What I Do While You Sleep…

First of all, I’m not sleeping while you’re asleep. You’re cuddling up with a pillow, all nice and warm, breathing slowing down and becoming more regular, and I’m standing for hours at an ironing board (at least that’s what I’m doing these nights…other nights, it might be sitting at a sewing machine or standing at the light table or sitting on the couch surrounded by Wonder Under). My brain isn’t slowing down, preparing my body for rest so it can then process the day and make it orderly and presentable, filing away this and that in the corners of the mind. Mine’s entering some weird alpha state, where it does slow down, but it harmonizes with something, some THING that breathes peace into my head, my heart, I can actually feel muscles in my chest and abdomen relaxing for the first time in hours.

Actually, I usually try to meditate first, and that helps even more, but meditation last night was a giant fuckwad of fucked-up-ed-ness, so that didn’t help.

I turn the iron on, and it makes that clicking noise that tells me it’s heating up. I pull the ironing board around and take off all the storage boxes that keep Babygirl from climbing on and disrupting fabric and Wonder Under piles. I start up Netflix, tuning into whatever I’m watching at the moment (I’m in Season 3 of the X Files, which yes, I’ve seen all of, so that’s why it’s easy to watch while ironing…it just distracts the small part of my brain that would otherwise fuck with my ability to pick fabrics).

I look at the drawing, hanging up on the bookcase, and I look at what pieces are next in the picking range…and I start processing the picture into color in my head. This current one is complicated enough in some small areas that I write the color progression in pencil on the drawing…this part is fabric 1, this is fabric 2, etc. Then I lay out the fabrics in progression and start finding the pieces and placing them on the fabric where they will eventually be bonded for life.

OK, the glue will get bonded…the paper is just thrown away at the ironing stage.

This piece is mostly flesh colors, and some of them are quite big. On Sunday night, I ironed everything (almost) that needed to be on the two fabrics I chose for the lightest parts of the body. I didn’t go further than that because I knew it was already late and the next step wasn’t something where I could stop halfway…I needed to get most of the way through it in one night…so it makes sense that I didn’t start until after 11 PM last night, right?

No. You’re right. It doesn’t. I can’t say I’m always making the healthiest decisions for Kathy at the moment. Let’s just say I do the best I can. I could, every night, go to bed at a reasonable hour and get much more sleep, but I would be really intensely unhappy (like more than I am at the moment…although unhappy and depressed are not necessarily synonymous) and no art would get done. So I started…

And that’s kind of what it looked like at about midnight…almost all the flesh fabrics were laid out on the fabric where they belonged…and I looked at the clock and realized (1) I wasn’t going to bed at a reasonable time, like y’all did and (2) I wasn’t getting a blogpost in last night.

I started ironing…this is one of my favorite hand-dyes at the moment, but I’m almost out of the flesh-colored part…the other half is more like dirt than flesh…

It’s OK. I do lots of dirt too. But you can see how crazy some of these pieces get…I try to fit them all efficiently together to get the least amount of wasted fabric. I think that one is number 5 in the progression.

And in the end, it was approaching 1 AM and I had everything ironed except the thousand pieces that needed to be fabric number 3…so I stopped there and put all of the 3’s into that bin on top and everything else in the one below…

And I went to bed. And didn’t sleep. Whoops. But I do have to be human today and do work, and I can’t just be a fulltime artist, although it’s a dream of mine…one that will probably never be fulfilled. I thought I had a chance at that, at that type of future, but I’m not allowed. Some days the dark depressed inside of me tells me to stop hoping and wishing for such things, because the reality of my life is such that I will always have to work uberhard to be the artist…it will always be something that I am arguing in my head about, deciding to spend the time on that rather than with other people doing normal people things…sacrificing sleep for art.

Sleep doesn’t make me happy though…and art, although it is not doing its job at the moment, certainly has a better chance of getting me to happy than another 20 minutes or an hour of zoned-out bliss in a warm bed. Of course, in the bright light of morning, I always wish I had chosen a LITTLE more sleep over art, but oh well. Honestly, I was lucky to get myself in bed when I did…my art brain wanted to iron the whole thing down last night, and it was only the tiny bit of mom brain that was in there monitoring my status that persuaded me that I was actually starting to manifest signs of TIRED that got me to turn off the iron and walk away from the fabric.

I can sleep when I’m dead.

McGinty Mountain Hike

On Sunday, I hiked to the top of McGinty Mountain in the Jamul, California, area. It’s about 5 miles round trip and is fairly strenuously uphill. It was a day after a rather large rainstorm came through the area, so mud was sticking to our boots making me about an inch taller at times. Sticky mud helps on the uphills, but you slide on the downhills. The hike goes up about 1300 feet to an elevation of 2183′. Here’s a cool link to Derek Loranger’s 100 Peaks website, with video of rain and hail on the trail (hey, that rhymed). He also talks about the excessively sticky mud, but honestly, in San Diego, that probably only happens a few times a year.

Here’s the official government website. There is a regular Hike with a Ranger event on this trail, but amusingly, the government website doesn’t forward to the calendar properly, so I’m not sure how you’d find it.

There’s a nice little dirt parking lot at the trailhead with a view of this, which is NOT McGinty Mountain…

There’s another little hill and path to the left. Honestly, the hardest part about this trail besides the fairly strenuous uphill climb is trying to figure out which is the REAL trail and which are just dead-ends.

It is not marked particularly well…although you’re unlikely to get totally lost, you may wander around a bit if it didn’t just rain so you could totally track your own footprints back. There’s a chimney sticking up on this hill.

Here’s the trailhead itself, complete with warnings, doggie poop bags, and trail map.

