It’s interesting to look at when and where I wrote for NaNoWriMo. I certainly got better at it as the month went on, and it’s a habit now, so I’m more likely to just DO it than I was before. I don’t have to write an entire scene to write. I can just write a little bit and then pick it up again later. It’s not like I really know what’s happening next most of the time anyway.
First of all, before I started writing this book back in June, I did write a lot. I wrote this damn blog. Almost every day for the last year and a half, three times a week before that. Mostly, I did it on the computer. I’m faster at typing on a computer than I am on any other device, and it has more capability, usually has a larger screen, etc. I had been known to write my blog on my iPad Mini AND on my phone, though, especially when traveling, but then photos become an issue. So this idea of writing while out of the house was not new to me.
So here’s where I wrote…
Saturday: In a plane from Houston, then in a tiny little lost terminal at LAX, all on an iPad Mini; then later, at my computer
Sunday: On a stationary bike (iPad), then on the computer
Monday: In a staff meeting (OK, let’s just admit that everything that wasn’t on my computer was on the iPad), on my computer, on the couch
Tuesday: On a stationary bike at the gym, at my computer
Wednesday: While on the phone, at my computer, on my iPad waiting for the girlchild to finish with my computer, while updating girlchild’s computer so she would stop using my computer (sense a pattern?)
Thursday through Sunday: On that computer, some days better than others (aka, I didn’t go anywhere that writing was acceptable)
I should explain that I did all of this in Google Docs, so I could access it anywhere. There are pros and cons to that, of course…one being when the file gets really large, it also gets cranky. I now have two files for this story: the first is the 36 pages I wrote over the summer and leading up to NaNoWriMo, and the second is the 74 pages I wrote this month. It doesn’t sound like much when you put it that way, eh? It’s OK. They’re single-spaced and I’m looking at word count more than pages. I’m kind of at the point where I think I’m going to start a third file…this one is getting too big as well. Some people have argued for other programs, but this worked well for what I needed. It was a pain in the butt if I needed to go back and find some detail, so I started another Doc that I called Characters, with a list of character names and traits, but it expanded to list the types of plants I was dealing with, locations of the labs (yup, my whole story takes place in a variety of science labs…and a jacuzzi). I’m not sure I would write any differently with a special program. It just might make editing easier.
Monday and Tuesday: On the iPad at the gym, at the computer
Wednesday: Wherever I could
Thursday: in professional development when my brain couldn’t take it any more (oh my god, shut up!), at the gym, on the bike, and then I couldn’t get it out of my head, so on the elliptical as well (that was a challenge)
Friday on a boring old computer
Saturday: In professional development, waiting for the speaker to finish, on a padded bench with Ruthie next to me. In between classes, sitting at high-school desks. On my computer. On my iPad. At the CUE!
Sunday through the following Thursday: mostly on the computer, sometimes on the iPad. I didn’t have anywhere I had to be where I could also write (not OK to write a book while in a parent meeting). Oh yeah, and I actually didn’t write on Thanksgiving. I had hit 50,000 words the night before, well, actually, at holy shit in the morning, so I felt OK with not writing then.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: on a soccer field x 3, on my computer also x 3; I had written on a soccer field before, so this was not new.
I sat there at yesterday’s game before it started and typed two huge paragraphs where one hybrid was trying to attack another and tranquilizer darts and all this, while listening to a bunch of parents yammer on about what colleges were courting their kid. And I have to say, I do feel like some sort of bizarre alien, writing a book while all that is going on, but I guess that’s nothing new. I do know I can write just about anywhere, so that’s a good thing. Before, I thought I had to be in the right mood and the muse had to be present, and no, fuck that. I can just write. I am the fucking muse. The story’s in my head. I just have to pull it out.
Good lesson learned. Now I just need to finish this book.
So yeah, I’m back. I’ve actually been here all along, but as I’m sure you realize, that whole holiday-with-family thing kind of eats up your free time. So I sleep even less. And at 1:30 AM, I’m not willing to START writing a blogpost. And mornings have been fraught. So here’s what happened.
On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is for a theme of Women at War, with interpretation pretty open as to what that meant. I’ve felt like other people have been coming after my uterus and everything within and around for quite a while, despite some nice-guy misogynists telling me I was imagining it. I mean, what the fuck do you know as a privileged rich white man? Best thing you can do as a man? Admit that you mostly don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a woman. You might have an inkling, but otherwise: Not inside, biologically, with periods and pregnancy and mood swings and menopause; not outside, trying to walk somewhere in public, dating, safety, being perceived as an object, wearing the wrong thing, whether you’re showing stuff off or not, it’s always wrong. Not breastfeeding, not being the mom, not with society’s expectations. I’m not saying being a man doesn’t have similar issues; I just think there are more “acceptable” options for men (in terms of what society believes). And I full-on admit I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. Some men have some of a clue, but mostly it seems not. The better men are understanding even when they don’t understand.
So the drawing was full of all these stereotypes and yet she stands tall on a pile of men. Because every man came from a woman, y’all.
Anyway, my rampant feminism aside, I need to get the quilt done in the next…um…5 weeks. Yup. So speedy mode. Midnight? Not helping…
Licking my elbow does not help me. This might even have been the night before. It looks awfully dark. It is! It’s Tuesday night. I sit on the couch and watch all the stuff I have saved on Tivo…
If girlchild is still awake, I have to watch her stuff. Some of her stuff is also my stuff…top box is pieces, bottom box is trash…in case I drop pieces in it (which I often do).
In the late afternoon (because I had to run a thousand errands), I managed to finish cutting and sort them all into bins by 100s. This is a smaller quilt, so there’s only 8 bins! A miracle.
Of course, I also did the two birds that need to be done in December, so that was two more bins.
And then because this time of year isn’t crazy enough, girlchild and I hiked Iron Mountain in the dark with the group I often hike with.
