The Person You Wanted to Be…

I’ve been watching X-Files reruns while ironing the fabric for this quilt…I’ve seen them all, so they’re a little bit familiar. The stories are generally safe; there’s not a lot of emotional triggers in them for me, so that’s good. They don’t require a lot of brain power either, plus I’ve always liked the characters. At one point, someone is impersonating Mulder (they have striated muscle that can change the shape of the face to match anyone else), and they ask Scully about the person she wanted to be when she was in high school, if she became that person. Did she have regrets?

It’s an interesting question, especially as my son gets really close to graduating high school and going off to college, but also I sit here staring at my life and wondering what the hell and how the fuck do I fix it? It’s not that easy to try to think back to high school (a million years ago) to what I wanted. It’s changed over the years, but it’s pretty simple: someone who pays attention and can travel through life with me. The ability to continue to make art. Being outside in nature. Painting my walls something besides earth tones. Life gets hard sometimes. We don’t always do it right, and when we don’t, it would be nice to know someone could handle that. My kids have had to handle it; so have my parents. I guess I have too. I’ve floundered my way through a huge load of bullshit in the last two years, both at work and in my personal life, and it could have been so much easier, except other people were involved who didn’t know how to behave.

As I sat on the stationary bike this evening, pedaling away, while playing the addictive game 2048, which my evil daughter introduced me to (dammit! I’m so close to summer that I can so easily get hooked on a silly game like this), listening to and helping the boychild vote his very first ballot (my little boy is all grown up!), I hope I did the right job with the two of them. Girlchild has way more empathy than boychild. She also cooks better. His temper is more even-handed. His handwriting sucks. Hers is much better, but she’s a total stress-monkey when it comes to school. He’s so calm, it’s scary…except he did study for AP Physics. And he was worried about colleges. And he’s worried about getting a job this summer. His social skills are not as developed as hers. I wish I had a job he could do this summer. I should make him (ha! can’t make him do much of anything) write a letter to himself about what he wants to do in his future, about the person he wants to be, about what’s in his head…like a senior-year brain dump. Then seal it up and mail it to him in 10 years.

Hell, maybe I should do that for myself. I don’t think I had any idea what I would be doing, how I would be living, how stressful being a single mom would be, how much I really wanted a semi-normal family shape (not necessarily a normal family). I didn’t know how huge the art would become in my life, how much of me it would suck up. I didn’t know I’d be sitting here at 47, trying to remake my life yet again, for the second time, and again not by choice…and honestly not really wanting to deal with that any more than I wanted to deal with my car issues, which may have been solved today by my parents. Sigh. I do feel a bit inept at the moment. OK. More than a little bit inept. Fucking useless some days. At least I know I can pick out a piece of fabric. That’s my successful moment for the day.

So I don’t think I am the person I wanted to be when I was in high school. I think I wanted to be a more-famous artist or in a more-stable, happy life. Maybe I wanted a mohawk (I could still do that). I wish I’d written it down somewhere. My college app essays mention art and children and even teaching (how strange…I didn’t get the last bit until 12 years ago), so maybe I was a bit psychic. I’m fairly sure I didn’t want one tenth of the pain and heartache. That wasn’t on the bucket list. And I’ve had enough of it.

So I get all pensive and reflective when I near the end of each stage of making these big quilts…it’s actually kind of depressing these days. I used to feel a bit of relief, a sense of achievement when I finished a big step. Tonight I finished ironing the Wonder Under pieces down to all the fabrics…here’s that damn octopus…

It did end up being that purple after all. I had to find the blue ocean fabrics I’d used for the pieces behind it, so I could make sure they’d work. There are 131 fabrics in this quilt, seen here…

It took 22 hours and 32 minutes to iron them all down. I have put almost 62 hours into this quilt already, and a top doesn’t even exist yet.

Call me crazy.

I had already started cutting them out at a meeting last month, so I kept going on that tonight. I’m sure there will be another 10-15 days of cutting pieces out in front of the telly now.

Now I need to iron that other quilt together, plus start drawing the piece for the Equality exhibit. My goal is to finish the Mammogram quilt and this one this summer, and to have the other one significantly started, like maybe even into the quilting stage before school starts up again in August. I also apparently need to do something with no nudity or violence (damn) for another possible exhibit. That might be harder. Maybe one of those other drawings I copied will work for that.

But right now, I’m sitting here with post-ironing-fabric depression. I need to get deeply into achy-hand-cutting-the-pieces mode, so I can just be a little frustrated with how long it takes and how my hand feels. And I don’t have to wonder about the PURPOSE of what I’m doing and how it doesn’t really make me feel good any more. Dammit, when will I get that back? That’s just frustrating. What the hell am I doing wrong? I know how it should feel, I tell myself how it should feel, and somewhere deep in my brain there’s this little voice, an old and tired voice that says, “Not yet. You can’t feel that yet. You’re still broken. Come back later. We’re still at lunch. Our hours are posted.” Damn smartass brain.

