Kathy Nida

Last night, we watched the girlchild in the Wizard of Oz. She played Miss Gulch, the evil Toto-stealing nasty old hag that turns into the Wicked Witch. Because of the way they cast these elementary school plays, though, I think we had 4 Scarecrows, 3 Tin Men, 3 Wicked Witches, 3 or 4 Cowardly Lions (I never did figure that out), and 5 Dorothys (which was somewhat disconcerting, because some were blond and skinny, some blond and pudgy, three were dark-haired, some short, some tall, and there was a wide variety of skin colors). But there was only one Miss Gulch, and as always, she aced the part of the evil character. She knew her lines, she projected, and she didn’t mess up…except once when Uncle Henry said something sarcastic.

She didn’t do much in the rest of the play, because she was balancing her Science Team efforts (competition is next Saturday), so she was only at half the play practices. It’s unfortunate that the middle school only has the opportunity to do plays for the kids who are in the drama elective. The girlchild has chosen a different elective (which I think is a good idea, because it includes a computer class), so she won’t be able to do plays again until high school, unless we venture into the expensive outside world of children’s productions. When I was in middle school, I was in Babes in Toyland and Oklahoma, and something else I can’t remember. They recruited from the Chorus class (yes, I was in Chorus…stop laughing), and all the practices were after school.

So it was a busy week, with all the dress rehearsals going on. It took my showing her this picture…

before she would let me put her hair in a bun, and then she had to complain heinously about it all the way over to the school. She can be such a crank about her hair…the soccer coaches keep sending emails demanding that all the girls have their hair up and explaining in 14 different ways why, and I just choose not to fight that battle with her. She hates it, I don’t want to deal with her whining and complaining about it, and I will let her dad (one of the coaches) walk that minefield with the other coaches.

My school situation is just as messy as before, and I try not to stress about something that might not happen. We had a bullying assembly by Teen Truth yesterday. JC and his cohorts made a 22-minute movie about the consequences of bullying that includes footage from the school cameras at Columbine, plus they talk to kids about making a difference in other kids’ lives, which we’ve really been pushing all year.

I sat up in the bleachers with the kids and tried not to cry as I watched the footage from Columbine and Santana High Schools…even now, thinking about it, it brings tears to my eyes. Many of the kids were affected, but some weren’t. There’s always a niggling thought in the back of my brain that some kid will see that and think it’s cool, and try it themselves, but if we don’t talk about it and put it out there, then it would probably happen anyway.

The best part was when he asked the adults in the audience to stand if they’d ever been bullied or teased. All of us stood. Then he asks us to raise a hand if we remembered a specific event of bullying or teasing, and the other hand if we remembered who did it. All of us had both hands in the air…I think most of the kids were amazed by that. It’s hard for them to think we ever lived through what they live through, and honestly, without the technology aspect, the MySpace and texting and camera-phone in the locker room issues, some parts of being a middle schooler in the 1970s-80s were probably easier, but the core part, the feeling alienated and not knowing how to BE? None of that has changed. I recommend the assembly for middle school and high school…he did a great job and the kids were engaged, which is always hard work.

On a much lighter note, I finally managed to attach one single shisha mirror to the elephant block.

Finally. 9 more to go, or something. Yeah. I did it at my quilt class, because I didn’t have anything else to work on. The classes are held at the Country Loft, which has a few classes that I would take if I didn’t have the schedule I have…like this one, a wool CQ in progress.

I know I’ve shown parts of this before, and I also know that I could do it without the class, but having a class makes you stitch more regularly, that whole deadline thing in your head.

Anyway. Plus I’d have to get a stash of wool. That would be a mistake. More fabric. Not a good plan. They also had this quilt hanging…

That caught my eye. All little houses. The windows and doors are drawn on, but the chimneys are little squares of red wool. Yes, I have this weird traditional bent, but I rarely make any of them. Not enough time.

