He Da Man

He da man. Back in January, when the boychild turned 18 (into a manchild, but you know I will always call him the boychild), I started a post about how he was now a man. Although it’s not an instantaneous change to manhood on the date…it’s been a long slow process. Digital cameras didn’t exist (or did they?) when he was born, but my first pictures of him date from Easter 2003, age 7 (girlchild is a mere 19 months younger than him)…searching for candy was always a joy.

This was back in the day when he would still let me shave his head and would wear what I asked him to…March 2004, age 8 (girlchild has bangs because he started the cut and I had to fix them).

Yeah, she let him do it.

He posed for pictures back them, November 2004, age 8. He also loved bright colors.

He even liked his cousins: December 2004, age 8, with cousin Jensen, aged 18 months?

Although sometimes we got the sulky smirk…October 2005, age 9.

July 2006 brought tears to my eyes…age 10, with Ivy as a puppy. Still letting me shave the head.

By December 2007, age 11, you can see the hair growth.

In November 2008, age 12, the hair is even longer, but he’ll still smile for the camera.

By April 2009, age 13, we had the hat. Yes. The hat.

In December 2009, age 13, with cousins, another hat…

We briefly lost the hat in April 2010, age 14.

No hats allowed in June 2010, 8th grade graduation, age 14, with the American grandparents. And the hair. And the lack of colored clothing.

The hat returns in December 2010, age 14, still poses and actually smiles.

By June 2011 in Aberystwyth, UK, barely a smile shows, age 15.

The hat returns in November 2011, age 15, with driving! The hair is seriously long now (yes, he did have to get it cut, but it kept getting longer and longer). Fewer pictures from here on out.

In December 2012, tall, fuzzy, long hair, um…put your cousin down, age 16.

December 2012, I managed to catch him smiling, age 16.

December 2013, the family photo, he’s refusing to smile, even though this is supposed to be the goofy photo, age 17.

But sometimes he still gets caught off guard, especially with his cousins…December 2013, age 17.

December 2013, girlchild snapchats while he listens to political convo…age 17.

Spring 2014, the two of them…her 16, him 18. Adult. Longest hair ever, settled into the black shirts and jeans he lives in (I can’t really argue against that, as those who know me will attest)…he does shave, when he feels like it. He even smiles occasionally.

Tomorrow he graduates from high school, with honors. In 8 weeks, he goes to college, Cornell, a way way far away…you did good, boychild. Don’t forget to write your momma. She’s gonna miss you.

Looking for Brain Space

Yup. That was blood sugar crashing that you heard last night. I probably didn’t eat enough. And yet, I ate too much. I felt it crashing while I was exercising. I don’t think it should have crashed. But what do I know? Just the basic biology of it, and apparently my body is ignoring biology. Or something else is going on.

Just like in the real world, I never have enough money or elixir in Clash of Clans to upgrade anything. When I look at all the house and yard stuff that needs to get done this summer, I am constantly reminded of that. There is only so much I can do. I wake up at 5 AM worrying about everything that needs to get done. This morning it was grades. Grades are due today. I got most of it done last night. My son asks me if I’m ever vengeful about grades, like THAT kid was SO annoying…I do think about that kid, but I always let the points rule…the only thing that plays with me is if they were really trying and it’s close to popping up a grade. Then I’ll adjust. That’s nice, though, not vengeful. I don’t ever go the other way. That would be what my students would do…that’s why they always accuse us of hating them, because everything to them is black or white, love or hate. Somehow they tie their grades to love and hate. I tie grades to percentages, to what you actually handed in. I don’t even look at names when I grade. I just process the info and provide a score based on a rubric I set up and gave to them, so honestly, they could grade their own papers if they’d be honest about it (most of them wouldn’t…hell, most adults wouldn’t either. I am strangely honest.).

So school continues for three more days, but it’s this weird in-between world of school, where nothing counts and there is nothing you can hold against them. It’s survival of the fittest (the kids may not know that we are the fittest, but we are). Teachers are sniping at each other, because it’s the end and we’re all stressed. That’s not good, but it happens. Then we don’t see each other all summer (work friends? only?) and that 8 weeks seems to clear the brain again for starting over. I’d be OK seeing them over break, I think, but I am the one with no life. Remember?

You may not know this about me, but apparently it drives my kids nuts that I don’t eat cereal with a spoon. Or my hands. Yes, I’m strange that way. Hey, I’m the one who does the dishes. And if I were in public, I’d use a spoon. Maybe. If I felt like it. I’m caring less and less about what I look like in public. I’m not sure it matters.

Mostly I use silverware…and how does the boychild get to criticize? I barely got him to use silverware in the last 5 years, and he’s still not great at the whole knife thing. He’d rather redefine whatever it is as finger food.

