Dyar Springs Hike

I picked last Saturday’s hike because of my knee…it was supposed to be about 5 1/2 miles with very little elevation gain/loss. The knee doesn’t like going downhill at the moment. So we went out to Dyar Springs in the Cuyamacas. I’m always amazed by how many hikes there are out there. I’ve been on so many hikes out there and there are always new ones.

It’s a typical California landscape…

I always imagine native people hundreds of years ago tramping across the landscape and what they would see.

It’s August, so it’s warm even in the mountains…it hit the 80s really quickly.

Some of this area had been hit by the fires over the last 10 or so years…but also bugs have killed some of the trees…

But those rolling, brown, grassy hills are what I see in my mind’s eye when I think of MY California…

With pines in the distance or oaks…

There was wildlife…a California horned toad (aka a horned lizard)…cute little creatures, aren’t they?

And a stick insect…

He had some plant life tangled around his head? Is it a HEAD? We tried to pull it off, but he wasn’t having it. Fought it the whole way. Don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of these in the wild. Belongs on WTF Evolution.

We hiked off trail a bit for some reason. I don’t remember what.

And then back towards the springs.

There wasn’t much in the way of springs…mostly mud. We stopped for lunch here, near these oak trees and rocks.

Those old California oaks are part of my sense of home too…

There weren’t a lot of flowers around this late in the season…

And some of the trees looked a little worse for wear…

Hard to know if they’re still alive sometimes, especially at this time of year…

This was the view back the way we’d come…

And here’s where we set up our potluck picnic…

Lots of good food and debating how many calories we’d burned so far and how many more we’d have to burn after eating everything that was laid out for us.

The path back was that typical mix of grass and trees…

Mountains in the distance…I think that’s Stonewall Peak to the left.

More dead trees from the fires…

Some monuments to the destruction that keeps this area alive.

And then? Strangely? A patch of watermelons. No water to be seen around. No reason for them to be there…WAIT! My loyal reader Julie (who is a bit of a native plant expert, certainly more than I am) tells me this is calabazilla (which is the funnest name around), aka buffalo gourd or more interestingly stinking gourd (glad we didn’t figure out why). It has a great Latin name, for sure: Cucurbita foetidissima. I’m always looking for the word foetid involved with food.

We kept hiking…

It was good. It was peaceful. It was 7 3/4 miles instead of 5 1/2. Oh well. And there was dirt and mud and I sunburnt the BACKS of my knees (nope, didn’t even think to sunscreen those). And my knee hurt briefly…but that’s it. Good.

Managed

I spent pretty much all day on a soccer field today, which explains the dehydration, the sunburn (despite multiple applications of sunscreen and the use of an umbrella), the 65 pictures of soccer playing, and my mood in the evening. Girlchild can be difficult to manage when she’s hot, tired, sweaty, etc., and all of those things happened today. I weathered most of it, but it wore me down, and by the end of the day, there wasn’t any strength left in me.

I had some moments of depressoidness today, moments when it was quiet and I wasn’t distracted enough from the inner workings of my disturbed little mind, the bit that keeps nattering on about all the things I’ve done wrong and how none of them will ever be right…you know, the standard depression fare.

I spent the hour before the first game and part of that game writing…writing this weird-ass science fiction story that just spills out of me when I turn it on, sputtering like a barely used faucet, words flowing out in big gouts of semi-literate paragraphs. I wrote about 1500 words in that hour plus. We’re out of the woods and back into the city, storywise. It’s good.

OK. I don’t actually know if it’s good. I’m just writing until I’m done, and then I’ll put the editor hat on and go back in and kick its ass. Then and only then will I read it for story. Actually, I’ll probably let other people read it then. It could really suck. Who knows.

The team lost the first game. It was very hot out there. The picture above, the girl on the other team was hooking her arm through the girlchild’s elbow, and when the girlchild swung her around as she got the ball, the other girl tried to get the ref to call a foul. He did. On her. BOOM. We then spent an hour in a chilly Panera. Much nicer, except for all the noisy people. I read. I wrote a little more. We went and bought water. I got yelled at, but not seriously.

Then we sat on the field waiting for game number two. Still hot. Sleepy. Napped a bit. Read. This is where the brain started wandering. It started thinking about life a few years ago and what it was like and all the stuff I’m missing and that I’ll never have again and trip! There you are. In the damn hole. Drag yourself back out. Tell yourself to be in the fucking moment. Watch the weird seed pods floating balletically (it is TOO a word) across the soccer field, feel the (ultra) warm breeze waft across your face (and dry your eyes out). Deep breaths. Traffic on the south Interstate 5 is finally clearing up, so we might get home in a reasonable time frame. POSITIVE FUCKING THINKING BABY.

Then girlchild made a goal, which was good, because she is more likely to be in a decent mood if she is successful at something (shocker, that. Must be genetic.). The photo above is right before the goal…she actually had to kick it past the goalie and then come around with her left foot and bend it (not like Beckham) into the goal. Which she did.

I stitched during the second game. Not a lot. I really wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes it all seems very pointless.

I talked to people. I tried to be sociable. I tried to shut up the bad parts of my brain with all the wondrous seed pods and warm breeziness. SIGH. And then I got yelled at in the car on the way home. So I turned the music up and cried a bit all the way home.

