more block without its little squares (if I don’t do the tiny squares right after I finish the block, I might never do them. I hate piecing. Plus I suck at it. More on that later this week).

What’s funny is I thought I had done this block last summer, but no. I did it in July 2007. Yikes!

And you wonder why nothing ever gets finished. I have Quilt ADD. So that is 7 blocks and now I’m doing the grapes block, which currently looks like this…

AKA nothing. Forty more grapes to go! Here I am picking out the greens for leaves (harder than you might think).

And then the purples, which I really didn’t think about at all…just tried not to put any of the same colors next to each other.

Purple is difficult because there are so many shades of it…red-purple, blue-purple, gray-purple. Maroon is borderline. Burgundy is too. There’s a brown fabric that lives half of its life in the brown drawer and the other half in the purple drawer, depending on how I’m feeling when I put it away. I have the same problems with grays. Let’s not even talk about the multi-colored fabrics.

Speaking of putting it away, I’m trying to find space for all the fabric in here and it’s an issue. Not sure what to do next. I bagged up a huge pile of stuff people had given me that aren’t really quilting fabrics (Hawaiian shirt remnants, some upholstery and curtain remnants) and it’s sitting in the hallway with the stuff I bagged up last summer and still haven’t dealt with properly. Sigh. I think I will calendar that.

OK. So it’s time to wake the dead (11-year-old and 13-year-old) and get ready for the day. This afternoon will hopefully include fabric-choosing for art quilts (as well as shopping for pajamas for the giant boychild, who needs to clean out his closet and stop looking down on his sweet mama when she asks why he’s wearing flannel pjs to bed when it’s 90 degrees out…maybe he should verbalize his needs…a girl can dream). It will probably also involve puppies and kittens and sweltering heat, but I can handle that now.

Needlebook Found

I’ve spent the last two weeks or so trying to find my needlebook. I’ve racked (wracked? don’t ask how long I spent on dictionary sites trying to figure out the spelling) my brains trying to remember where I had it last, thinking about where I might have laid it down, begin mourning its loss. I remembered having it at the Poway soccer tournament back in May because I was stitching the pine trees. The green thread from that endeavor is sitting on the ottoman, so obviously it came home from there. I thought it was in a yellow plastic envelope with the cross stitch I never finished from April. I searched my office (this was part of the cleaning frenzy), the car, the living room, my room, my ex-husband’s car (he drives to soccer half the time). I tried to decide if I’d had it at Soccer in the Sand the following weekend, and had I seen it all since then? Could not remember. This is a teacher’s brain on the last month of school: MUSH.

I’d told everyone around me I’d been looking for it. It’s been driving me mad. I love that needlebook…made it myself back in 1995 in a class, and almost every handstitching needle I own is in it (note to self: diversify). After cleaning the studio yesterday, I was pretty sure it was a goner…that I’d left it somewhere stupid or recycled it in the trash or who-knows-what. I hate that feeling.

Then driving back from stitching at a friend’s house, I let the brain wander off on its own (it does that a lot anyway) and I thought…what do we need to take with us to the concert tonight? The chairs. The chairs. My god…the chairs. My chair is sort of a yellow green color. And it has a pocket on it.

It’s been in the garage since Soccer in the Sand because I needed room in the trunk to move school stuff and possibly dump a friend’s trash. And in that pocket on the yellow-green chair was a BLUE plastic envelope…

with my needlebook, scissors, and an almost-finished cross-stitch piece.

Dingbat. My brain was really trying to tell me where it was (yellow pocket, eh?), but I wasn’t listening until today. It does take a week for a teacher’s brain to come back to reality after the end of school…a week and about 10 naps and 2 or 3 books and some bad television and maybe a glass of wine or two.

I will move some of these needles into my other needlebook later this week, maybe tonight, so I don’t have this level of panic again…

but it’s not the needles that really fazed me…

Needles are cheap and easy to replace…

check out the tea stains…it was that I’d had this thing since before my son was born and I am seriously attached to it. I don’t know why…

But I am.