I’m looking forward to some brain space in the next few days. Graduation for the boychild is tomorrow, but I see it as stitching time (seriously, it’s three hours and he’s graduating with honors, so he’ll be in the first group). Maybe I’ll read a book out there on the grass with the sun beating down on me. It wouldn’t be so bad. I should remember to bring food though. Stupid blood sugar.

The Difficult

I wonder sometimes what makes the teen years so difficult for me. I don’t seem able to communicate correctly. Honestly, I’ve spent the last two years feeling like the majority of what comes out of my mouth is just wrong, not allowed, I am misinterpreting everything, and I never say it right. There are about 15 drawings in my head coming out of that…most have tape over the mouth or the mouth is just stitched or stapled shut. I don’t know if it’s worse because I am me, and that me is depressed, or if I am alone in this, and the alone compounds the wrong feeling, or if, as the girlchild says, I am just more sensitive than most. In some conversations, the wrongness seems to swirl around in my head. I wonder what protections others have that seem to keep them whole. I feel like those are missing from my arsenal. My counselor tries to help…but what she tells me to say, the script, it angers the girlchild.

It seems I do it all wrong. I don’t think anything I’ve done in the last two years was right. Except draw…and turn those into quilts.

Is that good enough? Is the art I make good enough? Does it make up for whatever I don’t seem to be able to do right? Ask my children in 5-10 years. They may be able to answer. Maybe they will write my retrospective. My previous writer has been fired from the job for not paying attention, for falling asleep on the job, for not actually listening to what I was saying. Is it so hard to hear me?

It is just a matter of surviving these years I think. But this surviving…it is hard…harder on my own. I asked today for help. I tried to explain the things that set me off…and maybe that conversation went well…hard to say. I feel so ill-equipped for my own existence.

So. The summer: artmaking, house-fixing, room-painting, lesson-planning, sanity-finding (any chance of that?), book-reading, muscle-moving, heart-mending (not sure I believe this is possible).

Parenting is a bitch.

I cut stuff out today. I’m almost there. It’s a good thing. Progress. It’s movement…better than stagnation. I try to keep moving towards something…something healthier than what occupies my brain most of the time. Here’s where I was last night…

I did hike last night, a mere 4.5 miles; it barely felt like a walk. Fine line between what works for me and what hurts my knee. I’ll be testing it further in the next 7 days, for sure. More on that later.

Today was a giant mess of grading and managing things, but fell into this wormhole: Strong Female Protagonist…because I NEED more distractions? Naw, because it let me leave my head for a while…another troubled female trying to make sense of the world, but she can kick the shit out of robots. I bet I’d be less depressed if I could do that.

I was supposed to go to the gym, but I read instead. And I graded stuff. And then input grades. And there was the parenting thing that threw me for a loop. It doesn’t take much.

We have dinner almost every Sunday night at my parents’ house. I keep thinking it will get easier to be there on Sundays, but it is a memory of what I had that apparently I didn’t really have. Trust is an issue for me. Can you tell? I don’t even know how to draw that. Maybe when I figure that out it will get better.

I throw the ball for Calli as long as she puts it in my lap.

She makes this funny face, where part of her lip is up under her tooth. Love this dog. Love all dogs, who am I kidding? We had my parents’ dog, Katie, here this weekend…she was well-behaved but terrified of the cats (as are we all)…it was nice to have another dog here. When the girlchild goes to college, my first expense will probably have to be a dog. I don’t have one of my own and Calli will probably stay with the girlchild’s dad…we’ll see. She goes back and forth with the girlchild at the moment. My grocery bill will go down and so will the dog quotient?

Most of the year, I’m grading while she does this, but during vacations, I sew instead. And I was done grading (well, at least for a while…until all the kids who were absent dump stuff in my lap tomorrow)…so I was stitching. I managed a whopping 5 bullion stitches before I gave up. I am so far behind on this thing that it doesn’t really matter any more.

So then I came home and cut some more…

I really am almost there. And I have a plan for some smaller quilts that might go up on Etsy this summer…maybe. I want something that’s marketable. Well, as much as my stuff ever is. So watch for that. Don’t hold your breath or anything…it might be a few weeks…but I did go down into the garage and hunt around for some of the drawings that might help with that. I don’t need to remake the wheel…just re-trace something and iron it down. And see where that takes me.

Down a rabbit hole. Did I mention I am trying to write an actual novel? It will probably crash and burn, but I am starting. I have an idea…a start…a burning coal. Something might come of that. Strange that a visual artist has always wanted to write a book. Where does that come from? Words v. images. A constant war in my brain.

Yup. And then there’s Babygirl. Speaking of The Difficult. There she be.

