Three Peaks in Cuyamaca

Two weeks ago, I signed up for a hike I didn’t think I could finish. I had done 12.5 miles the week before, and it felt like my limit. I was significantly tired the next day, and sore too…so when I signed up for the three peaks hike (Middle, Cuyamaca, and Stonewall), I figured I would just skip the last one…the leader had set the hike up so we didn’t have to do all three.

I mapped the hike out using Map My Hike, but it did add some mileage to it…so it’s probably not exact. The leader had it at 14.4 miles, and this one is over 15…

We started at the parking spot near Milk Ranch Road, heading up the switchbacks on the fire road to Middle Peak. From the parking area, here’s Stonewall Peak…

And Cuyamaca in the distance…

Here’s the fire road…it was a warm day…

There were some flowers I hadn’t seen on previous hikes…

Middle Peak used to be covered with big trees, but the Cedar Fire in 2003 swept through this area in a pretty devastating way. Lots of undergrowth is coming back, but most of the trees are dead…

It wasn’t an easy climb, and this group hiked really fast…

Here’s Stonewall again from higher up the peak…you can just see our cars parked in the turn in the road.

And Stonewall again, through the burned trees. There was a good breeze all day, which was good…

More flowers…there were LOTS of these.

And dead trees…

A big fire road…

You can imagine what this might have looked like when the trees were alive. I actually hiked this area the weekend before the Cedar Fire, and then went back about two weeks after the fires…it was hard to see.

And yet, the dead trees have a fascinating presence…stark though it might be.

This is looking off towards Stonewall again, but closer to the top of Middle Peak.

There is no actual trail to this peak…you can bushwhack it if you like…

More flowers…they flourish in the full sun without trees shading them.

We reached the highest point of the trail, and then headed around the western side of Middle Peak…

This is the view to the west, which wouldn’t have been visible prior to October 2003…

Another view…

We headed south towards Cuyamaca Peak, following the Conejo Trail for most of it…

This is looking toward the east…

The trail was rocky now, and sometimes there were trees (some significantly large ones) over the trail…

But new trees were growing by the trail…

Not sure what direction this is…maybe north?

The wildflowers were everywhere on this section of trail, truly beautiful riotous color…

And long vistas of blue sky…

Even more pine trees lining the trail, close enough that you had to edge through them at times…makes you wonder what will happen to the trail as they get bigger…

It’s nice to see them growing…

This is the view of the slope looking north…once covered with trees…

Some berries?

This is one of the smaller trees I climbed over…some required assistance, but this one was on my own…it attacked my pants…had to sew that hole up…

Pretty flowers…

This was where the Conejo Trail meets the Cuyamaca Peak fire road to the peak itself.

Looking up the fire road…

There are still some trees alive on Cuyamaca…

Here we are at the top of Cuyamaca Peak, at 6512′, the second tallest peak in San Diego County.

I was last here in November, with snow…

We sat and ate lunch and communed with the iridescent green beatles…

This was over where the antennas are…looks like they’re building new ones.

Flowers and butterflies live at the top…

We then took the fire road down…

Down, down, down…

There’s Stonewall in the distance…the third peak on our challenge…

Still lots of dead trees…

So we got to the Paso Picacho Campground at the base of Cuyamaca and Stonewall peaks, and we rested a bit (bathrooms! with black widows!)…and it was then I had to make a decision about the last peak. Hell. I was still moving. It was hot…but it seemed lame to stop there. Some people wanted a longer rest, but I just wanted to get UP the last peak…so a few of us headed out…below you can see Cuyamaca Peak from the trail going up Stonewall, with Paso Picacho down across the road.

There’s Stonewall from below…

The hardest parts were tired legs and the heat…it was about 85 degrees at this point. I needed almost all of my 3 liters on this hike.

This is the view to the south…you can see the highway on the right side…

More dead trees…these creaked in the wind.

This trail is really hot and dry.

But beautiful flowers lined the trail…I last hiked this one in November as well…

Here’s Cuyamaca from the west trail on Stonewall…

And here’s Middle from Stonewall…

And there’s the peak I’m heading for…

These trees creaked in a very scary way…

Trees hung over the trail even up here…

Here’s the view from the top…there are steps going up to the peak and info maps up there to show you what you’re looking at…

I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the way down…we went down the back way and across some meadows with trails that were barely clear…pulling foxtails out of our shoes and socks became a regular stopping point…

At some point on a hike this long you are just trying to get done…although the meadows were very pretty…

That’s the Trout Pond in the distance (notice the electrical poles…must be approaching “civilization”…

It was a long tiring hike. It was a challenge, though, and it felt good finishing the whole thing. I think it took about 7 hours total…we stopped for maybe 40 minutes total…once at the top of Cuyamaca, once in the campground, and once at the top of Stonewall. No ticks, no blisters…just sore muscles and tired body. Definitely worth the trip.

Ironing a Mammogram

I had a goal this weekend to start ironing the Mammogram quilt together. It doesn’t have many pieces, less than 400, although it’s not a small quilt. I am still cutting pieces out for the big monster of a quilt I’ll be finishing this summer (which isn’t actually that BIG, it just has a lot of pieces). I like to have a variety of things to work on over the summer, so if I get tired of any one stage of a quilt, I can take a break and work on another one that’s in a different stage, because usually all the deadlines are in the fall, not the summer, so I have some leeway with what I work on. Last summer, I had one ironed together, another one in the fabric-trimming stage, one that needed tracing, and two smaller ones that I started, no wait…three smaller ones that I started and finished over the summer (if you count Labor Day weekend). So it worked out OK. Well, at least THAT part of summer worked out OK.