She wanted to show she had conquered the mountain.
That night, I realized I would need to clean the office up a bit to be able to cut fabrics out. I hadn’t put everything away from last time (and honestly, it’s a disaster area in here anyway, because all my school stuff lives in here too). So I had drawers open that cats had slept in and fabric piled everywhere…
I like a fresh start. Plus I need that table cleared off because that’s where I put the Wonder Under pieces.
And one section of the floor, I think the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff down (they get a bit rambunctious sometimes), so I needed to clean that up. Finding floor space in here has been a priority this last month. Two feet at a time, people. Two square feet is all I ask.
I had a ton of fabric to put away, both from the last quilt and from Houston, so I started by stacking by color, because everything in here is stored by color, except for the ones where I can’t figure out what color it is.
That was about halfway through. There were some issues with storage. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I use…it is not enough.
And I found this from a million years ago, from an Ellen Anne Eddy class.
Hand-dyed silk velvet plus thread-painted fetus. You know, like you do. That may still be in here when I die.
So at that point, it was Thursday, and although girlchild does most of the cooking, that means I get stuck with the cleaning (and then she complains that she can’t find anything because I moved it…from the couch to her bedroom), and I also cook a few things and I constantly try to clean up in the kitchen, which drives her nuts, but I can’t stand having to do it all at once.
So this picture is about 10 minutes before dinner is served. She’s making gravy. The fire extinguisher is out because she spilled turkey juices on the stovetop and it got in the box where the controller things are (technical term) and short-circuited something, and for a few minutes, we had loud popping noises and big sparks and electrical fire smoke. So yeah. A typical Thanksgiving…
The wine? Well. Obvious. See fire extinguisher. Especially after loud pops and sparks. And no, it’s not fixed yet. It’s actually not top on my list at the moment. The rest of it works, I got everything cleared off of there because of the fire danger, and I have other things that are more pressing. No really, the sink is completely clogged and getting fixed this afternoon, so I can finally do all the dishes. THEN I will deal with the stove.
Thanksgiving was small this year…just my parents, me, the girlchild, and the ex…
Guess he has decided Brits can celebrate that holiday…food was good, of course…
She makes a mess in the kitchen, tries to set the house on fire, but it always tastes good.
And yes, we’re still eating it. Ex came over last night and took away two platefuls of food. Sent a bunch home with my parents as well. And then we realized girlchild wouldn’t be around next year to cook.
Shit. I think we’re going out. I do cook. I just don’t want to spend that much time cooking for so few people.
Or dogs. I don’t feed dogs people food. Dogs LIKE people food.
Oh yeah. Pie and pi. All good.
Once the food was all eaten and I had cleaned up as much as I could with a nonworking sink, I finished cleaning up the studio (ah, much better)…
Hung the new drawing where I could see it, assumed the background fabric I had would work, and started the next fabric-picking adventure…
I don’t know what YOU do when chock full of tryptophan. I told you I was a bit crazy.
I picked all the stuff on the bottom…
And then started thinking about the fleshy issues…a pile of 7 or 8 bodies that I need to be able to distinguish from each other? Need at least two sets of flesh runs…
Luckily, they’re pretty simple bodies, so I don’t need the usual run of 7 fabrics or so. Although on the right, that’s the run for the main female figure, I think. The stuff on the left was the first of the male bodies.
Friday morning dawned nice and clear, and soccer was first on the agenda…of course.
Girlchild decided to play for another team, because hers didn’t get into the tournament they wanted. Luckily, it’s local, because we have a game a day.
I graded papers (ah, back to reality) and watched her run around and score one goal…
They beat an Alaskan team 5-1. I’m sure that team was a little hampered by the over-80-degree weather. Then I came home and helped dad do some yard things and went and bought two trees with him to block off that big open space that has been there since April? March? Don’t even remember how long. I need to go out there today and dig holes and trim off dead stuff and be a responsible homeowner (my neighbors will be thrilled). And I went to the gym. See, this is where time goes. But at the gym, I wrote…yes, I’m still writing. The story’s still not done. And I finished my book (the one I was reading). And these were good things. And then I traced some more Wonder Under for another piece, a small one that’s been lying around for a good long while…
Of course, technically it has nudity in it, so it can’t go into any of the shows coming up that need smaller pieces. I’m tired of making things FOR something, though, even though I don’t mind the themes that I’ve been in…sometimes you just have to make the stuff you WANT to make. I’m getting a wave of that feeling coming on…strong. I traced this also because I was watching something on Netflix that I couldn’t watch in my studio and I wanted to finish the episode.
Anyway, then back to the studio…where I kept going on the pile of flesh…
Which is taking significantly more time than I usually take, mostly because it’s complicated to figure out what is overlapping where, and to make sure I have all the pieces for that body, and that the fabrics don’t overlap in the wrong way.
After 4 hours of ironing, I am barely in the 200s. The plus is I should finish the pile of bodies today, so it will go faster after that. I think. I hope. Because remember how I said I wanted to be done with the ironing by the time school starts again? And there are two more soccer games? Plus I have to plan for school, because hey, we do have to go back there, despite the scary adrenaline rush I get when I think about it? I calculated grades yesterday from the stuff I had graded so far after break. It’s possible I should just quit teaching right now. I’m an absolute failure.
Sigh. So. And on top of all this, I slammed my finger in the door and I keep reopening the wound (bandaids forever!), a Golden Retriever is currently trying to play ball with me, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it, and the fish at school has probably died because I keep forgetting to go over there and feed it. Girlchild has applied to her first college, boychild got food poisoning on Thanksgiving from something (he did not have turkey dinner), and I’ve been living on deviled eggs for three days (I’m not sure that’s a bad thing).
This time of year just kicks my ass. So I’m going to kick it back by making lots of art. Yup. You can’t stop me.