Speaking of not enough time, I am cleaning house today. It needs it. I won’t get very far, but it makes sense to do it now, before I get some new quiltmaking bug up my nose.

Number 1: That spelling of “pastime” just looks rancidly wrong. But then again, so does “pasttime”. And I am a hyphen-hater, except when it is connecting like 10 words together that never belonged together, so forget “past-time.” Yes, I’m fully aware of how many freakin’ hyphens are in this post. OK OK! I don’t hate hyphens. I just don’t like them in the middle of words that obviously function without one. You wouldn’t want to make hyphenhater one word, would you? Hmn. Actually, I like that. Hyphenhater. Cool.

Don’t you hate it when you try to write out a word that you never really use and it looks completely strange? When I was about 12, I had this 2-year issue with the word “pants,” as in what you wear on your legs. It still sounds weird to me. Pants. Pants. Pants. Aargh. 

 Apparently, there is a good reason for my constant fatigue…

Right. OK. My son will be thrilled to know I have joined the Dark Side.

An update on the cleaning front…sigh. I think I need to send them away for a week while I’m not working and just get garbage bags. The girlchild managed to cobble together 2 huge piles of no-longer-wanted children’s books, picture-book level.

My sister-in-law will get the best of the bunch, and the rest will go to the library bookshop or to the thrift shop. I’m not sure which is a better choice…I want kids who have few books to get these, but I don’t have time to research that concept. And they probably are too beat-up for a serious donation to a school library or something.

The boychild thinks he was successful. I think that everything that WAS in that open space on the carpet is now under his bed. Scary thought.

I did finish grades AND I finished the quilt. Yesterday, I spent about 2 hours photographing it. My setup is lame, I have decided, although it has worked for years. I move a ton of stuff out of the way in the entryway (there seems to be a plethora of cluttering crap there right now, waiting for me to get out of school and go on a cleaning spree…ha!). I have to take down at least one painting and two quilts to be able to do this, plus move the entryway table. Then I hang a flannel sheet and pin the quilt to it. Then set up lights and camera, do long shots first (once had to go out the front door to get far enough away, then closeups. Lately, my quilts seem to be getting bigger and my tripod is not tall enough, so I have to improvise. This involves a badly balanced tripod on a coffee table…

of course. What else? Here’s the long shot with the whole setup.

Note the cat (my irritating assistant) to the right. Limbo persisted in jumping up on the coffee table (with the precariously balanced tripod on it and my camera on that) EVERY TIME I THREW HIM OFF. Cranky old man.

I’m reading this book…

I’ve read everything Kingsolver’s ever written, but I am not really a nonfiction reader most days, so I put off reading this until now. I’d done some research locally on getting organic food from local farms, but I’m in the desert-dry south of San Diego County, and the only local farm that seems to bring food into the community was hard-hit by the fires in October. Plus, honestly, it’s not cheap. I’m not a great gardener, but it seems like I should be able to handle a small vegetable garden. OK, my mom voice in my head is yelling that I bought tomato plants over a month ago, killed half of them by forgetting to water them, AND I’ve never actually planted them out. I want to do better than that. So I’ve figured it out, after hearing a comment my brother made (via my sister-in-law) about “taking the year off.” Better than that…first I’m going to publish a major novel that supports me and my monsters so I can quit teaching, and then I’m going to become much less dependent on cherries from Chile…or even from Washington. Sigh.

No. First I’m going to read the book. Then I’m going to figure out what part of it that I can handle in my real-life existence, and I will take that on. After June 20th.

Apparently cleaning your room now requires the Witness Protection Program. I was objecting to not being able to enter any kids’ room in this house without stepping on something (and potentially breaking either it or my skin). The clutter is driving me mad (yes, again). So of course, I don’t have time to clean the main areas of the house, so I torture the children with forcing them to clean theirs. I did meet with some resistance.