And after dinner, after I heard the litany of why girlchild is so stressed, which I can’t possibly understand (seriously, she said that), I decided to do what I wanted. Yes, I’m fully aware that school starts in four days and my house is a disaster and my lesson plans are questionable. I know all of that. I also know that BALANCE is what I need and that means the only really good thing I learned last year is that even if I am so depressed I barely function, I can do my job and come home and make some sort of art every night and I will survive. So I should keep doing that part. I should not bury myself in my job, because although it can be very fulfilling, it also sucks my soul out of my body and spits it out in a sewer. Art? Not so much. It tends to be much kinder. It is a better place to be.

I’ve got 5 birds to get done by September 1. Well, two birds HAVE to be done by then…here’s the first, another one of the doves…

I pulled the original picture up on the iPad, but couldn’t figure out what fabrics I’d used, so I winged it.

Because there’s a shortage of fabric in my room? Yeah. I didn’t think so.

The dove and a new version of the diving bird will be at the Fence/Barda exhibit that I’m involved with at Art Produce Gallery in North Park (San Diego), which opens September 13.

Both will be for sale at that venue…which means I need to finish them slightly differently and not spend too much time on them, because I don’t get all the money.

I got this one cut out too, but it should already have a home…

Two more to do tomorrow. I did this one slightly differently too. Can’t always find the original fabrics. Lots of fabric in here.

Anyway, I think I fought off most of the depressoid stuff…at least, if I go to bed now, I have a good chance of leaving it here instead of bringing it to interrupt my sleep, which is what happened this morning. I could have used the extra hour of sleep, but no…my brain does not allow it. Anyway. I’m trying. Know that I’m always trying.

I Will Not FedEx Your Underwear

Parenting. Is sometimes one of the weirdest experiences. After a series of texts this morning where I tried to explain to my daughter that I was busy trying to get ready for school and deal with life tasks, I ended up (giving up and) driving to her dad’s house and delivering a check, her mascara, and a pair of underwear. Seriously. He seemed to think she had underwear there but didn’t want to look for it. And I’m wondering if in a year from now I will be FedExing her a check, mascara, and a pair of underwear to college. Because that won’t be happening. I’m making that clear right now. (Just so you know, girlchild doesn’t read the blog. Occasionally she skims for pictures, but that’s it. And if she knew I was writing about her underwear issues, she would scream at me. Then again, she screams at me for a lot of things and I basically don’t hear it any more. I’ll get screamed at later for something else I’m sure, and since I’m the parent in charge of soccer this weekend, because her dad has another team going to another faraway tournament, the screaming will probably make me cry at some point this weekend because I’m not in a great mental space and then she’ll get upset about that and and and. So the underwear comment is the least of my worries.)

While I was there, ex and I had a discussion of the boychild’s imminent departure for college (less than a week now) and how unprepared he seemed to be to actually FLY out of here (with his dad, who seems similarly unprepared). And now I have to make a list for them so they know what to do when they get there. 1. Find room. 2. Find all the boxes and books that are all over campus that we’ve shipped out there to make sure he has bedding and textbooks and maybe even clothing. 3. Get him anything else he needs. 4. Don’t text me, don’t call me, don’t panic and freak out. Deal. Am I allowed to put that on the list?

Because it’s not like I’m starting school next week guys. It’s not like my room’s not an utter epic-fail disaster at the moment because of the kamikaze destruction I had to do at the end of the school year so the summer school special ed classes could SAFELY be in a science room. I don’t know where anything is. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I can’t focus on any of it.

So yesterday, I did the online stuff I was supposed to do to “train” me for using tech in my classroom (cough cough. not helpful.) and then went down to my classroom and did that crazy thing I always do, where I start one endeavor (empty boxes, unlock cupboards) and then like a squirrel enticed by a nut stash, I quickly switch to another task, and then while doing THAT task, another job rears its ugly little head, so I start that, and then I wander back over to the first one again, until I sit down somewhere, put my head in my hands, and wonder if I might make a good barista. Or a wonderful gas-station attendant. Or perhaps a bagger at the grocery store. These seem like worthy tasks. I might feel more successful. I might be less crazy.

Then after I finally gave up and started driving home, I notice movement from the car next to me at the stoplight. It’s one of my former students (a real jerk that year) waving at me. I roll my window down, music blasting, tell him his music isn’t loud enough and wave back. Take off when the light turns green. He’s on Clash of Clans with me (except he doesn’t know it’s me) and reports a Nida sighting.

Fuck me. This job will alternately save my life and drag me under.

And you wonder why the meditation and exercise are so important to me. OK, maybe you don’t wonder that.

I did exercise yesterday, after I found and ordered the rest of the boychild’s textbooks (he was here…he’ll have to do it himself in December or whenever he signs up for the next lot. Like a good teacher, I have now provided direct instruction and modeled best behaviors. He can now do guided instruction by texting me his questions while he’s trying to order for next semester. And hopefully by next year, he will have graduated to independent practice and I will just be the one paying the bills.). And then I came home and stared at the things I needed to do and I picked the ones that hurt least. The ones that gave me the most peace of mind. The ones I could handle the best.

Because my brain was slipping back into that depressoid place. It was quiet here last night, third night running with no one but cats. Hours of silence and no interaction with anyone but the chick at the gym who scanned my card and the guy who handed me my dinner. “Hot sauce?” “Yes please.” He’d already put it in there. I only go there once a month…it’s all I allow myself…but he knew I wanted the hot sauce. Thirteen hours of silence.

I worked on the binding for the big Menopause quilt, which is almost done…

And I cut out all the Wonder Under for the 5 birds that need to be done by the end of the month.