Here’s Aug(de)mented Reality 2…for some post-turkey amusement…
Hey, so I’m not going to write a lot today because I’m tired and you know what? I’ve already written a lot today. When I finally decided (after two years of having nothing to write about, but WANTING to write) to try NaNoWriMo this year, I thought I’d have to cut back on the blog, but I didn’t. And I finished a major quilt at the same time. And I think I averaged over 5 hours of sleep a night (this is a vast improvement over last year at this time, trust me).
So in late May, this idea for a book started poking at me…a plant/animal hybrid. And what that would look like. And what might happen to it. And being able to make your own FOOD! (which only works if you expose yourself to the sun, I realized as I was writing). And I probably was watching WAY too much X-Files, because of course the government would be involved and not in a good way (I don’t really trust government, which is funny, because technically, as a teacher, I work for the government). The idea niggled and poked and prodded, and finally, sometime in June, I started writing. I wrote about 25,000 words during the summer. I wanted to do more than that. I had a plan of 10,000 words/week, which totally didn’t happen, and once school started…well, sheeet. I barely wrote at all.
So I made a plan, a goal, to do NaNoWriMo, which if you don’t know (and can’t use The Google) stands for National Novel Writing Month, taking place in November, wherein a writer makes a goal to write 50,000 words in a month. OK. I do that, and I almost have a completed book. Sci fi books are usually between 75,000 and 100,000 words. Plus I would need to edit, right? So if I did 50,000 words, I’d be pretty damn close to a full novel. And if I failed, hell, I would still have more words than I did before.
So I set out on November 1st to do the recommended 1667 words per day that gets you to 50K on time. And most days I did that and more. Mostly at night, after dinner, before art time. I had no outline, no plan. I have a Google doc with the original 25,000 words, another one with the words I wrote for this month, and a third one with all the character’s names and details, just so I can remember them without going back through the rest of the story. And I haven’t done that: gone back through. Occasionally I skim through for a specific detail, but I haven’t read the whole thing since August. The doc is called “justwrite” and that’s what I do. I just write. I read the last few sentences from the night/day before and I pick up from there. And a few times, I was so tired that when I read the two sentences from the night before, I didn’t even remember writing them. I think I wrote them with my eyes closed. Or trolls came in and wrote them for me after they carried me off and tucked me into bed.
And it still makes sense as a story. I think. I won’t know until I finish. So yeah. But I did finish the 50,000 words tonight. On November 26. And NaNoWriMo has a little video of some of their staff cheering for you once you validate the word count. And then they cheer again. And again. And again! Because you know why? It’s pretty fucking amazing that anyone would be able to write all those words in one month, a month where they worked their butt off, and went on 5 or 6 hikes, and flew back from Houston, and sat through staff meetings and IEPs and parent-teacher meetings and hours of professional development (seriously, this month, it was fucking hours). And graded papers. And made a piece of art, not a small one or an easy one, but a significant piece of large art. And wrote her blog almost every day. And fought mood swings and cranky uteri and lived in a house with a teenager. I’ve said this before and I will say it again: No Wonder My House Is Not Clean. Do not judge me. Look at what I DID do.
And still. I wrote. I wrote my heart out. My head. My brain. Vomited all over the screen, my fingers going tippity tappity as fast as lightning. My fingers knowing how the story went before my brain ever caught up.
Dammit. I earned this.
Look. I can do things. I can do cool things. And yes, I do have to keep telling myself that.
Sure. I’m going to keep writing this story until it’s done. It deserves to get itself the fuck out of my head. And then I’ll edit it. And the next story, which is already there, lurking, giggling, wanting to be written…I’ll start it too. Oh yeah, and I totally got the T-shirt.
All the words? They need to go somewhere. They can’t stay in my head.
Last Saturday (like 4 days ago), I hiked Morena Butte, which overlooks Lake Morena in San Diego County’s eastern mountains. The hike starts at the Lake Morena campground in a PCT parking lot. We hiked a bit through the campground…you can see the butte rising up in the distance.
The weather was nice, although it felt a bit too warm at times, bordering on the mid-70s (when you’re climbing, that’s warm), but mostly in the high 60s.
Ranchers like to use their own locks…and lots of them…
We started out on mostly road…
Lake Morena is suffering from the drought and has had water drained to fill reservoirs closer to San Diego for resident use, taking the lake down to 4% of what it normally has.
The lake is actually a manmade reservoir, but local residents are not thrilled about the hit to recreation in the area. The boat ramp seems mostly stranded and most of what was lake is now dry.
Here we are further up, still with the butte in the background. Of course, I need to look that word up. BUTTE. An isolated hill with steep sides and a relatively flat top, smaller than a mesa. I wonder what measurements they are using. In this photo, we are standing on the concrete foundation of a house, of which only a chimney and steps remain.
There weren’t many trees along the way…
But there were a few.
Some more alive than others.
This is the view as we start to climb up towards the butte, facing south, with Mexico in the far distance.
Facing north as we climb through the brush.
The clouds were beautiful. Although it was just a bit breezy at first, as the day went on, we got some significant wind up top on the butte. Hence the pretty cloud trails.
Lots of boulders and rocky terrain.
Yup. I’m hot and sweaty. Sign of a good hike. Hell, I’m always hot and sweaty. This is facing east…
And more east…
Facing north…
Ah yes, most of the trail was marked by cairns. Or ducks. Depending on your point of view. This is definitely a cairn. Ducks point the way to the trail. Cairns are just markers. There were lots of them, except when there weren’t, which was when you really needed them. When you’re traipsing across a butte that is mostly stone, the trail gets a bit…um…unknowable.
Wish I could tell you what direction this was…
Still heading upwards…
Finally, we hit the butte. You can see it is mostly rock…
And you try to find the way where your boots will actually stick and not slip.
It is rather a large area to wander…
But quite beautiful…peaceful…
Duck? Or cairn? Hard to say.
