Crash

Stupid fucking blood sugar can’t behave again. Can’t figure out what the deal is…I ate healthy, then was exercising and it crashed so fast. I got the tester and lowered myself to the floor, told the girlchild to call 911 if I passed out (way to freak out your kid, eh?). BAD. Makes no sense timing-wise. I drank my milk, tested again. Better, but then started down again. Dammit. I ate a real snack and it leveled out, but now I am exhausted by the body’s machinations.

Didn’t finish exercising, didn’t meditate, certainly didn’t grade papers or make art. Can’t even think straight to write a whole post…have all the photos done from last week’s hike, but then this stupidity. Stupid body. Knock it off…it’s annoying and terrifying and I need it to stop.

Don’t worry…doc is aware and my blood tests are next week, appointment to follow. But now? Now is for sleep. I will try to have a normal life again tomorrow.

Sleep? Art.

To sleep? Or to art? That is the question, the perennial question. I don’t seem to be able to balance those two out appropriately…probably because I try to do other things like cook healthy meals, exercise, meditate. All those things. Really, I think my job is getting in the way of having a fulfilling life. In fact, while I’m writing this, I’m trying to come up with something to occupy the smart, quick workers in my classes who will be done with their assignment about 20 minutes into class while my less-motivated kids flail and whine and complain that I am actually expecting a product that requires brain power. I got this. I can do this.

Can I do this? I decided yesterday that I really wanted to try to get this whole damn drawing traced before Spring Break officially started, which is Friday at 3:30. I then slapped myself around some, because that would mean I can’t go to work for the next three days (tempting, certainly), which isn’t an option (my team would kill me if I wasn’t there for the field trip), so then I thought that maybe I could do it by Monday, but then I need to cut all those pieces out (THAT’S why I’ve been saving all those episodes of InsertCrappyTVShowNameHere) and try picking fabrics, and now it looks like I will be in upstate New York for at least three days or more during Spring Break and it’s looking pretty grim in terms of getting the ironing done.

Oh well. I still cleared my evening (meaning I ignored all the grading I brought home and anything else like yardwork or cleaning or whatever) because hell, I barely saw my kids yesterday (but I did run errands) and I basically didn’t talk to anyone at all after about 5:30 PM, and this is what it’s going to be like when they go to college. Every day. Depressing.

I lied. My brother and SIL called me (yes, I am that pitiful that they call me and check up on me, mostly because they bought this talking Mr. T thing at Archie McPhee that said things like “quit your jibber jabber” and “pity the fool” and they just can’t NOT share that with me) and talked to me about snow and Ivy League schools and my brother’s and my grades in high school and college (apparently I had better grades than him in high school because I applied myself better…a lot of good THAT did me, right?).

Anyway. More pictures of my favorite fusible, Wonder Under. I’ve been using Wonder Under to make quilts since um since (holy crap, I had to go look up my list of quilts to figure out when I started doing that) since January 2001, my first fused quilt (besides the one where I learned how to do it in the first place) was When Laundry Attacks…

clearly a feminist portrayal of the burden of motherhood. Seriously old-school Kathy. Love her hair though…best use of Australian aboriginal fabrics ever.

This is the picture I use for all my avatar thingies, whatever they’re called, when I have to put my photo somewhere and I can get away with not using a REAL photo of me. But look how few pieces there are in that face! Holy crap, I’ve gotten complicated. She doesn’t even have EARS! I just realized that. Weird.

Anyway, so Wonder Under and I have been best buddies for a good long time, weathering the years of paper that released without warning all the time to the years of paper that refused to release. I think they’ve finally gotten the recipe back to normal. I buy it by the bolt.

So I’m up to three yards for this quilt (it will go much higher than that)…

I’m in the water section now, so lots of pointy wavy bits. Then tonight, assuming I trace tonight, I think I will finally be tracing one of the three humans in this quilt. Well, one is barely human. Presumably he was human at some point.

I traced for almost 3 hours last night…with my tea and everything spread out over the couches…

What were YOU doing last night? Probably something way more useful or productive or sociable. Not me! I am none of those things. OK, maybe I could argue productive in terms of producing art, but sometimes I wonder to what purpose. Not last night, though. The purpose? Distracting me from my actual existence, ironically by tracing a quilt that is about my angst about my actual existence. I know. But it makes me feel better. And at least they will have a lot to write about when they write my biography.

Tracing Motivation…

So why can’t I wear pajamas to school today? Oh yeah, it’s not pajama day. It might be wear-your-sports-jersey day, but that’s not usually a day I celebrate, like I didn’t wear my SDSU gear last week (um, because I didn’t go there for one thing, but also because not so into the big sports events). If it’s crazy hair day or hat day, though, I’m there. I always forget (until someone reminds me) how bad the week before Spring Break is in middle school…especially when it’s so late in the year like this year. Why we tie a break to a religious holiday, I will never understand. It makes a lot more sense to figure out how many weeks there are in the second half of the year, look at when testing is supposed to happen, and put the break in a place where it will support the students (and honestly, the teachers) most. Then again, and I hate to say this, I suspect my students would do better without all those long breaks where they forget to behave like a student, where they go through their backpacks and throw out everything, where they completely forget whatever topic we were learning about before. Get rid of Spring Break! Wait. Don’t do that. I need that break.