There is an old-lady cat currently sitting on my shoulder. I think she’s revolting against my using the WHOLE desk chair. She’d like me to move up and let her sit in the back half (half? more like three-quarters) of the chair, like usual. Demanding old bitch, she is. So yeah, I moved. I accommodate my animals. I accommodate lots of organisms.

Besides, it’s time for me to go to bed. Maybe when I wake up, I’ll know who I want to be from here on out. Meanwhile, the cat can have the whole damn chair.

Better Moments…

Happy Mothers Day to the moms…and the moms of moms…etc. This day has always been bittersweet to me, at least a little, because I never have my kids on Sunday mornings, or at least not since they were 4 or 5 years old. I don’t think I ever had the breakfast in bed or the kids doing something special in the morning. I always had a kid-free morning. Of course, most of my friends with kids are insanely jealous, because all they’ve ever wanted is that kid-free morning, no noise, no clean up after the breakfast, no crazy activities. I get it. I really do. But every Sunday morning is kid-free for me, and it gets kinda old…and TOO quiet. It’s been over 12 hours since I talked to any human in person. I talked to two on the phone briefly, my SIL and my ex, both last night. That’s my life right now. I didn’t want to go out and do stuff. I needed to grade and I did iron last night, but the quiet starts to get to me. The being alone part…the part my SIL and friends crave…it gets old.

I spend too much time in my head as it is.

I did manage to finish the tax board appeal yesterday, except for getting it notarized. I’m waiting on approval. I also did LOTS of really painful math (this is why I had to call the ex…financial forms confuse the fuck out of me, and I needed another brain to bounce the confusing words off of, just to try to figure out what they REALLY wanted); this was for the financial aid appeal. All I do is appeal these days. That one is done and ready to be mailed. I even graded papers for a while.

Then I ironed. This was last night. I was really tired though. I hiked in the morning, long hike, I think I’m finding my limits. I went to the opening at Visions Art Museum…more about that later.

I only ironed the bird, the hawk. I actually pulled some photos of a red-tailed hawk up on my phone and used them as a reference for picking colors…

It may be the only thing in the quilt that is colored realistically…OK, maybe the humans. Sort of the wolf.

I do this sometimes, drop an almost-real animal in there with all the fantasy stuff…in Disrupted, I was watching lots of Big Cat Diary and really loved how strong and even vicious female lions are, especially when they are protecting their young…so that’s why there’s a lioness in that quilt…she’s the ultimate protecting female.

She’s the one you want around. She’ll kick anyone’s ass. A lot of the animals in my quilts are protectors. The birds aren’t and neither are the snakes. The birds are the talkers, the storytellers, or they are a sign of something, of bad or evil or death. The snakes are just evil, bad, the sign of badness in other people. They lie, they carry poison, they are inside all of us, coiled around each of us.

Some tiny birdwing pieces…

Of course, the next crazy step is to cut all those suckers out.

It’s not a small pile of pieces. I added some different browns to help make the hawk colors.

I do try to reuse colors throughout the piece, to repeat fabrics in other places so there’s a connection between all the bits. So I used some of the browns I’d already used (there’s a lot of brown in this quilt) and then added a few more.

Today…I managed to only cry a bit. I still do that, you know. Cry every day. I think it just is the new me. Part of it was feeling very alone this morning. Part of it was feeling like I missed out on something this morning. Yes, we went out to dinner for Mother’s Day and they bought me a really awesome gift (will show tomorrow), but I bought my own flowers and got into an argument with the girlchild and didn’t feel like anything good. I guess that’s the REAL mom existence, isn’t it? My SIL said something about needing a Teflon coating as a mom, so the really bad stuff, the stuff that makes you wonder if loving your kids makes any sense at all, because they are driving you so batshit crazy that you want to run away (we’ve all been there), the Teflon can just make it bounce off. And she doesn’t even have teenagers yet.

I’m back to not being allowed to talk. It’s kinda been a theme for the last two years of my life. You will not talk. You will not use this word or that word. What you say is bad, it’s evil, it should be stopped. There will be consequences for your daring to speak. You will not like them.

It’s so tiring to feel that way all the time.

So I wasn’t going to iron tonight, because I had grades to do and I’m physically tired from yesterday’s hike…but I really thought my brain needed it. I’ve been feeling depressed (for years) for days…I guess worse than before.

First, though…I picked up the last quilts from a show that recently closed, so I finally dealt with 4 boxes, a tube, and a plastic-wrapped roll of all the quilts that have come home in the last month…

I got rid of all the boxes and other stuff and put them in my bedroom to be rolled up with the others. It’s depressing to have so many come home, sure, but then I remember that they went out there in the world and hung up in front of people…that’s why they were gone…and that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will happen again (but I actually have to ENTER something for that to happen).