Actually, I have leeway on three of them and none on two of them, and they have to be a certain price, so I will be shortening up some time on those two to make them hit that price in my head. Plus there’s a gallery commission on them. So they won’t have a hand-stitched binding. I’ll satin stitch the edges. Much faster.

But I”m almost at the point where I can call the photographer on the two big quilts I will have finished this summer, and then I need to really really really get my butt in gear on the next big one. Maybe tonight I will work on that, or iron the birds down to fabric. I’m stuck on soccer fields all weekend (actually, if I’m lucky, we’ll have Sunday afternoon free) and then school takes over my life. School and soccer.

There are so many things that need to be done and I just don’t feel like I can handle all of it. So I make a list and start crossing things off of it. It’s the only way to survive this type of shit. Right now, my list consists of: 1. find my watch 2. take meds 3. make more tea (you need it) 4. go to school and make it happen. I can’t get beyond number 4.

OK. Going to look for the watch.

Because It Has to Be…

So I hiked last night. I think it will be very difficult for me to pull these hikes off during the school year, though…the mid-week after-work hikes? I didn’t get home until 9:30 and then cooked dinner and laid around like a sloth for a while, which is what you do after a 5- to 6-mile hike at the end of a long day, and then I did some more stuff on the floating house, but it really sucks hours out of your day. Three hours just gone. And I’m gonna need those hours. Sigh.

We did Iron Mountain again…

It’s a nice hike. Not too hard. Harder coming down in the dark. We led a Swedish team of kids down (actually, although I was in front, I led no one…Gail had to tell me where to turn, because I suck at that).

It was beautiful at the top. We ate snacks and talked and watched the sun drop below the marine layer and the colors reflecting off the mountains and clouds to the east.

Every time I get to the top of a peak in San Diego County, I look out and see this beautiful undulating, rocky landscape that is home. Maybe I need to put mountains on my floating house (shit. I don’t think I have the right colored organza for that). The surrounding landscape is home too. Living in the UK for a year, it never felt like home. It was too green and verdant, and although it was undulating (I was in Wales), it wasn’t very high or rocky. It was hills with sheep cavorting across them. It didn’t take long to climb to the top of anything. You were never very far from sea level.

And I tried to figure out last night, Why Hiking? What is it about putting the pack on, pulling 720 foxtails out of your boots from Saturday’s hike (seriously, I am not kidding), slathering deoderant on so you don’t smell too bad, stomping up a steep slope in the late-afternoon August heat, into the cool shade of the back side of the mountain, shading your eyes from the low-slung sun as you come around the corner facing west, summitting the peak, taking your pack off so the sweat drenching the back of your shirt can dry before heading down, thinking the downhill might never end, slipping a bit because you’re hiking in the dark, blinded by the lights behind you that splash your giant silhouette across the trail in front of you. And you don’t have dinner waiting, you barely ate all afternoon, you had a handful of peanuts and two grapes and five carrots at the top. And you come home covered in dust and needing to shower, sweaty to the core despite the cool night breeze for the last half of the hike. Why do this? What does it bring? There is this sense of accomplishment, of survival sometimes on the longer/harder hikes, this mental rush from the adrenaline, the serotonin release, and it makes you turn up the music LOUD on the drive home and you feel all I Am Strong for a while, and then the rush slips away and you are sad. Because there is no dinner waiting; there is only silence. And yeah, you did it. Good. You will strengthen this body and make sure it lasts as long as possible. This is one reason why you hike. And you hike so you actually TALK to people in the evenings or Saturday mornings, because otherwise the silence overwhelms you. But that feeling doesn’t last. It’s not sustainable. And that is the depression talking. It always has a cord around your neck, pulling you towards the hole, and when you are tired from the hike and you haven’t eaten yet and the thought of cooking something is already exhausting, then that cord can pull you back down really easily.

I came home and meditated while dinner was cooking. Jake, the German Shepherd, was not very respectful of my meditation time and kept plopping toys into my lap (I had left him alone all day). Tired won for a while. I worked on the house after professional development yesterday, before the hike…

I started the veins on the other side of the house…I run the stitching line first and then trim…

And then I put a second layer on top. Because if you’re using organza, you should overlap it.

And I’m not sure I like it at the moment. I liked it last night, but today I’m not so sure. I have some other stuff that needs to go on it. But I may just leave it hanging there for a bit to get used to it. Maybe. And I have another idea for something I want to do, but I’m supposed to be simplifying my life, right? So it doesn’t overwhelm me right as school starts?

It looks so different in artificial light…

I just don’t think that’s in my nature. Simplifying. I mean, maybe on some level, because last year, I worked really hard to streamline stuff so I wouldn’t have to bring so much work home, and I think that worked, but…reducing the amount of time I’m in the art mode? Or the number of things I work on? That doesn’t seem healthy. I know I cause more stress to myself by taking on artistic projects, but these are also the things that keep me functioning. They keep me from falling into that hole and staying there. Even though I’m barely out of the hole, hanging on by my fingernails, slipping back down on a regular basis, at least I’m mostly out. And that’s the art. The hiking might help a little, but it’s the art that sustains me.

Anyway. Back to school again today and tomorrow. In the old days, I would have fought it more, stayed away longer, but in the old days, I had more that was at home that sustained me and kept me recharged. I don’t have any real rechargers any more. I don’t feel like summer has given me the break I need to start a new year of teaching, but I think it will be OK. It will be different, and I don’t know what that different will look like, and I’m sad about some parts of it and excited about others, but I also know at the end of every day, I can come home and draw or sew or cut up pieces of organza and hang them from a coathanger in some crazy-ass desire to express what home is. And for now, that is enough. Because it has to be.