Parts of the butte are definitely ice- and water-worn…
And the rock shapes on top are definitely signs that weather has an effect on rock.
On one of the “tops” (there are apparently three), there are these rocky people. The female is a little discombobulated, but the male is rather obvious.
Not a cairn…that is wind and water that has worn that shape in the rocks, which are all still attached to each other.
We picnicked at the top, with a view of what’s left of the lake…which used to fill in most of that brown area…
The view to the southeast, quite impressive.
You can see us all sitting out on the edge, looking east.
Then we traipsed all around, looking for a trail to one of the other peaks on the butte…
To find this plaque on the West Peak…
This is the view from the rock with that plaque, Hauser Canyon going west.
We picked up part of the PCT going back, ending up with 9 miles logged. A stop at Descanso Junction for a late lunch was definitely worth it.
I don’t usually have time for those stops (it ends up being the whole day), but I did because it was the first day of vacation. Good food (awesome burger and draft beer). Yeah, there’s a guy who doesn’t want people to recognize him. Hence the black mask. Whatever. Good times…I want to do this one again. The butte is really kind of a wondrous place, very moonlike, otherworldly. Vernal pools in the rainy season (we had a bit of that, because it had rained on Thursday). Gorgeous views. Definitely worth the time.
I hear the wind blowing. It’s blowing quite heavily at the moment. I considered sweeping leaves up in the driveway this afternoon, because trash pickup is tomorrow and I never finished from last time (weeks ago). Ran out of room in the green recycling bin. But then I thought, what’s the point? I had seen the wind advisory. I knew I’d have a million more leaves by the morning. Better to wait and do it later this week. I don’t like to waste energy on things that need to be done more than once in a short period of time. I don’t have much time.
I don’t know how to feel about today. I don’t know how to feel about most days. Those questions “How are you?” or “How’s [insert name of current project] coming along?” or “How was the hike?”…I don’t know how to answer those. The hike was good, because I was outside and the rocks were really cool, but the last two miles kicked my mental butt, and yet I kept moving, but I’m debating that 14-miler I signed up for, because I’m not sure I can hike that far. Is that what you wanted to hear? Or did you just want to hear “Fine. It was fine.” I can’t answer the “How are you?” at all. I don’t have the words. I could draw it, but we’d be here for a while and you’d be frustrated by my answer. The projects? They’re moving along. There’s nothing I really want to talk about in depth about any of them at the moment. I’m just progressing, moving forward, continuing the process. I don’t know.
NaNoWriMo, for example: I totally forgot to write yesterday. I wrote for a short period while waiting for something, I don’t even remember when, but I only did like 400 words. I’ve haven’t done that few words a day all month. But I was busy yesterday and I got into art-brain mode and I just plain forgot. So this morning, I wrote 2500+ to make up for it. I have a little over 4000 words to go to hit 50,000. And I figured out how to kill off one of the characters. While I was watching David Attenborough’s show Life in the Undergrowth (fascinating, by the way, and kinda creepy), he talked about how ants use formic acid to attack plants and predators, and I had a lightning bolt hit my brain. It’s gonna be SO COOL. OK. I know. This book, it’s just plain weird how it’s inhabited this part of my brain. It’s writing itself. It really is. By Thursday, I will have hit 50,000 words this month, which I think means the book will be at 75,000 words. And I’m in the rising climax part of the book or whatever it is when all the good stuff happens that makes your heart race. I know the book itself won’t be done on Thursday. My goal is the end of the year. Then edit its ass. Then start the next one by next November.
Meanwhile, a car had a brake issue, so it went to the mechanic, my body went to the doctor and we tried to diagnose all my frailties (elbow brace, toenail collection, weird exercises with soup cans and hammers, more blood, changing meds. Holy moly.). I picked up my quilt and the photos. Warned him there was another one coming in December. Heard the story of his dog and cats.
The hardest part…parts…it’s been parts…about this vacation have been my mood swings (down, down, down) and the girlchild’s moods. So moods. The theme for Thanksgiving this year is MOODS. And none of them particularly good. I say everything wrong. I do everything wrong. I get irritated by having to stand in line at the post office to sign for a shirt she ordered (my name on the package, so I have to sign for it, plus she’s not 18), and then she’s out to lunch and at a friend’s for hours, so she doesn’t clean, and because we’re down to one car, she’s texting me to hurry up while I’m in Target trying to do all my errands in one place (I failed at that, by the way). Big Fucking Sigh. This is not fun. I have been on the verge of tears (or just outright crying, let’s be honest) more times in the last few days than in the last month. OK. That might be a lie. It’s been an emotional month. Blame hormones. Blame my thyroid. Blame the fucking moon. I mean, how could they ever have looked at the moon and NOT seen that it was a sphere? I just don’t understand. It so obviously has the sun reflecting off of it in crescent stage. It’s such a beautifully awesome thing. And yet it’s obviously fucking with me.
See. This is how my mind works. It’s on a crazy train.
I guess the good thing is that I worked. I finished tracing all the Wonder Under, despite almost needing to walk out of the living room twice due to girlchild’s intolerance for ANYTHING or ANYONE. (I do live here. I do. I have rights. Inalienable rights.)
It took almost 10 hours to trace this beast. Only 768 pieces, so you know the pile of men really did slow me down. It should have been 8 hours. Julie says I should copy the pile and color code the bodies. She may be right, but I feel like it’s time I don’t have. On the other hand, then I’ll waste the time trying to figure out what piece goes with what body. GAARHHH. Cannot Decide.
I also traced two more birds that were on order…
I’m hoping to finish them by the end of the year as well. By the way, there are three birds that have not sold. I should put them in their own post. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
And then I sat down and started cutting Wonder Under out.