I cut out the dog and the giant eyeball with the skull in it.

I’m down to the last 100 or so pieces, and they’re all part of the octopus…so I just need to decide what color he wants to be…

I was going to do it tonight…was considering that purple by the scissors (I spent some time straightening up the fabrics…the mess was driving me bonkers)…but I’m just not sure. So I will let it sit overnight and see what I think. I will be done tomorrow though…that’s good. I think.

I finished this book today, Hyperion by Dan Simmons…

I had a hard time getting into it; the first 50 pages were dense with world-building and strange vocabulary, organisms from multiple planets and lots of unknowns. Eventually, though, when he settles down into the story-telling portion of the book, I was really fascinated. The book is an outer story with 6 inner stories by major characters, explaining their reasons for going on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, where they expect to meet the Lord of Pain, aka the Shrike. My favorite story was that of the detective, Brawne Lamia. She was also the only major female character, so that’s an interesting coincidence. She’s a tough but interesting character. The Shrike character is pictured on the front of the book I was reading…that is so not how I pictured it. I didn’t really connect the figure on the front with the description in the book until I was near the end. I will definitely go on and read the next one, as soon as I finish all the library books that have recently appeared. It did take me a while to get through this one, about a week…which is a lot, considering it’s not so long (but the font was so freakin’ tiny!). Anyway. It was a good read.

I meant to post this video of hail on the hike in Julian…

I was standing by myself at this point, up against the rocks, but listening to the rain and the wind (and then the hail) going through these oak trees perched on the edge of the trail. It was a beautifully meditative moment. I seem to be pretty good at pulling those moments out of the hikes I’m on. I guess that’s a good thing.

Moving on. I still have to be a mom tomorrow, but this time with no celebration, no card, no cheesecake (she did make cheesecake…definitely good stuff). It’s harder, but you know it will all turn out OK in the long run. I probably have a lot more crying to do, but hopefully that will get balanced out with better moments. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Something about Me…

Damn wolf is done. Worried about it all day, along with other crap. Hate that. It was a day. Things that threw me in the past? I just rolled over them. Or under them. Hard to tell. Who the fuck cares about some of this stuff…petty people with their silly control issues. Better to walk away.

I dragged the boychild out to get something to water the wild animals who frequent my pool area. This confuses my SIL, who was raised by someone who grew up on a farm. She thinks I’m nuts. Quotes Darwinism. Well, yeah, but…these are babies. So if they’re too dumb to find my manmade pond, THEN they’re too dumb to live.

Anyway. That was my tiny good deed for the day. I probably only have a tiny one.

I did buy plants for the entryway too…that’s been bugging me for a while. So I’ll plant those tomorrow or Sunday, make the entry a happier place…it makes me feel better to come home to flowers there. The simple things. Now I will have to remember to water them too. Sometimes I forget and my ex waters them when he comes to pick up the kids. I have been known to return the favor at his house. Strange symbiosis there.

I ironed tonight finally…that wolf. Thought about it all day, stared at the fabrics for about 10 minutes. I knew what the flesh fabrics looked like and what would be below it and what was above it, and I also knew I didn’t want it to overshadow the figure in front of it, so it needed to slightly fade behind it. So it couldn’t be all the wild crazy colors I auditioned in my head.

So she’s gray…

I know. Boring. But necessary. Sometimes it has to be boring.

I ironed the snake and the iPhone as well. I’m in the 1500s now, getting nearer to the end.

I stopped when I realized (a) it was late and I have a long hike tomorrow and (b) I would have to choose fabrics for the bird next. Same deal as the wolf…probably needs to not be too flashy. I think of it as a hawk, although it’s probably not correct…

Why? Because I rarely draw from reality. I just draw. Beak’s wrong. But I’m thinking browns of a red-tailed hawk. Something like that. That’s tomorrow night. You have to understand that the hawk has about 80 pieces in it, so it’s not something you start at midnight when you have to be up early the next morning.

As it is, I’m already up too late.

I’m always up too late.

I added some yellows today. I already had the greens.

I like my snakes to be green and yellow. I’m not sure why. I’m not even sure that’s a proper snake color. Never mind, of course it is. It’s totally the snake from the story of Adam and Eve.

Snakes end up in my quilts a lot. They’re kind of evil, but not. Amazing creatures, snakes. Martha Sielman asked me about some of the symbols that end up in my quilts when she interviewed me for the People and Portraits book. It’s hard for me to define why I use certain things over and over, like the snakes. I know the cats and dogs, they’re a sign of the animals I have around me, of the unconditional love they have for you. They are my protectors. Sometimes they are almost like angels, the ones who are dead and watch over you. I don’t remember what I said about snakes though. The snake in this quilt isn’t particularly good…it’s threaded through her abdominal area. That seems like an issue. I think that’s the feeling I get in my gut lately, well, over the last year, when I think about what I’ve been dealing with. It makes me clench my abdominal muscles involuntarily. I’ve written about that feeling before.