I Am Sorta Here

Maybe. I think. It’s hard to know what day it is or what’s coming next. I don’t seem to have a handle on the big picture. Grades are due soon. I need to do those. Like today. We set out yesterday evening to try to deal with Father’s Day and graduation clothing, and we flailed massively on the former and succeeded on the latter, although I think I have to go back today because the one thing we were supposed to look for, we didn’t, because I think I was so tired and low-blood-sugar that nothing logical could happen. Dinner consisted of whatever we could find at Trader Joe’s to supplement what was in the fridge already and that wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to prepare. I hate eating like that, but it was a necessary thing. I should remember that Friday nights near the end of the school year are a giant clusterfuck and prepare accordingly. We’ve already decided that when both kids are at college, I should spend the first Sunday of every month cooking meals and freezing portions so I can eat normally all month without having to think about it every night.

I did manage exercise both nights I blew off writing. See, I can do THAT. That’s brainless. I had a stitching meeting on Thursday…

The stocking that will take 20 years to stitch. Progress is so slow. We did talk about many things, most of which I’ve completely forgotten, although I remember photo cards and female comics and grandbabies and travel plans and cool quilt and art exhibits coming up, like Quilt National will be at the Oceanside Museum of Art, but not the part with my quilt in it, which is up in San Jose right now. So I’ll still go to the opening down here because I couldn’t go to the one up there. Make sense? Yeah, not to me either.

My mood is a mess…overwhelmed still. Keep saying no to things like that helps…it doesn’t, because the have-to’s are way bigger than the ones I can say no to. Organized art entries slightly to make sure I had stuff to enter where I WANT to enter for sure. I mean, who doesn’t want to get rejected by the big shows over and over? Yeah, I know. Sometimes you get in. That’s why I keep entering. But it means finishing the two that are in process AND starting the one for November AND getting those house things done for the border show…I don’t even know where to start with those.

Bleeding money, that’s for sure. Everything costs money.

Anyway. Deep breaths. Taking one day at a time. I have a list for today and I’m going to go on a short flat hike to see if my knee is improved. If not, I’m going to call the doctor, because it’s not OK. Going to get the damn grades done. All that will help, and then I can focus on the artmaking like I want to. Stop panicking about the other stuff. I’ll figure it out. It was the counselor’s advice to just take one day at a time, but I laughed…because then I will never ever get the stuff done that I don’t WANT to do. She reminded me that it’s my vacation and I need to recharge before starting a new year with a new principal, a new team member, a new curriculum style and classroom function, etc. She’s right. Doesn’t mean the stuff won’t need to get done though.

On Thursday night, I managed a few minutes of cutting…

I really am SO CLOSE to finishing that it’s kind of lame that I haven’t. Of course, then I’ll have to do the hard part: sort a million pieces and then iron for a week or longer to get it all together. Mind-boggling. More overwhelming. Except I want to see what it looks like. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know what it will look like. Kind of a strange way of working.

I have some other plans for smaller pieces this summer too…maybe I am planning too much. Looking back at last summer (which I hate doing, because it was such a nasty beast of trauma), at the end of school, I was still ironing pieces down to fabric on Wise Choice, and I had Buried Under partially quilted I think? Then I had to make Babygirl and a couple other smaller pieces. Plus I started working on Love (not). So I am further ahead on the Menopause quilt, which is actually about half the size of Wise Choice, so it shouldn’t take as long. I’m a little further behind on the Mammogram quilt, but it won’t take long to stitch down and catch up to that stage. I know how many hours I put in last summer…art quilting is about all I did. And I don’t have that kind of time this summer…too many other things to do. So we’ll see.

I can’t really take it one day at a time. I have to be able to see the big picture. I’ve spent the last three months with my head under the pillow, not thinking about the big picture, and now I have to deal.

I think I’m calling in sick this week. Seriously, my brain just wandered off again. It doesn’t want to manage all this crap. It wants to hide. Reading books is a good way to hide…it’s another world, a protective space, somewhere I can live that doesn’t require me to constantly be picking up after people, where things aren’t demanding my attention. Really, I am only sorta here. Just checking in. Expect more calm sanity after the end. (four more days) I should have a blog category for overwhelmed, it’s such a common occurrence. I think I’m doing it wrong.

Dammit Seriously.

That seems to be my mantra at the moment. Or is it Damnit. Go look here. Because I am that ubergeek who googled it and then tried to decide whether ubergeek should be one word or two or hyphenated.

I got an email yesterday about a fiber show coming up and I also got my new issue of Fiber Art Now, which is an intriguing magazine…not as highbrow as the Surface Design Association magazine, but not as crafty as Quilting Arts is. I find I barely read these any more…I TRY to…really I do, usually while cooking, but sitting and reading short articles seems to work better with an electronic device these days than with a pile of pages.