I only did it for an hour, because it was getting late. And some of it is releasing from the paper, which is always annoying. And I need to buy background fabric or decide if what I have in house will work, because inevitably, I will be ready to iron on Thursday and nothing will be open. Must Plan Ahead. And I have to clean house and straighten up my studio so I can tear it apart again, and now I have a window screen AND a screen door with issues, and for every one thing I solve or resolve, two more pop up in its place.
And dammit. I’m still depressed. That’s the only thing to call this blob in my head that keeps raining on my parade. That keeps dragging me into the mud. That keeps eating at my peace of mind. That won’t shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
Knowing that this is not how you want to be? It doesn’t really help make it stop. This war quilt I’m doing, women at war: it’s women at war with their own bodies, with failing uteri and thyroid glands, with fluctuating hormones and clogged ducts and irritated tendons and pus-filled pores; at war with their children and their parents, with people trying to push them into holes, into slots, into places they think you should fit, telling you what to do, how you’re doing it wrong, constantly getting at you; at war with men, the misguided, the nice-guy misogynists (so many of those), the crazies, the assholes, the arrogant, the self-centered, the clueless; at war with society, which is trying to control my parts, my mind, my place in the world. Nature vs nurture. There’s outliers and I guess I’m way the fuck out there. Like in outer space outlier. I’ve never wanted to be easily categorized or explained, but that makes it harder…to just be, honestly. Sometimes it just makes it harder to exist. I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because that’s where I belong. I never meant to be here by myself though. And it’s hard. It’s hard to deal with the girlchild’s drama without any support. I often just want to crawl into bed and never ever come out. Just put the pillow over my head and ignore all of it. Never fucking come out.
I don’t know how many times I have to scream “This is not where I want to be!” before someone hears me.
That’s why I keep these guys around, the furry ones, even though all they did today was sleep, bat at me with claws out, and vomit. I swear I cleaned up more vomit today than I did anything else. It’s just not right.
So this looks like a picture of the girlchild messing with her hair, but look closely.
What is that in the back, in the corner of the couch?
I do not know how to explain the dog.
Then this evening, the scary bitchy cat ventured out again, and this is the closest I’ve ever seen her to any living thing that was not human without her trying to kill it.
It’s not even that cold tonight.
But I had both of them for a while…
It’s hard to cut out Wonder Under with her on your lap, but again…she’s old and I feel sorry for her, so I tolerate a lot. Besides, she didn’t vomit today, so she’s on my good side.
Tomorrow I finish cutting out Wonder Under and hopefully start ironing to fabric. Dammit. That means I need a background. Aargh.
And the song the post title comes from…one of my favorite bands…
So. I’m officially on vacation. I traced Wonder Under Friday night for a little while, but I was exhausted and went to bed early, because I had a long hike early Saturday morning. I get up earlier for hikes than I do for school. It’s a little crazy. But it was a good hike (post later) and we went out to eat afterwards, which I almost never do, because you lose the whole day. But I could afford to lose the whole day because I have a whole week of them off. Anyway. It was good. And I came home and tried to function, but the body and brain were old and tired. Eventually, after the second or third cup of tea and some reading of the book club selection that I had to be done with by today (there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute), I got up and started tracing Wonder Under again…
The fun part (wait, put “fun” in quotes) about tracing this section is that it’s a pile of bodies that are all overlapping, and although I might have tried to be logical about numbering them in the first place, that logic has now left the building, and I am often staring at the pile, trying to find the next piece in number order. Piece 225 took like 10 minutes to find. I don’t know what I was thinking. So the almost-200 pieces in the pile took forever to trace. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it done, so that when I came back to tracing today, it would be straightforward and relatively easy.
The thing is, that pile is gonna kick my ass when I have to pick fabrics out, because overlapping and random behind spaces and I don’t even know what parts go with what body in half of it. Yeah. Way to fuck with yourself, Kathryn. I guess I like a good challenge.
So I’m 4 hours into the tracing and only at piece 287 or so. Like I said, it was a bitch. I have about 5 hours left, I’m guessing, and I’d like to be done today. No really. I would. That might not be realistic though because I still have to go grocery shopping and to book club and to dinner at my parents’ house. Hmn. Are there 5 hours LEFT after all that? So much for vacations, right? That’s why you’re supposed to GO somewhere, so you can relax and stop doing all that other stuff. Then again, I don’t really do anything else right…why start with doing vacations right? It’s a stay-at-home vacation because I can’t afford anything else. I would have loved to have taken the girlchild to NYC, met the boychild there, hung out, got an AirBnB apartment, checked out the city. It would have been cool. It would have been $1500 I don’t have right now. Especially with college apps coming up again.
So we’re here in lovely San Diego, soccer tournament, practices, a couple of hikes, dinner with the close family on Tday. And lots of artmaking. So my plan is to have all the Wonder Under ironed to fabric in a week. Because then school starts back up again and that 3-week stretch notoriously kicks my butt. And then I have vacation again, but only about a week and a half before this next quilt has to be done. So yeah. I need to work hard. Like usual. Like what the fuck is new about that? This is my life. It’s a continuous hard-work endeavor. I’m not always entirely sure what I get out of that. People tell me the art is cool, amazing, etc., but then I just make more of it. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, except that I’m incredibly unhappy when I don’t make it. And there’s enough of that feeling in my life…I don’t need to make more of it. There must be a better balance though.
I did take time out to finish the book for book club. It must have been cold last night because (1) I was wearing polar fleece in the house (lots of windows behind the light table) and (2) the bitchy old-lady cat was in the living room, curled up tight next to me.
Which was fine. Notice the pile of dirty clothes on the floor? Girlchild has some cleaning to do. I’m tired of the slob factor. That’s one goal for this vacation…get the mess under control, at least enough to get me through December.
