A Persistent Drive to Create

Seven hours to iron it all down. Two and a half hours to stitch it down.

It needs a good ironing, then batting, backing, and pinbasting.

It was quick and easy. But I cried a lot while stitching. Not sure why. Too much free brain space.

The back…the brain really shouldn’t be allowed out on its own. It causes trouble. Runs amok.

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but I got some done. I never get as much done as I want. Goals keep resetting as I get closer to them. Never be satisfied. Always you could have done more. Why didn’t you? Failure.

Sigh. A persistent drive to create. It’s an obsession. It gets me up and out of bed.

I had troubled sleep last night, partially because my brain just worries about stupid stuff and can’t drop it, especially if I’m too tired to MAKE it drop it. Also, the girlchild was up really early to go to some soccer thing (thank god she sets her own alarm and I don’t even need to get out of bed, but it still wakes me up and then I drowse until she’s gone). So there were two dreams that were interrupted in all of that. I usually dream a lot, but lately, um, for the last 4 months, to be specific, I’m not remembering any of them. That might be a blessing, who knows, but since they’re usually pretty random, it might not be. The first dream, I was at school, in class, and kids were handing in their homework…one of the more stressful times of the week, since I hate excuses, and that’s all I hear for the whole day…my dog ate it, you didn’t give it to me (one of my favorites), I didn’t know it was due today, I had to go to the hospital last night because my sister was having her baby (were you helping her?). So I was collecting homework and it was supposed to be strips of paper that kids had written some stuff on and their names (another thing they have issues doing, writing their names on their papers), and as I collected them, I realized it looked like they had done the work and someone had then cut all of it up into strips, but not so everything lined up, so someone’s name wasn’t on the same piece of paper as their sentences, and I couldn’t tell whose was whose. The kids were thrilled by this, especially those who hadn’t DONE their homework, because they thought I should just not count it, because I couldn’t tell who had handed in what. Stubborn Kathy. I sat down at one of the desks and started laying the strips out, matching them up with the pencil marks, taping them together, while the kids groaned. Dammit. Talk about obsessive.

The second dream was in a doctor’s waiting room…god knows, I’ve spent enough time in those during my life. I was sewing. I’m always sewing. I don’t know why I was there, whether it was for me or one of my kids, but the room is full, and I look up, and there’s Jim K. (from college) with his MOM (no really, he looks like he’s 12) and he’s ignoring me. They’re talking to one of the doctor’s staff, signing in or making an appointment, but even though I wave at him twice, he purposely doesn’t look at me. There’s someone else in the waiting room that I know, but in the time between dream waking and waking up enough to type the basics on my phone, I forgot who it was…someone from school, like high school or college. Why do we go back to that so often? Or is it just me? The third guy was Mike S. (from high school, names shortened to protect the innocent, because I really don’t know why my brain has picked these people out of all the people in the world that I know), but before I saw him come out of the door, I saw his mom and sister. Actually, I saw a mom and sister I thought I knew, but I couldn’t figure out why (this happens to me all the time), and the girl waved at me and I waved back, and then he came out and smiled at me and talked to me, and then his sister sat next to me, held my face towards her, and spit at me like a camel, a huge wad of goo, and for some reason, I found that hysterical and started laughing. That’s when the girlchild started squawking in the hallway (for real) about her shoes to her dad or something, I was half asleep so I only half heard any of that.

Unless the dreams are working through something for me, I’m not sure this is that helpful, brain.