Anyway. Three more major things to iron down on the quilt: a bird, a giant eyeball, and an octopus (well, three tentacles anyway). Then I can start the 20+ hours of cutting stuff out. I’m at 20 hours for picking fabrics so far too. There’s something magical about that 20-hour mark. It means, This is a quilt of import. It has lots of pieces. It must be good.

Whatever. It’s a significant piece to me. I understand that it might not feel the same to others.

Earth Stories opens Sunday. I can start writing about that quilt soon…I’ve actually started but not finished the first post. Maybe tomorrow night. I’m so glad to have that quilt out of the house.

OK, need to find that sleepy place again. Must sleep so I can go beat the crap out of my physical self in an attempt to get my mental self under control on a long hike. One of my friends said to me today about the depression, “We need to DO something about that.” Made me laugh. Like we could just go to the store and buy a cure. My counselor would ask me if I would actually BUY the cure, or would I stay depressed? I don’t believe in insta-cures for things like this. I think it’s a process and it takes time. If you don’t take the time to work through it, if you just move on and start partying and trying to be a different person, like one person I know right now, I think you end up in the same place…or a worse one. I don’t want to do that. I want to be better…not pretend-better, but really better. So no, I guess I wouldn’t buy the cure. I guess that tells you something about me.

Mt. McGinty Take Two

The Julian hike two weeks ago wasn’t very long, so I came back and still needed exercise, if just to counteract the calories eaten at lunch. Plus the weather improved (no more hail or rain), and I had a bunch of dogs and a lazy teenager, and a pile of grading staring at me, so I hustled them all into a car.

Yes, that means I did two hikes in one day. I am approaching crazy. See the bird at the top of the photo? Mt. McGinty overlooks Jamul, Rancho San Diego, etc., and you can see for miles on a clear day…

The clouds made it a cool hike, which is good, because this isn’t an easy hike…

There’s switchbacks, then hills, and it’s dry with no trees.

Even the dogs were tired at the end…

Lots of desert plants…

Long stretches of dirt with clouds filling up the sky.

A long 2-hour conversation with an 18-year-old who is going off to college soon.

A shot-up sign.

The last time I did this, it was pure mud…even though it rained in the morning, it was mostly dry by the time we got up there.

You can see the path stretching out…the rocks make it harder. You have to pay attention. I did actually fall at some point on the way down. Landed on my knee.

There’s a few mines out there…not sure where the access point to this one is…

The view makes this hike totally worthwhile. I could have done it the next morning with my hiking group too, but I had somewhere I had to be.

There’s a couple of nasty climbs on this hike…I think they are all called Heartbreak Hill.

and the ubiquitous yucca…

This is looking east, toward Cuyamaca.

I believe this was looking west…

One of the kids my daughter went to middle school with was recently killed in a car crash. Apparently this was a hike he enjoyed…so the sign had been put up recently.

Boychild and dogs resting at the top.

And leaning on each other for support on the way down (looking south towards Chula Vista and the Jamul Mountain Range).

5 miles and a bit, 2 hours. Definitely a workout. The dogs slept well. Perhaps we did as well.

I Think I Did It Wrong

Yesterday. I think I did it wrong. I tried to do it right. I went to the gym. I did not engage the girlchild in any squawkiness until I knew she could handle it (basically waited until she was asking me for a favor…ha!). I even got done with the gym early and went to FINALLY buy my new camera. Decided that I was never going to find exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t really that crucial, but the Canon has gotten to the point that it randomly refuses to open the lens unless I eject the battery (I think I did that about 20 times on the last hike) and I didn’t want to do that again. I knew my price range (gift card and birthday money…I actually didn’t spend it all!). I knew I wanted rechargeable batteries. I knew I wanted real zoom for part of it, not optical all the way. I also knew that I’m hard on cameras and it will only last a couple of years, so stop freaking worrying so hard about this little tiny decision that will NOT be the end of the world!

Anyway. So I did that. And then I tried to deal with my normal evening plan and fell asleep in meditation, even though it was early. So my brain had this argument about whether I needed to go to sleep, because I was really tired, but my blood sugar has also been off the last couple of days, and I have a long hike tomorrow, and I don’t want that heavy-leg feeling, which might be hormones and might be physical rest. I wanted to FEEL rested. But then balance that with my mind. Either my body’s rested or my mind is. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium (or even a content medium).

What decided it was that damn wolf. I don’t know what color to make the wolf. Usually when I have a problem picking colors, I put that piece of the quilt in my head and let my brain work on it all day (or days). It’s not really conscious work…it’s just up there, like a little neuro-reminder, and occasionally I’ll see snippets of trying to solve the problem, coloring here or there, and then all of a sudden…BOOM! There’s the solution.