I wanted to show you where I normally write…
Yup. The computer. The computer desk is a mess. The chair has been scratched all to hell by bitchy cat, who often is sitting on the chair (you can see the top of her head in the picture). Right now, she’s not, but that’s because morning winter sun is over THERE on the table, so she’s curled up over there. Thank god. I can actually sit properly. I’m over 42,000 words on the novel, and I will easily hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and get to the end, whatever that is, by the end of the year or earlier. I’ve already decided no sequel. So I’m writing it that way. I guess I always knew I would. I do have another book started in my head though. Different story, different characters, different location. Still sci-fi though. Not sure what’s up with that.
Here’s Luana Rubin’s review of the two SAQA exhibits at Houston this year…she mentions my piece.
Someday I’ll meet her in person and tell her how to pronounce my name. Or maybe you could do that for me.
Some kind of crazy happened yesterday. I mean, there’s the regular crazy of my job, but then I came home right after work and sat down with a cup of tea and finished the drawing (it took 13 minutes to finish it, by the way, but probably 6 hours to decide how to finish it in 13 minutes). My car tire was having inflation issues again, so I knew I needed to get it some air, but I went to the copy place first and enlarged the drawing, then filled the car with air and gas, then went home and started taping the drawing together. I realized it needed more space below as well as above (I knew about above…there were some leaf-fitting issues…nothing major), so I taped more paper above and below. Girlchild came home and left with the dog. I seriously only see her (girlchild) for like 10-minute sessions, and then she’s gone again. Or I’m gone. Or we’re both gone. And I sort of realized that if I was going to get to quilt class on time, I wasn’t going to be able to finish drawing at the house. So I packed up all the stuff to trace Wonder Under, and I even dropped off my library book on the way there, and I got there and drew the bottom, which I didn’t even know was going to happen until it happened. This is how life is when you let the creative brain have free rein (or is that reign? I could argue both at the moment)…it just does stuff and doesn’t tell you about it. Wow. Just like my relationships. Ha!
Anyway. On track, Kathryn. So then I started numbering, and because of the bizarre penis pileup I have going on in the bottom, it took for-freakin-ever to number that section…
(OK, it’s just a pile of men, not penises) I was trying to be logical about it, but it turns out, you can’t be particularly logical about chaos. I had about 280 pieces numbered when I finished the pile, so I asked the other quilters at my meeting to hazard a guess as to my total pieces. Susan came in at 1500, Jean at 957, Mary at 1267, and Barbara at 850 (mostly because I kept saying it better NOT be over a thousand, but by then, she could see I was up to 400 and something and she was estimating beyond that. So maybe she had insider information by sitting next to me).
So I ended up getting to 749 (oh thank god…I might actually be able to finish it in time)…
But then when I got home (because it took me two hours to finish drawing and then number the piece, speaking of not being particularly efficient), I realized I hadn’t numbered the bullet thingie on her chest, which surely has a real name. Let me ask The Google. Holy crap! It IS a bandolier. I thought it was, and then I thought NOOO. That’s like something fancier than that, like something you wear when you dance or something. Yeah. Anyway. I numbered that and got to 768. Totally doable (crazy ass bitch. Are you NUTS?).
Meanwhile, I did write once I got back. I really wanted to start tracing Wonder Under, but I’m being really good about writing every day, so I did that first. I’m over 38,000 words. I will finish Thanksgiving Day (with the 50,000…probably not with the book) at this rate, which is kinda cool. It’s nice to know I can do it if I have to. I got stymied by some DNA testing terminology, so I just flagged it for future research. Googling stuff like “What’s that thing called when the DNA gets spread out and makes pretty pictures” is not particularly useful when you’re already tired. And it’s not worth spending hours trying to figure out right now.
Then finally…finally I was allowed to go back to the drawing…
Which turned out being bigger than I had planned…as usual. But I think it’ll be OK. It’s longer, but not wider, and wide is the issue in a small gallery. It’s 27″ wide by 45″ high, which is smaller than anything I’ve done for a while. Which is good. Because I only have 6 weeks. I think. Don’t think about it.
Those flying hearts showed up again…
I like them. At the moment. Don’t know why. A metaphor for where I’m at? Who knows. And DNA hand is back.
I didn’t trace a lot or for super long, because it was getting late, but I’m starting! So I think I’m ahead of where I planned to be. Or maybe I’m right where I planned to be. Hard to say.
So the girlchild is sick. It’s two days until a week-long vacation, and I am surrounded by coughy, sneezy, leaves-her-used-tissues all over the house, which the dog then tries to eat, so I have to touch all of them to either throw them away or get them out of the dog’s mouth. And THEN. Then she drinks out of the milk jug, straight out of it, right in front of me, like she doesn’t even care that she’s bombarding ME with all those germs on levels that I don’t even need to consider. Her response? “Um. Sorry? We live together anyway.” She’s like the worst roommate ever. I come home and she’s already left for soccer, and all the clothes she’s worn are all over the floor, and when I come back from the gym, I find her smelly soccer socks, shoes, and shinguards sitting on the couch where I would like to sit and draw, and it reeks.
Bad roommate. Except she’s my blood. I did give her some grief yesterday when she finally came home, but she’s SIIICKKK. Sigh. I guess my plan for break is to be sick as well (pounding vitamins, washing hands as I speak). I don’t have time to be sick. I have two hikes to go on, 13,000 words to write, a quilt to get significantly started. I can’t be sick.
So there’s the drawing. I came home after delivering my quilt to the photographer and I was exhausted. So I tried to read, but fell asleep on the couch (probably I’m getting sick) and woke up to a cat lying on me. It’s a risk in this house. Happens all the time. I only had like 30 pages of my book left, so I finished it (It was good by the way…the last in Lev Grossman’s Magicians series). Then I started trying to draw, and here’s why I don’t keep track of time on the drawings. When it’s not going well, when I’m having a hard time getting it out of my head or solidifying it in there, I just stare at things…mostly at the paper, but also at the TV (Blacklist, James Spader is truly evil in this show, and yet not), or a cat. Or the white wall, annoyed by the fact that I haven’t finished doing things in here, like hanging art. So I did a lot of that. I have “four hours” into the drawing, but I’d bet that only half of that was actual pen or pencil moving on paper. And if you’re going to count the staring-at-the-paper minutes, you should also count the minutes when I’m thinking about the drawing when I don’t have a sketchbook in my lap, and that’s quite a few more hours. So yeah. Pointless measurement there. No real start and stop. Fluid.