The boy…

Gave me the most argument, including “why do you care?” and “I like it that way” and other golden oldies. I asked for piles outside the door of trash and stuff-I’ve-grown-out-of. I was given this…

When I asked him what it was, he shrugged his shoulders. I asked him if he brought it into his room. He said yes, but said the sister took it out again, so then he had to get it back. I asked why. Shrug shoulders. Asked again…what is it? Shrug shoulders. It is the Teenaged Mafia.

The other child was happily making piles, but also is apparently part of the Witness Protection Program…

Her room isn’t nearly as bad, but I did have to go in there yesterday to find ONE missing shoe, which was located right next to where the other one had been, but under 4 pieces of clothing. Hmn. What’s wrong with this picture.

I set the timer for 30 minutes. I figure more than that will cause a riot, and I don’t have patience for that. Maybe one of them will vacuum the hallway too. You never know.

I managed to fight my way through the 12 inches of grading, starting Friday night and finishing Sunday morning. The next time one of my students says “I hate homework. Why do we have to do it?”, I may throw something…not at them, that would be illegal. I’ve only had one job in my lifetime where I didn’t have to bring work home to get caught up, and that was a low-level job. I guess their goal of working at McDonalds while living at home means they can fulfill their dreams of no homework. Anyway, I can’t finish grades until tomorrow night, though, because of all the kids who were absent Friday so they could finish all their makeup work. Well I could, but it would be mean.

I also managed to “finish” the quilt I can’t show you until it’s been rejected from the show in which I’m entering it. I can however show you one of the two mistakes I made.

I suppose it means something that I’ve never made this mistake before in my life, and I know why I made it too. I was sewing binding strips together to bind this monster, and I sewed one of them on backwards, so the seam was right-side up. Only one. So I had to rip it and re-sew it. Of course, I sewed it wrong the first time I re-sewed it, so then I had to rip the seam and sew it again. Why did I do this? Because I was making the mistake of hashing over all the future possibilities for my job next school year, trying to prepare myself for the worst-case scenarios, and I stopped paying attention to what I was sewing. No big deal. I fixed it. The binding is pinned down, so I can photograph it either tonight or tomorrow night. Either way, I made the deadline. Now let’s hope I read the instructions right, because the last entry I tried to put together, it took 4 tries to get the files correct on the CD…not because there was a computer problem, but because every time I read the instructions, I found one more teensy-weensy detail about the sizing or the title or whatever that wasn’t in the paragraph where they were telling us how to name the silly files. Frustrating.

The other mistake wasn’t really a mistake. I’ll tell you later, after I try to fix it. Probably should do that before I photograph it.

I moved this into my studio/office…

I made this in 2000 for some contest, but it’s not quilted at all, so it doesn’t hang well. Before I rehang it in my room (after the plastering incident, I have not rehung anything), I want to quilt it so it’s more stable.

OK, back to work. I’m trying to pull together the last however-many weeks of school. With state testing coming up and a lot of other activities, it’s hard to plan around it all. Is anyone else having an issue remembering April? I feel like the whole month just slid on past. Weird.

I’ve spent a while with my district’s Bump Analysis now. Isn’t that a great title for an official form? I’m being bumped, twice in fact, but I do still have a job. I just don’t have a clue what it will be…it seems I will teach in two schools, two subjects, who knows. I give up. I’m trying to just hold that piece of stress away from me…just there…as far out as my hand can push it…so it’s there but not touching me for a while, because there’s no point in letting it touch me until I have to. And today, with grades due next week and a pile of grading that is about one foot high, is not the day to let it touch me.

I went to my monthly crazy stitchers in a bookstore meeting, and took a godawful picture of an actually very pretty heron (it does NOT look like an emu butt) by my friend Julie…

sorry, Julie. My picture sucked. I’ll try again when I’m not so blurry. I need to learn to stop a moment to take the pictures. I’ve gotten too rushed. With that, I’m going to go rush through some of the brainless grading, the stuff I can just check off and don’t have to read, so I can do some quilting (round and round to the left, round and round to the right) later tonight. Wish me luck. Oh, and the heron was from Carolyn Cibik at Evening Star Designs…who someday will release a book of all her stitching designs and Julie and I will each buy it. I think the pattern was originally part of some monthly treasure club thing from when she first had the store open…I’m not sure it’s still available…I think Julie said 2002. Yikes! Long time ago.