Although again…it’s not always easy to tell where you should be going on the actual trail.

There are lots of sweeping views of the valleys on either side, with Rancho San Diego on one side, Jamul on the other.

The trail does track along next to houses on the lower slopes, and you can see more on the hills in the distance.

There is some steep climbing at the beginning and the end.

I think the parking lot is down in those trees in the middle of the picture.

We did see some weather, but it mostly left us alone…this is the view to the north, with Cowles Mountain in the distance (not the first peak in the middle, but the paler one to the right of it.

And a bird…which one of the hikers was able to identify…all I remember is that it’s a Spotted something (because of the wings, of course).

This is the view to the south of Jamul…the mountains on the right is where I’ll be next weekend.

Bailey was our faithful companion on the hike.

There was a mine off the trail on one side…

I’m not entirely sure what they mined (the Internet says gold), but these aren’t very big holes…we saw another one on the side of a rock on part of the hike.

I did not crawl inside. We took our first group picture up here…

It was a small group, due to the weather. And I am apparently short. You can decide which view is best…

Yes. I wore shorts. What can I say? It wasn’t actually super cold…cold enough that I had two shirts on for most of it, but went down to short sleeves for part of it…until the weather wandered back in…we could see rainstorms in the distance (or not-so-far distance). I have official zip-off hiking pants somewhere…I just don’t know where.

The trail consistently moved upwards…although most of the time, it wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t talk and hike (that’s my measure of how bad IS it…can I talk? Not so bad.).

Lots of valley views and vistas with big dark clouds…

It reminds me of what I love about San Diego County…all those mountains so close to home. I would die in Kansas…too flat.

This is looking north at where my house might be if you could see through hills.

On the right is San Miguel, which I’ve hiked previously. The trail was eroded by rain, definitely, but was also pretty rocky. Bailey was a trooper.

I think this is the portion the leader called “Heartbreak Hill”…here’s where talking and breathing had a bit of a conflict…

I was not the only one taking photos…you can see my naked legs up there in shorts…

McGinty6 small

Still easier than San Miguel though…more mountain vistas, off to the east, this time.

And northeast…

I think that’s looking at San Miguel again, but I’m not really sure!

That’s definitely north again.

North…

At the top, we climbed as high as we could (that rock) and took another group photo…

And here was the big money shot…

This was on the way back, I think…easier going down, but had some issues with picking the right trail.

We didn’t have much rain in the end. The hike was just short of 5 miles in about two and a half hours (with a few stops for people to rest and/or catch up, plus playing in mines and on rocks)…I would definitely do this again, although I suspect it’s particularly difficult in the heat of summer. Apparently snakes are a real issue up there too. This is closer to home than Cowles Mountain is and definitely less populated. Strenuous? Yeah…a bit…you need to be in some sort of shape, but if you’re persistent, you could go up it even if you are a slow but steady hiker…and you don’t have to go all the way up. It’s an up and back hike, so you could stop whenever you were tired and come back. The trail does continue past the mountain peak…I didn’t really explore beyond that…maybe on another day.

That One Thing

I didn’t do too well with my goals in the last week. Too many things in my head, kinda like vines taking over newly planted flowers…choking out what I wanted to do with whatever their goal was when they took over my brain. It’s OK. It’s not like I failed or anything. I overplan so there’s no down time. There’s never a moment when I’m wondering what I could possibly do with my spare time. There are many things on the list, things of all types of creative expenditure…from drawing to ironing to sewing to simply cutting things out, which honestly doesn’t require a lot of brain power or motivation. Plus there’s always grading and cleaning and dehoarding and yardwork. I do all that on purpose. If there were nothing to keep my brain fully occupied, I might rip it out of my head and toss it in the garbage disposal. Shred that puppy.

So I did some of what was on the list. Saturday. Sigh. Well, Saturday was different…and yet the same. I’ve been there before, not to that particular place, which was quite beautiful…

Made me wish I had lots of money and no fear about fire danger…gorgeous views. Quiet. Neighbors forever far enough away. But that’s not my life. SOOO not my life.

That was followed by this…

OK. Well. I’ll be dead. Although this did foster a funny drawing in my head that never made it onto paper. Oh well. There is no shortage of drawings in there. I’m not sure drawings of Kathy’s version of God should be a part of this world.

I hiked this morning…another post on that later. It was good. The rain held off…just a few sprinkles. Which reminds me, I only had 6 eucalyptus branches down and they all missed the house, but the pool pump died in the storm (after I went out to try to clean it out)…so the continuing hits to my financial stability are in fact, well, continuing. They are all out of my control, so I will have to deal. I’ve told the boychild we can be a mother-son pizza-delivery team. He’s not amused.

Speaking of not amused, during Friday’s soccer game, girlchild headed the ball by slamming her forehead into another girl’s head and got this cute little bruise…

It’s actually even more purple and darker (but less swollen) today. Should be green by the banquet (and photos) on Wednesday. Looks like eyeshadow gone horribly wrong.

Girlchild and I often text back and forth…especially when we’re not in the same place.

Yeah. I don’t know. At least we both have a sense of humor.

Wolves rock by the way.

I am amazed by this stuff…trying to figure out how to smash more natural selection into the year so I can use this as part of it.

Plus NOT audio books…I tried to listen to an audiobook the other day because many people were recommending it, and I failed miserably. I could not keep all the words in my head. I couldn’t concentrate. I will try again, maybe while quilting? Usually I listen to music when I quilt because I zone out. I tried listening to a podcast once and completely lost focus on the quilting if I listened hard and lost focus on the podcast if I focused on the quilting. Some connection in there is fried maybe. Or I am that deeply in focus when I quilt? I don’t know.