But after I made dinner and girlchild finally showed up to eat (and sneeze and cough and moan and leave used Kleenex everywhere), I went and wrote some more story (she’s kidnapped! It happened early! I said 5 PM and then I kidnapped her early! Don’t ask. My brain does what it pleases.), and when I came back to the couch, the snotty thing had gone to bed (without even saying good night) and I was able to do a significant piece of the drawing. Because before that? I was just staring at the paper for a long time.
It is unfortunately not done. That said, I think it COULD be done with about 20 more minutes. I don’t HAVE 20 minutes before school though. And I was going to go copy it after school. SO. I could take it to school and instead of doing grades during prep, I could finish it. And then copy it after school. But I don’t like taking my sketchbook (the big one) to school. It’s just…it’s got stuff in it that the students would be shocked by, and it’s big and hard to hide, unlike the one in my bag. SO. I could just ditch out of school as soon as the bell rings, come home and finish it, and then go copy it. Probably means I’ll be putting it together at class, but I think I can do that. OR. I could stop writing this and go finish it, except mornings are not good drawing times for me. I don’t know why. My brain is primed for late night. Right now, I’m still trying to wake up. Apparently I can write half asleep but I can’t draw. Two different parts of the brain. The rambling wordy bit can vomit shit up all the time. The drawing part needs more caffeine. And wake time.
But this is where I’m at…
Like I said, not much left. Trying to keep it simple so I can actually finish it in time. Yes, the DNA hand showed up again. So did the tree. I really like the pile of people, of MEN. Yup. Standing on Da Boyz. And there’s pencil between her legs because I’m not sure about that part, but it’s there to remind me to think about it. So I guess I really need to wait until the end of the day. Yup. Plus I’m going to have to add to the top and sides a bit so I can put more leaves in. But not much.
Another thing I’m doing, which I had heard about back in September or October, is Coursera. If you haven’t heard of it, they are college classes you can take for free (no credit) or for credit (pay!) that are offered on a wide variety of subjects and from a huge number of participants. A friend (Linda!) emailed me about one she thought I would like about how plants use their “senses.” It sounded interesting, so I signed up for this class taught by a professor at Tel Aviv University, and I’m about three weeks behind starting, but since I’m not taking it for credit (unlike some of the kids in there), I don’t care. I also don’t care that I’m not acing the quizzes, because I’m listening to his lectures while I’m writing the book. And when he says something really interesting or confusing, I flip to the tab running the video and I rewatch that section, and sometimes I take notes (right now, my post-it says “auxin” and “Barbara McClintock”), but mostly I’m just listening for stuff that I could use in the book or that might make some things make more sense. I’m still boggled by this article about plants that can “hear” caterpillars eating them and respond chemically. They recorded the sounds and played them near another plant and it responded in kind. This is awesome science, and helped me write the section where the plant talks to the main character. Yeah, my science is a little out there, but I don’t think it’s as out there as I originally thought.
Anyway. It’s interesting enough and I’ve done two weeks of work in two nights (well, I didn’t do it WELL. I got a D on the quiz, but whatevs. I’m not taking it for reals.).
So. Progress on all levels. And two more days of school to survive. If you’ve never been in a middle school the week before an upcoming vacation, even if it’s only a week off that’s coming up, it’s like there’s a full moon. They wig out all over the place and do amazingly stupid things, because they think it’s not going to follow them after break. Which is only a week long. I’m with them, though. I want to be on vacation too. I just don’t want to be SICK on vacation. Grr. More vitamins. More handwashing.
Well, one thing I’ve got going for me right now is that there is no shortage of projects I’m supposed to be working on. In fact, there are four due within the next 2 1/2 months. Luckily, three of them are tiny, compared to what I normally do, and even the larger one can’t be TOO large. And it’s been in my head for a couple of months, so I actually think I can get it out fairly quickly. I did know that I would have to fit it all on one page. I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but it’s been hard for me to fit anything on a single page. Even those drawings that are mostly on one page seem to need something added once I enlarge it…which isn’t a problem. But when I know I need to make what is for me a smaller piece because the show has a lot of people and the gallery isn’t very big, it means I have to THINK about size. I don’t usually think about size.
So before I could even deal with the drawing last night, though, I had to get my hair cut, mostly because I couldn’t get a comb through the ends. I wanted to do it in October, but financially, October was a major issue. Timewise as well, so I finally got there yesterday. It’s silly, because I guess I could have chopped it all off myself, but Rebecca does a much better job (duh. She is trained.). I have learned over the years that there are I things I CAN do (like my own quilt photography), but it’s stupid when others can do it better and I can pay them a reasonable amount to do so. My photographer also…I gladly let him do what he’s good at, so I can do more of the stuff that I’m good at. And it’s remarkably silly how nice a good haircut feels. I don’t get a lot of the good feels.
By the time I finally got home (had to pick up ex-husband because his car is in the shop again), I was tired, but I forced myself to the gym. I wrote the novel on the bike; got about 450 words written in 25 minutes (so that’s 18 words a minute), which means I’ve spent over 55 hours writing this book so far. No wonder I don’t sleep. That’s not 55 hours this month…I started in June, but it is 30 hours so far this month, which is about an hour and 3/4 each day. Wow. Really? Someone check my math. I’m not meditating at the moment by the way. I often write, though, while I’m doing something else. But still, wow. I work full time as a teacher, I exercise, I cook real food, I apparently sleep, and I write almost 2 hours a day. Plus art.