Anyway, the email and the magazine sent me down a rabbit hole of shows coming up and possible entries and due dates and size requirements, so girlchild cooked dinner (late! she walked in and asked if I was planning on cooking any time soon…oops) while I bounced around websites trying to figure out if it was worth entering. I don’t mind being invited to enter a show, but when entry fees are exorbitant for a short show? That seems crazy…maybe I’m reading it wrong. I did manage to find some other shows that sounded interesting though, and I almost got excited about art for a moment there. Until I realized how late it was and that I had grades to input and my computer was being a slow-ass beast, which is another thing I need to deal with this summer, along with EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE FUCKING WORLD.

It does not look good for relaxation and mai tais by the pool. Like I ever do that. The to-do list is miles long. Plus I started reading a book about blended learning (the new code word in education) and realizing I need to get my entire curriculum onto Google Drive and Docs by the end of the summer, which is not a small task, and I won’t get paid for that, by the way, you idiot politicians who think we’re in it for the money, but I will do it ANYWAY, because it’s best for the kids, so maybe you should give me a raise, and then in a year or two’s time, I will also MAKE UP new curriculum all by myself when the science standards switch and we don’t get new textbooks until never. So. Yeah. This job. Sometimes…sometimes it’s the best thing around and exciting (it really is kind of exciting to be getting everything online and making things collaborative in a way I can track, instead of trying to figure out who wrote what, when the overachievers did the whole project while the other kid picked his nose for three days), but sometimes it is a huge drain on your brain.

In the middle of all this thinking and reading and stuff, I realized that my phone had disappeared some important notes from the Notes app (this was in the middle of riding the stationary bike), so then I had to try and find those, which meant restarting and installing a backup, which took forever (see note about screwed-up computer…you know, sometimes it’s just easier to buy a new one than figure out what the fuck is the matter with the old one, but that’s not an option, so figure it out we will). Plus the boychild was in here analyzing his yearbook at 11:45 at night (really, we are both night owls…I told him how I used to read under the covers until mom would come yell at me…he should be glad I’m his mom), which really was about analyzing his high-school career, because the twit is graduating in less than a week. GRADUATING. Fuck. And then moving out and never really coming back.

So not where I wanted to be right now. I’m a fucking mess these days really. I have spent the last two days showing one of the pregnancy videos to my students, and post-birth, I always tear up when I see someone give birth, but it’s usually OK, very controllable, because prior to a year ago, I wasn’t a CRIER. I really wasn’t. Barely ever. So I had picked the video with like 3 births in a row, and I almost lost it yesterday…over and over again…because I saw 15 births yesterday and I am not as in control of my crying tendencies as I used to be. It was a real struggle holding it together. By lunch (6 births down), I wanted to huddle in the bathroom and sob. It’s OK…today we move on to STDs. No crying there.

I know my head’s a mess, and I was hoping to MAKE art yesterday, but by the time the technology was all fixed and boychild was back in bed, it was almost 1 in the morning. My sleep app tells me I’ve averaged 4.5 hours of sleep a night this week. Um. Not good. But I’m wired at night, totally awake (unlike in the afternoon meetings). So that’s not conducive to lying down and sleeping. I try it and then my brain ransacks the emotional storage area and I end up crying myself to sleep because the SUMMER sounds overwhelming. My vacation time (vacation, ha!) sounds like it’s going to kick my ass. I’m crawling into bed on June 20 and pulling the covers over my head. Wake me up in 2017. OK, maybe I’ll get up to deal with the girlchild’s graduation.

Then this morning, the computer wants to tell me about the updates it’s installed. You don’t understand, you asshole…I don’t fucking CARE what you installed…are you working better than you were last night? Because that was a clusterfuck. The grading program was writing line by line and I just had to sit there WAITING for it to process to the alphabetical letter that I needed it to get to, and I don’t know whether it was internet or the grade server or my computer. I don’t CARE…it took forever. Just knock it off.

I’ve decided Clash of Clans (which I really do play sort of half-heartedly and then the boychild yells at me for even playing it) is a metaphor for life. I wake up every morning and my shield went down overnight and some total stranger attacked me and somehow I won. Because my defenses are OK (they aren’t really), but somehow I won without doing anything. But if I go out and attack anything, first of all, I suck at attacking…I just deploy everyone AT ONCE (GO! KILL! DESTROY!) with absolutely no strategy except to get them all running on the screen at once, little cartoon goblins and archers and barbarians (what are they all doing hanging out together anyway?), and then I get creamed. Because I suck at attacking. I go to sleep though and all this stuff happens and I wake up and I have more trophies. It feels kinda empty. So maybe entering shows will help…unless I get rejected from all of them and then that will be worse. Or maybe I won’t care. Who knows.