Building an Ephemeral House…

Exhaustion kicked my butt yesterday. Something about spending all day in a workshop about culturally responsive classrooms when you already know how to do that and what it looks like. Isn’t my masters degree in cross-cultural hoohaw? Yup, there’s some official title there, but I can’t remember it. I feel like there was a lot of eye-rolling and No Duh moments. Plus I was doing it on 4 hours of sleep. Troubled sleep. Almost killed the alarm clock with my sword, I did.

I did manage a kamikaze run through Walmart (no one goes there this time of year without fear in their hearts) and swore at their self-checkout machine, which kept telling me there were UFOs in the bagging area (no, you idiot…those are the bags I’m filling. They are meant to be there.), and then came home and attempted art.

I’m really not sure how I feel about it. I’m obviously messing around and there’s some feeling/picture/UFO? in my head that’s guiding all this…

I’m stitching vein lines on the sides…from certain lighting angles, the red looks really freaky…

And then it almost fades away. So then I’m cutting around the stitching lines.

I have a pile of bits and pieces…

Using wire and fabric and thread…wire cutters, needle-nosed pliers, scissors, pins. A little different than my normal stash of materials. Organza. Fucking loosey-goosey stuff. Anyway. It doesn’t require much thought because I’m just fucking around with this idea of home, what is home, what does home look like and feel like, is home a good thing, is home a solid thing (well, obviously not to me, eh?). The show is about the border fence, about these fences we put up to keep people in or out (hell, you should see my fence at the moment. I’m trying very hard to let the sides down occasionally to let people in, but it’s really hard, because even that makes things hurt more. I’m really tired of the hurting, I have to tell you. It’s just so never-ending. I’m staying away from the word relentless. It’s a bad word. It’s a hurtful word. It’s a word I will have to carry around in my heart forever now, I think. Long story. I know.). ANYWAY. Houses floating over the border, the fence. Birds. I’m not sure the bird group has explained the significance of the birds to me! I guess I don’t have to understand the whole exhibit to understand the little piece I’m doing.

I went out to dinner last night with mom because everyone else is in Arrowhead, and came back needing to exercise off the million calories, but Babygirl was hogging the bike.

Yes, I have an exercise bike in my living room. It gets used almost every day by me or the girlchild. And now, apparently, the elderly cat. Jake’s here, my ex’s rambunctious German Shepherd, so I think she didn’t feel safe on the floor…like this is out of his reach? Midnight was smart and moved to the top of the light table. Jake is NOT smart and has had his nose bopped by everyone but Midnight. She disturbs him by wrapping herself around his legs and ignoring his attempts to nose her to death. She is not scared of dogs. The other two are…well, not of Calli, because she doesn’t even notice them. But Jake is a cat chaser, or at least he would be, if they would run and stop bopping him on the nose. Then he looks at me, all confused. “Aren’t I supposed to chase cats?”

Anyway, more professional development to suck my brain out today. We are in Positive Behavior Interventions today…which my mother commented on, “Why would you want to intervene if they’re behaving positively?” thus proving that teacher PD is a waste of time (most of the time…I’ve had a few, all science-related, that were not). OK the real name is Positive Behavior Supports…and I’m the smartass who wants to know WTF to do with the kids who don’t respond to these supports. I have so little faith these days. The afternoon session was about behavior with technology in the classroom, which actually was helpful.

More about this Robin Williams’ thing that came up on the way to school, after I’d read a few more articles about his death (not on purpose…it just happened): The thing about really cool people killing themselves is that you know for sure that you will never be as cool or amazing as Robin Williams and he couldn’t keep himself going. So when you’re having a hard time getting out of bed or off the couch, something like his suicide can really rock you; it can trigger even more feelings of depression and uselessness and lame-i-tude (it is TOO a word). I came home after yesterday’s class and read The Bloggess’ post from January about depression and it just made me cry…and then laugh…and then cry. And turkey butlers! There is a community out there that supports you when this shit is in your head, when you’re down in that hole. Use it. Cry if you need to. Take a damn nap. Eat a piece of cheesecake. Or don’t eat it. Exercise (I did kick the cat off the bike). Draw. Watch shitty TV…or really good TV. Just don’t do what he did.

With that in mind, I’m gonna stitch those veins for a while as I watch bad television, while getting ready for a night hike…sunset at the top of the mountain and then back down in the dark. And I’ll think about the bit of news I got today that threw me back in the hole, although not very deep, because I realized it wasn’t a really bad horrible thing like someone dying of cancer, but a smaller sad thing that was disappointing, yes, and a downer, yes, but not the end of the world. I’m just so much more likely to cry when I’m sad these days, so it seems like a bigger thing than it is. It’s OK to be sad when there is a loss or an unhappy change. Then take a deep breath and move on.

If I tell myself that, it becomes easier to actually feel that way.

You’d Think…

Sometimes it’s good to let the brain wander down new streets for a while…to let it consider other ways of thinking, of making, of creating. I have one art group I’m a member of where I am often doing this meandering down avenues I wouldn’t normally frequent. Which is why tonight found me wiring two coathangers together and handstitching organza on top…

No really. I’m building a floating house of sorts and this is the picture in my head.