So yesterday? Wow. Ouch. Supreme frustration. I was doing deep breathing exercises most of the day. I thought about bringing my book today so that when that period that everyone has that refuses to do any work because they’re too focused on anything BUT work, when they start going off like they did yesterday, I can just settle down in my chair and read a few chapters until they get back on task. And I’m not teaching something easy at the moment…it’s mitosis…cell division. It seems easy, but it boggles their minds that something like this is happening ALL the time in their bodies. Even though it boggles them, though, they’re not willing to think about it, consider the details, let alone show me they get it with that fun thing we call an assessment.

So I came home supremely frustrated…and down because nothing I did worked. When the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, there is often nothing a teacher can do on days like that. I can change it up, engage with a video, tell goofy stories, have high expectations (I hate that one…), I could probably throw cupcakes into the air…oh no, wait, THAT they would get their attention. Food. Rewards. Money would probably work. So that’s what I carried home from work. After 14 after-school errands. Tired. Blood sugar off again. And there were two things I wanted to work on before I had to make dinner, but the girlchild needed my computer (and both the things I wanted to work on, you guessed it, on my computer). So I tried that dinner-making thing.

Wow. It really wasn’t my day. I had some weird ingredient and the instructions to open the container were in Spanish, so that was OK. I could figure that out, although it was the strangest thing I had opened and the instructions didn’t really work, but then the ingredient wasn’t in a form I expected. In fact, it was mostly unusable. I’m sure I was doing it wrong, but I had another similar option in the freezer that I knew would work, so I used that instead. Then two ingredients were just not in the cupboard. Strange. These are staples, things I always have, unless someone used them all up and didn’t tell me. Yup. She denied it though. Anyway, for a variety of reasons, dinner took forever to make and was kind of a lot of work for what it was. Tasted good, but I can’t handle that many minutes on a school night. We ate late.

So after meditation and exercise (at which point, my blood sugar was careening towards the other crazy extreme, making absolutely no sense biologically), I was really tired. In fact, I think I fell asleep in meditation. I don’t remember all the parts I was supposed to do. But I was still carrying around that crazy irritation, that bugged feeling from working a job that is often thankless and more often completely crazy and sometimes seemingly pointless (please, lord, do not let any child ask me today why they need to learn about mitosis, because I’m not sure I can give a coherent answer that doesn’t harken back to my mom’s constant “Because I said so.”).

That’s not a good thing. I can’t carry that to sleep. I’ll wake up with it still draped around my shoulders, still dragging me down. It will feed off the core depression and make it hard for me to even walk across the classroom, let alone find a way to encourage them to learn this weird process that helps explain all the crap that happens in genetics. Plus I can’t be in that mood space. It’s just too hard.

So I stood up, drank some water, looked at the clock, tried to balance my sleep needs and my artistic needs in my mind, and started tracing…

Yup. It’s crazy that I’m doing that at midnight. Totally and completely nuts. But I’m glad I did, because it let me fall asleep and I didn’t wake up in an awful place. It’s not a great place I’m in, because (1) I am tired and (2) I still have to teach mitosis today (trust me, I did totally consider blowing it off and showing baby animals videos), plus there’s a staff meeting about using Google docs (holey moley, shoot me now), but if I play music really loud during my prep (oh wait, I think I have to be making field trip group lists during prep…another hellish task). Dammit.

Deep breaths.

Hey, here’s some fish I traced!

You don’t want to know how small those fishy eyeballs are. I know. I really do try to keep my brain out of the muck. Some days it’s really hard, though.

I’ve done about 3 hours of tracing…and I’ve traced about 206 pieces…so it’s going really slowly. That could be because I’m doing it really late at night and I’m tired, or it could be really complicated pieces. Or both. Usually I figure 100 pieces/hour, so it would be about 17 hours to trace this whole thing. At the rate I’m going on this one, it will probably be closer to 23 hours. I really need to rethink the artmaking plan for Spring Break. It’s going to be less purposeful than I had hoped. My fault. I was not focused enough (here is where half the people who read my blog, the ones who read it for the art-related stuff, start gagging and sending me messages that I am the most focused art person they know and they wish they could do as much work as I do and I should just shut the fuck up and rejoice that I am making as much as I am…it’s all relative, though, isn’t it?).

I’m hard on myself. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t get any art made. I don’t always understand why making the art is so necessary to my existence, but it is, and as long as I can keep that in the front of my mind, I know that I can get out of bed and shower and get dressed and go to work at a job that is the most difficult (and yet sometimes the most rewarding) job I’ve ever had. And for now, that’s what I need to do. So I need that focus. I need to have the goals in place and they need to be something I’m working towards every day. Without that, I don’t know how I would do anything else.

Now I need to get out of the pajamas.

Zooming In…

It’s interesting to wake up the morning after the hike and try to figure out what the hell you did the day before to cause the specific, different muscle pain that you have today. For instance, why does my right quad hurt so much more than the left? Maybe because that’s the leg I used to pull myself up onto rocks when we were scrambling up the canyon toward the waterfalls?

Then there’s Poison Oak Paranoia: every slightly itchy feeling since Saturday, I’m checking for the rash. I’m convinced it will show up (and it can take up to 5 days to show up, which is scary). At some point, I’ll get around to posting about that hike, but I have to resize the photos and I was in two long meetings yesterday, so I ran out of time.

My women’s art group is doing a show with Mexican female artists in September/October about the border, more of a conceptual collaborative piece than everyone contributing a single piece of art, so it requires meetings and brainstorming and working with people who work very differently than I do. I realize my experience of the border by being a teacher of students who regularly cross it is very different than others. I’m not entirely sure what I feel about it except that it seems to break up families and make it more difficult for certain groups of people, especially those who really don’t need more trouble in their lives. I read a book a few years ago about four Hispanic girls and the Dream Act and how this arbitrary line that we draw affected their lives. Anyway, you will probably see more about this project in the future, but know that right now, I am envisioning floating 3D fabric houses in the air above our real-live fence. And how that will go together. I think it’s good to force the art brain to work out of its comfort zone, out of what it’s used to doing.