So right now I have one small top ironed, ready to be stitched down. I have this larger one that is getting ironed down now. I have the big one in pieces, and as soon as I can get my head somewhat cleared (um. cough cough. when might that be?), I can draw the other one that’s due in November and start tracing it. It’s OK. I seem to eventually be able to draw what I need to…when I really need to. I have faith in my brain’s ability to kick butt when it’s required. Someone told me this weekend that I handle high-stress situations well, that I can be counted on in those situations. Huh. Funny. It never FEELS that way. I always feel like I’m falling apart, that I’m barely holding it together. I guess I fake it well.

The problem with that quilt, the one I need to draw, is that I had a clear vision of it back in September when I was first asked to be part of the exhibit, and ironically, that view was more positive in outlook than the view I have now. So I keep trying to get back to that positive view, because that is a view of hope, and I’d rather be there than in the negative place I’m in now about gender equality. But maybe that negative view is more realistic? I have a post-in-progress that I’ve been writing on and off for about a month about feminism and gender equality as they exist (or not) right now…not in the 50s or the 60s or whenever, but right this minute, while I’m trying to raise a son and daughter to be aware (they are, trust me). But like the drawing, the post is not fully gelling, so I’m just giving it space and time to develop. I’ll probably work some of it out in drawings that will never grow up to be big quilts, which is fine. It’s not a waste of time; sometimes they do go on to be quilts, and if not, it was an hour or so that I needed in order to process what was in my head. That’s never a bad thing.

I had a ton of grading to deal with yesterday, plus my eyesight is getting worse again, so I had to get eyes checked…they were lots worse, unfortunately, because the cost of new glasses was not in my summer expense budget (and now it is). So I didn’t get started on ironing the Mammogram quilt together until about 10:45 at night (yes, when you were all going to bed), and then my brother and SIL called about a teacher/tech issue that I hopefully gave them multiple ways to solve…so I was trying to iron AND help them (how to get a large video file to a teacher at 11 PM on the night before it’s due). So I didn’t get very far…

It’s a start. I’m already missing an eyelid. And yes, that figure fades into the belly, but that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want it to bounce out at you. And when I stitch around it, it will be more visible. I only got 49 pieces ironed down. Oh wait, 48, because of the missing eyelid (it will either show up in another bin or I will cut a new one. It’s not crucial).

For those who haven’t been around for a whole year, I’ve had a few mammograms over the years that show this dense area that sometimes makes the radiologists nervous, so I’ve had to have retakes on the scans a few times. Last July, it was a major retake with multiple mammograms and other scans and then he wanted to see me in 6 months, just to be sure…that was back in January, where they did all the panicky stuff again, which makes you feel like you just want to cut the offending appendage off and hand it to them…here, just go at it. Give it back to me when you’re done. Of course, you go along with it, because that cancer word is scary as hell, and I did finally get cleared…again. But now I’m back to my yearly schedule, so I get to do it again. Anyway, last year, when it was a big issue, I drew the issue. Because that’s what I do. I draw what bugs me, what worries me, what makes me sad.

I think the fish are like protective spirits of some sort. They show up a lot. Birds aren’t really protective. Harbingers of doom and all. Anyway. The breast is still here, and so is the funny shadowy area that freaks them out every other year or so (some years, it’s not an issue at all). So maybe I’ll draw one every year and have a mammogram series. Or not.

Hopefully it won’t take all week to finish this (although this week is a bitch, so it could). I thought about trying to finish it for IQF, but I don’t really see it hanging there…amongst the pretty landscapes and technically amazing traditional patterns and the occasional quilt from a nice photo. I will have a piece in the SAQA Celebrating Silver exhibit that is challenging enough for most viewers, so I don’t know that I need to try to enter IQF…besides, I just checked and the entries are due in two days and I haven’t mailed it yet, so there’s the deciding factor right there. I love it when my forgetful brain handles decisions like this by just filing them in the back cupboard, so I don’t have to even consider it. I only remembered the exhibit at all because people were talking about it being the 40th anniversary.

Anyway. Back to entering art shows. Because that’s where my stuff belongs.

No Fit…

I’ve never been good at fitting in. I have a lot of different interests and that seems like it should make it easier, but it doesn’t always. I suspect part of it is my fault…I see all the differences, as well as the similarities, and the differences feel like they push me away. I’m not even sure I want to fit in most of the time…maybe it’s that I want to feel accepted even when I don’t fit well. Maybe I will never fit well. That’s not true. There have been times when my core existence was a good fit, or at least I thought it was, and it made it easier to feel like I fit in elsewhere. Or that it mattered less. Right now, I can’t even find my core…I’m floating around in this weird mental space that doesn’t feel right, I don’t feel right, and maybe that’s the issue. It’s not that I don’t fit in with any particular group. I can handle that. I’m OK with that. It’s that I don’t feel like I fit in with myself.

It’s hard to explain. It’s like wearing a shoe that’s not quite comfortable. There’s a rock in there. You pull the shoe off, readjust the sock, find the rock, put the shoe back on, walk for a while. Nope. Still doesn’t feel right. It’s just uncomfortable. It’s wrong. You stomp your feet a bit to try to make them conform to the shoe or vice versa. No luck. No fit.

I have conversations with my counselor pretty regularly about how this feels and what to do about it. It’s part of what feeds the depression, feeling out of place, unsettled, like I don’t know who I am. I do the stuff she suggests, sometimes I’m already doing it, because I do know how to make a life. I’ve had to remake my life before. I remember. It wasn’t this bad last time though. This time, it’s like going from a scorched landscape…like the hike we did on Saturday, where the fire was a year ago…where baby plants are just now popping up, and here we are stepping on them, feeling bad about it. A fire goes through, it can take 10 years or more to get back to something approximating normal. So maybe I am the fire-scorched landscape, and it hasn’t even been a year, and I have baby plants, but they’re not strong enough, big enough, and they’re getting stepped on. I’m betting those hillsides don’t feel normal yet. They certainly don’t look it.