What am I scared of? I wrote about being scared last night. The funny thing is, I don’t even know that most of the time there is something specific that I am scared of…I am just scared, like when you’re walking on a dark sidewalk in a not-so-great part of town and you wish you weren’t walking alone, but you’ve got to get from A to B…that kind of scared…or when you wake up in the middle of the night with your heart pounding and you have no idea why. Then there’s the standard fears: not enough money to (a) send kids to college, (b) ever retire, (c) pay the bills. There’s the fear that I will never really get over all this shit, that I will be damaged beyond full repair forever. I don’t think that’s a realistic one, but it’s hard to get past it when you don’t FEEL better. The two are linked. The fear that I will be alone forever because there is something inherently wrong with me that caused all this. That’s one I know is unreal, at my core, at least the second part, but the first part? You don’t get to control that. This whole experience (this whole experience being the last 25 years of my life) has made me think I am perhaps a difficult child…and that may doom me. So I have to get OK with just being here on the planet by myself and not blaming myself for it…because deep down, I know I wasn’t the issue either time. I picked badly, but I was not the issue. I’m afraid of screwing up at my job, I’m afraid I’ll have to be a teacher forever and I’ll start to hate it (there are parts I hate now, but that’s true of all jobs). I’m afraid I’ll get old and there will be no one to help me. Yo! Kids! Guess what? I’m afraid I will never stop crying. I’m afraid I’ll be a hoarder. I’m afraid my really old car will just die and I won’t be able to afford a new one. I’m afraid the kids will move away and rarely come back (a real fear, that one). I’m afraid of my health issues, the diabetes, the family heart issues. I’m afraid of going blind or deaf. I’m afraid my computer will die and I won’t know how to fix it…or be able to afford to fix it.

So lots of them are money-related. Those are very real fears. Many of them are about my future, which my counselor has advised me to stop thinking about, because worrying about something that hasn’t happened doesn’t stop it from happening, and I’m just wasting a lot of good mental energy on that stress and worry. That said, I should plan for some things (I have…I have retirement money, some…I have college funds put away for the kids…some. I don’t have a plan for the car. I am doing my best to deal with the health and mental issues.).

There’s this song, All Cried Out…

by Alison Moyet…I think of her as the Adele of the 80s (or Adele is the Moyet of the 2010s?). Apparently she’s released a new album this year (and she looks a LOT different).

I keep wondering when I will be all cried out, when I will run out of tears, when things will not affect me like this. My med-pro friends will say that is a sign I need to be on anti-depressants, but I don’t think the crying is a problem…it would be if I didn’t do my art and shower and leave the house and do my job and do the shopping and buy Xmas gifts. That would be an issue, but I DO all the things I’m supposed to. So yeah, I’m sad. I’m depressed. But I don’t think meds that push that sadness away are going to be the answer. I don’t know what the answer is besides time and lots of it, but I don’t think it’s meds. You don’t have to agree with me. But I’m the only one who really knows my brain and how it works, and I spend a lot of time watching it and listening to it. So I get to make the decision.

The toenail finally fell off…

Friday. During class. Yup. I bandaged that sucker up and kept dealing. It looks lovely…which reminds me. It’s that stupid Gratefulness month. I’m not a fan of the post-a-note about your thankfulness every day…it just seems trite to me, like we should try to be that way all the time, and with fighting the depression for the last year and a half, I haven’t felt very grateful for anything. It’s too hard. It feels painful to be thankful. I can’t really explain that. But I was thinking about it while stitching stuff down today, which made me cry (the stitching and the thinking, potent mixture), and then I read an article about being mindful and how being thankful is part of that paying attention part…so I tried.

I’m thankful that my toenail finally fell off and it’s not too painful. I’m thankful for my kids keeping me sane (and alternately driving me insane) and requiring me to be present on a regular basis. I’m thankful for the driven creativity that keeps me going and out of bed and away from illegal drugs and scrapbooking and compulsive online shopping and other nefarious pursuits that would not do me well at the moment. I’m grateful for all the authors out there who write books for me to lose myself in, so I don’t have to be alone with myself all the time. I’m thankful for Kitten when she’s snuggled up against my back at night in bed. She is a comfort. I’m grateful for the plumber who came today and quickly and cheaply fixed my cold-water faucet so I don’t have to shower in the kids’ bathroom again. I’m thankful for British tea, PG Tips. I’m thankful for a brain that takes the worst and tries to deal anyway, that rages against the way it is and tries to make changes, even as it sinks into depressoid mud, that rails at me and tells me it’s going to be OK, that I am strong and I will survive this, yet again, and it will not take me down. I’m thankful for warm socks, because I am cold all the time these days. I’m thankful for all the words that help me clear my brain each night…hopefully to sleep like a child, without nightmares though…the dreamless sleep of the truly untroubled innocents.