Mar 12 14 001 wolf crop

There are parts of my brain I love. Not all of it, for sure. Seriously? I’m being artistically bamboozled by a section with like 20 pieces in it that might MIGHT need 5 or 6 colors of fabric in it. My brain is like, gray wolf? Brown wolf? Red wolf? Can’t be a black wolf. Won’t work with the background. Dark gray? Light gray? Can’t see light gray against the arm color. Pink wolf?

Fuck. Maybe that’s it. The wolf is like a freaky color because it’s obviously a major issue for me.

Sigh. So I did that last night. Tucked the wolf drawing up in there and told my brain to go at it. Went to bed early. Woke up this morning and I still don’t know! Oh well. I have all day.

But the morning has been hard. I have a stressful meeting today that might NOT be stressful, but until I know what it IS, it’s stressful. Hate that. Thank you, brain, for your PTSD crap. I’m getting significantly behind in grading again. Suck. I wanted to be done with the fabric ironing. Not. Despite saving one baby possum this week, I found his sister in the pool this morning, along with some other baby rodent that I don’t recognize. DEAD BABIES. Fuck. Way to go. I’m going to Home Depot this afternoon, I think, to go get something to put out there for water so they don’t have to drown on my account. I can’t handle any more dead babies at the moment. Because if I put a pond out there and they STILL drown in the pool, well that’s Darwinism and I can handle that? Whatever.

I am trying to get back on track. My brain is really in wander mode and I have all this stuff I’m responsible for (shocking, I am an adult) and I’ve slacked off on some of it because I’m finding it hard to care about it, or really it’s just that it’s overwhelming to care about it. My SIL said I needed to simplify. Huh. OK. I should stop hiking so much maybe. Except that’s sanity in its own way. I know she wants me to clean out my house. I’m trying. I have two major issues on my plate right now…it’s my goal to get them taken care of this weekend, so they stop weighing on me. I’m going to work on them tonight and tomorrow and Sunday, and they will be done so I can cross them (violently with a big black Sharpie and a Fuck You yelled at the top of my lungs, because that’s what they deserve) off the list.

Then I can maybe be less of a blithering sobbing idiot for a while. Maybe. It’s good to have goals.

I Am the Weapon/Boy Nobody Review

The book with two names…

I recently read Allen Zadoff’s I Am the Weapon, about a teenager who was raised to be a weapon, to go in and take out certain people. He is trained to blend in, find his mark, and quickly and quietly help them die of “natural” causes. Then he meets a girl he actually likes, and the story changes. He starts to question his training and it affects his ability to do his job. The psychological aspect of his hesitation is probably the most interesting part of the book, I think more because of the mayor in the story than his daughter.

The book was originally published as Boy Nobody, but was re-released as I Am the Weapon. He does plan a series with this one, and apparently it will also be a movie.

I liked the story. It was a bit short (I like really long books though) and definitely of the Young Adult genre. It kept my attention until the end and there were some surprises in the plot, which is nice. Sometimes I think the problem with Young Adult novels is that they tend to dumb down the emotion a bit, maybe to keep the younger reader engaged, and it seems an obvious difference to an adult novel…that said, the violence is definitely there, although not over the top. I appreciate how he makes decisions about violence in a very thinking manner.

I was a little disappointed in how they handled his original story of being taken for training, and for the assumption about his father’s death. Both seemed improbable, but he was young and the memory of the young is somewhat shady.

Anyway, looking forward to the next in the series, if just to hear what dad did that was so bad…and where the heck was mom?

Little Pieces

I’m 18 hours and 23 minutes into ironing fabric for this quilt…this quilt that does not yet have an exhibit to call home, and is probably destined to be like a couple of the other quilts I’ve made, where no one wants them in a show. Oh well. I like them to be in shows, but honestly, that’s not why I make them.

I’ve made it into the 1400s, but not very far, about 20 pieces in. So I’ve got about another 350 pieces to go. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m in the fussy little piece section now…

See all those little pieces? There’s like two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THIS gray and two tiny pieces ironed onto one little piece of THAT gray. It’s a little piece bonanza. So it takes more time. Or maybe it’s just that this thing takes X time and X seems to be a larger number than normal. It’s still not taking as long as the Earth Stories piece. But it seems like no matter how much ironing I do each night, I still have about 4 more hours to do…I find that strange. Like time is stretching out and the fabric is breeding or the Wonder Under is undergoing mitosis.

Or I’m thinking too hard.

At least there will be no shortage of things to work on this summer (besides my sanity, a clean house, and a better yard). I have a lot of stuff in progress and a whole new quilt I have to make by November that only barely exists in a sketch in my brain.

I’m not worried. My summer is pretty empty. Well, except for soccer and working and all the other shit that will rain down upon me that I don’t even know about yet.