So why do I hike? Being outside in nature helps with the depression. Being outside doing something physical, sometimes even challenging, it helps. (Saturday was a challenge, between elevation and my knee acting up…not a good thing…it was a challenge. Not a significant challenge, like the previous week, which hopefully I’ll post later today, but still…) Forcing myself to be with people for at least part of the days when I would normally be alone, in dead silence, it’s probably a good thing. I do OK when the people are around most days…it isn’t until I’m on my own, driving home or wherever, that I have an issue. Out of the group, into the pit.

I’m working on all of this. I’m aware of it. I’m trying to find my trail through all of it. There are marked trails, but I’m not good at following those…I’m out bushwhacking my own trail. It may take me a while. It most definitely will take me a while.

So this weekend, I tried a few social events. I did OK. I haven’t found a balance between trying to be with people and getting my introverted and artistic needs met. I have to sacrifice one to the other, it seems, and that’s not ideal. It’s not what I want. But it is what it is right now. I went to a work thing. I went hiking. Then I went camping with people from work (well, one people from work, because the others bailed). In the moment, it was fine. I did OK. I like hiking. I like camping. The crap feelings I have on either side are what I need to work through. And I am.

So after I hiked about 10 miles off of Sunrise Highway, I drove out to William Heise County Park near Julian, where a friend from work and a bunch of her family and friends were camping. Here was my setup…

We had four campsites all clustered together under the oaks, with a nice wide area in the middle for the ten kids to race around and throw things at each other (you know, like kids do…).

We hung out and chatted and ate and sat by the campfire…

It was nice. I was tired, but it was OK. I even walked around and took pictures of flowers…

These are the oaks that were above my tent…

Here was my breakfast (very exciting…I did not challenge myself on the cooking. I bought a burrito for dinner and heated it up on the fire).

I read. I drew. I made tea (shocking, for those who know me). It was nice. This drawing has been in my head in pieces for months. It’s not done.

I’m not even sure I like it, but if it’s in my head, it needs to get out.

This one I did Sunday morning while drinking tea…

It’s also not done. I like it better than the other one, but I’m not sure it needs to become a quilt. Maybe.

Sometimes I just draw and I don’t worry about the purpose of the drawing or the final product. It is enough to draw. I haven’t been drawing much lately. You need time to draw, and my time has been limited. That is one of the issues of doing all the hiking and social stuff…it takes away from my art time, from the actual space I need in my head to draw. I hate that. It’s a nasty balance. I don’t seem to be able to work it out right. I was better at it before, but that was a different me. She’s gone. This other me is a lot more needy.

I only camped for about 22 hours (yes, I counted). I had stuff I had to do yesterday, including groceries and getting the boychild a tux for prom. Yes, he’s going…with a group of friends, which is the best way to go anyway. So we stood around in a tux rental place yesterday and tried to get him to make decisions (amusing!). And I was uber-tired yesterday night after very little sleep two nights running, so I fell asleep while trying to grade tests (I am so far behind…) and finally gave up and went to sleep. No amount of caffeine was going to help. I slept over 9 hours last night, almost straight through, so that tells you how exhausted I was. Good thing I had today off. Today? Gotta be efficient. This week? Gotta be on top of my game. Whether or not I fit is irrelevant this week. I just have to get through.

So here’s the science teacher brain at work. One of my coworker’s daughters pointed out these bugs while we were setting up my tent (it required two people…it was a bizarre shape…kinda buglike, actually). There were some on the ground near the tent, and then she found them on the tree. These are the adults, I think, with the wings…

Then these are the larva, no wings, look kinda like bees with the stripes.

There were husks of the larva on the tree, attached to it, so like a cocoon, but not. The legs are still there. Like they stick to the tree for a while.

Then as I was taking the tent down, I saw this one, probably newly emerged, because the wings aren’t entirely unfurled, and it still had a really pink, new-looking body.

And this one, also on the tent, looked full grown.

We were concerned that these were the gold-spotted oak borers that have attacked many of the trees up in the Cuyamacas, including in this park, but those are much smaller, and the larva are worms, not crawly beetle things. So I don’t know what they are. But it was interesting seeing all the stages around (most of them on my tent).

Anyway. Today? Not trying to fit. Just trying to cope. But see, I’m back with my kids in my house doing the stuff I need to do as a mom and teacher. So that’s not where I have the problems. I have issues when it’s just me on my own…and that’s going to get worse over the next two years as the kids go off to college, so that’s my goal…figure out my head before they both leave. Have a comfortable space where I feel like I fit, even if it’s just me by myself, and be OK with that. Be able to go out and do this more social stuff and come home and feel content, not empty and lost. It sucks to be in my late 40s and trying to figure all this stuff out yet again, but there’s nothing I can do about that except try to do a better job from here on out. Find my fit.

Power Struggles

Apparently there’s some sort of power struggle going on in my head between the depressed part of my brain and the part that is just tired of the depressed part. I have to admit that the tired part is not winning. Neither is the depressed part, so I guess that’s a good thing…imagine a big tug-of-war rope with two weaklings pulling on each side, falling down at times, rope burns on the hands, but no one lets go. Oh wait, sometimes the tired side lets go and the depressed part wins for a while, but because she’s depressed, she eventually lets go of the rope and wanders off, only to start tugging again when tired rises up and tries to take control again.

It’s exhausting to watch. Hard to muster any sort of energy on either side of the fight. No one wants depression to win, but sometimes it’s so hard to even consider who you’d have to turn into in order to have the other side win. I don’t know who I am at the moment, but I do know a lot about who I’m not. I guess that helps.