Wishful Thinking

I get to milestones and they don’t register. Or they don’t register correctly. You finished a step in making a quilt! Cool! Yup. Not feeling it. It’s almost worse getting a step done…because then I think, wow, you don’t feel any better, any different. You are still sad, depressed, slogging through the days, taking the next step and the next one, waiting for something to make a difference, to make your heart show up, to make the feelings get out of the sad realm. But they don’t. It’s just the same.

I ironed today.

Every tree needs lightning bolts.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter that I ironed today. I also helped the boychild with his college apps; we got through the worst of it (well, he still has to write essays and ask for recommendations, so that might be the worst of it, and I have to pay for all of it, which also could be painful). I cleaned a bathroom. I grocery-shopped. I wrote a quilt statement. I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing. I worked out. I added a new bunch of exercises to my regimen, because if I’m going to be an antisocial, lonely old lady, I might as well be a strong, buff, antisocial, lonely old lady who does not have osteoporosis. None of that really mattered. I don’t know what matters.

I found the eyelid, after I had cut another one. That whole pile is pieces that I’ve found after I cut another one, or pieces I had cut out twice, or pieces that were totally the wrong color. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems mean to throw them out simply because I fucked up when I cut them out.

I’ve found that most TV shows right now rub me the wrong way. People are so shitty to each other in relationships that I can’t handle it; it makes me feel sick. So I’m watching X-Files. Mulder is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he’s well-meaning. I can handle shows from the 90s. Great. And Masterpiece Theater Mystery. That’s about it.

I didn’t start ironing until after 9, I think. I don’t know where the day went. It just went.

Once I got it all ironed together, I pulled it off the ironing sheets and rolled it up while I got the background ready to go, ironed it flat and laid it out on the floor.

I laid out the base first…the tree is easier to put down once the main section is ironed flat.

That’s most of it…missing two toenails, a fingernail, some drops of blood, a question mark, some dots over i’s, and a plug. I did get those on too, but didn’t manage a photo of that. You’ll see it again, once it’s stitched down. I’m hoping to do that tomorrow. It’s about 40″ wide x 50″ high. Something like that. She’s not happy, is she. I drew this back in June…before my life fell into a crack in the earth. I guess she knew what was coming. But she’s not crying…

I have to admit to a new emotion that’s showing up in meditation. Why do I have to admit to it? Because it’s scary. Admitting to it will hopefully make it less so. What emotion? Fear. Straight up. I’m scared of my future (or lack thereof), I’m scared of not feeling safe and comfortable…like…almost…ever. I’m just plain scared. I thought I had the future figured out. I knew shit would happen…it always does…but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t know then that everything that made me feel safe would just be gone. Without any input from me, without any chance to have a say or work on things…just gone. And I know that’s what happens when you put trust in other people, which we have to do to be in this world. OK, some people don’t…it’s true…but I don’t want to be one of those people…I’m already a bit of a hermit, and I know I could go further along that road, and I may very well wander down there for a good long time. It’s quiet, there are very few people, and I don’t have to deal with other people’s stupid shit affecting me.

But I don’t like being scared. No one does. We rush around when we’re anxious and scared and we try to control everything so we feel better, safer, and it doesn’t really work. It’s inside us and we have to work on the part inside us that reacts to things; that’s what causes the fear. It’s not the other people, the things…it’s us. So if I see scared in meditation and I feel scared in meditation (and elsewhere), I just have to face it and figure out how to make it feel safer INSIDE me. Because that’s where it lives.

Tonight’s meditation kept talking about my mental state…and I kept thinking, “like California?” A state as in a physical place with a flag and a state flower and state bird and state motto, “In nothing we trust,” and a state tree. A state of mind. A state of being. A state of matter. And then Mr. Meditation started talking about the blue sky, and that’s when I lost it…my state? The theory is that the blue sky is always there. It may be obstructed by clouds, sometimes light and feathery and easy to push through, and sometimes big and black and dark and thick…but if you just push through, you can see the blue sky. I don’t know how thick the layer of big black clouds is, but I can’t see the sky. I know it’s there, though, and that makes me sad…knowing it exists and I can’t see it, I can’t figure out how to get high enough to see the blue. It’s there though.