The good news: It looks like my son’s kidney issues are either the same after 2 years or maybe even improving. We have to wait a week to know for sure, but it looks good, maybe even No-Surgery good.

He was Grade IV…they think he may have improved to Grade III, but they won’t know for sure until they compare them to the previous results. That would be good. Improvement would mean no surgery.

The bad news: It was Hell figuring that out. A 20-minute procedure took almost 2 hours. We found out a lot of really cool (irritating) stuff, like nitrous oxide and lidocaine don’t work on my son. No relieving of anxiety. No amnesia. No feeling of calm or euphoria. No pain relief. We found out how loud he can scream with a mask on. Oh, and how loud he can scream without the mask on, once they figured out it wasn’t working. Once again, they had to call in a doctor to complete the procedure, although the catheter didn’t get stuck this time. One nurse kept talking to him about going to his happy place, but he doesn’t have the ability to do that yet.

I did not make him go back to school. I took him out to brunch and then let him read all afternoon. He hadn’t eaten, so he was probably starving without knowing it. He said he felt icky and traumatized (yes, he used that word). Honestly, I was traumatized by it, so I didn’t send him back. I think I said I was sorry to him about 100 times while I held the mask on and held his upper body. I hope we never ever have to do that again.

I’m quilting now. Spirals. Round and round. I’m taking one day at a time. I will get this quilt done in time. I will get my grades done in time. I will not freak out about my financial future or my job future.

Deep breaths. I even walked around the yard, looking for pretty gardenlike things to photograph, because everyone is. It just made me realize how much of a mess my yard was. In fact, I put the camera down and went and got the long clippers to trim the three palm fronds that are completely blocking the entryway at the moment. I’m short…I just go under them. My dad isn’t short.

Tomorrow is the boychild’s sedated procedure to determine whether he needs surgery. We had been told that he would be sedated like last time. Um. No. Apparently not. He will be awake, just on happy gas, so hopefully he won’t fight back. And no, I’m not kidding about that. So I’m a little worried about that, but it sounds like if we get him into happy relaxed mode, the rest will go quickly. We should know in a week or so whether he really needs surgery.

I haven’t ranted yet. I have a headache that is part weather, part stress, part major work unhappiness, and part who-the-fuck-knows-what. I blithely commented a few posts back that I might be the high school art teacher next year. Seems like it wasn’t really a rumor…they really do want to pull me completely out of the middle school and science and thrust me into high school and art. Um. I thought my lack of credential in art might help me, but apparently having a supplemental and a degree in the damn subject means they can push me where they like.

There are many problems with this version of my future. (1) I have a Federal Perkins loan that I don’t have to pay off to the Federal government (yes, I was that poor when I was finishing my credential) AS LONG AS I AM TEACHING SCIENCE. Oh great. So there’s that. The Feds pay off a little each year for 5 years, and then it disappears. Otherwise, I have to pay it…with interest. Great. More money going out that I don’t have. (2) I get a pretty healthy stipend from a local middle school science educational leadership group that I work with each year. It gets me these awesome materials to use in the classroom, plus they pay me. Money. Money I won’t get UNLESS I’M TEACHING SCIENCE. (3) I don’t want to teach art.

I could go on for a long time about why I don’t want to teach art and why I like teaching science, even though it’s hard some days, but it doesn’t really matter, because no one at school who can make this go away is listening. Because they can’t. Because Governor Schwarzenegger is being a dumb kneejerk. Because there aren’t any other teaching jobs in California because everyone’s been pink-slipped already.