One of my goals this weekend was to start ironing fabrics on the Mammogram quilt (which by the way is a really lame name for a quilt). I really wanted to start last night, but was way too exhausted and knew I was hiking early this morning…so I went to bed early (for me) instead of getting the first steps done. I needed to straighten up a little and move Babygirl off the ironing board…

She wasn’t happy about that, but I managed it…at least for now.

This quilt doesn’t have many pieces, but it does have BIG pieces…I hang the drawing up so I can see it while I iron. I also marked the flesh pieces (which are the biggest part of this quilt) with numbers for the range of colors…I originally had 1-7, but added a subcolor to 1, because I honestly didn’t have a yard of any light-enough flesh color that would work for all the pieces that needed to be the lightest color. I usually only buy 1/2 yards. I found two that harmonized well on the light end, so split it into 1 and 1a.

Yes, my brain is somewhat convoluted sometimes. Originally I was going to go buy some fabric, but I don’t have any money to spare right now. Oh, and I haven’t really picked a background fabric yet. I just realized that. Maybe the purple is going to be it. Who knows. I’m a little unfocused at the moment. OK. A lot unfocused. Ask Mr. Meditation. I’m in the next series, the Heart series. It’s really throwing me. It’s all about feeling happiness in yourself and seeing it in others, and I can’t get there at all. What’s amazing about this app is that whatever discomfort or problem I’m having with the meditation, usually within a day of my having issues, he’s addressing that exact issue. Wow. So either I’m semi-normal or he’s psychic. Either way, I do just stick with it and at some point it will start to make more sense to me. It’s not surprising that I can’t remember being happy or doing something for someone to make them happy…the only things I can remember are so painful at the moment that my brain just literally shuts down, slams the door, and screams that she’s not coming out until I stop all that recollecting and shit.

All righty then. Moving on.

Hence the fabric-picking. It’s really another type of meditative state.

And though it doesn’t make me happy to do it, it does give me some sense of peace, some relief from the shitty mindstate in which I otherwise exist. Crappy beat-up license plate on a junker car. Yes. THAT mindstate. That above was my original run of 7 fabrics, but I added another similar light one to go with the first one…because here’s how much fabric HALF of the pieces that needed to be the lightest color took up.

Yup. So I have two now. There’s not much left of that fabric. Sometimes certain fabrics are so precious-feeling that you don’t want to do this to them, but then I think, when it’s in the drawer, I never see it…if it’s in a quilt, I might see it. But then it doesn’t really matter once the quilt is made.

Sometimes being an artist makes me feel like an alien. My brain does all this stuff and is obsessed for hours, days, weeks, months, with all this act of creation stuff and when you talk to other people about it, they don’t really know what to say. Huh. OK. Well. Yes, I’m a freak. It’s strange, I get so much fulfillment and peace from the artmaking, but it really does push me away from lots of people, just because the doing of it seems such a foreign concept to them, unless they have a friend or family member who makes art, creates something. Or there are a few people who just get it. Not many. Most give me that look and that nervous laugh. Especially when they figure out how much time and energy I spend doing this. I actually wonder what they heck they do all those hours when I’m doing this. Oh. They’re probably sleeping. Or cleaning.

Sigh.

Some of you reading here will understand this, though…the arrival of the Dharma catalog…

Be still my beating heart. You have no money. Plus you have dye stuff. You don’t need more (“need?” What is this word “need?”). I still like to read through the whole thing. Maybe there’s some tool or coloring device that will just make my day and I haven’t heard of it yet and it’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for to change my life.

Yeah. Not? Are you sure? Because I’m definitely on the lookout for that one thing I’ve been waiting for. I just don’t actually believe it exists.

Missing: Brain

Description: gray, white, pink, lots of surface area, bad attitude. Last seen: wandering the streets cluelessly, not following instructions.

I have another post I started writing this morning, but it requires brain power and I am missing significant portions of my brain tonight. They have just wandered off for a nap or a vacation or something…they muttered as they went by, so I’m not really sure what their issue is. I just know that there’s some resentment and anger, and I can’t really deal with their drama right now, so I’m just going to let them have some time to themselves and hope we can converse in a civil manner tomorrow.

I am such a tolerant brain owner.

Seriously, though, the numbness continues, but my counselor says that she has heard a real laugh out of me the last two weeks instead of just my nervous laugh (I have spent the last 7 hours trying to imagine what my nervous laugh sounds like…I cannot produce it on command and apparently have no control over my laughing). I guess that’s good. We talked about stress and how my reaction to stressful events and non-stressful events are somewhat flipped, backwards even, and I need to figure that out and switch them. But acknowledge that numbness is some version of healthy, of my brain trying to protect me or give me a rest from constant hypervigilance. It doesn’t help with the crying though. I am numb but then I cry. At the drop of a freakin’ hat. It’s so hard to be at social events sometimes because the stupidest stuff will upset me and I have to work really hard not to tear up. Not acceptable behavior…unless you’re at a funeral. Or a wedding. Neither of which do I attend with any frequency.

I drew during prep yesterday. It’s not very exciting and it’s certainly not done.

But it’s pen on paper. Blurry? Camera sucks. But drawing. Drawing good.

Girlchild had her last playoff game tonight, because they lost 0-1…

It was dark, so I’m not sure why I started taking pictures…except that she was on the field and that was kind of amazing for her coach.

And yes, it was on-and-off pouring rain. Fun stuff. She went up to head the ball and headed the other player at the same time, right above the eye…it’s all swollen and purple now. She’ll probably have a black eye. Good times.