So yeah, that makes me cry. I’m fucking hopeless some days.

And during the 20 seconds when we’re meant to let the brain just do what it needs to do, and we sit back and observe and “note”…it’s screaming…full on screaming its head off…and I’m crying. That’s not stepping back. That’s not noting. That’s responding. That’s watching the movie and feeling it in your gut, your heart, where your heart used to be but where there’s a giant sucking hole now. That place.

Boychild sent me this link to the DSM-5 reviewed as a dystopian novel. It’s actually fairly amusing, especially when you know you’re experiencing a few of the things in there. I should just think of my life as a fucked-up dystopian novel, write it as a book, and make a couple million (someone’s debut novel just made them that amount…seriously? What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. I’m not writing a book.).

I realized today that I had meant to ink the Earth Stories quilt, but then I forgot. Or something. My brain not being itself and all. So it’s photographed for the catalog already, but I didn’t ink it. So I was thinking…should I ink or should I not? It doesn’t ship until March or April of next year. I have time. How the fuck did I forget the inking? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. My brain, it wanders off and does things without telling me, and I don’t find out for days or weeks after. I could just leave it alone (the quilt, not my brain…my brain needs me to pay attention to it). Fuck. I don’t know. Does it matter if it’s different than the catalog? It probably won’t be hugely noticeable? I don’t know. I will have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I could think about that instead of all the angst my brain currently dwells upon.

Wishful thinking.

So…I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse…

As a NetGalley reviewer, I recently read (viewed?) I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse and All I Got Was This Podcast, by Chris W. Freeman, Korey Hunt, Daniel Chabon (Editor), Rich Bonk (Illustrations), Andrew Mangum (Illustrations), Alan Kupperberg (Illustrations), Anthony Diecidue (Illustrations), and Jerry Beck (Illustrations).

So first of all, I do like graphic novels/comics/whatever you want to call them…but I have some limitations. First of all, they’re short. I like longer stuff. My favorite graphic novels are those big thick books that collect the last years’ worth of comic books, and they have to have a STORY. And characters that I give a shit about…one of my favorites is the Powers series, with Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim…

Troubled souls with good hearts, good stories, and I didn’t feel like female characters were just there for the boobs.

Zombie Apocalypse is no Powers. The story was OK…but I don’t understand why comic women have to wear cantaloupes where their breasts should be. Then again, this comic is definitely tongue-in-cheek trying to make fun of the zombie fanaticism. When the main character makes cookies for the zombie females because she wants friends, and then tries to dress up like them…it’s amusing. Unfortunately, it’s not amusing enough to make this a must-buy. It’s a quick read…it’s somewhat funny…but unless you’re a full-fledged zombie historian, it’s probably not going to be high on your wish list.

Hard

Today’s blog post is brought to you by R.E.M.

Every time I watch this video, listen to this song, it just kills me. Even if I’m in the best mood in the world, this song makes me cry. For some reason, I’m listening to R.E.M. today. Mood music. Maybe not the best choice…but it’s my choice.

Yeah, I know I’m getting better. It doesn’t feel better really, but I can feel shifting in something. Whatever that something is. That said, today was a throwback. I had an hour or so intermission in the evening with art and food and wine with a good friend, but it was sandwiched by Crying Act I And Crying Acts II and III. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I can pinpoint an event or a thought that warranted all those tears…they just happened.

The art was good, by the way…the new exhibit at Visions Art Museum is recent purchases by Del Thomas, a big collector in the art quilt world, and it is definitely worth seeing. There was a good variety of quilts, some truly beautiful works of art. It’s there through January 19. You can see some of the work on Del’s blog (link above in her name). I enjoyed seeing Charlotte Bird and Cathy Denton’s works about words that start with C as well. The intermission was appreciated.

Mr. Meditation tells me today to step away from the feeling as I identify with it. I step away from some pretty fucking overwhelming sadness and fall into the hole behind me of deep dark weeping. Nice. You could have warned me, man. Seriously. What am I aware of? Did you just ask me that? I’m aware of feeling like shit right now, Mr. Meditation. I’m sure there will be a positive outcome from the meditation in the long run, but today? Not so much. Today it is just sad.