Girlchild survived her weekend camp and came back invigorated and excited (she is so much more of an extrovert than I am). She had to tell everyone who her role model was as one of their team-building/introduction exercises, and she told me she chose me, and I said, “because you want to be a depressed, crazy old woman in your future?” and she said, no, because she wanted to be strong like me. Sigh. And I don’t feel strong at all most days. It’s like dragging myself along through the mud most days, but I guess she’s right. I just wish I didn’t HAVE to be so strong. It would be OK to have less to deal with and get through and to not have to feel like I’m always surviving things. I’d be OK with that. I guess I should tell her, some day, when it doesn’t make me burst into tears, that a huge part of my strength comes from having her and her brother around, that if they hadn’t been here this year, if they’d been off at college or even if they’d been around but not supportive (which believe it or not, they have been), then I don’t know where I’d be right now…maybe still in bed and under the covers. Maybe worse. Sigh.

I graded a little, but I didn’t let it take over my day. Then I traced some more…

Honestly, this seems to be taking forever and I don’t know why. Complicated pieces? Tired brain? Hard to say. Lots of little skeleton pieces…hey, I must be tracing dirt again! Dirt, then water. Skeletons, then bodies. Then birds, always the birds…and cats. Actually, I think this one has a dog instead of a cat. I don’t remember drawing a cat. The drawing is so big and took so long to do that I don’t remember, and when I’m tracing it, it’s upside down on the light table, so I can’t see all of it. I literally only see the little section that I’m tracing.

Kinda how I’m living life at the moment…just the little section I can handle each day. The night before I usually think about the little section I will handle the following day, but I try not to think further ahead than that unless I have to. It’s too hard. It feels too empty.

Brain. You really need to rewire yourself. Being smart and reflective and all inside-looking and crap? It ain’t helping you at the moment. Look out. See the whole drawing, not just the piece you’re on.

Nope. That’s what gets me in trouble right now. Trying to see the whole picture. I zoom out, the brain freaks out, and I zoom back in, quickly erasing whatever set it off. I don’t know whether that’s the healthiest thing to do or not…it’s just what I’m doing to survive right now.

Diverging from the Fairy Tales

I’m finding that certain parts of my artmaking process are more meditative, more peaceful-making than others. I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with how much brain power the task takes up…the more, the better. Drawing, tracing Wonder Under, and choosing fabrics use up big chunks of brain real estate, so they work really well to dispel wandering depressive thoughts. Cutting pieces out? Not so much. I’ve spent my artmaking time all week cutting pieces out, and it hasn’t really helped much…a little, but not much. Tonight, though, I started tracing the big drawing on Wonder Under, and there it was…a peaceful (semi-, as much as it ever is) brain. Sigh. Wow. It’s such a better place…because before that, not so much peace.

I did OK this morning and into the middle of the afternoon with an awesome yet physically challenging hike (more on that in another post), but my blood sugar was being cranky today…it was too high after hiking, for no apparent reason, and in trying to control it, I don’t know what happened, but it crashed worse than it has even in the last month or so…and it’s a real mood changer. I know the symptoms, but I often get the symptoms when my blood sugar is normal, so coming back from the grocery store, I was fairly sure it had dropped again…and yes, I had eaten…and yes, it was bloody low by the time I got home, like bad. Not call 911 bad, but certainly minor-freak-out bad.

Dammit. It freaked me out (it always does, especially when I’m on my own, even knowing there’s help a phone call away). I drank my milk and finished unloading groceries (because that’s what you do when your blood sugar is crashing, right? No. That’s what you do when you’re trying to keep your mind off the crash…and no, it’s not really effective because you still feel like shit). And after 15 minutes, it was OK again. But I have no freakin’ idea what is regulating it right now. It’s all over the freakin’ map. It makes no logical sense if you look at what and when I eat and when I exercise. My doctor’s running some tests in a week and a half, and we can look at meds, but her initial answer was to make sure my diet was appropriate, which was more than a little annoying, because I haven’t changed a damn thing about my diet, and the blood sugar is totally off. Now that I’m totally watching everything and counting everything and keeping track multiple times a day, it’s even worse. And it’s inconsistent about it too. So that’s something out of whack.

So it’s probably a good thing I traced some stuff…

I actually didn’t get very far, because these pieces were really complicated to trace, lots of funny complicated shapes. But at least I got a start on it. I was supposed to grade papers today, and I napped instead. And read my book. And meditated.

I cannot bring myself to care about the grading.

My car, she is old. She is 12 years old this year…and she rolled into 190,000+ miles without my noticing at first.

Sigh. And the check engine light went off, but I think that’s because the bulb died. I don’t know how much longer she will keep driving. Problem.

I took this picture at our school assembly on Friday…

We had these BMX bike guys come out and do stunts…

One of the better assemblies we have had…only a little proselytizing about no drugs and staying in school.

It’s not that I disagree with those things for my students; it’s just that I don’t think it works to get them to repeat it back during an assembly like this. They don’t hear it. It doesn’t sink in. But the bike-riders were cool.