I like to set goals for the weekends. It keeps me (sometimes) from wallowing too deeply in depressive thoughts about what I used to do on weekends and how they feel now, which is mostly like shit. I need to go to the gym and I have a hike planned, even though there’s some rain wandering around the county. It should be OK. I have a ton of grading to get done before Thursday, when the gradebook opens. I want to get a good chunk of it done this weekend, because the week is awfully full already. I want to get the big long tall drawing done…there’s not that much left to do. I want to start ironing Wonder Under onto fabrics for the Mammogram quilt. That means I need to figure out a setup to keep Babygirl off the ironing board for a few days (barbed wire? fencing around the ironing board?).

Not much. There’s a bunch of errands sprinkled in there as well, plus installing external hard drives and moving stuff around to hopefully help the computer run better. Plus some yardwork. Did I tell you two big branches came down in the storm? They missed the house luckily…last time, one spiked the roof into the bathroom ceiling. Still haven’t fixed the inside part…the outside is fixed.

Maybe I’ll even take a nap. Could happen. It would help if those pieces of the brain would come back. I kinda need their assistance.

Unacceptable…

I got an invitation to apply to a juried art competition for American women artists, art that “exemplifies the utmost in excellence in terms of composition, technique, mastery of medium and quality of design.” Then they listed “acceptable” and “not accepted” media. Um. So first of all, those aren’t antonyms really. It should be “accepted” and “not accepted” OR “acceptable” and “unacceptable.” Yes, I’m pedantic about language…but here’s the thing…acceptable means something very different here than accepted…also because what I do, fiber art, is not in the “acceptable” range. Painting is (of course), as is sculpture and drawing. Textile and fiber art are listed in the “not accepted” (unacceptable?) range.

But fiber art is almost exclusively a female art. Now they knocked photography out too, so they are obviously clinically deranged, but whatever. Also not accepted are “craft, jewelry…any work containing computer-generated elements, prints”…so basically all the art forms I have used over the years are unacceptable. My subject matter is on the fringe, and so is my medium.

I’m reading a book about art called Making Art: Form and Meaning, by Terry Barrett, and he talks about choosing your medium to fit your message. I don’t know how much I chose fabric, or whether it chose me. I don’t know when I made the decision to fully move away from screenprinting to quilt art. I know I was never a great painter…or sculptor…or photographer. I could draw though. I did all of it in school and quite a bit of it afterwards…but pen on paper and then translating that into fabric has been my preferred artistic form of communication for an awfully long time, like since 1991? OK, I probably got serious about fabric only in about 1996 or so.

Anyway, the picture I spent a lot of time staring at in that book, like for the last three days, was Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me…

an amazing painting. I think I have a bathtub drawing coming…it has to be better than George W’s version…

Yup. Our former president apparently has nothing in the water. Totally. Anyway, I think of the bathtub as this introspective place, and I think Kahlo expresses that well…that time in your head when you are floating in warm water, and you can see your toes, but all the trials and tribulations of the day are floating there in front of you (please note again the emptiness of Bush’s bathtub…a metaphor for the empty mind?). Anyway. It’s an image that has stuck with me, and then because of the title, this song has been in my head for days as well…

Sigh. The weird connections of art and emotions. And yes, Florence admits to looking at Kahlo’s painting when she wrote the song…she spoke of the ocean being “nature’s great overwhelmer.” I think kids are the great overwhelmer personally, but I don’t think Florence has had any of those yet.

The next email that came through? “Create instant happiness by injecting color into your house.” Really? Oh…so THAT’S how it works. Damn. These people have obviously never seen my house…lack of color is not the issue…and if only it were so simple to just paint a few walls and add some colorful cushions and BAM! You’re fucking happy. I mean, the wall facing my kitchen is bright red. I don’t think it’s an issue.

So I had a day. And sometimes I just pick up science journals in between classes and make the kids line up outside so I have a whole 48 seconds of silence…of breathing calmly…of preparing my head for the next onslaught. I play music. I sing to myself. Apparently today I was in Roast Mode. I don’t roast on purpose. I just state the obvious. Apparently that’s roasting. We are nearing the end of the light unit (the unit on light…not the unit that is light in content…in fact, trying to explain the difference between reflection and refraction to 7th-grade brains more interested in candy and farting…yes…farting…is remarkably difficult and not light at all). It doesn’t actually get better or easier, but talking about DNA and genetics is a bit more engaging than light…even with 400 optical illusions to show them. I think I just need a change of topic…because if one more kid tells me that the CAUSE of rainbows is ROY G. BIV? That might be the straw that breaks this camel’s back.

I got an email from the girlchild’s English teacher today (fun stuff, let me tell you), and it was RIFE with typos and grammatical errors. I refrained from marking it up and sending it back with a grade on it. Really. I did REFRAIN.

Teaching is not easy. Teaching is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done…not as hard as being a single/divorced parent…but close. You are parent, disciplinarian, hard-ass, therapist, content-expert, maid, actor, feeder of the mind (sometimes of the body as well)…and somehow you have to find sanity in all that. Sometimes that is very hard to do. I’m better at it now. I’m better at it while depressed. I don’t know what that means.

So it’s important that I find some balance…this school year more than any other has been about that balance…especially with the depression throwing me completely OFF balance, destroying motivation, fucking with my mood, messing with my ability to deal with the simplest things. I’ve dropped so many balls this year. I thought I would be in a better place by now, but I’m stuck in a sad swamp. I made myself exercise tonight, then finished a book…and treated myself with Mexican food. I don’t hardly ever eat out any more, but after the gym, my blood sugar was crashing, and the thought of having to come home and cook something that I really didn’t want to eat was SO depressing that I stopped at the local good Mexican food place. It was worth it. Calories? Yup. But I don’t think you can live like a monk all the time and not have the joy of guacamole in a burrito.