I had goals today…I wanted to get grades done (it’s the end of the Trimester), so I would have the rest of the weekend free. I had to be up at 4:40 AM to take the girlchild somewhere, and when I got home, I went back to sleep. I was going to be all gung ho and go to the gym, but when I realized they weren’t even open, I was much more cavalier about the day. It’s not like I really had to BE anywhere. No one was waiting on me to be done with my stuff and be free. So I went back to sleep and Kitten tried to head butt me awake, but I put the pillow over my head, and then Calli (the dog) was whining, but I didn’t get up until she started farting…because that’s never a good sign.

It took me about 4 hours to get through all the grades, but I did it. Then I finally packed up the two quilts that are going to Poway…which should have been shipped already, but whatever…they’re not late yet.

Dehair, label on one of them, cut a dowel and put in eyescrews, pack it all up, print labels, tape it up. Shipped it before I went to the gym. Then home and showered (the cold-water faucet is stripped…makes showers very exciting at the moment…plumber can’t come until Monday)…and off to VAM. I cried all the way there. Don’t know why. Really don’t. It just happened. I got it under control about 4 times, the last time while walking across the street to go in to the museum. Good thing…I know a lot of people in there.

Babygirl witnessed the grading…

by sitting on the gradebook. It’s either there or she sits behind my neck on the chair, like an overly heavy scarf…with claws. That’s where she is now. It explains the crick in my neck.

When I got home from food and drink, which was a pleasant experience…it was nice…I ironed for a while. I really want this thing stitched down by the end of the weekend.

I don’t know if that’s really possible, but I can try. I don’t have anything else important to do, well, except shopping and lesson planning and dealing with plumbing and pet food and kids and helping the boychild with college apps and probably saving the world if I get around to it. Did I mention housecleaning? No I did not. Someone still owes me a year of housecleaning. This would be a good time to have that. In the above picture, I’m ironing the eye and the face separate from the rest of the body. I actually lost the eyelid. It’s a big piece. Usually I lose small pieces. Who knows where it disappeared to.

Once I had all the pieces ready, I ironed the head onto the body.

This piece is holding together pretty well as a single, large ironed piece, which means I keep having to move it around on the ironing sheets…they’re not big enough for the whole quilt. I finally pulled off the whole body so I could do the top part with the tree and the hair…

Here’s the already-ironed bits (from the back).

They look a bit different. And there it is with the body ironed to the hair and the tree…

With the body hanging off the edge of the ironing board. The roots that belong on the neck are sitting to the left, waiting to be ironed on.

All I have left is everything in the tree…which is about 130 pieces…not too bad, but not getting done tonight. Too tired. I’m almost 5 hours into the ironing. At least a couple of hours to go, if you count ironing down to the background.

It was after the ironing that I hit Crying Part III. That was meditation’s fault. Sigh. Obviously there’s a reason for all of it…I’m just not allowed to know what it is right now, except if you watch this TED video…

TED Talk Ash Beckham

There is no competition for who has it harder. There is just HARD. Coming out of any closet. I guess I’m out of the depression/grief closet. Sort of…because I do close the door again sometimes when I can’t deal any more, keep hiding in the closet. It’s easier to be on here and write about it than to talk about it in person. It’s easier to draw how I feel than to talk about it. I don’t know what that means in the long run, whether it will take me longer to get through the grief than it would someone who shares more than I do in person. I can’t really do anything but what I am doing, though, so it will take as long as it takes…and while it’s taking its time, it will be hard.

Not Normal. Cracked. Kittywampus.

I went to sleep early(er) last night, knowing I was tired. Then woke up an hour early and was completely wired, couldn’t go back to sleep, tried meditative breathing and pretending to sleep. No luck. Like I was being electrocuted. Then the have-to list kicked in and there was no hope. I just wanted to sleep for the last hour. I’m writing this early tonight, because I’m exhausted from this week (I ran three labs this week…plus all the other crap that inhabits my brain and makes it tired) and I have to be up to get the girlchild somewhere…I think I have to be up at 4:45. I know. Really.

Sigh. Whatever.