I finished reading Wally Lamb’s We Are Water…

I love his writing, and this book was no exception. The only issue was that the story was fairly predictable. I knew where it was going, I just didn’t know how he would get there, and it’s in how he writes and reveals the details that his stories are so great to read. The book is about a woman whose life is full of some fairly dank and nasty secrets, and how they affect her family over time. She also happens to be an artist, which might have made it more interesting to me as well. I wonder how my being an artist has affected the kids and the rest of my life. Is it part of the problem? Who knows. It’s told through multiple perspectives, which mesh very well. It’s interesting that they are only family perspectives…one woman marrying into the family shows up in everyone’s story but has no story of her own.

We have a week of school left until Spring Break. It’s possible I might have to take the boychild to New York to look at a college…or not. Hard to say. Girlchild is still recovering well; in fact, she’s at a camp this weekend for Key Club. So I think she’s doing fine…which is a relief after last week at this time. It’s amazing how fast the young bounce back.

Maybe that is the core problem with my depression…my brain doesn’t have the resilience it used to have. I hate to think of the brain slowing down like the body obviously has…on the one hand, I’m hiking all over and doing crazy things like boulder scrambling and rope climbing, but I also feel it the next day (and the next day), and it’s clear to me when my body is done, is tired. It doesn’t bounce back quickly. But I don’t know about my brain…it is just as creative as ever, if not more so, but it will not drop this depression…it will not move past it and get on with it, even though intellectually I’ve gone through it all and I realize what the deal is, but I just can’t get on. The core part of feeling is so mired in this bad place where I’m not worth anything and I can’t be happy…and that part feels so horrible that I get lost in it. It’s like those swampy horrible monster-filled places in the stories we read, where the heroine has to tromp through to the other side, usually to a dark and nasty castle where something important is hidden or being kept, and the heroine has to rescue it and get it out, away from whatever evil ruler or magic being that is in the castle, and of course, they always succeed, right? Except I’m still in the swamp and I’m lost. So I guess that’s where my story diverges from the fairy tales.

I’m not the princess, not worth saving. I’m not even the scruffy servant who has some secret magical power. Or I’m not a good enough heroine, or whatever’s in the castle isn’t motivating enough? Or I didn’t bring my sidekick or my group of intensely supportive friends or my weapon of magic or whatever. Do fairy tales only work on the young? Hard to say. At least I have over 1600 pieces of Wonder Under to trace in the next few weeks to try to keep that old brain occupied. Maybe it will figure out it’s own fairy-tale ending in that time period.

It Will Have to Do…

I had a plan for the artmaking this month. Spring Break is coming up. Usually, by now, I’d be counting the days and ranting and raving about how I need to be on vacation. This year, Spring Break is late even. But I don’t know how many days it is. I’m not even keeping track. It’s not that this year is easier than any other year; it’s really not. We took on some things this year that made it more difficult, trying to keep on top of kids and their work, really pushing for passing grades, TRIED to take on computers in the classroom, but that disappeared last week (long stupid story). Plus my brain makes it difficult for me to focus a lot on school this year. I’ve figured out how to push it over there in the corner and ignore its existence a lot better. I think. Maybe. Either meditation or depression has helped me to balance my work life better. I’m hoping it’s the former more than the latter. I don’t want to have to be depressed to put work in its rightful place…just enough attention to do it well, but not at workaholic level.

So I wanted to have all the Wonder Under traced on that new big drawing by now (insert hysterical laughter here, because that’s probably 20 hours of tracing), and to be cutting out Wonder Under, so I could do all the fabric ironing over break, but in reality, that’s not going to happen. I haven’t even started tracing. I’ve had other stuff to deal with. And it’s not that important that I finish it “on time,” because there is no “on time” for this one. There’s no deadline for anything I’m working on, which is alternately a relief and really depressing. Last year had three major pieces that had to be made by a deadline for a specific show, and I guess that was a good thing in some ways, providing me with a focus that I couldn’t wander away from. Right now? I don’t have that. So on the one hand, I can make what I want without some wacky theme hanging over me, but on the other hand, who knows if it will get in anywhere? I have about 4 pieces from the last two years that are getting in NOWHERE. Sigh.

It’s OK. I know intellectually that is a temporary thing, that there is no explaining the whims of jurors, any more than you can explain what colleges the boychild got into and didn’t get into (still waiting to hear on two more, but I think he did OK). It just is what it is; you take a deep breath, and you move on. You pick up the next thing and start working on it.

So I did…

Still doing this, but I didn’t fall asleep while doing it tonight. I guess that’s good. I’m 4 hours in and still have most of the fleshy pieces to cut out. But it’s getting there. Worst case scenario, I’ll get this one ironed down and start on the stitching over break. I’m going to schedule some hikes in there too, plus I have an art exhibit to go see up in the OC, and I’m going to do some life-drawing classes during the school days. I can pretend to be retired…practice for a million years from now when I might be able to afford to retire (ha!).

I managed to make it to the gym, eat dinner, meditate, read my book, AND do the art stuff. Of course, that’s because the house is empty and I have no one to talk to except furry beasts, and I’m blowing off work. So. There’s that. I don’t know that it’s the healthiest existence. It’s certainly lonely.

I also had to do a journal entry thing for the Celebrating Silver exhibit. I had found the scrapbook paper at my ex’s house Tuesday night. I wrote up the pages yesterday and got it all put together tonight.

It’s not super-exciting, but it will do. And since it has to arrive by April 1, it will have to do.

Over Spring Break, I also need to draw my gender equality thing (the only real deadline I have this year), and then there’s an exhibit my women’s art group is working on about the border between the US and Mexico; we’re meeting about that this weekend. I think I will have very little weekend free outside of the hike and the art meetings. There’s more next weekend. I guess I know how to keep myself busy. Now if I could only figure out the happiness part. I guess that comes with time.