Or at least, this is part of the picture in my head. There’s more. Again, though, the quickie painters kick my butt. The people in my group who just spend an hour or so on a painting? I’m so jealous. Everything I do is so time-consuming. I’m over an hour in and nowhere near done. I have some time on this one though, a couple of weeks. This is for a show about the border between the US and Mexico, and we’re working with a group of female Mexican artists. My house is ephemeral. Maybe. We’ll see what it really looks like in the end. This is just the base layer. I’m handstitching it to the wire and coathangers and then there will be more layers and more handstitching and those worry dolls I ordered. Maybe some writing as well. We’ll see. I’m just glad I finally got started, so some of the image can get out of my head and into reality. The head was getting crowded. Too many ideas in there.

I also traced the five birds I need to do next…

Three are commissions and the other two are for the same exhibit as the house. They will be for sale at the exhibit or afterwards. Girlchild picked the additional two…some of that was based on size, since they need to fit into a particular shape.

Midnight was very helpful.

Not. She is known for taking bites out of drawings that are on the light table. She was also watching bad television. And reminding me that I still need to hang the TV and sort out the technology storage and put shelves up for the books. And then hang art. Because I’m not stressed out enough at the moment about getting things done.

Have I told you that I have no idea what day it is? I really don’t.

The reason I finally got going on the birds and the house was because I managed to trim the big quilt yesterday…

Aug 11 14 001 small

It’s not as straight as I’d like…the image, that is. The rectangle is in fact rectangular and not a parallelogram. Although I did consider a different shape. But in the end, I figured it was fine…

Although I would have liked the head to the left a bit…oh well. When you look at the whole thing, it’s not a problem. I see it, but most people won’t. Of course, now I’ve told you about it, so when you see the official photographs, you’ll be all judgmental, just like me.

When I bought the binding fabric, I saw some great reds for heart colors…

I actually had an idea for a quilt of a huge heart. Because I don’t have 17 quilts ahead of that one. I entered another show today and did some research for the next batch of shows, what can be in and what can’t kind-of-thing, whether it’s subject matter or size or date completed that causes the issue. I actually said out loud that if I didn’t get into one of the two big shows I’m entering, then that’s it, I’m done. No more quilts.

Yeah right. I know. Not gonna happen. But it is discouraging to have rejection after rejection for months on end, especially when you know the stuff you’re making is bang, in your face, detailed and amazing. You wonder where it belongs. You wonder if you will ever find a place where your life’s work belongs. It doesn’t have to be in a tribe of likes or anything…just to belong. I realize it has to fit into the shows I enter. Maybe that is the core problem, the fitting-in.

I got the binding sewn on last night, super late.

I used a lighter background fabric for once, so you can see the outlining.

I got everything pinned down and started stitching it down last night. Had a hard time going to sleep. Brain was racing around like a crazy car…

So I stitched for a while. There aren’t enough waking hours in the day to get everything done. I’d rather be awake and making art than sleeping. That’s probably not healthy, but it is where I’m at at the moment. At at.

This, by the way, made me inordinately sad.

To realize how much pain he must have been in. He was so great in Mrs. Doubtfire, and also in Dead Poet’s Society…in everything. At some point, I guess, it no longer matters that you haven’t read all the books or seen all the movies. I joke about not killing myself because my Netflix queue is too long or I don’t know if Arya will survive George R. R. Martin. I can’t possibly die not knowing that. I am not the suicidal type, at core, so that helps, but have experienced the depths seriously enough to feel an electric shock when I hear of someone who seemed like he had it all together and thought this was a solution. Look at that face. I’m very sad. My whole household was sad. Well, except for the cats, and that’s because they are just clueless assholes.

(I just had to get up and go look for Babygirl, because I realized I hadn’t seen her in a while…she’s an old lady and sleeps a lot. I found her in the dining area, deeply asleep on the floor.)

By the way, the girlchild’s friend who gave her the Frozen soundtrack? I hate you. You bitch. But it was amusing to walk past her bedroom as she was packing for their trip to Arrowhead and hear the music blasting and seeing the boychild (who spent 2+ hours with me today negotiating shipping boxes to New York, ordering textbooks from multiple sites, trying to figure out his mailing address, and trying to open a bank account, and finally walked out and handed me his phone, saying he wasn’t going to watch it for a phone call) sitting on her floor untangling all of her bracelets and necklaces, and when I asked him why, he said the knots offended him. He leaves in 10 days. Sad. I think he might miss us. I know we will miss him. Greatly. He tells me he won’t answer his phone if he doesn’t recognize the number. I suggested he might have to get over that in the next few weeks. Damn. Sending your oldest off to college, knowing they will only barely come back, that this is the line between childhood and adulthood, that now it’s his life and not his life as my child. That is just so difficult. More so knowing that he provides me with a level of sanity that I otherwise don’t have. I’m rewriting my life as I sit here. I don’t know what it will look like any more than he knows what his looks like.

I finally managed to break through the writer’s block that was stifling me the last 10 days on the science fiction novel I am apparently writing. Yes, it still surprises me that I am doing this, but I am definitely doing it, and already have a core outline for book 2, which is not related…or is it? Hard to say. I was stymied by the science at one point and kept thinking myself into this hole of wanting GOOD science, but not having a strong enough background to write it well. So I wrote a paragraph that was extremely vague and then, because I’m using Google Docs, wrote a comment telling myself to add a bunch of good science here, once I have a chance to chase down a source of said information (I think I need to pick someone’s brain, a plant geneticist or something like that), and even wrote “blah blah blah” at the end of one sentence, and then actually typed, “Add good science here.” And then? Then I could jumpstart the story again (although now I need a gun consultant, dammit), and it wrote another 1000 words all by itself without my even trying very hard. I think that’s the goal. Get the core story out and then go back and fix all the shit I don’t really know yet. Like people’s names…although the three core players in this section all have names. I still have a main character named Dr. Blank, though. Not good.