Then I came home and meditated and drew…I drew very very slowly, because (1) I’m really tired and (2) I’m not sure what’s coming next…I have to let my brain work it through. I know I want a wolf in there somewhere, but haven’t figured out how to fit it in…I thought originally that she (the chick at the bottom) was under water…

But maybe she’s not…maybe all that is behind her and she’s sitting on the ground. I don’t know.

It’s not like I’m portraying reality here. I’m pretty sure Kahlo didn’t worry about shit like that. And my stuff certainly has surrealistic tendencies. I can decide that’s the bottom of the ocean and wolves live down there…SEA WOLVES. Or not. Maybe there’s an aquarium behind her. Yeah. That’s it. She’s at the fucking aquarium. NAKED. Insert hysterical laughter here. I think I need to go hang out with some artists for a while…not sure where I will find them. It’s really alienating to never have other artists to talk to in person. I love book club, but I think I need art club. Then again, so many artists drive me bonkers with artspeak and pretentiousness. Sigh.

Oh who cares. I’m just drawing. Insight into the artist’s mind. Wish I could have read Frida’s blog. We could have gone out for a glass of wine and complained about how big of an ass Diego was. Could have been good.

So Much Wasted…

I don’t feel human when I’m numb. I woke up this morning and the numbness, it was dragging me down into a pit. That’s not good.

I go to school. I do work. I go to the chiropractor and she says oh my what’s going on with your neck and puts warming pads on me and leaves me to relax and instead I cry. That is what I do now. That is who I am now. She gives me some exercises, explains what’s happening (to my back…she doesn’t notice the crying). Asks what’s going on. Tries to suss out why it’s worse than it ever has been. Hmn. Can’t say. I come home and think about being productive. I think about what I’m doing to my back?

I can go two ways with that productive thing: (1) do some work, grading of some type or (2) start picking fabrics for a quilt.

I do neither. I have a library book due Saturday. I’m almost done with it. I sit down and read. I talk to parentals for a bit about sprinklers, but mostly I read. I didn’t actually have much time between getting home from the chiropractor and having to leave again…so it was hard to force myself to be productive.

Then it’s book club night! I liked the book a lot, and I like getting out of the house to hang out with other geeky women and talk about books and movies and whether the guy that plays Sherlock is hotter than the tenth Dr. Who. Or whatever. These are my people. I ended up talking to someone I’d talked to before briefly…turns out her current life has some similarities to mine. It was a good conversation. Plus I have more books to read. This is how geeky our group is…those of us who liked the book now vow to read everything he’s written and we get all excited about how many books he’s written. Yup. I will never be able to read all the books that I want to read. Then there’s discussion of whether the British show of this is better than the American version, and if it’s a European show, we know there will be no happy ending. Americans like happy endings. The Europeans are much more realistic. I am more Euro than US of A in character. Always have been.

I come home and exercise while talking briefly to the kids, then spend an hour plus on the phone with brother and SIL talking college and retirement and money. It’s too late to start anything artistic. I’m honestly too tired to do anything else tonight. Maybe tomorrow. There’s no rush.

I still haven’t finished the book. Too many distractions and interruptions. They’re not bad interruptions though…they’re just life. And life interruptions like that are better than wallowing in the depression pit. That pit smells bad. I don’t like hanging out there. It makes me feel bad.

Except I know I still feel empty and numb…and I feel like I didn’t accomplish anything today…and I feel like I will never feel better. And I haven’t meditated yet, so I will try to do that after I finish writing this, but will probably fall asleep doing it.

I drew at school during prep. I did a bunch of grading and I got that nasty awful feeling in the pit of my belly that tells me I should work on my mindset, so I turned the music on and started to draw. There wasn’t much time left in my prep period, so I didn’t draw for long, but it seemed to get me through the day.

I wish for so many things to be different. I didn’t want things to be like this. There are some things I can change, but so much of it is out of my control…so much is just up in the air. So much is because of my brain, which refuses to behave. Why start now? Depression takes hold, digs in. I feel like I will need to cut fingers off, sever tentacles, slice up some connecting phalanges in order to disconnect from that part of my brain, the part that is deep in hopelessness…deep in crying.

So much brain power and energy wasted on this state of mind.

So much wasted.

Maybes.

My brain is disturbingly empty tonight. I’ve been poking around the edges, looking for some insight into the emptiness, but there’s nothing. Ha. Nothing in the emptiness. Sigh. Knock knock. I don’t appear to be at home. Maybe I’m on vacation and forgot to let me know. Dammit. Stupid irresponsible brain. Never can count on it to be mature and follow through.

I went to the girlchild’s soccer game and stitched through the whole thing…

Well, except when I was trying to take about 40 blurry pictures of her because it was dark and I hadn’t quite admitted to myself yet that it was too dark to be trying to photograph anything. Did I mention my camera is currently taped together? Yeah. So I took a lot of blurry photos…

I have no idea what is going on in this photo…

And in between I stitched…

Like the only picture I got of her that wasn’t significantly blurry was because she was almost standing still. I don’t know why I work so hard at this. I got amused later when one of the parents, whom I’ve known for YEARS, told me he thought I was British…like I’d lost my accent years ago. Say what? Dude. I’m born and bred Californian…OK, by some mistake of weird geography (my dad was stationed in Alaska in the Army and I was born on an Army base there), I was not actually BORN in California, but I might as well have been. Both my parents are from California as well. I have been amused by this all night. I’m a secret agent Brit masquerading as a typical Californian artistic freak. OK, not so typical. Whatever. I embrace my British roots (well, I do have some of those…but Scottish).