And art. And nature. It’s kinda like sleep when you’re female and my age…if you really want it, it’s elusive. It comes when you least expect it, when you’re holding scissors in your hand.

That Stupid Voice

I have a houseful of giant stress monkeys. This one…

this one is trying to make up all her schoolwork from the week she missed due to surgery, but she comes home and is (logically) exhausted and falls asleep and then freaks out because she can’t get everything done and there isn’t a good liberal arts college (she says) in Boston. I let boychild deal with that one, walking her through a bunch of websites where she can look shit up like lists of good colleges.

Boychild is freaking out (in his own quiet repressed way, because if he gets loud and emotional, the world is ending, guys) because almost all of the colleges he applied to are notifying today and tomorrow. I tried to tell him that he should be less stressed because he got into one of his backup schools, but since he really really wants to go to the OTHER schools, my comments fell on deaf (or slightly irritated and know-it-all) ears.

Both were yelling this morning because I was in the laundry room, home of pet food and litter-tray hell, which is what I was dealing with, demanding little furry beasts, because girlchild can’t tie her shoes (she can’t bend down yet to reach them), so boychild was doing it FOR her, which was highly amusing. He doesn’t tie them “normally” because when he was little, he pretty much refused to do anything the way it was taught…he had to find his OWN way to do it, like writing certain letters and numbers. He would say, “But I don’t LIKE it that way,” and that would be the end of all arguments, because it was his world and in his world, everything was done his way.

I pity any woman who ever decides she really likes him and wants to like hang out with him for any extended period of time. Either that, or maybe he’ll mellow a bit with old age.

I had book club last night (oh thank god, people of a like mind who READ) and we discussed Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones…

Yeah, it’s a kid’s book, but we liked it…except the last few chapters are moving a bit fast…the pacing seems off. There are two more books in the series and some of us may read them; some may not. Honestly, I’ve got so many books on my to-read list at the moment, that I probably won’t get around to them. I’m not sure I cared that much…I mean, the story was entertaining and nice and well-written (mostly), but it wasn’t something that I was dying to finish, like some books. I should be dying to finish the book I have out from the library right now, because it was due three days ago and I can’t renew it and the fees are adding up. I am a very bad person for that, I’m sure. Sometimes I think it would be cheaper to just buy the book…but then I’d have to find a place to PUT it, and that is a bigger issue here.

A sign of how stressed the boychild is was that he texted me at book club about some financial aid thing he thought I hadn’t done for one of the colleges, and when I got home and looked, it was obvious that he had been trolling not only all the college websites for dates and notification times, but he’d been on their Twitter feeds checking out admissions stuff (one of them actually sends out PAPER LETTERS for notification, the horror! And so when you’re on the Left Coast, it takes a lot longer to get notification than on that other coast). Poor kid. I hope it’s a good day for him. I don’t really care where he goes, as long as he goes. Oh wait, that sounded wrong. You know what I mean. He needs to go to college. And he will.

I made dinner for them last night, put the casserole in the oven. Neither of them ate it though. Girlchild was groggy from sleep (she actually ate some later, after I got home) and boychild was on a food strike (he says he doesn’t like this dish…oh well, he can make a quesadilla then). So I guess I have leftovers for the next three days. Score!

I’ve spent all morning racing from one pet-related mess to another. The dog, though sweet most of the time, is some sort of crazy trash/underwear-eater in the morning, and I have to constantly check on her to see what she’s trying to eat next and stop her. One of the cats had broken into a bag of cat food, so there was food all over the place. Because I’m starving them? No. The old Psychobitch (aka Babygirl) has been very good lately, but was on a yowly rampage this morning. Someone puked somewhere. I heard it, but I haven’t located it yet. That’s OK, because my morning stomach doesn’t handle puke well…I do much better in the afternoon.

Anyway, I fell asleep cutting these out last night.

Seriously, I jerked my head awake at one point and I was holding a piece of fabric, half-cut-out, in one hand and scissors, open, in the other. Who knows how long I sat like that, but I decided it was time to go to sleep, even though I wasn’t done with that piece or exercise or meditation or blogpost. Sometimes the body just needs to sleep, apparently (only 4 hours the night before might have been the issue).

I realized (again) yesterday that I spend most of my work day saying really entertaining things (although I am often irritated when I say them)…such as:

No, you don’t poop babies out.

That’s not what a penis looks like. You have one. You should look at it some day.

Yes, that is a penis. Congratulations for noticing that the picture of a dog you are looking at does have a penis.

That is not a penis; it’s a foot.

Put the ruler down.

If you are not drawing a straight line with that ruler, I will take it away from you.

If you pee on the seat, you will clean it up (here is where I clarify that I teach 7th grade, not kindergartners).

No, I do not know how squid reproduce.

I don’t know why humans don’t lay eggs.

No, humans and dogs cannot have babies together.

(We are obviously reaching the end of the year, when I will eventually be teaching human reproduction and I can clear up some of this confusion for them, PLUS have them draw a penis correctly, thus traumatizing AND educating them all in one go.)

We have been dealing with epidemics of stomach flu and pink eye (not usually together) at school, so there’s been lots of handwashing and deskwashing and sending kids to the nurse and/or pointing out the nearest trashcan. Luckily, most of the vomiting seems to be going on in other classrooms, so all I see is the empty desk where the kid should be.