My Teeth Are Clean…My Studio? Not So Much

This is the doctor-appointment week. Today we spend hours in a variety of dental offices for me and the kids. My teeth are now clean (ish), and I can finally schedule the major dental work that I didn’t do because I didn’t have a guaranteed job for the last 4 months. The kids are on the tooth deck next, in about 30 minutes. My biggest decision seems to be what to take with me to do in the waiting room.

I have 9 stars to applique on the town quilt…I got it all pieced together last night…

And then I sewed down all the hills. I’m trying to figure out how to work this bias tape making beast so I can do the sun rays next. Yesterday, we went to the fabric store (aack!) to get the two border fabrics for this one and the sashing fabric for the girlchild’s summer project. I’m hoping to get the borders on soon so I can applique the cars on. I wanted to do it this afternoon, before the dentist, but I decided that CLEANING was the main job in the studio. I can’t pick fabrics out until the rest is cleaned up. It’s been a few hours, and I have lots done, but the bits that are left cause me to just shake my head. I’m considering just putting it all in a trash bag and storing it in a closet until I have the guts to throw it out.

The girlchild was laying squares out yesterday…

I suggested she pick it up before we headed out, but she was convinced it would be fine.

When people are away, kittens do play. Next time, she did not leave it unattended…

And now it is all stacked up in a pile. There will be sashing between each block. We haven’t gotten to that part yet.

The kids have spent time in the pool…

sulking and/or splashing…while I’ve spent time trying to conquer the amazing fig tree/plant that is taking over my yard.

One trash can full, 17 more to go. The puppy sleeps by the pool…

on a chair after falling in the pool…

and just about anywhere she wants…

I got a little cross stitch done while sunburning my shins…

All the light green leaves are done and it’s time to start the leafy vine on the left side now.

Too many things that have to get done today. It always feels like each day of summer vacation is slipping away, never to be seen again. I haven’t completely disengaged from school stuff (mostly because I’ve spent two hours putting school stuff away this morning). I need a nap…I wonder if the kids’ dentist office will mind my stretching out on one of the benches in the waiting room. Maybe I should take caffeine. Yeah.

Getting in the Mood

I’ve traced three quilts onto Wonder Under in the last week. Two of them are cut out and ready to be ironed. The other one is waiting to be cut out…maybe tonight. I’m having problems getting in the mood to deal with fabric. One of the problems is the mess in my studio, which was attacked seriously today. I’m getting there. I tossed out a bunch of stuff and put away a bunch of stuff and all in all, I’m getting there. Getting my head where it needs to be to figure out the color schemes up there. I don’t do it on paper. It’s a little Colorforms board in my head. Maybe when I get really old and senile I will have to color it in on paper…

I forget every year that it takes me a while to tune out school and find the art part of my brain. I checked school email today and it’s drama drama everywhere. One interesting thing is that I will probably be a union rep next year. Not sure why…civic duty? The screw up of the union rep who lost my paperwork and almost lost me my representation during the pink-slip days? Whatever. I don’t always agree with the union…or even the need for a union…or the way the union works…but my dad always told me growing up that the only way to change things you don’t like is to take them over. OK, that’s not quite what he said…I’m sure he used less aggressive terminology. Maybe.

Mostly today was about trying to get girlchild to take on puppy duties (peeing and cleaning up and feeding). She is very much like her dad in that she can sleep through all babies crying, so I was up at 1:55 AM peeing a puppy. And 6:15 AM peeing a puppy. And then I wondered, hey, wasn’t the dad supposed to have puppy at night? We’ll see.

I don’t want this to just be a blog about the puppy, so here’s my mom with the puppy…

Everybody loves puppies in pictures…just not in real life. Mom loved the puppy.

Today is my baby brother’s 40th birthday, so here’s a picture of him too, but without the puppy.

No, that’s not a straw growing out of his shoulder. I suspect there’s a kid down there somewhere poking him with it and he’s just trying to ignore it. He’s been a good baby brother over the years, and since I know some people don’t have the luxury of siblings that are still amusing and weird and yet supportive in many ways, I offer you Jim…who had to survive school after I screeched through there, all anti-establishment and anti-authority and independent suburban punk, and he did survive it well, flying under the radar when necessary. I hope the next 10 years find him the perfect job that allows him more time with his family, and no major issues when those three kids hit middle school (ha!).