They won the game. We knew they would. I’m really REALLY looking forward to the next game on Friday, because they’re predicting lots of rain and lightning storms. Yes, I will still stitch. I have that cool setup where I put the plastic-covered blanket over me and the umbrella sits in my bra (seriously, it props quite well in there), and I stitch under the umbrella. Yes, it’s a little crazy. I don’t think we’ll get past Friday’s game…we’ve played this team before and we usually lose…although we tied them a couple of weeks ago. Who knows.

I got home and didn’t have time for the gym, so I just made my dinner and ate and read a little and exercised, and then the ex called because his car broke down and he needed me to pick him up, so I did that, and then made tomorrow night’s dinner for the kids, so I can go to book club, and then I meditated and then it was time for bed. Or writing, then bed. Not very exciting. Then again, most of my nights aren’t very exciting. What’s new?

So no art. No deep thinking. Nothing really. Just empty. Seriously vacant. Wanted to draw. Wanted to pick fabrics for the Mammo quilt. Realized I didn’t have a background fabric picked out. I have a bunch of hand-dyed backgrounds I could use (probably too busy), or I have the dark purple I originally picked out for the Celebrating Silver quilt, but then rejected. I think I decided that was my best choice. And a little-old-lady cat with dandruffy skin just jumped on my lap, even though I told her it wouldn’t last long.

I finished reading this tonight, David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls…

I’m still not sure what the title means, but how could you NOT read a book with that title? It’s a bunch of essays. Some were quite interesting, some funny, some I just didn’t care about. I’m not really an essay reader…maybe because I actually read essays as part of my job…although Sedaris writes better than 99% of my students (I have had a few very funny and articulate students).

Really, the best thing for me is to take the empty brain to bed and do a restart tomorrow. Maybe after book club, I’ll be motivated to pick fabrics. Maybe I’ll feel like installing the absolutely adorable (really, they are…they are so tiny and cute) external hard drives I got to try to ameliorate the computer issues I’m having (running out of space). Maybe I’ll make dessert and eat it. Maybe I’ll make it to the gym (OK, not tomorrow night, for sure). Maybe my brain will check back in from whatever vacation it’s on at the moment and let me know something helpful, something pertinent to my healing.

Or not.

Take a Sad Song…

So much for my plan to go to sleep earlier…my brain got in the way tonight and forced me to draw to make it better.

It was late and my brain just didn’t fucking care…it was disinterested in the whole “normal amount of sleep” theory and how sleep is supposed to protect me from all this health shit. Vicious damn cycle. Can’t sleep. Health is an issue. Can’t sleep. Depression. Depression affects health, affects sleep. Fuck it.

I’m still working on this drawing. It has so much detail in it that I will be hating myself when I go to make it…because I don’t think I can enlarge it more than 200%. So those suckers on the octopus? Holy crap. They will be tiny (they are two concentric circles). Whatever. It demands to be the way it is. I didn’t draw for long, about 30 minutes. I just felt so shitty after meditation…which is probably not the way it should work, but it did. I can’t remember exactly what the issue was…something about my calm confidence (which doesn’t exist, by the way) or dealing with problems calmly (fuck no)…I just cried. It’s a good thing no one watches me meditate. It’s probably somewhat disturbing. I guess the crying was calm.

I figured out what was on the other side…

DNA. DNA is part of this, you know? DNA gives you tendencies, precursors to certain problems. Then your environment fucks with that, the people around you…they fuck with your DNA tendencies and cause nasty shit to happen. Or not. I wish I were one of the ‘or nots,’ but apparently I angered the gods before I was born and my nasty-ass karma is now fucking with my entire existence. If you believe in that shit. The combination of the two, DNA and environment, makes you who you are. Although I have to believe that my brain, my own personal will, free will? Nah. Not free. Paid for. That my will can affect some of that. When I’m feeling sane. When I’m feeling strong. I am feeling neither at the moment, sane nor strong. Mine is a particularly toxic combination, apparently. It’s one I’m really unhappy with, one I don’t want to be. I know I can mess with the environment part…the nurture part. The DNA, well, I’m stuck with that. You can’t escape your DNA. Is my brother’s DNA so different from mine? He makes better choices. I suck at it. I wonder if he is happy. I hope he is. I’m not.

I did finish the Wonder Under on the Mammo quilt…

There it is, all sorted out. Isn’t it cute? It only took up 4 bins, instead of the 13 I needed for the last one. Goals? Get this ironed onto fabric, cut out, ironed down, maybe even stitched down by Spring Break. Break is really late this year, starts April 5…so I have 6 weeks. Then I need to start drawing the next invitational quilt…can’t talk about that one yet. I guess I will start drawing it when I finish this crazy one. Then I’ll need to decide what big one will occupy me for the next few months. The mammo one won’t take long. No down time. Down time is DOOWWWNNN time. Yeah. Moody. Stupid fucking hormones. Stupid woman existence. Sigh. I don’t really hate being female…but it’s not a whole lot of fun at the moment.

Calli doesn’t seem to mind her existence…

Wish I could sleep with such sweet abandon. Maybe I should have been spayed. Or a dog.

I used my meditation skills today during one class and during tutorial. Really, my brain wanted to strangle a couple of the tutorial/detention kids who were doing their best to annoy the crap out of me. Seriously. They were doing it on purpose. They’ve learned that if they irritate their teacher enough, they will get sent out and they won’t have to work. I didn’t bite. I tortured them and made them do their work. I didn’t really torture them. I just made them stay with my evil eye. Ticket out the door is a completed piece of work. They bought it. Deep breathing though. Then came home and got drama from the girlchild. Cried in the car. Cried at home. Cry cry cry. Solves nothing. Just makes my eyes hurt. Bought nice eye drops for sore eyes. Sad. There should be a formula for Sad Eyes. Crying Eyes. Mostly no…they have allergy eyes and dry eyes and contact eyes, but not Depressoid Eyes and Fucked-Up-Life Eyes. I looked. I really did.