I guess the plus of my own kids stressing out all over the place is that I can’t really concentrate on my own mopey self, although there was a bit of that last night since book club was in my old stomping grounds, a part of town I can’t really afford to hang out in any more (which does suck, because no movies). I managed to get my head out of THAT gutter though and move on. At least last night, I did. This morning, it’s a bit more difficult to turn off that stupid voice. It’s stalking me.

Expect more artmaking tonight. It’s about the only thing that shuts it up.

Blue Sky

No, I’m all still tied up in knots inside my head, still lost in some depressoid space that doesn’t seem to want to release me from its clutches. I just get tired of announcing, Oh Hey! I’m still depressed! I still cry! Everything still sucks! It gets old. I want to shed that skin…it’s Spring, I want to run free among the wildflowers like a child. Or something. I don’t know how to shed years of sad though. They just cling to you like a small snot-nosed child.

I went over to the ex’s to find my scrapbook pages (don’t even ask…just know that it involved the girlchild)…and I sat there listening to all the stuff I needed to deal with while the three of them ate dinner, directed by girlchild, cooked by my ex. Then I came home and cooked my pitiful dinner by myself.

Oh shit. So this is my life? That wasn’t good. I went to the gym, though, and I’m reading a really good book (although it’s one that brings me to the brink of tears almost every time I open it)…so I try to think of the good, to think of the positive, and I still drive away from his house with the damn scrapbook pages that I needed for some quilt thing, and I’m crying. Not a little, but a lot. This is a life? It’s an incredibly painful one.

Boychild got his financial award statement from University of California. I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended. They gave him a good chunk of money (assuming he goes there, which he probably won’t), but they gave it to him because I am “significantly low income.” Their words. I’m a teacher. A public-school teacher. With a Master’s degree…who’s been teaching for over 12 years. And I’m “significantly low income.” Should I be offended? Or relieved? I wonder how many years post-divorce before I stop living paycheck to paycheck. Not this year, for sure. I guess I am relieved. Saddened, but relieved. Now let the private schools feel the same way.

I’ve been reading what people in my past have been saying. What does it mean when people who were significant in your life make no sense to you? Is that a good thing? And yet people LIKE it on Facebook. I can’t parse the words.

I still don’t know who I am.

Art rejections. Sigh. Discouraged by them. Numerous. Doesn’t help the mood. Seriously, there’s no point in entering shows right now. I can just expect a rejection. It’s been a few months of that. And I keep making stuff, hoping that it’s not a permanent thing, that the stuff I’m making will get in somewhere. REJECT. We don’t want your art. It sucks.

The girlchild and I joke that every time I leave school, this song is on the radio…

And every time, it makes me cry. I wish I were young again and everything felt possible. OR…I am moving to Iceland soon (it could happen).

Bear trap on ankle. I remember writing this. I feel like depression is a bear trap on my ankle. It grabs it as I’m running away, trying to get away, strips the flesh down to the bone, breaks the bone, hurts like a bitch, doesn’t let go, no way to get it off.

In meditation, there is the concept of blue sky. Blue sky is always there, if you put your head up above the clouds, the blue sky is always there, even when you can’t see it. Mr. Meditation says that contentness is like that…it is always there, like the blue sky. What stops us from experiencing it? He tells me to notice the resistance and let go of it. Then there’s nothing but blue sky. Mr. Meditation has been smoking the wacky weed again. Seriously. He also wants me to put this happy pinpoint of light and warmth that spreads from the center of the chest outwards. It doesn’t work on me at all. The black vultures chomp at the pinpoint and snuff it out. I can put it on OTHER people though. I’m supposed to pick a person I respect…I have plenty of those. A person I care about. Right now? There are two. I gave birth to both of them. I can’t think beyond them. Then this week, I am supposed to pick someone outside those two realms, someone I know but don’t really care about. That’s harder. What’s interesting is that I can inflict the happiness, the warmth, the exploding pinpoint of light on ALL of them…all of them except myself.

So yeah. Meditation = crying at the moment. Hate that place.

Realized that the disruption in my life that was the surgery was messing with mood. Girlchild went back to school today and is doing much better. She was very tired when she got home, napped for like 2 hours, but she was AT school. This is a plus.

But I have been neglecting my art mind, and that is what might be causing all this emotional dippage. Or something. Fuck knows.

So I am up late again tonight. I’ve been good about going to sleep earlier, but the casualty is making art. And then I think, what’s the fucking point of making the art if you aren’t going to get into the shows with the new stuff? Fuck. I can’t think that way. I just HAVE to make the art. There’s no choice about that.

I’m reading this right now…

along with other things. It’s appropriate. I feel unlovable.

Underneath it is a birthday card from my ex, quoting Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)…

And the happy book from my mom. Not getting to the happy.

So tonight. I cut out fabric pieces. Because I needed to.

And it won’t make me happy. But. I don’t know what will.

Did I show you the scissors that were found in my driveway?

We don’t know where they came from. Is it a donation? Or some sort of religious icon left there? No one knows. People are now driving past my driveway and throwing scissors at it. Seriously. These aren’t mine.

Plus there’s Midnight. She sits behind me as I cut out fabric.

Someone should sit there.

Corte Madera Mountain

Saturday I hiked Corte Madera Mountain, otherwise known as San Diego’s Half Dome…when we started in the morning, it was foggy, cold, and damp. Here we are at the trailhead (thanks to Keith and Maritie for their group photos)…

The trail starts out on a nice, oak-shaded, fairly wide road. You do need an Adventure Pass to park out on the road for this hike.