Yeah, I know. It’s a stupid game. I’m OK with that. I need something that doesn’t mean much, that isn’t that important, that I can do while waiting for the stupid grade program to respond.

I wish I could say that tonight will be better, and maybe it will…but it’s looking kind of fraught.

I was sitting at the union meeting last night (did I mention I didn’t even get home until almost 6 because of the union meeting?) and they had brought us ice cream, because it’s the last meeting of the year, but it was chocolate and sugar, so I’m allergic to the first, and I’m diabetic, so lots of the latter is not a good plan, and the woman next to me asks why I don’t have any ice cream, so I tell her those two things, and she says she’s diabetic too, which I didn’t know, and never would have guessed, because she had already eaten her ice cream and she always has a giant soda everywhere she goes. And I’m thinking, well, maybe it’s sugar free? But seriously? I do everything right, I lose all the weight, I exercise, I watch my diet, and I get stuck with symptoms that are worse than before, way worse, and there she is…poster child for bad diabetics, making me look bad. Dammit. Seriously.

I love this picture in the yearbook…

Yup. Those are my two. Boychild says they didn’t ask him about the words at all, and I guess if “closest of friends” includes yelling “Calm your asshole!” at the other one in the morning (that’s what I heard just before they left), then yeah, they might be. Certainly, the last part is true, and is why we will have to get a new monitor with a webcam so she can Skype him for math and science next year, because AP Physics is beyond me and Calculus makes my brain explode. Seriously, there are no spare brain cells for that stuff any more. Damn. I’m going to miss them. Seriously. I’m a mess.

The Geography of You and Me

I read this in one day.

There’s a couple of reasons for that…first of all, it’s not particularly long. Second, it’s a fast read. It grabbed me and kept me. It’s the story of two teens who meet while trapped in an elevator in New York City, but most of the book is about their not being in the same city and thinking about each other. It’s definitely YA teen romance, coming of age, all that…it’s on the light side (as I fall into summer vacation a few days early?), so good for summer reading. I’m sure it will be a movie soon. Don’t read it expecting world revelations or super-smart intellectual classic. Read it with a sense of remembering high school and what that felt like, but leaving out most of the bad nasty stuff (there is a little, just for tension), and you’ll enjoy it.

This is the first of Smith’s books that I’ve read…not sure I’m compelled to read more (I’m a little older than the expected audience I think), but I suspect the girlchild might enjoy her books.

Outlast…

First of all, I stayed up too fucking late last night because I was reading a book. Yes, I am still that geek girl I was in middle school. Nothing has changed. I finished it though, and I didn’t have to hide under the covers with a flashlight to do it. And then I finished another one today. Read it in one afternoon. I’m sure there’s something really helpful y’all could say about my avoidance tendencies at the moment…wanting to hide in fictional worlds isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but it could be. Ironically, one of the books I read was about a girl who did just that. Life imitating art. Actually, my art imitates my life. Doing it backwards yet again.

Second of all, please make that goddamned mockingbird shut the fuck up. I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. (I think it finally stopped around 2:30 AM, because that might be when I fell asleep). Tonight? Tonight I don’t hear the bird. Probably a neighbor shot it. They’ve threatened to before (yes, that means my neighbors have guns).

Thirdly, this is what overwhelmed looks like: Me. I got a bunch of stuff done, but then my brain melted down and lost itself in fiction, because it’s nicer than real life. I ran 14 errands, cooked dinner (BOTH kids are sick and stayed home yesterday…it is a wonderful place, my house, at the moment…full of snotty kleenex and me popping Vitamin C), did all the dishes, exercised, AND input a million grades. At that point, it was after 11 PM and there was no way I was getting anything else done, and I wanted to know how the book ended. It had been a particularly frustrating teaching day and I needed a break. I worked many hours. I worked more this morning, which is why this post isn’t getting done until later…dammit.

Whatever.

Both kids made it to school today. One’s slightly better, although he sounds like crap. The other claims she’s horrible, but I haven’t seen her since this morning, so I have no evidence to support that claim. She can’t be TOO sick, because she answered texts from me. Teenaged-girl indicators of illness: if they can still text, they’re fine.

The blog title…if you can stand it for long enough, the really shitty stuff will roll under the moving car, it will disappear, it will wander off, it will resolve itself. That’s not always true, but if it’s something you can’t change, you can either leave it (if that’s an option, and there are times when that might be easiest, but doesn’t make the most sense) or you can wait it out. Outlast…remember the Survivor motto? Me neither. I had to look it up: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. I guess that’s my new mantra. For the end of the year. For my life. For all the stupid little shit. Actually, just the two on the outsides…I don’t need to outplay. I don’t have those competitive issues. Suffice it to say, I have now outlasted (and possibly outwitted) one of the heinous parts of my life. Moving on. The next will be the last day of school. Almost there. I’ll have some issues with summer…they are already raising their ugly little heads. God forbid I finish what I NEED to finish. Oh well.