So after all that and eating dinner, I wrote…see above…over 34,000 words and a step closer to the violence. It’s 1:15 PM in the afternoon of the day when all the shit hits the fan. Some shit just hit, but we don’t really know what it means yet, and when I say “we,” yes, I’m including me, because my brain hasn’t written that part yet. It will tonight. Seriously. I rarely know where I’m going with this story until I get there. I’m hoping it all holds together, but I realized last night that I had one character bifurcating in the story (no, she really can’t be in two places at once…it’s sci fi, but not THAT sci fi.), so I’m sure editing will need to tighten up some details.
Then I ironed the new quilt for the photographer and dehaired it and prepped it…
I have to cover it so it doesn’t get more cat hair, but also because my car has dog hair in it from Calli riding in there, so I usually make a plastic bag covering. Yes, some people buy bags especially for this, but I’m not like that. Plus I spent all my money on my haircut (not really…but teenagers are really expensive). This morning I decided to roll it with the front out, because I know it will sit in the car all day, and I don’t want it to get wrinkled. I’ll drive it to him after school, he’ll take great pictures and charge me not very much at all, and I’ll happily go back and get it when he’s done. It’s like magic!
And then I’ll spend the next two weeks trying to come up with a name for it, because it needs a fucking name and the one I came up with yesterday really does reference the Adam and Eve thing, and I don’t actually want to reference that…because that’s not what it’s about. It’s interesting that there is a reference to that story, but it’s not about that story.
And then at maybe 11:30 PM, I finally sat down in the living room (it took 10 minutes to find my sketchbook, which in itself is sad) and started drawing. I have to admit that I was tired at that point, and I kept trying to Google images that would help my brain, like “woman standing with gun belt” and “arms akimbo.” Seriously. That was a thing. I finally gave up (my internet was cranky) and just started drawing.
I have to admit that I did a rough pencil sketch first of where things needed to go because they needed to fit on the page, and that’s one of my issues: fitting things on the page. And I’m not sure about either hand. But I can always redo those parts. And no, I didn’t get very far. I was tired. I actually went to bed at a reasonable hour. No, not really. But reasonable for me.
Oh yeah, and the total for the Quilt That Has No Name Yet was 101 hours and 33 minutes (yikes!). Not a small or easy beast, but a nice beast nonetheless.
Tonight? Finish the drawing, rush over to Fed Ex before they close so I can enlarge it, and come back number it, so I can start tracing at class tomorrow. Yes. It DOES sound crazy. Why do you ask?
Hey. Shhh. Over here. C’mere. Hey. (It’s done. The quilt. I finished it. Really. I did.)
Sigh. Started numbered the drawing September 6. That’s the first official time I take usually; sometimes I keep track of the taping, if it seems bad, but this one got taped and then drawn on the full-size, and I don’t keep track of drawing time. Finished November 17. I guess you could argue finished November 18, because it was after midnight, but I don’t consider it the next day until I’ve gone to sleep and woken up again. Completely arbitrary? Well yeah. I got a late start on the binding yesterday, because I had to meet the girlchild at the sports store to buy her soccer gear after school. I got home (completely exhausted by then) and decided (because I was braindead with exhaustion) that I should paint right away. Something about the paint drying before I started sewing and having more brain power then than later, for some quantity of “MORE”.
The real problem with the painting is that I have a ton of fabric paints, but most of them have dried up, being old, and I really should open every jar and toss anything that’s unusable. But if I had done that, I wouldn’t have been able to paint last night…so I didn’t.
I managed to mix something very close to the lighter color of the briefcase. Took me a while to get it, but I did.
I never took a picture of the bleed through, which is too bad, because it was pretty bad there. Less so in other places. (Must train self to wash with Retayne) Just trust me…there was a swath of blue across the light brown…
And now there isn’t. What a relief.
I used colored pencils and a little bit of paint on a couple other bits that had issues…
But otherwise, I left it there to dry while I moved money and calculated college costs, then cooked dinner and texted the boychild back and forth for an hour. He has snow on and off and ice and cold and rain and cold. Frozen hair (he has a lot of hair). I send him videos of his cat being a brat and he sends pictures of puppies and kittens and long dense sentences out of his essays that I then have to try to make sense of out of context.
Then I wrote a few thousand words where my main character communes with her bad plant self.
And then I sewed binding, poking holes in my fingers again. I don’t do well with thimbles. Put them on and then avoid that finger. It’s like my brain thinks there’s something wrong with the thimbled finger and tries to protect it, so it uses another finger. I debated whether I could finish last night…I had one whole short side, most of a long side, and then two sleeves.
I had one of my trusty companions.
There was another one, but she kept licking the stitching hand, so she got pushed off. I sewed for almost two hours and it was done. Please don’t ask when I went to sleep. It was entirely too late. It probably shows in my face today. But I’m done. Deep breath. I’ll have to total the hours later, because I have a parent meeting this morning. But the trimming and binding was almost 8 hours total and there was about an hour of painting and coloring. Not a small number of hours…and basically I did it in a little over 2 months. During the school year. Yup. Crazy. My hand is sore this morning from the sewing.
The next one? I only have 6 weeks. Ha! But I also have 3 weeks of vacation in that time, so I’m hoping that helps. And it needs to be smaller. So I should probably draw fewer pieces. I’m already at war in my head with this one (ironic, since it’s for a show about women and war). Drawing tonight hopefully. Also need to dehair and pack quilt for photographer…see, if you set up the photo appointment, then you HAVE to finish it. Minor issue: it has no name. I had one pop into my head just now, but I don’t know if I like it. And the boychild would argue it only deals with the traditional genders, which is true. I wasn’t having trans v cis issues, just the standard man v woman in society issues. There are two blogposts on this that I’ve been writing on and off for months. Maybe they will surface in the next week, along with my report from Houston. Maybe.
Kathy Nida 