From there, the trail opens up into a bushy valley. To the west, we could have seen Los Pinos (if it wasn’t foggy)…we originally had a plan to climb that as well…

The wildflowers were blooming…

The deer (and some other pawed animal) had been on the trail before us…

The sky looked a bit gloomy, but it didn’t rain. This part of the trail, which really looks like a creek bed, was fairly easy to walk…a few small climbs, but not hard…until the last little bit up to the other road (I’m sure it has a name; haven’t got a clue what it is…wait, there’s this thing called the INTERNET…Ah…it’s Los Pinos Road, and yes, it’s actually a road.), which is on the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos. This part was a bit steep at times.

Here we are on the saddle with Corte Madera hidden in the clouds.

There’s a sign there that marks out all the trails, some more officially than others.

This is about the only wildflower picture I took on purpose…

Here we are with Corte Madera in the distance…despite the fog, it’s starting to warm up (or we are starting to warm up because of the hiking)…

From the saddle, we took the road towards Corte Madera…apparently cars/off-road vehicles do drive this, but we didn’t see any of them.

From that road, here’s the path up to Los Pinos (which you can’t actually see, because it’s in a cloud). We did not do that hike, by the way…by the time we got back to the saddle, lots of time (and energy) had passed and there was a unanimous vote NOT to deal with this peak on this trip.

There is then a small, unmarked trail that has this raptor sign at the head…this is the one that goes up to Corte Madera. This time of year, the birds are mating and laying eggs, so there are rules about where to hike and not hike, although it was fairly difficult once we were up there to figure out where that actually was…more about that later…

At this point, the trail got narrow and sometimes climby…

The views were gorgeous though…

Lots of boulders and pine trees and tromping through manzanita that was waist- to shoulder-high. It was still cloudy/foggy at this point.

These two rocks had space between them…I have a later view of them from below.

Many of the rocks were colorful.

As was the manzanita…

Beautiful vistas stretching for miles…

You can see a raptor flying in the blue sky that is now peeking through the clouds…

We stopped around here for a snack break…with a view of Corte Madera in the background.

More raptors…I think this was a turkey vulture, actually.

I took a panorama shot here of the group eating and resting…

This is one of the hills on top of the long stretch towards Corte Madera…

The top was fairly flat, a narrow trail, but you could see forever on both sides…

This is looking back at the group coming down the trail on the other side…this was the only bit where we had to climb on the top at all.

This is to the north…toward Cuyamaca…

I think this is where I took the next panorama shot…

There were lots of stacked-rock cairns marking the trail.

Can you see the face in this rock?

Nose, eye, big chin?

This is at the top of Corte Madera, where the can is. We weren’t sure, due to conflicting maps, whether this was where we shouldn’t be, in order to protect the birds nesting, but we did a silent hike for this whole section, no noise, no talking, just in case. This is the view to the northwest…you can see all the clouds are finally clearing out.

I think this is more to the west, but I’m not positive!

We all sat and admired the view, and took lots of photos. It was very peaceful being up there, even with so many people, because we were all still silent.

There’s something to be said for hiking like that sometimes. This was taken up at the top…

This is Cuyamaca Peak in the distance (hiked it in November)…

And the group shot at the top, looking north…

On the way back, we were waiting for the other group to catch up with us…this is the valley between the two sorta peaks up there. The bushes are about waist high.

These are the two trees we had used as markers to remind us to take another trail down, instead of returning the way we came. So here, instead of going back south, we headed off to the northeast, through bushes that were often head height and very close together…

There’s a view of the Corte Madera valley and pond to the east…

The bushes are closing in! One person found a tick on their body. Many people ended up scratched from this section. We put on long sleeves and long pants for a reason…

On the far end of the long ridge, there were some rocks with iron inclusions…very pretty…

It turned out it was one of the leader’s birthdays next week, so we all brought potluck snacks for lunch and surprised him. Someone brought party favors for a goofy picture at the top. There was even cake (sort of) and candles (that kept blowing out). It was a nice birthday surprise…

Then we set off, way too full, down the back side of the mountain…there’s that pond again.

The path was difficult at times, but also there was a lot of wandering through areas like this, and one oak-covered area that was quite nice and shady.

Here’s those two rocks from below…

Lots of boulders and a wide trail at this point…

And a water barrel…that had holes in it and a bathtub at the front.

Yup. How often can you get in a bathtub with 11 other people? Not often enough apparently…

At this point, we were pretty tired…and then we realized something…we were on the wrong side of this fence…

Yeah. This one.

For the record, we never saw such a sign on the other side of our trail, and we didn’t see any patrols, but we did have to crawl through barbed wire to get out. So maybe that wasn’t the best choice for coming down the mountain.

So this is us curving back around the eastern side of the Corte Madera area, heading back to the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos…because that’s Los Pinos (not in the fog now) in the distance…

And back at the saddle, there’s Corte Madera in the bright sunshine…

And we looked back at everything we’d spent all morning climbing over…

Then went back down into the creek bed, with Los Pinos rising over us to the west…

Back through the shady oaks towards the cars…

This was a gorgeous hike, not super strenuous, didn’t need poles (though many had them). The various GPS devices said this was 8.6 miles (which includes our backwards descent into somewhere we shouldn’t have been) with about 4.5 hours of hiking time (that doesn’t count all our stops for photos and food). It took us longer than we thought it would, but I think that was the fault of the potluck more than anything else, plus a meandering trail at the end that we had never hiked before. What’s interesting is that I think I hiked this back in 2003 when I was hiking regularly…but it was about 90 degrees that day and I got mild heat stroke. Today was wonderful…started out chilly and got a little warm in the end, but the transition from foggy and cloudy to bright-blue sunny skies was definitely a plus.