That’s it. Done. Still upset. Glad I don’t have to go to school tomorrow, because I’m that upset. It’s a job, yes. It pays the bills, yes (barely). But that’s not why I went into teaching. It may seem to some of you that I am cut out for teaching art. I mean, I am an artist, right? But I work in a few media, not lots. I don’t have the training to feel comfortable teaching a wide variety of techniques to kids who are barely paying attention or stoned or just killing time in an elective. I don’t want my job to suck all my creativity out and leave me too tired to draw (um, this year, for example) or even think. That’s what you’re doing, Arnold…taking a smart, workaholic teacher who busts her butt to make sure kids GET science (gee, I wonder if that’s important), and you’re making her think of it as Just A Job. Nothing More Than A Paycheck. Not good.

It maxed out at 102 degrees F today. I don’t have air conditioning. Yesterday, I went down to Artwalk, which is by the water, hoping (praying) for a nice sea breeze and a reduction in temperatures. It was a whopping 3 degrees cooler than it was at my home. Usually you can count on at least 10, maybe 15 degrees cooler. Yeah.

Dehydration and heat pounding down on black asphalt and acres of unappealing bouncy cleavage and midriffs did not help me enjoy the art. The plus was that the number of paintings of fruit had diminished…there was only one artist I saw who had multiple paintings of pears and the like, unlike past years when that’s all there was. This year, the hip new thing is wonky building paintings. They were EVERYWHERE. I should probably have bought some water to help the delirium out there, but there was only Smart Water, and I wanted just plain old normal or even stupid water. I didn’t need my water to be more intelligent than I was yesterday.

Anyway, some highlights, when I finally got my camera out and used it (not on the cleavage, and did I mention the tattoos? I guess I forgot and left mine at home). Before I send you anywhere, though, I didn’t photograph Kirstin Francis’ tent, but I love her stuff and will own one of her prints someday. Shockingly, many of her pieces have birds in them.

Yes, I even have a bird obsession when it comes to sculpture…he would love to live in my yard. I found the artist, Vicki Banks. What’s strange is that I saw a man in the tent talking about some of these sculptures and assumed he was the artist. Naw.

I’ve seen this wire sculpture artist before…even had his card (he had a show in the Rubber Rose Gallery sometime in the last year). Fascinating stuff, the heads especially. I’ll try to find his name. He was complaining about the cost of wire. I couldn’t find him in the list of Artwalk artists…sigh…can’t find him on the gallery page either. Can’t remember his name.

Here’s a sign of how heat-spacey I was. This is like something we did in my art class, except much bigger and much cooler (maybe next year?), but it benefited some organization for kids who were in need, and I can’t even remember the name. Sigh.

This artist (whose name I didn’t catch!!!) had a whole row of these bird paintings. Oops. Birds again. I just liked the shape of them and the repetition. I could have taken a better picture, but I was afraid I would collapse if I stopped moving, so I kept moving.

Now, I know I blogged about this glass mosaic artist last year (Aida Valencia). Last year she had BIRDS. Or maybe they were bird people. The link back is here.

Not art. Backs of art tents.

Detail of the crazy spirals I’m quilting this afternoon. Had to take a break to let the foot pedal cool down. When I get into the rhythm of this pattern, it’s almost hard to stop when the bobbin thread runs out or when the pedal gets so hot it starts to actually burn my foot. I just want to get it done. Grades are due next Monday, so my time is supremely limited. Maybe my son’s medical procedure will not take all day on Wednesday, and I’ll get some extra time to quilt. Or bind. I did get the binding fabric yesterday…boring, because I don’t want it to detract from the picture…the picture I can’t show you, until it gets rejected from the show.

When it’s hot, the animals find a spot to park themselves and don’t come out until it gets dark. It’s usually not this close to the vibrating machine

but Limbo doesn’t seem to mind today. Yesterday, it was Midnight in that spot. Sometimes they verbally complain if I sew too fast, but not today. It’s too hot. See the beautiful blue pool through the window? The kids were in there for about an hour this afternoon.