He doesn’t read my blog either, because he doesn’t have time to read anything, although I sent him home with all my Agatha Christie when he was here at Christmas.

Speaking of books, I’m reading. Because I can. I’m reading two teacher books, one on professional development in science content and one on general class management. I’ll let you know later if they’re any good…at the moment they just feel like a slog. I did finish Jim Lynch’s first book, The Highest Tide, and it was a good read.

I know it was recommended on someone’s blog and I don’t remember whose, but it’s a nice story about a 13-year-old boy on Puget Sound and some weird marine mysteries.

I finished that today and started a book my dad loaned me, because he hasn’t read it yet and I want to be sure he gets it back soon…

I’m not always a Minette Walters fan, but so far it seems good. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished it. I got so much reading done today because we had the first of like 5 doctor’s appointments…I scheduled everything for the first week after school because I didn’t want it messing with my whole vacation. Today was the podiatrist. I have had plantar fasciitis for 3 years now, and end up going to the foot doctor about once every 6-8 months. I would go more often, but I would have to take time off work, so I try to schedule them for vacations. We’ve managed to get rid of all the pain in one foot, but the heel pain in the other foot is just not going away. He X-rayed today and there is a large bone spur…whee! You can’t see it in this X-ray…

But that’s my foot! If I could have figured out how to move the computer to the next picture, I would have, but I was afraid I’d mess it up. He also shoved a massive needle in the heel to try to break up a bursa in there and to reduce the inflammation. He says I get one more shot and then we have to talk about surgery (yikes), but the plus is that we did manage to fix the other heel with only shots and orthotics, so I’m thinking good thoughts that don’t involve scalpels and files and yucky stuff like stitches. Erg. He also strapped it up good so it could rest and hopefully help everything to go back to normal.

Sometimes this works for a couple of weeks. The hope is that because I’m not teaching (and walking 45 miles a week) right now, it might actually have a chance of healing.

I did actually ship off the three quilts to Santa Cruz today. It took me about 5 hours of label-making, label-stitching, Home-Depot-shopping for dowels and hardware, dowel-cutting, hardware-installing, cat-hair-removing, box-making, quilt-rolling, box-label-making, napping, and driving to get those three suckers out of here. What a pain. I have one more to ship to Texas for the show in Birmingham, England. Hopefully it won’t take nearly as long.

There was a soccer game on Saturday, so I drew.

It’s actually kind of amazing that I was able to draw, because the girlchild was playing against the team that she had tried out for back in March and really wanted to get onto that team and was rejected for her best friend. It was a traumatic time for all of us (although maybe worst for daddy)…and the girlchild’s team won! We weren’t expecting that, but it was nice for her (and perhaps for her daddy) to have that victory. It’s hard for girls this age to accept rejection…hell, it’s hard for us old ladies too, although I don’t take art rejections personally (Quilt National, I’m talking to you!).

So I’m going to keep cleaning. I’m actually looking for a couple of things in this disaster area of a room (as usual). I finished the binding on 3-Piece Family and I want to do a bunch of embroidery. I found the thread, because I always put it away in the same place (good kathy), but I can’t find my needle book. I know when I had it last and I know what it should be in, but I can’t find the container (or the other stuff that was in it). I’m wondering what I did with it. Wait a minute…I just had a brain twiggle. Nope. It wasn’t there either. I keep thinking if I let my brain wander around thinking about where the container MIGHT be, I might just remember where it actually IS. Hasn’t worked yet…second day trying.

Calliope

I did not name this dog. The girlchild did. She is Callie for short. She came “home” today.

I put “home” in quotes because she really belongs to daddy’s house, but she will be here during the day all summer. Today she met my parents’ dog and my dog.

See all the wet spots on the deck? That is the two adult dogs drooling all over the place. We’re not sure why. Ivy drools at the vet because she’s nervous. Apparently Golden Retriever puppies make her nervous?

Girlchild has already had to pick up two accidents (my carpets are old and crappy anyway).

Missy did her leap-in-the-air routine when the puppy first arrived.

Ivy just barked.