You can drive up the road to where the raptor sign was and shorten your hike, which might make it very doable for families, although there’s still some scrambling and some issues with the raptor nesting dates, but otherwise, a drop-dead beautiful trail. You can access the trail off of Buckman Springs (off Interstate 8). This website gives fairly clear directions (I obviously don’t write posts to get people TO the hikes…that’s what the internet is for). He also has a bunch of other San Diego hikes at different levels of difficulty with lots of great photography.

Those Damn Monkeys

I finished numbering the giant-ass drawing. I had guessed about 1200 pieces, based on the Celebrating Silver piece, which is about the same size, but apparently, I was more of a crazy-ass on this drawing…first of all, I forgot to number this happy little face when I numbered the rest of her body, so she’s in the 400s and the 1200s…

That won’t be confusing at all. One of you needs to remind me that I did that when I start ironing pieces to fabric, because otherwise I will just be massively confused.

OK, I will be confused anyway. I think that’s why Julie sent me some spare brains…

They are very nice and brightly colored. I am sure they will be much more effective than the probably gray-and-blah brain I am using now. Plus now I have two extras.

I’m really working on significant exhaustion at the moment, which is unfortunate, because I spent many hours this afternoon working on school stuff, because when life is chaotic and you have way too much going on, it makes sense to create an entirely new lesson plan for the week that requires additional work, significant amounts of it. I am some kind of workaholic freak. But I wanted to do art stuff.

So back to the numbering. I managed to find a bunch of pieces I had missed the first time around, but I think I officially hit 1662 pieces (with at least three more numbered something-a, something-b, and something-c). That would be significantly more than the 1200 I had originally guessed. Oh well. Life goes on. At least I know I’ll have plenty to be working on over Spring Break. Can’t have down time, you know. Might accidentally get happy or something.

See that? I number everything and then I write down the total and I date everything, document the shit out of these projects. That’s the left brain trying to control the right brain. Except those concepts are faulty…at least that’s what science is saying today. Who knows what it will say next week.

Next up? 10 yards of Wonder Under probably.

Speaking of happy (was I?), girlchild finally had an almost-pain-free day, after 4 days of nonstop pain. She was so much calmer…and she ate food…and she got up and walked around and did some math homework. Hallelujah. I was starting to sorta freak out over when she might go back to school. And we timed the meds better for tonight; we’re going to try to push everything to 4:30 (yes, that’s AM) and see if she’s OK with that. Last night, they skipped one medication at 2:30 and she was awake at 3 or 4 in a lot of pain…so we’ll see how that goes. Ideally, she’ll be at school on Tuesday, moving like molasses and probably late to every class, potentially falling asleep during 3rd period because of her meds, but at least they will be able to count her snoring body as attending class. OK, that’s not ideal, but if she can stay awake for the math lectures, I think she’ll be OK. Luckily, there’s no way any teacher will look at her and question her absences…she’s obviously disabled. Plus the big black brace she has to wear all the time might signal an injury. Deep breaths.

This is the face of menopause.

Seriously. There’s so many things wrong at the moment. Stupid blood sugar. Hormones. Sleep. Aargh.

Anyway, I can start tracing Wonder Under now, or I can cut out the fabric for the two quilts sitting on the hearth waiting for me. Or I can draw. Or something. But tonight my brain is demanding sleep. I guess that’s good. It’s a change. Change can be good. Sleep can be too. It’s too bad that I usually get this tired, then go to bed, and then can’t fall asleep. How is that survival of the fittest?

Note to self: do NOT, repeat, do NOT read lists of things you can do to be happy, especially the stupid one that says that “everything will be all right because everything always is.” Wow. OK. You crazy. When will I learn to stay away from shit like that? No one knows, but probably, when I figure it out? I’ll be happy again. And then I’ll just laugh it off (no I won’t) and move on. No, I’ll probably remember how awful it felt to read those stupid lists when you were doing almost everything on them and it wasn’t working and it made you feel like even more of a failure than you already did. Because in our culture, depression is a failure. Suffering from a biological imbalance in your brain that was caused either chemically or by some shitty thing or things that happened to you that then turned into some chemical cascade, that’s a failure. You did it wrong. You suck. And that attitude doesn’t really help with depression, now does it. Ah, the vicious cycle. Even when you’re fully cognizant of what your brain is doing, you can’t make it stop doing it.

Jellybeans: why do black and white even exist? Even purple and pink are questionable. And why all the fake jellybean versions? Jelly bellies are fine; the rest are crap. Classic jellybean flavor though? Very addictive.

Yes, I’m stress-eating; why do you ask? Best thing to do when you feel stressed is to remove all food from the house that might cause you to stress eat, leaving you with carrots, brussels sprouts, and the like. I can totally stress eat sprouts and they will not hurt me. Seriously. I just bought more today. Oh my god! I’m getting dietary fiber! I’m fighting cancer! Although, after last week, this week will have to be a piece of cake. Someone should tell my twitchy eyeball that. So it can stop twitching. That would be nice.

I was lucky this weekend to have two friends who wanted me to eat. One took me out to dinner and sent me home with a ton of tasty leftovers. The other one appeared at the house with large containers of food. Score! I don’t have to cook for a few more nights this week. That’s a good thing. Plus it leaves food in the house for the girlchild, who has not been eating well and then gets dizzy and wonders why. Hmn. I know why. Food as fuel. Diabetic mantra.

Anyway, it was kindness that was appreciated.

Read it. It’s a screenshot from my work computer…

I never did see those damn monkeys. Sleep. I hear it helps with twitchy eyelids.