Meditation: Wants me to notice when feelings begin and end. Can’t. Tried. Really hard. Also he talks about being at ease with whatever arises in the mind. I am getting better at this. I practice at school, noticing when my irritation levels get super high and talking myself through it, paying attention, breathing and remembering that kids are kids and it’s not about me. But it’s still hard to drop certain feelings. The sadness feels like a shawl I am constantly wearing. I shrug it off and when I think about it again, it’s back, too heavy on my shoulders and somewhat scratchy. Horrible yarn. Get it off. Feels like it’s choking me.

Counselor says I managed to be positive during the session today. I didn’t come up with any “buts”. Yes, this, but that. I don’t know. I don’t feel positive. I told her I felt flat. Like the emotional waves were less extreme (most days, certainly today and yesterday), but that the entire wave was still under the X-axis. Yes, I used a math analogy. I guess I really am a geek. I also talked about protective walls, how mine are still all the way up…and they seem like they will be that way for a while. A teacher friend asked me if I was really depressed, because I laughed. I do laugh. I don’t laugh a lot. I do laugh. I can fake it too. Have to. On a regular basis. I hate that phrase “fake it till you make it.” I hate being fake. I just want to be me, and if me is depressed, then so be it. Eventually I won’t be. But there’s only one person I have to have a relationship with for the rest of my life, and right now that person is sad and wandering this misty world of confused crap…and I’m just following her until she finds the way out. It’s cold in there.

I had this vision of a dead tree coming out of the uterus or the vulva area. I did a bunch of grading tonight (grades are due Tuesday) and had about 15 minutes of a show left and didn’t want to just sit there (I never know how to just sit and watch)…so I pulled out the almost-full sketchbook and started one version (there are about 5 in my head at the moment)…

It’s not done. There’s a window. She needs a head. Although that might be problematic…fitting it in and all. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Or draw it again. Who knows.

I also have ideas for menopause drawings. Reproductive function shutting down. All the stupid stuff we deal with…the stuff that colors huge parts of our lives, and then it’s gone…but it causes such massive pain and chaos on its way out. Don’t appreciate it. Don’t want to become one with it. Uterus is like an alien at the moment, asserting a parasitical nature. Speaking to me.

I am tired. Yes. Counselor asked when I felt normal. I said I thought I needed a new normal, that the old one was no longer relevant. Sufficient. Locatable. She thought I might feel normal while teaching (nope. definitely not. I am a different person this year.) or while being a mom (nope. not there either. and they know I’m not in my normal state). What is normal any more? I don’t know. I still feel damaged, broken, lost. It’s less in-my-face-at-all-times, but it never stops. Do you feel normal when you make art? No. Then I really know that I’m broken and trying to fix it with fabric and thread and pen and ink. I feel that broken in the making…I feel like I’m desperately trying to put myself back together by sort of frantically making art at all hours…it’s obsessive even.

It’s the way out, I know that…but I also know I don’t feel normal doing it. It’s…um…not quite right. I think the work coming OUT of it is fine, good even, but the doing of it is damaged…the reasons behind how and why, the feelings while actually doing whatever art activity I’m doing? Not normal. Cracked. Kittywampus.

Not in Focus

My camera was taking blurry pictures earlier this evening. Seems my fingerprint was smeared across the lens. I feel that way all the time, blurry, not in focus. Trying to stay sharp, keep the important stuff in the front part of my mind (or on my electronic calendars, so I have some chance of remembering). Trying to get a hold on a new life, a new existence? Also fuzzy, unfocused. Can’t grab on to anything. If I’m not already doing it, it’s not getting done. Even as simple as changing up my exercise routine, per my health coach…sheesh…I think I need to write down the routines (type them on my phone, duh)…because it’s just too easy to keep doing the same thing. I don’t have the brain power to be creative at the gym. I’m all used up.

I’ll get there. I guess. I only have 5 more health-coach meetings. That’s OK. I think they’ve served their purpose. I’m trying to pick her brain as much as possible before then, though…types of exercise that are more useful, how many reps, what helps build muscle mass. Fun stuff. Something to focus on besides my lack of focus.

I had my monthly stitching meeting tonight. Nice people. Distracting. Good thing. Needed some. Distraction.