So. I was at the gym tonight and an entire drawing basically dropped into my brain. Seriously. It’s right up THERE. Now the hard part is getting it out. Sometimes my drawing ability does not match my mental ability. I show this process so you realize I don’t always just draw the whole damn thing out in one go with no edits. Here’s what I drew first.

Yick. Don’t want her to look that angry. Plus she needs to be looking down at what’s in her arms. Tilt! (As Mr. Peterson said in high school…)

Try again…

Fuck. That nose sucks. Not on a woman. Restart. Maybe if I start with the mouth?

It’s a nice mouth, but facing the wrong direction. I’ll use it for something else…try again.

Huh. Maybe. Not sure about him. It’s a start, though…much better than what I had before. He’s kinda angry though. At least I have something down on paper at this point. I’m feeling much better about that. This won’t be a huge quilt, but it will be detailed…I need to get going on it.

I made the first college payment tonight. Freaky. Scary too. I miss them so much when I don’t see them, like on days when their dad has them and I have a late meeting. I don’t want to think about their being gone all the time. I had a plan for that. I was looking forward to it in some ways. Now I dread it. Sad but true. I didn’t want to be that mom.

So the books I’ve read recently…Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice for book club later this month…really liked this one and already have the next one on order from the library…not formulaic (well, much), interesting fantasy story. Love the link to the dogs.

Then this showed up from the library…Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl…

Yes, I did just read Eleanor and Park. Coincidence. One came electronically and one in real live paper. I enjoyed this one too…it’s the one I read last night until the wee hours. Definitely YA nice falling-in-love stuff. Not sure that’s a good idea for me to read, so it makes total sense that I should move on to this one…The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer Smith…

(Just between you and me, I think it should be The Geography of Me and You…I keep thinking of it that way and getting confused about it.) This was a Netgalley book, so I’ll be reviewing it separately. I hadn’t read her stuff before though…if that matters. It seems like the majority of my summer reading list is the next book in a series I’m already reading or the next book by an author whose stuff I am constantly reading. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There probably is something wrong with reading the YA lovey-dovey stuff…it’s not realistic at all and just throws me back into the wishful-thinking stages of middle school and high school. I don’t need to go back there with all the girly drama and inability to communicate and little boys running away from reality. So yes, the next book on my reading list is fantasy recommended by boychild. That said, he has a huge crush (OK, he would be mad if I called it that) on the women of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly (hell, so do I)…so who knows what this book will be like.

Summer approaches. I’m making a list, checking it twice. I have a ton of crap to do. Wish me luck.

Falling Apart

I spent my weekend ironing her together…

Really, she deserves better than me. A nicer artist, one who doesn’t bitch so much about her parts. And once I’d gotten her all together, there was the issue of backing. Well, I had one left over from the Celebrating Silver piece…I’d originally wanted to do it on this dark purple batik…

which really IS dark purple in real life (my camera can’t handle it). And I couldn’t remember if I’d picked something else for this piece. I doubted it, since when I pick backgrounds, they go in a specific pile to the right of the door…and there were the two I bought for the Menopause quilt, which is up next in the progress pile, and then the purple was still sitting there from January or December or whenever it was I got ballsy and bought a whole ‘nother background for the first time in my life.

So I auditioned it…

And I had already convinced myself that it wouldn’t work, that the hair was too dark, and maybe I should pick a blue, but then that would make the lungs too important and the bird wouldn’t stand out enough, and fuck it, maybe now was the time to go with yellow, but I fucking HATE yellow.

Anyway. It worked. It’s a good thing I don’t really listen to my brain. It’s a stupid prat most of the time. It worked. I ironed it down. Total ironing time from start to finish? 6 hours and 8 minutes. This is not a particularly large or complicated piece. It’s good to have some of these in your stash…not huge but with a forceful impact. It has 366 pieces. That’s like nothing for me. So now I have two tops ready to be stitched down, sandwiched, and quilted. Hopefully I’ll start on one of those this week. Of course, I have to do grades too, and at the moment, I think I have a meeting every night this week…close to it anyway. So I’ll try. Then I’ll start ironing the big one together, and maybe by then, I’ll have enough brain power to draw the one that has to be done in November. Plus there are like three other drawings that want to be quilts right now. These two were just the least challenging emotionally. The next one will be a bitch to make and a bitch to finish.

Such is the artmaking at the moment. Bitchy.

Last night, I did a night kayaking event…

We loaded up on the kayaks at about 8 (there were a lot of us) and then set out in Mission Bay towards Sea World…

Why? Fireworks. On the water…for free.