Anyway. Unfortunately, the rest of my week is full of school stuff, mostly professional development. I’m taking the iPad so I can work on the book if it’s boring (it usually is), and hopefully I’ll get the binding on that big quilt done this week so I can call the photographer, plus get the birds in gear and make a bloody floating house. The kids are gone for a few days to Arrowhead with their dad and grandpa. I get to house Jake, the amazingly large and overly friendly German Shepherd who belongs to my ex but really loves me more…plus clean up vast amounts of cat puke and negotiate a houseful of silence…which honestly might be a joy after three days of teacher talk. I shoved a hike in there too, because why the fuck not? And the weekend is full of soccer, or maybe it’s full of drawing boobies on the soccer field (the breasticle kind instead of the blue-footed kind). Whatever. Three to five soccer games in two days in the OC? There are many things wrong with that picture, but in the end? It doesn’t really matter. I will do this or that and make this or that and get into this or that show and whatever. School starts in a week and I am not ready, but then again, when am I ever? It’s a job and I do it relatively well, despite the mental crap I carry around.

I had to apologize to the kids about 14 times tonight. I tried a new meal (we do a lot of that over the summer, because there is more time than during the school year), and the recipe said 20 minutes prep time and 40 minutes cook time. What a joke! I think it took me 90 minutes to prep, and no, I wasn’t being particularly lame…there was just a lot of cutting and chopping. Girlchild says some recipes don’t count that as prep time (fuckwads!), so who knows. She is willing to look for shortcuts for me. So we didn’t have dinner until 9 PM, and I said, well, at least you’ll look back at these years and laugh, because your mom was so lame at the basics, like cooking and cleaning (because I was entering an art show!), but the thing that sucks is that the recipe was really GOOD (both kids went back for seconds), so I will probably have to make it again. At least I have leftovers for the next two days of lunch, right? Unless some kid bogarts it for breakfast. Seriously. I started cooking at 6:15. I’m not totally lame…just mostly lame.

OK, I really should have gone to bed two hours ago, but the brain is not complying. Fucked up, for sure, because that’s two nights running with very little sleep. You’d think I would have figured that one out by now.

Book Review: Traveling Left of Center

I recently read a collection of short stories by Nancy Christie titled Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories, through NetGalley.

I enjoyed Christie’s writing style, although many of the stories found me wondering about the characters in them, as they made remarkably bad or just plain scary decisions. Christie says her characters cannot or will not get control over their own lives, and so the outcomes of their actions are often not what they expect. One story that sticks in my mind was Alice in Wonderland, about a woman who travels through books while her real life weighs her down. Watching for Billy was another story where you worried about the main character, often yelling out in your head, NO! Don’t be that nice person! Which is of course an interesting comment on society itself…we begin the story feeling sorry for Agnes and supporting her actions, all the while telling our paranoid selves that this will not turn out well. Still Life is a dream I myself have had, usually right before the alarm clock goes off.

That’s the beauty of these stories: they feed our paranoias, our fears, but also our dreams. Many of the characters resonated with me. I liked that each story was fully fleshed out, even in so few words. Often short stories leave more questions than answers and I feel unfulfilled by them, but this was not true of Christie’s stories. There was only one where I was left thinking, “Wait a minute. How does that work?” The creepy part of the mind is definitely at work here, but in a good way. I enjoyed reading these.

The publisher would like you to know that the book itself publishes Sept 9, but that the eBook of “Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories” is currently discounted for the prepublication price of $4.99 or less until September 9th (when it will go back up to the retail price of $5.99). If you preorder, it will be automatically delivered to your eReader on the publication date (September 9th). The prepublication discount is currently active on Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/q3vqvqr) Apple iBookstore (http://tinyurl.com/q3rjbkw), Barnes & Noble (http://tinyurl.com/moozc5y), Kobo (http://tinyurl.com/nt8vyyd) and other online bookstores.

If you enjoy short stories about people who aren’t perfect, but with a creepy tinge to them, because there is no way to read this book without getting a little creeped out, then you should enjoy this collection.

Hopefully

I’m having a hard time focusing this morning. I know I have this huge to-do list that encompasses the house, the yard, school stuff, sending boychild to college stuff, and art stuff. It’s a stuff tsunami swirling around in my head. So I just sat here staring at the computer for a while, because I did a lot of stuff yesterday, but some of it was just soul-fixing stuff that needed to happen and some of it was family stuff that needed to happen (girlchild turned 17 yesterday), and my head was still whirling around last night, even though I did finally get to that magical place…I finished quilting that damn beast of a quilt…

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It took 18 hours and 36 minutes. I had estimated 20 hours, so that wasn’t a bad estimate. The quilting became a pain in the butt on Friday, which is partially why I didn’t write Friday night (that and being totally exhausted from lack of sleep). The thread kept breaking over and over again and I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do (saying prayers to the Goddess of Thread, wafting burning sage throughout the house, dancing the Dance of the Strong Thread) and nothing was working. I finally gave up around midnight, because I knew I had to be up super early on Saturday morning to hike (yes! I hiked! I’ll post that later) and I was just getting frustrated.

I hiked in the morning on Saturday, and some time in the afternoon, after napping (because that’s what lack of sleep and a strenuous hike does to your body), I sat down to finish quilting…except I had to be somewhere later…

But the damn thread was still being cranky. Its’ so irritating to deal with thread sometimes. I mean, you’re already changing bobbins way too often because they’re not very big and don’t hold much thread, but then every time it breaks, you have to tie off and start over again, and it just wears on you. But at that point, I could see the end. I had gotten about 2/3 of the way around the outside edge. I was almost there.