I came into counseling angry today, for decent reasons, and we parsed out why, and delved deep into where it came from, but didn’t find the healthy outlet for it. I spend a lot of time saying “but that’s not who I am” to explain why I don’t take the easy way out. I guess that’s good. I don’t know. I do know I understand better than most why I do things, what I feel, how I’m thinking. Yes, it probably means I spend too much time in my head, but at least I’m not just reacting to life. I don’t want to just make random decisions without thinking clearly about all the parts that go with it. There are so many decisions right now that my head is basically spinning. I think that’s why I’m hiking so much…I can’t possibly decide anything on a hike. All I can do is put one foot in front of another. Over and over again. Until I’m done. You can’t beat that. That’s the decision…walk or stop. Walking is the only thing that makes sense.

I have a plan for the three-day weekend. I probably won’t make it through all the things I’ve planned, but I’ve tried to set myself up for both control and success. I could fail miserably, but hopefully not. I really am hoping for three days of no power struggles (um, yes…I AM aware that I live with teenagers, but I have faith…in something).

I have a quilt that’s been in pieces for a while now, since early April. It’s only got about 365 pieces in it, so it wouldn’t take long to iron…so tonight, I sorted the pieces to that end…

I’m hoping to have some time on Sunday to get them ironed together. Or even Monday. I’m trying to ignore the 160 journals in my classroom that need grading, as well as the two periods’ worth of tests I still haven’t graded. Grrr. Ignore. Yes, this quilt only has FOUR boxes of pieces, instead of TWENTY-ONE. It’s not complicated…on purpose. Apparently I also need to make another smallish quilt with no nudity or violence (um. hmn. ok…)…apparently soonish. Whatever that means. We’ll see how that goes. Summer looms. I’m apparently not teaching summer school (they rejected most of us, so I don’t feel bad)…so maybe I’m going to get a seasonal job at Home Depot. We’ll see.

Then I spent a little time cutting pieces out…

Still forever away from finishing…

Honestly, I have an early hike tomorrow, plus I’m camping, so I had to pack a bunch of stuff for that, and I really should get my butt in bed. Like now. But because I SHOULD, my brain is balking and wanting to stay up late, like the immature little brat it can be. Anyway. I think I can persuade it that sleep is a better choice than trolling the internet…although trying to persuade it that it’s not OK to stay up all night making art is a little bit more difficult. It’s a recalcitrant beast.

PCT: Desert View Picnic Area to Kitchen Creek Road

I seem to regularly be about two weeks behind in posting this (Must Get Caught Up)…It’s not the end of the world, although it may be the end of my disk space for photos. This was the next section of the PCT we hiked, from Desert View Picnic area south to Kitchen Creek Road, where we ended a few weeks ago. Here we are at the start of the hike…it was a little chilly at the start, but warmed up…

Here’s the view of the desert from the start…

This was my first trip with the new camera, PLUS I was carrying poles, so I didn’t take as many pictures. It’s hard to hold a camera and poles; in fact, I had a long conversation about the future of things like photographs (think Google Glass) and how technology would be even more integrated into our lives. I don’t have a problem with that.

The hike started out in mostly mountain pines…

As we were hiking, we saw all these pink ties on the the bushes, trees, and PCT markers…is it Breast Cancer Day? What the heck?

We stopped here to divest ourselves of all the extra layers of clothing…it doesn’t take long to warm up when you’re hiking.

There were beautiful long vistas of the surrounding mountains as we hiked.

And then we found out what the markers were for…apparently this was the weekend of the PCT 50 mile trail run…25 miles up and back from the Boulder Oaks area, basically through all of what we were hiking today (and more). So any time you think I’m crazy for the hiking I do, just think about running the trail for 50 miles in one day.

It ended up being kind of a pain in the ass, because we (were nice and) had to get off the trail for the runners. So that seemed to slow us down (except it didn’t…it just meant we didn’t stop much to rest). There were at least 168 runners (we know that because we saw number 1 and number 168)…we applauded them, encouraged them. But it made for a very choppy hike for this section of it. Eventually we got past them all…or they got past us…or something.

Like I said, beautiful mountain trail…this is past the Burnt Rancheria section I think. According to our fearless leader, this is an area of the forest with a beautiful landscape of trees and wildflowers. From here, we passed through Horse Meadows and down to Long Canyon, where we hiked through another shady area lined with trees and passed by Long Canyon Creek. Then we descended around Fred Canyon and down to the Kitchen Creek Road endpoint. I wish I could tell you from my photos where all that happened (I am not remembering a creek…sorry), but I can’t. But I think this is the trees and wildflowers part.

This part of the Lagunas doesn’t have a lot of fire damage, which is nice.

Apparently I’m not in the mood to raise my arm…

This was not a physically difficult hike in terms of ups and downs. I had the poles (and I’m glad I did), because it was supposed to be a loss of 2540 feet and a gain of only 553 feet, so first of all, that’s why we went north to south (more downhill) and second of all, I thought the poles would help with the downhills. In reality, none of the downhills were really difficult, but the length of the hike meant that at about the 9-mile mark, the poles helped because the downhills were really rocky and you were already tired and not picking up your feet well, so they gave you some stability. Basically, it meant I didn’t fall down. That’s probably a good thing.

I didn’t take a lot of flower photos…poles, new camera…long hike. It took my legs a while to wake up and remember how to hike.

Oh hey…this might have been Long Canyon. We stopped somewhere in here to eat lunch…we didn’t take long, though, because we knew those runners would be coming BACK, and they’d be behind us, and it would just be a pain in the butt again.

More long vistas of mountains…

The hike gets a little more desertlike out here…lots of low bushes, trees gone. Luckily, it wasn’t too hot and we had plenty of water…plus the race had fueling stations with Gatorade and water, so we could have gotten more. We didn’t see a lot of thru hikers today…they were probably trying to avoid the race.

I think that brown stripe on the mountain is Sunrise Highway? Maybe not. Can’t remember. That’s the problem with writing about it two weeks later.

This last section of the hike was a narrow trail on the side of a mountain…this would have been a bad place to intersect with runners.