Noticed as I left that they all have uncolored hair…they all are naturally gray/white…unlike my work cohorts, who are all coloring their hair (if they’re old enough to think they need to). I fit in with the first crew…it’s going white and crazy all by itself (my hair, not the crew).

I finally finished this…

Now I have to frame it…it’s a gift. I’ve only taken about 4 years to get it done (started in June 2010…maybe May…so 3 1/2 years). Seriously. It means I’ll have to pick something new for the next meeting. Not a problem. I have no shortage of things in my stash, many already started. It’s more about the process than the product, obviously. I made a ton of mistakes on it, stopped reading the instructions a year ago. Oh well. No one but the designer would know.

I also finally pulled this thing out from under the cat the other night…

It was almost done…I had decided it needed another flower and leaf, so tonight I sewed some of that on. I’ll need to finish sewing on and do the embellishment…then I can sandwich and quilt this one. Probably not a huge priority, that part of it. It’s last year’s Block of the Month from Sue Spargo. I was so close to finishing. Oh well. The world’s not ending soon. I have time.

I managed to only feel sort of like shit on the way to and from the meeting…this has been a difficult drive for the last few months…too many memories. I can’t handle memories of good stuff, because it hurts too much to think about it being gone. There’s nothing replacing it. I’m not forgetful enough to disremember looking forward to the evening of stitching and what came after. I remember and my gut gets torn open. At least I could relax a little during the meeting itself. Forget a little. Much as I ever can.

Thought I would get some useful stuff done when I got home…not. I exercised and meditated (necessary), but my tired brain is telling me to go to bed, so I will do that soon.

Calli this morning…

She really didn’t want me to put her outside. Please mommy. I could just sleep HERE all day.

This is what you do with your leftover spiderweb stuff after Halloween…

Because he needed hair, that’s why. I also did the Can Can with a student. What’s funny is he went along with it. Sometimes I wonder…about them as much as me.

The reason I pulled that wool quilt out is because Babygirl was sleeping on it the other night…

So I gave her the boychild’s baby quilt instead. She seemed OK with that, but that’s what reminded me that I needed to finish the wool quilt. I guess that’s a good reminder.

The wonder of teaching middle school: I always tell the kids, “If the fat old lady can do it, then so can you,” especially when talking about exercise and homework and stuff like that. Today, one of my kids says, “Ms. Nida, who’s the fat old lady?” I answered, “Me.” He said, “You’re not fat.” “But I’m old?” He smiled. Sweet kid. I laughed. I guess I don’t qualify as fat any more. Nice to know (but I’m still old).

Bed time. Still not focused. Walking through fog. Slowly. Quietly.

My Unruly Mind

Brain fuzzy. Forgot, completely, totally, to eat breakfast this morning. Didn’t even cross my mind. Don’t know what I was thinking about instead, but I’m sure it wasn’t good. Remembered at about 10 AM, when I tripped over a step and thought, “Why am I feeling so spacey?” Oh yeah. Food. Hmn. Diabetics need to eat. I do keep food at school (and plenty of other people do as well), but I hate that feeling that I’m so disconnected from my brain sometimes that I forget the stupidest (and most essential) things.

Food wasn’t good today…lunch…yuck. I just didn’t do well until nighttime. I don’t know why. I rarely know why. My unruly mind, as Mr. Meditation calls it. I need to be kind to my unruly mind. Sigh. I just need it to show up, check in once in a while…make me believe that it’s paying attention. Someone should.

Tiring day at school…cardiovascular lab where we exercise (by dancing crazily around the room, if you’re a teacher trying to motivate 7th-graders to actually MOVE) and then determine recovery rate. It’s kind of a fun lab, although frustrating when the kids are being lazy. I always tell them that if the Old Lady (me) can do it 5 times (5 periods), then they can do it once. I turn on music and we dance. No biggie. Exhausting by the end of the day though to manage the lab and the kids AND exercise every 50 minutes.

Boychild had Academic League after school, so I stopped by to hear him answer a bunch of questions about math, dance (!), and other stuff. I’m realizing how soon he will be leaving for college…it’s scary. I wonder if he will ever call or email…he’s not the most social beast. I will miss him.