It isn’t really surprising that I cry as much as I do.

I wish I didn’t have to.

Two teachers today were commenting on how skinny I am at the moment, and how I growled about their saying it before. I just looked at them. They said, just say thank you. So I did. Begrudgingly. And in my head, there was the litany of the unhealthy status of my weight loss, about how it’s sickness that caused it, not healthy behaviors. Healthy behaviors are maintaining it (well, as healthy as I can be at the moment, because some of my obsessive exercising and avoiding food are not particularly healthy).

I finally ordered some external hard drives to deal with my storage issues…and then the camera wasn’t working right with the computer. Thought it was the camera, because it’s actually starting to pull apart…the two sides are not fully connected (sigh. yes, I drop it a lot, and now it’s taped together…yes, seriously)…but it turns out I think it’s the fucking hub. Dammit. Could I have more go wrong? Seriously? I just don’t have the patience for all this. I’m hoping the boychild will help me with the hard drives, move the photos maybe and set up the backup on the new ones…then maybe I will have to get a new hub as well…plus I think my computer has a memory issue. I know the boychild’s does, but I would have to buy him a new computer to fix that issue, and that’s not happening…because he’ll need a laptop for college and I can’t afford both.

MONEY. God damn. It’s tight. Deep breaths. Stop panicking. I didn’t want to be this old and still living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted my life to be different, more stable. I don’t think this level of stress is healthy for me. I don’t want to be this stressed, this worried about my future and the kids’ futures. I didn’t want to be constantly worried. But I am. I don’t see an end to that…there’s no magic that fixes the stressed-out part of my life. I just push it over THERE. Meditation helps me numb my response…is that meditation? Or depression? Hard to tell. If I’m numb, it doesn’t matter. Numb isn’t a healthy state, though. It’s supposed to be short-term, enough to get me to the hospital and into triage…enough to get me through hospice and a funeral…and then I’m supposed to feel properly again. Sheesh. Don’t want THAT. Feelings bad. Feelings make me feel bad.

I’ve been listening to the Beatles a lot lately…they are a big portion of my iPod library. This one…

I’m trying to listen to the voices in my head (yes, I sound crazy…the counselor asked me if I have conversations with myself…well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone?). But the part I keep hearing is “take a sad song and make it better.” Trying, Paul. Really. I am. I’m the sad song. I can be better.

The hardest thing to admit is that I’m not better. I want to be. I really do. But I’m not. And maybe I never will be.

Searching for Better Than This…

When my head gets all tied in knots, I have this stash of partially written or barely started posts in draft form on here, and that’s what I put on the blog. It’s like fill-in-the-blank posts, posting-lite, don’t have to think too hard about posting…like the Road to California post…I had all the pictures resized and stuck in the post. I just had to go through and add all the names and links. I can do that without hardly thinking about it…and yet it takes up mental space and time. So I don’t have to deal too much with the goo in my head that wants me to feel bad. Avoidance. Book reviews? Same thing. I have about 8 other posts that are started in draft form, just sitting there, waiting. The Chihuly glass one? Started with photos, but then words took over.

This weekend? Not so much fun. Just keeping my head above water. Trying not to think too hard about feeling bad, about feeling sad. Trying not to remember how I used to feel, because that Kathy does not live here any more. She has moved out. She is never coming back. She can’t get in past the hoard (imagining when they try to get in the front door and all the crap that’s been hoarded is blocking it, and you can only squeeze in).

I went to a movie last night. I used to go to the movies almost every Saturday night. I loved going to the movies. I don’t love it so much by myself. I did it, though, because I felt like I was being punished for being alone, that I didn’t feel like I could do the things I love because of that. I’m becoming a hermit. OK, I was kind of hermit-like before, but I’m getting worse. It’s because it’s honestly too hard to be with people. I often feel more lonely in groups than I do at home alone with my sketchbook and my fabric and a cat or two. It’s sad. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. Right now. And realistically, the movies cost money and money is really tight at the moment.

So I picked a movie I had wanted to see when I first saw the trailers ages ago (there were others, but they weren’t at convenient times), and I drove out there to the theater and I cried through almost the whole movie and all the way home. I saw Her.

It was good…although it had some slow bits and the ending was…eh. Thing is, when I see people with technology now, out to dinner, hanging out in groups, everyone is doing that…talking to themselves, to their OS instead of a human…so it’s creepy, but not that far off of reality. Shades of that book…crap…Wake, by Robert Sawyer, where the WWW becomes conscious and starts talking to a teenage girl…because I know that’s who I would choose to talk to if I were the web (not). Anyway. Here’s why I’m on Goodreads…so I can look shit like that up, books I read before that I can’t remember the name of because my brain is like mush.

I suspect it’s really that so much of my brain is otherwise occupied that stuff like that just slips through.

So that was really successful, guys! I joined a couple of movie-going groups on MeetUp…maybe it will be a better experience. Of course, I can only go like one night a week, and most of their movies are not on that night. Sigh. But it’s better than this. It’s got to be. Something has to be. I keep searching for Better Than This…it’s an island in the Atlantic and there are no boats that go there. I might have to swim.