The trail is still pretty rocky at this point. I was tired on this hike.

A long view to the east, where you can see Interstate 8 heading for the desert.

More narrow trail views to the west…

You could almost see to the ocean from here…

We stopped at this rock for photos (none of which are on the site, so I can’t pull any of them…sorry)…as we were standing there, we saw the number 1 runner go by, going back towards Boulder Oaks. That motivated us to get our butts in gear, because we knew at least 167 more were coming and we didn’t know how far ahead he was…and that trail was too damn narrow to be getting over all the time, especially with runners coming from behind.

There were lots of interesting rock formations on this side of the mountains…definitely some metamorphic and volcanic action going on here…

Light on pictures this time…we did beat all the other runners back to the finish at Kitchen Creek Road (they kept going, which explains all the runners we’d seen two weeks earlier on the section from Lake Morena to Kitchen Creek…they were practicing). Number 2 came by while we were standing around at the end. We did 12.5 miles in about 5 hours. I really felt it the next day and thought, OK, there’s your limit…12.5 miles. Ha! I was wrong. But there are days when you’re tired and days when you can walk forever. This was not one of those days. It was a nice hike…although I preferred the first part of it. And as a thru hiker, going the other direction is probably kind of tiring…lots of minor climbing that you probably don’t notice until your legs start complaining. At some point, I’ll count up how many miles of the PCT I’ve done so far (not many)…

Seriously…

I have that weird weather throb in my head again. It’s been there for two days now, as the weather flip flops around from hot to cold. It means monster headaches. It means taking all the Motrin I had in my purse yesterday and gulping it all down and actually calendaring Get More Motrin on my phone so I wouldn’t forget to restock my purse stash before school today, because today we are doing microscopes and heads might roll. Seriously.

Yeah. So I’m having issues balancing blood sugar again and now I know it is at least partially (if not completely) hormonal, which sucks, because I can’t control that. So I’m having to remember to pack extra food that isn’t high in calories but will keep me from passing out at inopportune times, like when I’m teaching or driving. I’m hoping when I get out the other side of menopause that it all calms back down to the semi-normal level of blood-sugar-tending that I had to do before all this, because this is just annoying. I get so paranoid about food. You have to be obsessive about it. I envy people who just eat whenever they like, whatever they like, and don’t have to think about what it will do inside you, or worry that I’m having to go to 2 meetings after school and I need to prepare for that like I’m going camping or something. Like there will be NO Food Available (and certainly there’s the issue of you can bring food but we won’t let you eat it in here, which has been an issue in the past…I just argue medical necessity).

I don’t feel very organized at the moment, either at home or at school. Both places have too much going on and I’m getting overwhelmed. Deep breaths. Make lists. Calendar shit. Pick your battles.

So I should have graded tests last night, and I didn’t. I always have to look at the overwhelmed feelings and try to figure out what’s going to be best for me tonight. Is more grading going to make the difference? Or does it need to be exercise and meditation and artmaking? The latter is winning most nights, at least some combination of those. It’s been difficult lately to find time for all three, especially since I’ve been working really hard on getting more sleep…even an extra half hour or so a night I think will make a difference. It seems like every two or three nights, my brain pitches a fit and doesn’t want to sleep. I don’t even go to bed until my brain has capitulated, decided that the idea of sleep is not a heinous thing. I don’t want to lie awake, letting it wander. That’s when I end up back in the pit.

This morning, I woke up with the alarm, screaming in my head, “Stop it, Fuck off, Go away!” Um. OK. And adrenaline surging. Not a good way to wake up. I have no idea what was going on in my head. I was watching The Americans while I cut out pieces last night. I’m reading The Fall of Hyperion. Neither seemed relevant to the dreaming. I wanted to draw last night…maybe I should have (ran out of hours, minutes, seconds).

I only cut stuff out for 47 minutes. See, when you’re thinking about how much I get done, realize that most nights, I get an hour in. That’s it. I don’t spend a ton of time a day (wish I could). Less than an hour last night…which is why it still looks like this…

There is still a lot to cut out. I’m 9 hours into the cutting. I had estimated 12. I think I’m wrong. Who knows…but certainly I spent a good chunk of that time cutting pieces out that looked like this…

Yup, that’s full on crazy. Those are the outer parts of the octopus suckers. Technical term. Holy crap. I think they really are just called suckers. If you’re in the mood for sorta irreverent sciencey talk about octopus suckers, yet highly educational irreverence, go here. I’m not really sure how I ended up with the science leaning. Coming out of college, I was pure literature and art. There’s some really cool vocabulary in that article though, like ‘infundibulum.’ Yesterday, I taught my students ‘endoplasmic reticulum’ and told them to pull THAT out at dinner time. Earlier this year, I taught them ‘vex’ and ‘irk.’ They’re still using those words. I love that I have taught 160 middle-schoolers to say “You VEX me,” instead of all those other lame words they use.

Which reminds me, someone told me this weekend that my use of the word “DUUUDE” guaranteed my California residency (I was not actually born in California…born in an Alaskan military hospital to two California parents though).

Anyway. Another hour of cutting stuff out and I might have had some mental balance, but I had to consider the sleep component as well.

Midnight was a worthy couch companion…

She misses her mommy at night and harasses me instead.

If I’m at the computer, I get Babygirl (stupidest name EVER)…

who insists on sitting ON the mouse, or IN FRONT of the screen, or trying to drink my tea or eat my oatmeal. And then she gets all pissed off if you don’t pet her at the same time. Try resizing photos when she’s sitting there. It’s impossible.