You know, like it does. All the little things. That’s what’s overwhelming me at the moment is all the little detailed crap that I’m supposed to be handling and getting done every day, and which is really NOT getting done because I keep doing healthy things like meditating and exercising and making dinner and then I do other things like making art, because if I didn’t do that, I don’t know who I would be. I’ve really thrown the balance up in the air this year, and I don’t know how successful it’s been. I think I need some distance from it to decide.

Here’s what it looked like last night when I was picking fabrics for the face-in-a-cloud section, which is only like 8″ square…

Each fabric had no more than 4 pieces on it…and some only had one. I’m running out of room on the ironing board.

See the face in a cloud in the top right? That’s what I was ironing.

I also ironed the headphones and cords…basically all I have left is the wolf, the iPhone, the snake, the bird, the dog, and the giant skull eyeball. It doesn’t seem like much when you realize how much I HAVE done, but it requires some mental attention. I quit last night right before the wolf, because I was too tired to think WOLF. I had done over an hour of ironing, which seems to be the right amount for working every night at the moment. In my old life, I would work on it every other night, but for longer usually. I actually didn’t usually get ironing of big projects done during the school year at all. So I guess that’s changed.

Everything’s changed.

I was going to write all this last night, but WordPress was having issues, so I went to bed (a little early!) instead. I should try to do that more often, but then I’d get even less done. It would be nice if I could get some sense of life fulfillment from my job…and you’d think as a teacher, I would, but it’s so much hard work and paper pushing that it’s hard to see the good stuff until you’re 6 months past it.

I realized how much irritation I was carrying yesterday at work, but then I remembered that we don’t have much of the school year left, and this is normal. The kids want to be on vacation already. There’s all these end-of-year pressures of awards, grades, cleaning up, preparing for next year…I have a boss who sends messages demanding meetings at certain times without ever thinking that we might already have things on our calendar. I seriously get emails that say “See me during Period 2.” or “Meet here at 3:45.” and you’re thinking, wow. Dude. I already have a parent meeting during Period 2, thanks for asking, and at 3:45, I’m doing this presentation thing. And there’s often no information telling you the purpose of the meeting, so then you’re left wondering if this is a bitchslap event or just a check-in. A decent boss emails you and says, hey, we need to talk about X, here are the times I have available. I realize you’re busy doing your job; when would be convenient for you?

I guess that is too much to hope for. I just take a deep breath these days, do a little weird dance in the hallways to make the kids laugh, or randomly yell “Dress Code!” into the hallway (that’s actually really fun to do…I’m not even dress coding anyone, but they’re so paranoid it will be THEM that they all jump). OK, yes, it’s time for vacation. Someone on last week’s hike (which is still in a picture file and not in a blog post) said they were surprised I wasn’t in a tower surrounded by a bunch of guns. Well, isn’t THAT a nice image to put alongside my teacher image.

Now you know why I exercise so much and make so much art. Otherwise I’d go even more nuts than I already am. I’m leaving the guns alone though. I do better with pen and paper. And honestly? The kids aren’t the problem…they may drive me bonkers on a regular basis with their shenanigans and laziness and moody crap and drama, but it’s the adults that cause the real trauma. I know the kids aren’t old enough to control their shit. I wish the adults remembered that they are.

Saving One Possum

I’m too tired to post tonight. Got started on everything too late. Busy day. Saved a baby possum. Will write this up in the morning. Am typing this now to remind myself to write the rest in the morning. Right now, a pillow calls my name.

Sleep is a troubled thing at the moment…it really only works for me when it’s like the sleep of the dead. There are so many times when I go to sleep after 1 AM and then STILL wake up around 4 or 5, wide awake. This is not good for me…I know it…but it seems to continue.

Yesterday. Sigh. I didn’t manage it well, and yet there were things about it that clued me in to what makes me feel better…like, apparently, saving baby animals. Doesn’t everyone feel better after saving a baby animal? Yesterday morning, I looked out and saw something swimming in the pool…

Yes, it looks like a drowned ~~rat~~ possum. Because it is.

Yes, I know they bite and carry disease (hell, so do humans), but I’ve never had an issue with them. I did find its sibling in the pool last week, though, and it was not a good thing. So I left it out there for a little while to see if mom was around somewhere. And then I went out and dried it off, because it was shivering and not moving. And then I put it up in the bushes, so it was away from the pool and hidden from the hawks who hang out here. And I waited some more. And my mom hormones kicked in (are they hormones?) and I went out and it hadn’t moved in 20 minutes and it was still shivering.

Dammit. I need to go to school and Project Wildlife doesn’t open until 9.

So he (she?) went to school with me. In a cat carrier. See? He looks much better dry.

I fed him apple and gave him water and eventually he recovered enough to poop all over the towel and bare his teeth at us when we would check up on him. Yes, I think possums are adorable (I know, I’m weird). I don’t have issues with rats or snakes either, but spiders? Yeek. I’m fascinated by them, but inordinately creeped out as well.