All the hikes I wanted to go on this weekend were too many hours for a two-day weekend…I had too much I needed to get done, so I got up this morning and hiked Cowles Mountain instead. It’s a quickie, but still is a good workout. San Diego has two mountains that get the shit hiked out of them by every weekend-walker and lame-ass wannabe hiker in the whole town: Cowles and Iron Mountains. The annoying part is the number of people…and the number of people who don’t know trail rules (yes, I’m a hiking elitist, sorry, get the fuck over if you are hiking that slow please)…and the number of dumb bimbos and assholes who are hiking up the side of the mountain, not following the trails, destroying it for future generations. Yes, I yelled at two girls. I apologize. Wait. No I don’t. They were being stupid. Ladies, if there’s a fence, it’s there for a reason. Where are the vicious rattlesnakes when you need them? Avoiding Cowles, for sure. I should carry one in my pack for times like this, just hurl it at the dumbshits who can’t walk on a trail without damaging sensitive habitat. Yes, they went over a fence right next to a sensitive habitat sign. I don’t feel bad about yelling at them.

That said, I did it fast (the hike) and proved I am much more fit than I was 7 months ago, when I would have to stop to rest. I didn’t rest at all, and I ran the downhill, passing two of my former students. HA! That was funny. And their mom. YOUR MOM. Sorry. Middle-school brain took over. I did pass your mom though. She’s looking good. You should be proud of her.

I didn’t do much in the way of art, because I was doing a lot of work-related shit. Which sucks. Always. I did a whole 16 minutes of cutting out Wonder Under…

The thing is, there isn’t much more to do on this one…then I’ll be on to the next step of picking out fabrics. But to what purpose? Hell. I still don’t know. Still don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t push it. I knew I’d be done and have to go on to the next step and I wasn’t in the mood. It’s depressing to finish a step right now. I hate that. It used to be fun, sometimes even exhilarating. Now it’s just fucked up.

Then I cleaned photos off my phone. My computer is actually getting full. I have too much music and too many photos. I need to do something about that, like soon. I meant to do it over Xmas and freakin’ ignored it. It’s too much for my brain to handle, like the broken sprinkler lines. I just can’t take it on. I have to though.

The girlchild got reading glasses.

Which is funny, because it was the boychild we thought needed glasses and turns out his vision is almost perfect. She describes her vision as “buzzy.” We said, “vibrating? blurry? fuzzy?” She said, “No, buzzy.” The child has her mother’s way with words. Oh well.

There was this…

Now, it’s one thing to put all those words on the back of your car (to remind you? because it’s not reminding others…driving along, OH SHIT…I’ve blown number 8. Dammit.); it’s another to spell one of them wrong. Sigh.

Jake helping the girlchild make her bed…

I am still learning to take panorama photos on my phone…I inevitably do it wrong three times before I do it right.

That’s Penasquitos last weekend. NOT a panorama.

And here it is again…done almost right this time…

Pretty, huh?

And here was the top of Cowles’ Mountain this morning…

San Diego does have the weather, doesn’t it? OK, summer will suck. I’m a little worried about summer. I won’t be able to hike like this. I don’t do heat well. Maybe I will borrow my ex’s kayak a lot. Maybe I will swim more. I don’t like swimming though.

I finished this book…A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore…

which is a good thing because book club is Wednesday. I liked it. I liked his turn of phrase. I like his weirdo stories. It’s the second of his books that I’ve read. It’s a little wacky, a little out there, but amusing and not dreary. Probably that was a good choice for the weekend, because it was a bit dreary…except for the hiking bit.

I watched this, a Tate Gallery video on nudity in art through the ages…

What’s funny is that to actually link to this video, I had to persuade YouTube that I didn’t need Safety Mode on my videos. They thought it was unsafe…I guess you shouldn’t watch it at work (I thought it was pretty benign myself). I like their shorts…educate the public about art. God knows we aren’t doing it in school any more.

This week? This week is the girlchild’s team finally making it to the CIF playoffs…two games this week guaranteed unless a volcano swallows us up (could happen), a book club meeting, and I think I signed up for two hikes next weekend, just because I think one will get canceled due to rain (she’s a real water wimp, the leader is). I set some goals on the art stuff for this week…I have two drawings I’d like to get done…one is in the sketchbook and one has been copied full size, but needs more. I want to finish the Wonder Under on the Mammogram quilt and start ironing it to fabric. I’d like to get all the wool cut out for Ivy’s quilt too, but I suspect I just shoved more into a busy week than can actually realistically get done. All that is better than thinking about the muck my brain wants to wallow in, though, so hopefully it will keep me distracted. If not, I may be back here again, clearing out photos and writing filler posts that don’t let my brain think too hard about reality. My other goal is to try to go to bed earlier…those super late nights aren’t helping. Maybe just 10 minutes earlier each night until I get back to something in the realm of sanity? Or not. It’s got to be better than this.

Book Review: Above

A few weeks ago, I read Isla Morley’s new book Above, to be released March 4.

Above is a fictional account of a survivalist kidnapping that unexpectedly turns into a dystopian novel. In fact, it feels like two novels, with the kidnapping of 16-year-old Blythe and installing her in a nuclear bomb silo underground as the first part, as she comes to adjust to her existence…and then the second novel, when she escapes. I don’t want to say much more because of spoilers, but it was not what I expected…which was refreshing…and jarring…shades of “be careful what you wish for…”.

Anyway, the important part is the writing…was it well-written? Yes, I would recommend the book, because it was certainly a book that was difficult to put down, albeit a bit slow in reading and jumpy in years in the middle of the book, but I would add that the last part of the book seemed weak in comparison. I love the idea of the last part of the book, love that it was unexpected and strange and messed with your head, but I thought the actual writing of that section fell a little flat. It seemed rushed, flat, compared to the rest…and maybe that is the difference between focusing on a significantly inner life for years and then being out in the world in the second part…but it just seemed like it was cut short or it lacked the depth of the first section.

All in all, though, worth a read, just to consider the possibilities.