It was awesome. Well, except there were a LOT of kayaks in a small space, so that was difficult. There was one kayak of two young girls who were always in sync (unlike my partner and I, who had never met, let alone kayaked together), but overcorrected like crazy, so it looked like they were tacking a sailboat directly in front of us. Avoiding others was a challenge.

It was about 6 miles and 2 hours. And did I mention how awesome it was? We were sopping wet by the end.

Kayak oars just drip water on you. But it was June in San Diego, slightly chilly, but not too cold for flipflops. The lights on the water were freaking beautiful, my kayaking partner and I had a lot in common (divorced moms, kids the same age, etc.), so we had a good conversation while waiting for the fireworks to start. I had never kayaked at night, and I loved it. The peaceful feeling of being on the water and not really being able to see anything was great. Plus it didn’t hurt my knee. I might try a baby hike next weekend to test the knee out. Who knows.

Anyway. That was a good thing.

I got notification on Friday of yet another rejection: “Your work isn’t quite right.” Yeah. Whatever. I had actually forgotten about it…a European magazine that was interested in writing an article about my work, but not everyone was on board, so there we are. I’m not trying very hard at the moment to put anything out there. It takes too much energy…energy I don’t have. So much energy wasted dealing with teenagers, trying to negotiate shit. That would be my own kids, mostly. My counselor said I should just ask her (them?) to tell me what they want from me. So often, though, the answer is “I don’t know.” It’s true…they don’t know…they just know to pick fights, to push away, to make it difficult. Again, I know it’s normal. I just can’t handle it.

And then one of the teenagers in question turns around and offers to cook every night this week and comes up with recipes for every meal (OK, every night I have her anyway). I might have to cook one or two of the meals, but I didn’t have to come up with them. That’s a gift in itself. I think I try to take every positive interaction and hold it close to kind of cushion me against the negative ones. It’s hard, though. Very hard.

Meditation talked about being present throughout the whole day, this concept of being mindful (sometimes I think I am Way Too Mindful, that I would be better off if I were a bit more oblivious…there is no Obliviousness Training). He says that everyone wants to be happy, but negative emotions can be so strong that we can’t banish them. That’s where I’m at, I guess. Although I do manage some days to banish the negative, but there’s no positive to fill up that space. I get brief snatches of enjoyment: when I was kayaking, when the lights of the fireworks were reflecting off the water, when I hung up the new quilt top. Then reality kicks in and tries to brush all that aside. “You didn’t prep for school. You should have graded more. You shouldn’t have spent money last night on kayaking.” That’s a hard one, the money. I have to really budget for any frivolities. Seriously. Like how many book clubs meetings can I do a month, because each one wants money for parking and money for anything I might eat or drink there, and I can’t just put off eating for hours any more…my blood sugar raises its ugly head (actually, it sinks like a stone), and on good days, I remember and feed myself or carry food, but every $20 on a glass or two of wine or a kayak for a night…it all adds up. Everything I have planned for the summer is going to cost more money (renting a wallpaper steamer for the two bathrooms, painting interior of the house, steam-cleaning the disgusting carpets from the 1980s, going to life drawing, making quilts). I so much want to take a week-long trip somewhere away from all this shit and just recharge, and that isn’t going to happen. There isn’t money. And where would I go? I would probably just fall apart.

I am falling apart. I’ve been falling apart all year…like a constant tipping over and pieces falling to the ground, then cycling back up to do it again. Nasty shit that. Falling apart over and over again so I can fall apart again. Broken.

Hermitlike

Hermit mode. Grading and ironing. Head barely comes up for air. Or communication. I’m not sure this is the healthiest place to be when you don’t have some sort of anchor at the other end of the making. I used to have that, something that pulled me up and out when I was done making for hours and hours, that would make me be out in the world and talk and make decisions that weren’t just fabric-related. Now I have to force myself to do that. It feels painful sometimes, like, dammit…I don’t WANT to try and be social with other people and make small talk and try to NOT think about the art in my head. But I know I need to do that fairly regularly, or I will be that hermit. It’s not a happy place to be. It’s too much like hard work. I’ve done a lot of hard work in the last year…

So tonight I am headed out to an activity that sounded fun, but it’s with a ton of people I don’t know. I’m OK with that. I could have played it easy and gone to the other gathering with all the people I normally hike with, but this sounded better. I picked the activity, not the people. Hmn. Not particularly healthy if I’m trying to not be a hermit. Oh well. The brain does what it wants.

I spent about 4 hours ironing things together today…

I graded in the morning too…up way too early because the girlchild had SAT subject tests. But it meant I got a bunch done in the morning and then rewarded myself with hours of artmaking time.

I’m wasting time playing Clash of Clans…I’m not very good at it and I don’t really understand it (yeah, I know), but some people from school are playing. There was a war today and I was supposed to fight two battles…I’m better at defense than offense, shockingly.