I wanted to clear out a couple of posts-in-progress last night on hikes and Earth Stories, but girlchild needed my computer to write an essay (the computer she uses is apparently barely functional at the moment, which is unfortunate, because I’m not able to get a NEW one…she can use her brother’s when he gets his graduation laptop, whenever that happens). Then she asked for my advice, which is like asking someone to tell you if your butt is big, when you ask a writing mom with a Comparative Literature degree about your intro paragraph and she actually tries to help you, but you’re an emotional 16-year-old and holy god, why did I even open my mouth, because there were tears and it was not pretty. I should have just told her that her butt looked big. It would have been less traumatic. For both of us.

Remind me never to talk again. Seriously. I’m done with it.

Out of the Pit, into the Cave

Depression is an interesting beast. It’s so prevalent in our world, has been for years, just read some Romantic poetry or wallow in Russian literature for a while, and you’ll realize how not-alone you are in this feeling that never seems to go away. I’ve seen it described as a rain cloud that follows you around, the big black dog, a pit, a hole, a cave. We come up with these personifications, these illustrations, to try to make it something we can look at, distance ourselves from, maybe even fix. My meditation guy wants me to look at my whole brain that way. Like I’m a private detective, leaning up against that lamppost in the dark, lighting the cigarette and watching the brain (hey…shouldn’t smoke!). Watch what the brain does, make notes in a little book, process it, spit out a report at the end. This is what happened, this is where it went, dry and dissected, no emotions.

I wish my depression was the big black dog. I know how to deal with dogs. It started out as a pit, a hole. It’s been that before. Prior to my divorce, back in 2000 or so, it was a giant hole, and once I had dragged myself out of it, with no help from my husband at the time, he tossed me back in. But I got out…probably because I had spent a couple of years trying to deal with my brain and what it was doing, and I had enough tools to build a ladder out of there fairly quickly. I had some control over the situation.

Not so this time. This time I didn’t even see the pit before I got tossed in. I thought it was way behind me, filled in, totally safe ground to walk on, and I blithely continued on, carrying my little beachball of work stress and hormonal disruptions…which yes, caused a minor depression, but it was completely treatable. I just didn’t know I needed to deal with it. I think it would have eventually worked itself out with the right supports (which I wasn’t getting). But then a giant maw of a deep dark hole opened up and I just tumbled all the way down. And I can look back now and see how deep I went, how bad it was (sometimes still is).

They tell you that once you’ve experienced one depressive event that you are more prone to them later on. Great. Appreciate it. Didn’t ask for this. Mine are event-based. This isn’t just random shit being shot out of a cannon, like some people’s depression, which I can see would be much harder to deal with, because you can’t pinpoint the cause. It just is. It’s that brain chemistry out of whack. No, this is because of what other people have done, and in each case, it is out of my control. I am just the one dealing with the aftermath. It seems unfair, but I know that life is not set out to be fair…there is no arbitrator of fairness and karma setting out punishments and rewards. You may believe otherwise…feel free…but I don’t.

So once I’m in the pit, the deep hole, I have to find my way out. Sometimes it’s medications, which didn’t work this time, it’s always counseling, it’s always a time of deep reflection and artmaking for me, which makes me somewhat lucky, in that I can actually create while down in the pit. I know plenty who can’t, who are hogtied by the depression to a point of not being able to even pick up a pencil. I guess I’m glad that when my brain goes into that hole, she takes her sketchbook and her pens with her. I guess that is a learned defense against the depression.

And it really is me, the private dick, still leaning up against the lamppost, checking my watch, adjusting my hat against the misty rain, waiting for the brain to show herself again, logging her activity.

I guess the plus is that she’s moved out of the hole. Well, she moved into a cave recently, I guess…I don’t know why the visualization changed, but it did. It seems easier…she can just walk in and out of the cave, no need to build a ladder or scramble up the sides of a muddy pit. She hunches over, my brain, and she brings a bowl out into the light, gathers some leaves or berries (I’ve been eating a lot of berries lately), she blinks, squints up at the sky, sees me and drops her chin, acknowledging my presence, and then shuffles back into the cave. Brings tears to my eyes. There she is. She was out. She tried. She’s going back in for a while, because it was too much.

Some day I’ll talk about the current quilt and its title. Because it is the hardest part of this depression. I know what was in my head as I drew it, and…it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with in my own head. Yes, only one. Sad but true.

I’d better find a way to do something restorative tonight, beyond exercise and meditation. Because…ouch. Bad place.

Earth Stories: Sticking It Together

My continuing saga of how the Earth Stories quilts came together…

Once the pieces are trimmed, I iron them all together. I do this by putting the original drawing right-side up on the ironing board and putting an applique press sheet on top. You can see the lines through the sheet, so I pull the paper backing off the pieces one at a time, line them up, overlap them where necessary, and iron them down.

On a quilt this big, I needed multiple sheets going at a time…the quilt is 72″ wide and the sheets aren’t.

I try to iron big sections together, but not necessarily all the pieces. I need room for adjustment later when I go to iron it down to the background.

When I have super-small pieces, like in the skeletons, I often don’t cut those pieces out until I’m ready to iron them. Otherwise, I lose them. I’m not sure WHERE I lose them…it’s like that extra sock you can never find. Sometimes I find them two quilts later, a randomly numbered piece that has no home. So sometimes during this stage I have to redraw and recut a missing piece.

If I can get away with it, I just make a note about the missing piece…they often show up later in a different bin.

This section below has about 250 tiny pieces in it. It was a little crazy.

Oh yeah. This was also crazy. There was a lot of crazy with this quilt. It might have been funny if it weren’t so crazy.

Earth Mother’s face coming together…and her heart. Her heart didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted. I remembered that when I did the next heart.

And here’s the main character in the dream bubble…

I actually divided the sky in half, but ironed both halves on the same fabric…

Did I mention crazy? This is corn. I’m not sure in the end product that it was worth the level of crazy that I drew, but there it is.

You can see the little corn tassels and leaves above ready to be ironed. If you ever see this quilt in person, please appreciate the corn.