And then I had to stop! It was OK. I went to the Visions Art Museum opening. They currently have Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s 30 Quilts for 30 Years, which yes, was at Houston, but is still nice to see again. That’s not why I went. I went because of Deidre Adams’ Tracings, six pieces that she made just for the exhibit, but also because I was hoping to meet her after only knowing her online via her blog and comments she made when I sent photos in for SAQA shows. So that was really nice, not only to see her work up close…this combines paper and her fabric technique of layering color and marks on the piece…but also to see her face to face. You should go read her blogposts about making these pieces if you go…interesting insights into how we sometimes have to work even if our brains aren’t ready for it (I don’t know ANYTHING about that state, right?). I also wanted to see Arline Fisch’s Hanging Garden of California, which was a treat with the artist standing in the middle dressed to match. I’m a bit annoyed that no photos are allowed at all…I can see the point when the pieces are in a book that you can buy, but I think a picture of the art with artist standing by is really cool, and we weren’t allowed to do that. I guess they might find it easier to have the same no-photo policy for all shows, but I think it would be good advertising to let people take photos at shows where publications aren’t available.

So after that, it was the girlchild’s birthday dinner, which was nice, good food and she seemed happy with her gifts (we are supporting her dream of a trip to Paris next summer…scary stuff to think of sending her off, but she’ll be 18 in a year and then off to college).

When I got home, it wasn’t that late, and yes, I was tired again, but the quilt told me that it only needed another hour or so. And it was right. And this time, it didn’t break thread a million times, so I stitched like the wind…

And finished 44 minutes later. Yes, I use an app to keep track of time. My brain isn’t capable.

It was early, so I thought about trying to trim it, but I think this one might be difficult to trim…it’s not particularly straight (my fault…being lazy, stubborn, stupid, I don’t know what) and I’m debating making it not a rectangle. So I thought it would be better to make that decision when I’m fully awake (whenever that might be, because I have half a cup of tea in me and it’s most definitely morning and I actually had almost 9 hours of sleep last night for the first time in like a month, and I am nowhere near fully awake). Soon. Get the rest of the tea in me, finish this post, clear the floor, lay it out, let the brain wander in to a decision.

Shut the negative crap up. Because that voice is going ballistic in there…it’s referencing past failures, berating me for not being more careful when I ironed this together (there’s only so much I can do about my own mental state), it’s listing all the things I need to get done and yelling at me for sleeping too long, for hiking because it took up valuable time, but then also for not going to the gym this morning. So make up your fucking mind…either you want me to exercise and be healthy or you don’t. Seriously. I have to weigh every decision. I went to bed early without meditating because I was exhausted. I would have fallen asleep in meditation, so I just skipped that step and went to bed. Somewhere in my head, I know it was the right decision, but that stupid judgy part of the brain is questioning every single thing I do, every thing I say, every thing that I’ve done in the last 10 years, maybe more.

Shut the fuck up. We all have those voices. They’re just damn annoying. So I need it to get further away before I lay this thing on the floor and decide the damage. The next step. Then I can work my way through the shit on the post-it note in front of my computer, where I tried to corral all the crap that needs to happen today. I can feel inspired by seeing the art last night and the successful hike and the girlchild’s existence and even the fact that my ex and son cleaned the kitchen yesterday before I got home (apparently the girlchild had left a larger disaster than usual, which is what I had been expecting to come home to, so that was a truly wonderful surprise). I want to be invited to do a solo show at Visions, dammit. Don’t know if that will ever happen. My work is a bit more in-your-face than the work of those to whom they usually offer such opportunities. That nasty part of my brain is now telling me to make pretty landscapes. It’s telling me I’ll never get a solo show anywhere. It’s reminding me of all the rejections I’ve gotten in the last 8 months and asking me why I made art at all. Sigh. Making pretty landscapes wouldn’t work either. I need an exorcism. That part of the brain needs to wander off and get hit by a train.

Anyway. Hopefully by tonight, I’ll have it trimmed and the binding machine-stitched on so I can do the handwork. Hopefully I’ll have a bunch of things crossed off this post-it. Hopefully that negative brain piece will have duct tape wrapped tightly around its mouth. I do spend a lot of time hoping.

Book Review: Bloodlight

I recently read a NetGalley book for the purposes of review, Bloodlight: The Apocalypse of Robert Goldner, by Harambee K. Grey-Sun.

I so wanted to like this book. The cover is nice. It starts out telling the story of a boy almost 17 years old who wrestles at school and is kind of a nerd and sort of has a girlfriend, but doesn’t really fit in, and then he starts having these hallucinations and seizures. At that point, the author has asked us to understand the book not as a YA novel (which is good, because it doesn’t do well as that), but as some sort of metaphysical event, which feeds into a strange ending that reads like an X-Files episode gone bad, and not bad in that everyone dies, but bad as in Jumped the Shark bad.

On the one hand, when Grey-Sun is writing descriptions of the brain phases that the main character, Robert Goldner, goes through, his descriptions are beautiful and poetic. In fact, if he just wrote an entire book describing say how an artist views the world or a long LSD trip, he might be getting somewhere, but the story itself is beyond any sort of belief, even for someone who loves sci fi and fantasy and a wide variety of pretty out-there fiction. And the dialogue is awful. It’s so stilted, it’s hard to read it without wincing.