I am trying to finish the Hulme book in the previous post, because it is due back to the library on Tuesday. I checked online and there are only 2 copies in the county library system, and one is checked out (mine) and one is available, but the system won’t let me renew it. Don’t know why…because if there is a hold on mine, couldn’t they just ship the other one? Anyway, I can finish it by Tuesday, request the other copy of it (which might take days to get here), or hand it in late and pay the fine. I’m aiming for the first option…but there is a war on between the quilting and the reading. Can’t do both at the same time. Maybe if I pay the girlchild, she will come read to me.

She was talking to my son earlier about where I was (I was eating lunch and reading…can’t quilt and eat), and they were commenting about the number of afternoon naps I had been taking lately. They’re right. I’ve turned into my mother. We would come home from school, and she would be asleep on the couch with a book upside down on her belly, and we would stare at her and wonder why anyone in their right mind would take a nap if they didn’t have to. Aah. Silly youth. Naps are wonderful, although seem like a waste of time. I needed a nap every day this week, for some reason, except for today.  

OK, back to quilting. There is a breeze now, although a hot and muggy breeze. Better than nothing.

I am going to bed early…with a book. I’ve been reading this…

The Bone People by Keri Hulme. It was recommended on a blog I read, but I don’t remember which one. Oops. I apparently read a lot of blogs belonging to Aussies and New Zealanders, so I think it was one of them. Anyway, I’m getting more and more engrossed in the story, and I’m already tired, and I’m not going to work any more tonight, and I got a bunch of quilting done, but I don’t feel like doing any more, and if I try to push myself and do more tonight, I might really mess it up, so I’m going to stop. Rejoice in my run-on sentence. I loved Faulkner when I was in college.

I watched the first episode of this…

On my brother’s recommendation. I think I know why he likes it…lots of political intrigue and stabbing and stuff, but then some level of raucous nudity and improper behavior. I was watching the clothes. Hmn. We are related. We just have different interests. I will probably watch the rest of Season 1…at least it’s short and doesn’t require extended bits of attention. I don’t have any of those at the moment.

Rumor at school is that I might be the high school art teacher next year, instead of middle school science. Um. No. Not what I want to do. Like they care. Y’all know that teachers don’t really have choices, especially not in this economic climate, right? We can be transferred anywhere in the district, be assigned any class the district office believes you can legally teach, sent up or down or miles away. And that’s WITH tenure. I guess that happens in corporate too, but it’s usually considered hostile behavior when they don’t talk to you about it first. Or it’s just a really badly behaved company. Schools really need corporate training.

Here’s a piece of what I’m quilting…

feet and hand. I have about 2 weeks to finish this. Yeah. I’m crazy.

Tomorrow is Artwalk locally, so I’ll be there wandering around, wishing I had a few grand to spend on new art. Maybe I’ll get some good pictures. It will be a beautiful day. Maybe there will be funnel cakes.

Now there’s a title for you. I’ve spent all week writing boner referrals. Not referrals because someone’s acting like a boner, but referrals because they’re yelling out “Boner!” or talking about boners or suggesting boners with drawings or anything longer than it’s wide. Sigh. I need a break. Yes, it’s my fault for teaching reproduction…not the act of reproducing, but the stuff your skin cells are doing right now.

I took 50 kids to the zoo on Wednesday. That was kind of a break. The kids were well-behaved. The polar bears were well-behaved. The old ladies at the zoo were intolerant and not very well-behaved, but I wasn’t responsible for them, so I ignored them. I do the best I can, but the students are not my kids. My control over them is somewhat limited. This is not one of my students.

Anyway. I’m also quilting, but I can’t show it to you. Yet. I can’t show you much of anything. I’m balancing (trying) work and artwork. It looks kinda like the orangutan above…not quite stable. More later. I’m being hovered over…y’all know how I hate that.