Then I pieced the (huge) background and laid it out on my entryway floor…which it filled. My mom’s entryway is bigger, so I have done this at her house too. If I ever move, I will need one big empty floor…

I lay the pieces out on the background and make them fit together. This is sometimes a really long and painful process. The dream world bubble was all one piece at this point…much easier to deal with.

You can see I had the Earth Mother figure divided into three main pieces…top, bottom, and belly.

Here’s most of it in place. I iron it down, best I can on a lumpy tile floor…I just need it all to stick together long enough to get it to the ironing board. Did I mention this is 72″ square? Yeah.

And then I transfer it to my ironing board and spray each section with water (hoping fabrics don’t run) and put the heat on for 30 seconds at least, trying to get all the layers to fuse down.

It took almost 31 hours to iron this sucker together. I worked from July 11-31. I should add that I was going through a significantly traumatic event while this was happening, so I know I wasn’t working very well or efficiently. Technically you’d call my mental state shock. So I guess I should be impressed that I can create anything while in shock, although this task is really just about getting it done, not about being creative. An assistant could probably do this part. I tried to concentrate on what I was doing to distract me from the other crap, but I had a really hard time doing that well. I really didn’t care if it got done or not, except that I had committed to make the quilt for the exhibit, and I’m usually pretty good about commitments like that. I’m not a flaky artist. So I did it. It was, honestly, something to do. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 months…just making the art, even though it doesn’t feel good…there are other things that feel worse, and this seems to occasionally make me feel at peace…so I keep doing it.

But just looking at that piece lying on the floor brings back how awful I was feeling. I would get out of bed, trudge down the hallway, sigh deeply, and just keep going. Every day. That’s not a life. But it’s the life that birthed this quilt.

Next post, stitching it all together.

What’s That About…

I mentioned that I had some drawings pop up in my head in the last few days. One has actually been popping in and out for about a month. It thinks it wants to be the equality quilt that has to be done by November, but I’ve already told it that it’s not what I want, it’s not appropriate. It’s interesting, because I had picked gender equality, because that’s a big issue for me, always has been, and the image that’s popping up is not a good one…and I really do believe gender equality is possible…eventually. But some shit needs to change. The boychild is an editor on the newspaper at his high school and one of the writers (female) wrote an article about why we need feminism, and there was nothing new or earth-shattering in this article, being as it was written by a teenaged girl who hadn’t really experienced much of anything, but she obviously knew the code words and the issues…but another student (apparently) at the school wrote a comment, a huge long diatribe against feminism and women, claiming she was a 17-year-old female, showing enough knowledge of the school that our guess is that it’s the PARENT of a student, but because of some of the stuff in the comment, they can’t post it online as is (because if they could, me, my SIL, and half my friends would be commenting on her ass, for sure). The assumption is that every women CAN have whatever she wants, that nothing gets in the way of that, but then some stuff about being a proper wife (oh dear, well, I’ve blown that…in fact, I can’t even be a proper girl, or woman, in her terms…and I’m so totally OK with that).

So I need my drawing to be on the good side, the positive side of what gender equality is going to look like, because I have to believe that can exist, despite some of the shit I’ve seen throughout my 47 years (as she wrote about her vast experience of 17 years). So that drawing…it will happen, but the bad version of it might need to happen first. The one where despite what people SAY, they still believe in the lame divisions of who does what, with no understanding of the work involved or the assumptions behind it. If you want me to cook for you dammit, then pick a meal and go buy the supplies, and THEN we can have a discussion…don’t drop all that shit into the lap of someone who cooks all the time and thinks of it as just more work when she is already overwhelmed…do you know how many nights I make TWO dinners, one for tonight and one for the next night? Cooking is not my friend.

On Saturday’s hike, someone (male) slapped my ass. I didn’t say much…not sure what his assumption was, but I refrained from saying something…well…rude, honestly…but it certainly reframed the conversations we’d had over the last two hikes. Women in general will talk about almost anything on hikes…I talked with women about hiking, knee surgery, hysterectomies, teaching, raising children, artmaking, sleep, hormones, allergies, the view, hiking again, shoes (hiking, not the other, plus sandals for post-hiking), diabetes, and food…and that was just today. The men? Always a different conversation. We never know what they do for a living, unless we ask (women tend to drop this info quickly and easily). We don’t know whether they have kids half the time (they rarely talk about their children…we talk about our kids constantly). They appear to have no lives. They probably would say they come on these hikes to get AWAY from their lives, but you know that shit follows you…you might as well let it out.

So if he slaps my ass again, I will probably have to say something, but I’ve learned enough from dealing with middle-school kids that I have two routes: embarrass the crap out of him (burn! as my students say), which is sometimes effective, or grab him on his own and explain that I don’t like it. Either way, I am now that feminist, eh? And I’m OK with that. So my dad and I had a conversation about that and he said there were some women who slapped his ass (which he does NOT mind, the old lech), which I think is just as bad, personally, unless you know the person well and this is part of your interaction with them. I don’t know this guy well. And that’s my ass. So get off of it.

Sigh. There I go being all confrontational again.

So instead of drawing gender equality last night, I drew one version of the bathtub that’s been in and out of my head since I saw Frida Kahlo’s version…

reminded of George Bush’s version (it scares me that I keep remembering art that George made)…

and it’s not done, and I don’t even think it’s right, but it is. She needs a head though.

There’s a lot more that needs to go into the picture. I need at least a half a page above this one. It’s funny…I remember being in 4th or 5th grade, Mrs. Westcott was my teacher, and she was an artist on the side as well…in fact, my parents have a portrait of me that she drew, pastels I think? Anyway, she would get so frustrated with my inability to stay ON the page. My drawings, paintings, etc. always fell off the page. My tree trunks would extend so far up the paper that there was just the bottom part of the leaves showing. I distinctly remember her pointing that out to me, and telling me I needed to look at the page and try to FIT on it. Didn’t happen. I need paper that extends automatically. Anyway. I drew. That’s the real point. It felt good. It’s such a good place to be in my head when I’m drawing. Everything else goes away.