They are all the same color. Callie will be more Missy’s size when she’s full-grown, and probably a little heftier. After she visited here, she set off to the other house to meet Jake…the 115-pound German Shepherd.

Jake will probably act like he does with Ivy: something along the lines of “what the hell is this little thing and how can I get it away from me?” Although Callie is less hyper than Ivy, so that may be a plus on her side.

Meanwhile, I’m packing three quilts up for a show in Santa Cruz. They all needed labels, and I’m still short a dowel and some hardware, so after the girlchild’s soccer game, I’ll head over to Home Debit for those. I think I need another nap.

Free at Last

Yes, it’s true. School is out. I’m free. Well, except for all the crap I have to do over the summer that I don’t get done during the school year. But I can READ BOOKS. I can MAKE ART. I can feel halfway human even.

The first thing I did when we all got home was take a nap. Seriously. I must have needed it, because I was mostly dead to the world (how dead to the world can you really get with two dogs, three cats, and two teenagers in the house) for at least an hour and a half. Then the kitten bounded onto my head and the cranky male cat responded, and sleep was over.

The number one piece of good news is that I have a fulltime job come August; none of this stupid 90% crap, although I still have a 2% paycut from the district thanks to the state government’s inability to fund education. And my classes will be huge come August. I am relieved about the 100% status, but there is a niggling worry about the class sizes. I’m also fairly sure I will be teaching all 7th grade classes, so no more of this trying to come up with innovative stuff for content areas I have never taught before…I can focus on making the life science curriculum better and more engaging and more full of gross things to cut up. Right? With no budget for supplies. Minor issue.

I do have a ton of yardwork to do. I expect to use teenaged slave labor to help with this.

This is part of the backyard. The thing on the left that looks like a tree is actually a weed. The agave needs to go. The weeds need to go. There is a fountain somewhere on the right that needs to go. I need better steps.

There is a fence in there somewhere. We need to reclaim this. I want a compost pile and the beginnings of a vegetable garden for next fall, when there might be water. I swear, if I hear another ad down here for growing your own fruit and vegetables while we are in extreme water rationing, I will scream. That said, there is a plum tree in there somewhere. It may or may not actually be alive. And the beans are growing.

The original science lab had the kids plant in rocks, sand, and dirt. The dirt ones went straight into this pot and are doing OK. The ones that are growing the most are the ones that were in sand. I just hauled their root asses out of the sand and plopped them in dirt, expecting them to panic and fall over, but they are growing heartily. The boychild tells me he hates green beans, so we will have to figure out a way to get them into pancakes.

More cactusy-like things trying to take over the yard.

I wouldn’t have a problem with that if they were on the edges, allowing for seating and gardening, but they are plopped smack-dab in the middle of the flat space, so they will have to move or go. Plus, I need another tree to replace the one that fell down last year or the year before. I don’t want to see my neighbor’s house. So I need a home for that. Also not in the middle of the yard where the last one was located.

Inside the house is a similar problem: my studio slash office.

Tomorrow I’m picking fabrics for two quilts and I need that space cleared off. I’m going to spend 30 minutes with a timer working on it tonight. Worst problem is not knowing what to do with stuff. There isn’t enough room or organization, so I’m trying to clean out this bookshelf, one of three in the room that are all stuffed to the gills.

There is stuff just shoved randomly in there. It’s been there for years. It’s just scary. I need room for books (and maybe to clean out the books again). One is all school stuff…you can see part of it on the right here.

Yes. The piles. I could have a view. I should have a view. And you can’t even see what’s under the table.

Kitten has been creating havoc here.

She climbs behind the fabric storage containers and knocks them down, and then ravages the contents. Not to mention there’s such a ton of crap there that I don’t even know how to start. But I will, because otherwise I can’t start picking fabrics, and that is screeching loudly at me.

Tonight, though, I have Wonder Under calling me.

This is a new quilt. Can’t you tell? I cut half of the pieces out last night, and tonight I will finish the other half. That’s three quilts ready to be quilted, one ready to be ironed onto a top (if I can find the fabric for the top), and two ready to be ironed onto fabric. Yeah baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. A real life.