I don’t spend hours on it. I don’t spend hours on anything except for art and reading books and drawing. Maybe sleep.

Putting the lungs together was kind of a pain in the butt…lots of little overlapping pieces that tried to drive me nuts…

But eventually I got most of the torso ironed down.

Yes, those are fish on her arm.

Then I managed to make the face fit where it was supposed to fit, although I needed to add two little pieces of hair color under the ear for some reason…

The bird was the last thing I ironed together.

My real problem is that I don’t remember what I was going to use for the background. I’m not sure I ever chose a background fabric. So I might have to find something here or go shopping for something that will work. But it’s ready to iron to the background fabric. Success! Wah. Whatever. I think I am looking too hard for that feeling of fulfillment. I think I have to wait patiently until it arrives. What kind of artist am I? The tortured kind. The drawings spill out of me in some attempt to heal the breaks, the cracks, the dust of a former self, but it does not stop. It’s shattered. It hurts to finish things.

I’m almost done cutting out fabrics for the other big quilt…you can actually see the bottom of the middle box…the stuff to be cut out. So maybe another couple of hours? It’s deceptive to see that few pieces…they don’t get cut out quickly, unfortunately.

Kitten is still coming out to visit in the living room at night. It’s nice.

OK. I have to try and be sociable now. You can’t make me.

Exorcising Demons

It’s interesting how angry I am at this piece. At all of them maybe. Certainly at the Earth Stories piece…I don’t ever want to see it again. I may get over that. I’m angry at myself for letting my emotional existence affect my enjoyment of making art. Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. There’s no point in being angry at myself for something I don’t really have any control over…despite all the happy shit on Pinterest that says it’s my decision to be this way. Fuck you Pinterest. Seriously. Who asked you?

Yeah right. Anyway. I’ve avoided this sucker all week…too tired to stand after work. Seriously that tired. Somehow today, when I taught just like always, then went to finish up the refi after work (this might be how I survive the summer), then came home and went directly to the gym, came home again and cooked and did dishes…plus graded papers. On a day like that, you’d expect me to just collapse on the couch, never to rise again.

Fuck that shit. I’m not going to be that person. It may kill me to keep making art when it feels so sucky to do so, but hell, it can’t be worse than sitting around and doing nothing. So I ironed…and I wasn’t sure about it at all until I saw the photograph.

Oh yes. That’s nice. That’s going to kick some butt when the fingers are all stitched down and outlined. I am liking that hand. It’s a pain in the butt to iron, of course, because the overlaps aren’t logical and nice, but I’m getting there. This is about two hours in (with the torso already ironed below). Not a lot of pieces…just a pain in the ass. Nothing new in Kathy Art world. Welcome to my ability to punish myself with my own artwork.

I also cut pieces out…

a little of both worlds tonight. I’m 16 hours into this, and probably still have at least two to three more to go. This is the biggie that will eat up a large portion of the summer. Plus the next one, which doesn’t exist. Then there are at least 3 drawings done in the last year that want to be new quilts. Plus I need to do some smaller ones for shows that don’t like boobies. Assholes.

Who needs a personal life. I’ll just keep making art and hiding in my room, coming out for work and the occasional something or other. Fuck the world. I wrote that all over my notebook in high school. FTW. Not sure my attitude’s changed much in 30 years. I guess I’m more likely to say it out loud now.

I’ve spent all week explaining to my female students that Nature isn’t fair, that there isn’t an equivalent to their 40 years of periods and giving birth for the boys…although I personally think that giving birth and nursing babies is one of the most fucking awesome things I’ve ever done (not wanting to do it again, though, and pregnancy was hell for me, like want-to-die hell). But it would be nice to not have the rest of it. They’re pissed, my girl students. They don’t think it’s fair. They want payback. I don’t blame them.

I was ironing and the cord was hanging down in front of Babygirl. Apparently she thought she needed to play with it (smart animal) and got her claws stuck in it while I was ironing…

Sigh. She is not particularly bright. So she’s semi-yowling and trying to rip her claws through an electrical cord, and I’m trying to free her from the nasty beast, and she’s trying to kill me in the process, because that’s how her tiny little brain works. I do feel sorry for her. We take in the losers and the mutants here.

The mood is still bleak. Then I look back at that ironed breast up there and smile, slightly, to myself. That’s good. Keep doing that. The smiles might stick if you do it enough. You don’t have to like them once they’re done. The Earth Stories quilt? It can travel for years. I don’t particularly want the memories of making it under duress back in my house. The quilt itself is fine…it’s all the emotional shit that’s sewed INTO it that can go fuck itself. So yeah. When you make art to exorcise your demons, it’s better if they stay gone, out, far away. Don’t let those assholes come back home.