That woman standing in the bathtub…she was a skeleton when I saw her for the first time in the drawing Saturday. Before that, when I saw this drawing, she wasn’t there at all. So I’m not sure what that’s about.

I had another low-blood-sugar event yesterday, the first since I went off the apparently offending medication. It was a strange one, too, and I’m starting to pin these occurrences on hormones instead of anything else…I was feeling nauseous but knew I needed to eat, so I had some fruit with frozen yogurt about 30 minutes before, and then it crashed…which makes no freakin’ sense. Basically I ate pure simple sugars there, and my body flipped out. Sigh. So I logged it and dealt with the ensuing exhaustion that follows, and the blood sugar came back, but it just annoys me that I do everything I’m supposed to and it still doesn’t behave. Story of my life.

So I didn’t get much cutting done, because I drew instead (plus I graded a ton of papers, which I really needed to do)…

But there are the bins…some slightly fuller, one slightly less full. It’s not a short process…it takes for-freakin’-ever, basically. I had hoped to be done cutting out last week, though, and you’d think with having a full day off for fires I could have pulled that off, but my brain and I don’t always agree, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. I do have a goal for this weekend, though, so I should get that set up (means sorting pieces into bins again…that’s a truly boring part of artmaking). But before all that, apparently I have to be a ~~good citizen~~ ~~mommy~~ responsible adult and go to work.

Kinda Stuck

I spent a lot of time in my head yesterday, partially because I was on a LONG kick-your-butt hike where I was hiking by myself for a goodly amount of time (not fast enough to be with the front group and not slow enough to be with the back group), and also because it’s Saturday and I usually spend long swathes of time by myself on Saturdays these days. Some people tell me to fix that, because yes, I do find it depressing to be in my head that much, I should go out with friends to dinner or movies or just to hang out, and I do have those options, but you know what? I’m an introvert. Yes. I teach middle-school kids all day and I’m an introvert. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people…I do OK with them most of the time, although you have to be the right kind of person for me to get really close to you, but I can talk to just about anyone (as evidenced on these hikes). What it means is that too much interaction with people and I need to recharge. I need quiet mental space with a book or music or my art and I need it on a regular basis, like every day, and sometimes for many hours. I can handle my kids and close family, but more than that and I feel like I’m exerting energy I don’t even have any more. It’s exhausting. Because yes, the depression steals some of my ability to cope in social situations. It gets used up faster.

So I actually need those evenings/afternoons/mornings where I’m not expected to be a certain way or put out a certain amount of interaction…but because of how my life is at the moment, most of those moments are now alone moments and my brain reacts to those badly.

I’m a fairly self-reflective person (not with mirrors all over me…that would be funny…oh shit, that’s the THIRD drawing that’s popped into my head in the last 24 hours. That was a plus of all the hiking alone time yesterday. I did a whole drawing in my head…now to get it on paper), so I spend a lot of time (possibly too much) thinking about what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and how to make it better. Yesterday’s notes to myself: When depressed, don’t watch movies where babies die unexpectedly. Also grocery stores on Saturday night are depressing. Always. Knock it off. Go another day. I don’t care how convenient it is because you have nothing else to do. I don’t care if you feel you HAVE to go Saturday because Sunday is a clusterfuck schedulewise. Find some other chore that needs doing so you’re not perusing the vegetables at 7 PM on Saturday when all you can think of is what you would have been doing then a year ago. A year ago doesn’t exist any more. Move on.

Yeah. Brain and I are not getting along at the moment. I think some of it is because there are still a couple of really high-stress things in my life that need to get handled this week, and they are overwhelming me, so I’m not handling the rest of life well.

Anyway. So I hiked yesterday, a really long hike, and my body is complaining today, but I managed yesterday to NOT have to take a nap (good). And yes, I went to the store (bad). But then I needed to do some cutting out of fabric, because I was too tired Friday night to do that after searching for about an hour for the title on my old car, which needs to be sold. So that now requires a DMV trip, which would be fine if they’d let me make an appointment, but they won’t at the local one, and I can’t get to the nonlocal one in time after school. Bastards.

I have the bins all set up on the couch…

I’m still working on using my new camera well…it’s fussy. There is a black cat in the back of that photo, but you can’t see her at all. The bin on my lap (which you can’t see) has all the trimmed-off trash pieces in it. The bigger bin to the right of me has all the pieces I need to cut out, and then the bin just past it has all the cut-out pieces. Usually there’s a cat somewhere in there too…eventually she moved to the couch behind my head (where she likes to be, because I reach back and pet her occasionally). I use an app (Task Measure) on my phone to record how long I spend each day on each part of making the quilt.

I cut stuff out for a couple of hours, putting me up to 7+ hours on this part of the quilt.

This is the stuff I still haven’t cut out…so the pile is getting smaller, but it’s still pretty big.

I get frustrated with some of the pieces because they’re so tiny (see all the skeleton bones, long skinny pieces?)…some I don’t cut out until later, so I don’t lose them, but these are big enough. These are all the pieces I’ve cut out so far.

So I’m getting there…both with the quilt pieces and with my life, although the latter does seem stalled in place at the moment. There’s some step I need to take but can’t. I know what I want but can’t deal with what I’ll have to do to get there. Don’t have the mental energy, the desire even to go there. So I will be stuck with the quiet Saturday nights for a long while, I think…I can’t really financially afford to be going out and doing stuff anyway, so that doesn’t help. I think sometimes you just have to accept where you’re at and that at some point in the future you might be able to make a change. I don’t like that waiting stuff, though, but until my brain figures out how to come out of the cave/pit/hole/whatever the hell it is that it lives in right now and stay OUT, I’m kinda stuck.