Around 8th period, my two kids showed up (because I texted them and told them they had to) and took him to Project Wildlife, where hopefully they will get him ready for release back into the wild. They come to my pool to drink and fall in. I used to have a fountain that helped a little with that, but the fountain doesn’t work any more…and you can’t leave standing water out with West Nile and the mosquitoes around here. Anyway. It was my good deed for the day, and the interesting thing is that it made me feel better.

So maybe I need to fit some volunteer work in this summer (except some will die or need to be euthanized and then I will be sad, OR I will bring a huge number of homeless animals home with me.). Things to consider. I know if I start fostering animals, my SIL will come slap me with wet noodles…she already thinks I have animal hoarder tendencies (I’m down to 3.5 animals…not bad!).

I did finally make it to the gym and meditated and all that. And then started ironing late again. I really wasn’t very focused last night. I was tired and unmotivated. I know it’s OK to be both of those things, but it just seems like such a waste of time sometimes. I need to be productive or I feel more awful than normal. I know some of that is being a workaholic, but I think being productive holds the depression off a bit as well…counteracts the hormones that are zigzagging through my system. At the end of the day, if I can say, “I accomplished THIS,” and THIS is not just eating three meals and not killing anyone, then I’m doing OK. I need to be doing OK.

Anyway. I didn’t iron much, that’s for sure. I quit the night before because I had to make a decision about her hair: gray or white. She’s definitely menopausal, aging, so what direction do I go with that? I finally decided on white with black, mostly because I think of this quilt as directly autobiographical, and I’m going white, not gray. Plus I liked the idea of the two lighter fabrics having words and computer code in them…it’s supremely relevant.

If I ever have to explain this quilt at an exhibit, I will probably lose it. Or someone else will have to read the statement while I stand there crying. Good stuff! Or more likely at the moment, it won’t get in anywhere.

Another shot of the in-process fabrics. I tried to straighten them up last night because they were getting out of control.

I finished the lungs too. I think I’m officially done with the main figure and moving into all the crap floating around her now.

I have a parent meeting this morning, so I need to leave…but here’s another pitiful picture of the possum…

Yeah, there was no way I could just leave him out there like that. I saved ONE baby yesterday. That was my accomplishment.

Half a King Review

I recently read Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, a story of a prince with a crippled hand who becomes king due to circumstances he had not expected…

I enjoyed the story, even though it was highly predictable. I guess once you’ve read one kingly fantasy about the guy that you didn’t expect becoming king, well, they all kind of sound similar. That said, Abercrombie’s writing was solid and the story had enough new details to the standard coming-of-age fare that it kept me reading until the end (which, of course, isn’t REALLY the end). Oh yes, this is a series. It’s all “He Left a Boy; He Returned a Man.” There are shades of George R. R. Martin all over the place, but then Martin is stealing from years of fantasy worlds with kings in charge. The women in the book are few and far between, and somewhat troubled, but then it seems ALL the characters are troubled. The female minister seems a replacement mother, but isn’t. The king’s real mother is Cersei Lannister all over again, minus the incest. There are two romantic figures who show up and are dealt with. The boat’s captain is female, but a drunkard and more than a bit crazy. It’s certain some of those will show up again.

It’s listed as Young Adult AND Adult Fantasy, which is interesting in itself (where is the line anyway? I don’t seem to be able to find it.). There are two more books planned for the series, which seems to focus on Yarvi, the second son of a king who dies in the first few pages. Yarvi is an interesting character, definitely morally good in general, although near the end, he does become a bit more heartless about sacrificing the lives of a few to get his vengeance. A few parts of the story are a bit unbelievable, but it is fantasy, and I enjoyed it anyway.

Would I read the next two? Oh yeah…if they are written in the same way, I will. Abercrombie is not a Faulkner…his turn of phrase is short, to the point, sometimes even brutal. He has written other books that are of a different style and focused more on the Adult Fantasy crowd, and I would definitely try one of those. His writing is interesting enough that it distracted me from the standard plot, so definitely worth a second read. That’s probably any author’s hope…that the first book of theirs that you read brings you back to try another (and then you hope the second one keeps you in).

The Environment in Which I’m Sat…

I spend a lot of my life mediating…with students, with my kids, honestly, with my own brain. It’s not always pretty. I think of mediating as trying to see both (or many) sides and to come to some place in between where everyone is probably not happy but not completely unhappy either. I haven’t found mediation all that successful in my relationships, mostly I think because some people are incapable of seeing the other side…they’re so convinced that they’re right that they can’t see a solution that doesn’t include their rightness. That’s kinda where I’m at with the girlchild at the moment…she’s so sure she’s right and I’m not (and her dad’s not and the counselor’s not and the world’s not) that she can’t see straight. And there’s really nothing I can do about that except to keep saying the same calm and reasonable things over and over again, and occasionally tell her I still love her (even though she’s still screaming at me for the slightest things). She’ll come around. It might be 2020 before she does, but she will.