I wavered back and forth between a 1 and a 2 on Goodreads, and stuck with the 2, just because I was really entranced by his descriptions of the epileptic attacks, or whatever they finally were. I had to work hard to make myself finish the book. I was hoping for sense, some clarity. Sigh. No such luck.

Meditate the Fuck through It

Yup. I think that is my mantra for the new school year, which officially starts in 13 days. Don’t count team meetings and getting the room set up and prep days and professional development. Because if you count all that shit, I started yesterday. It’s a matter of looking at everything they want me to do (“they” being an amalgamate of all the people who want me to do all the things) and deciding what pieces are actually possible to do and how much of the doing I will do. And where is the line, the balance, between being a fucking awesome teacher and getting institutionalized for overwork. You take a little piece at a time. You pick one thing, maybe two, that can be different. You don’t rewrite everything. You don’t become an entirely different teacher. You do a little at a time and remember that working yourself into the ground doesn’t help anyone.

There’s been a lot of deep breathing the last two days. I’m OK. My meditation app now includes short, 2-minute refresher meditation blips…passing period is 4 minutes long, so I could meditate in between each class. You laugh, but I did that last year on way too many days. Close the door behind the last kid, gather up the journals, take a handful of deep breaths, wipe tears from eyes, open the door for the next class full of kids. It’s not the best way to live, but when you are in survival mode, that is what you do. Last year, I survived. My counselor has decided that this year, I will have a fulfilling school year. She promises me this. She calls me on my negativity. I call myself on it, but I’m not as good at it. In fact, I mostly suck at it. The parts of my brain argue with each other and there is rarely agreement. My daughter calls me on it too. I guess that’s a good thing. It’s hard to be positive when there have been so many disappointing developments, so many high expectations just completely trashed by someone else. That said, I manage it with art rejections. I’ve been rejected from a ton of shows this year. I can’t get into anything, apparently. Do I stop making art? Do I question my purpose in continuing to make art? Not really. Briefly, and then the art brain tells me to fuck off and ignore all those losers who reject my work. It will get in eventually. I won’t stop making it. I wish I had that confidence in the rest of my life, in my job, my love life, my relationships with people. Why can’t the art brain get all hot and heavy with those parts of me? Where does her attitude come from? How can it just be in part of me and not in all the parts?

All philosophical questions for the middle of the night. Remember how I was going to be done quilting on Tuesday? Yeah. Well. Fuck that. I’m still quilting. I’m 15 hours in now…

So maybe 20 hours was an accurate guess. I have about 1/3 of the quilting around the outside of the image done, maybe a little less than that. I didn’t have a lot of quilting time today. School. Other stuff. So I’m doing a stipple to fill in the background…dark blue thread on dark blue fabric at night. In bad lighting. And the thread was doing really well for a good long time, and then it started breaking. Bastard.

So I gots a little frusterated in the last hour or so. There was swearing and yelling and growling and application of oily crap that keeps the thread from breaking.

This is the backing…

I have most of one long side, all of the top and about half of another long side to do…hopefully done tomorrow. Why do I even predict things like that? I already know how busy tomorrow is. Saturday is busy too. Sunday? Sunday is wide open. Next week. Sigh. I always want to have more done than I do. Always dissatisfied with my progress. High expectations and not meeting them. But it’s a good thing to have high expectations with the artmaking. I’m more realistic with the outcomes. I don’t often chastise myself for not meeting them…I just revise. Again…lessons to apply to the rest of life?

Stitching with friends tonight…still working on the never-ending Christmas stocking…

I post these pictures to prove that I’m actually doing SOMETHING…something besides endlessly stitching around and around in dark blue thread.

This quilt will be done soon. I want to get the binding either Saturday or Sunday, get it stitched on next week. Call the photographer. Move on to the next project(s). I need to build a fabric house, complete 5 birds, and get the gender equality drawing done. I think my brain will be less panicky if I can make headway on that in the next week. Plus school. And clear out all the stuff in my bedroom that belongs in the living room. If I move it out, I think I’ll be more likely to deal with it. If I work on just one positive thing achieved each day (hung a piece of art, finished one step in the next quilt, crossed one thing off the list), I think it will all feel better. This is partially why I’m doing the GISHWHES thing…it’s goofy stuff (we shot a rock album cover last night, and tonight I added the band name and album title and submitted it), but it’s fun and I am actually getting these silly tasks done. It puts my brain in a different place. I need my brain to be in a different place. I need it to stop going over and over what I did wrong, when in reality, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wasn’t psychic. Again. There’s a drawing in there somewhere. At least one. I need to find time for that too. The drawing is part of processing the bad shit out of me. The drawing is a way to vomit it up and get it out, like a hairball. Poison in the brain. Disgusting on the carpet.

Sigh. One of the projects that needs to be done before the end of the month is a floating house, and I have all the materials (coathangers, wire, organza, tulle) and I was thinking about what the house meant and how to build and decorate it, and all of a sudden, I thought: worry dolls. I need worry dolls. Kathy York’s quilts reminded me of them. So I’m hanging worry dolls off this house, but I think I’m also going to write some of my worries down, either on tags tied to the dolls, or maybe just right on the house itself, on the bits hanging off of it. Write down the worries, have them pulled down, weighed down, by the dolls. Because that is what worry feels like, extreme financial worry, worry for sending the boychild off to college, worry about my own job, worry about finishing stuff on time, worry about the girlchild applying to college, worry about my future, worry about so many things. Maybe if I tie all that to the floating house, I won’t have to carry them around myself.

You can see why I need the meditation.