I realized today that I have been lax again with my meditation (not mediation) (too much need to get to the fabric-choosing part of the evening), and I think that is part of my problem. It helps to center me, stabilize the emotions. It’s not that I don’t feel when I’m meditating…on the contrary, I think I cried through the whole damn thing tonight, mostly because it was talking about seeing the things you needed to get rid of, the things that were troubling you most, seeing them almost as black smoke drifting around you, and then having it waft away and be replaced with an increasing sense of happiness and relaxation. I can’t quite get there, though…I see the black smoke and I get lost in it. But I’m hopeful that I will get there if I’m a good little meditator (so close to mediator) and keep practicing the visualization.

One of the things Mr. Meditation says that I like is he talks about sensing “the environment in which you’re sat.” Such a British turn of phrase…like I’ve been placed here. It’s true…this IS the environment in which I’m sat. I think at some point I’ll be able to just get up and walk away from that environment, if I choose to (and I will), but for now, I was sat here. I have no choice. There were very few seats available and this is where I was put. When it’s time to leave, I will choose to get up and go and sit myself elsewhere, or perhaps not sit at all. I’m not good at sitting still as it is. Maybe I’ll just start running and you won’t be able to catch me.

Meditation lets me be very metaphorical, philosophical, in my head but not in a bad way.

I came home to tree parts everywhere…nine trees on my property were being trimmed. Some were dangerously large or overweighted on certain branches that were over the house. Some are just in need of a serious pruning every 5-8 years or so…ah, the eucalypts and their tendency to drop crap (or themselves). Anyway, it’s a different look now…more light and air, although probably more sun as well (not so good for summer). Now I can move on to the next step of replanting the trees that were taken out for the septic and then replanting the grass area, except I’m not doing grass this time…something more native, meadowy. Nice to look at. I don’t have little kids any more, so the grass isn’t needed. I’m sure my neighbors will be glad to have me do anything in the yard. There are only so many hours in the day. When I get home from school, I have very little energy…it comes back later at night, but too late to do yardwork (in the dark). Replacing the trees is high on my list, though, because I tend to dress in front of that window and it’s a bit exposed at the moment, which I keep forgetting about (damn, now all the voyeurs will be trying to figure out what window I mean…get away!). I just want my private yard back and now I can have it.

So I mediated today. And I meditated tonight. And about 10 minutes of a Hoarders episode during cooking dinner persuaded me to clean out a huge pile of stuff and toss it into trash and recycling. I’m trying to do a little every day. Get the house under control. Maybe.

I then had to persuade Babygirl to get off the ironing board…boychild helped.

There was talking and petting. And then toe-cleaning. Very important, the toe-cleaning aspect.

I am still ironing all the non-fleshy bits and pieces that make up the main figure.

Today I did heart and veins (cool, huh?), a couple of tattoo-things on the arms, plus eyeballs and other random bits. I just have the lungs to do in the body, and then I have the hairy bits. I think there’s about 20 pieces in the 1100s at the moment, and then I’ve got most of the 1300s. It seems to be going pretty slowly. I don’t know why.

The box is getting fuller…this is the second box with pieces in it, too.

Most of what I did today was fussy little piecing. There’s a lot of mental action going on when I do this. I have to evaluate each section and the pieces within that section with how they relate to the whole piece and the coloring I’ve done so far.

It really is one of the places my brain is the calmest, the most peaceful. I’m hoping one day it hits happy again.

Content is the closest it will consider at the moment.

Here’s the fabrics in progress from the other side. It really is a large, chaotic pile.

At some point, I got tired again. Weird how that happens. I couldn’t figure the lungs out, so I quit. I think I still have 4 or 5 hours left…I have 16 hours and 18 minutes in at the moment. This alternate life I have, the other job, it’s not nothing. It’s a significant part of my life. It’s huge.

The other thing I tortured myself with tonight was trying to figure out the financial aid appeal for Cornell. I had to take out a loan to pay for the septic, but they want this complicated calculation of all my expenses and income as part of the appeal. I swear they do this shit to persuade us NOT to apply for more aid, because this is in fact a giant pain in the ass, where I have to figure out the monthly average of a wide variety of expenses, including gas and car insurance (we spend a TON on gas) and utilities. I think I prefer not to know these exact details. I have a general idea of my finances…I don’t want to know how many thousands of dollars it takes to keep the lights and the heat on.

This is what part of my calculations look like…

Holy Hell. Shoot me now. I’m not done. I promised myself I’d start, but I didn’t have to finish.

That’s kinda how I feel about everything at the moment: make a start. You don’t have to finish. You may not be able to finish. You’re going to do your best. Sometimes your best will suck and you’ll just take a deep breath and let the tears roll down your cheeks, and then you’ll try again, dammit. Just start, though. That’s all I ask. For now.