I did grade a little. Mostly I sat and stared at the computer for about an hour…I was so tired…and I realized I haven’t been reading blogs hardly at all. I don’t know why. Easier to read fiction than reality? I’m not really spending a lot of time just sitting at the computer…except to write this each night. Maybe that’s where the blog-reading time went…from passively reading other people’s stuff to writing my own crap out. Who needs NaNoWriMo? I’ve been doing it since July. I’m averaging about 1200 words a day…that means I’m up to about 135,000 words. Wow. It’s not really a novel, though…just the story of my unruly mind, my wandering intellect, my moody and emotional mental midget, trauma, disrepair, dissolution. Sigh. I wonder when I will not have to think like this any more. I wonder when I will stop having long conversations with my mind about holding it together and not losing it in the car or the gym or the grocery store…when life will seem real again. Fuzz. Fog. Mud.

With a mood like that, I needed to make art…especially after not doing it last night. Three and a half hours in. About 300 pieces ironed together. Still missing a fingernail piece and two toenails…of all things (they’re small…they’re easy to disappear). Either I’ll find them in the last box or I’ll cut new ones…and then weeks from now, I’ll find them somewhere…and be unable to throw them out, because that’s how I roll.

But the cat is done. Hi Kitten…

I managed the torso and upper arms…

Next is the head and the crazy heart tree above it…

Still got 200 pieces to go, but I’m past the halfway mark. I might actually get this ironed down to the background this weekend (grades due…aargh)…stitching down next week maybe? It could happen…like if I don’t look at the calendar and all the stupid meetings and crap I need to go to. OK. Some of it’s not stupid. Some of it is actually social, or at least as social as I get these days…like three people I know really really well who won’t freak out on me. I can do that. Or complete and total strangers that I can tell nothing to. I can do that. I can make art. I can do that.

Fucking slog.

I like this song. I don’t like the video. Or I do. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too old for it.

And then I watch it again and it reminds me of those old paintings of groups of philosophers and scholars…like this one…

School of Athens by Raphael. OK…is that a weird comparison? Artist brain. I don’t know why they’re linked up there, but they are.

And this video…yeah…totally (except not flowers)…

Tattoos in a New Light

I would do that. Reminds me…followup mammogram number three for this year is coming up. May my breasts survive the experience. When she starts to tear up…I do that a lot…and I don’t even have cancer. But that’s how close everything is to the surface. I’m not sure I could get a tattoo that someone else had drawn. And if I were to do one of my own, I would just keep adding details until it turned into a 70-hour extravaganza. Not sure that’s a good use of time or money. Will think good thoughts though. My followup is unlikely to be a problem…he’s just being overly cautious. Deep breaths. Don’t think about bad stuff. Don’t think about the future (you don’t have one at the moment…it’s just more of the same). Don’t think? That’s harder.

I’m in that fuzzy place…not the good fuzzy, but the blurry fuzzy, the muffled mess that seems like a psychiatric hospital, the crazy ward, the mental ward, the strait-jacket and smells-like-disinfectant ward. Not a good thing. Need a remedy for that.

Holding on…

I’m feeling lost in today’s space. Meditation is focusing on, as he puts it, becoming friendly with our emotions so we can live more peacefully. I think I’m a little TOO friendly with them sometimes, but it doesn’t seem to give me peace. Tuesdays are always difficult for me…stupid anniversaries of painful shit. I tried really hard to modulate emotion today…successful for part of the day, but the end was…the end…and I cried on the way home from school. Tired is part of it, I know. Sleep has not been great with the time change. I wake up way too early so completely tense that even with meditative breathing and pure exhaustion breathing down my neck, there’s no way I’m falling back to sleep. So that doesn’t help. Plus grades are due soon, and that’s additional stress.

I made it to the gym tonight after a meeting at school and then a bunch of paperwork and management stuff I needed to do here. The gym…I wasn’t all in my head…I don’t know where I was. It wasn’t anywhere good. I did read. Then I came home and finished the book and remembered to eat. Didn’t want to eat. Wish I could just get an injection once a day and never deal with food at all.

Before you freak out about two posts in an hour, the Houston one was half-written this morning.

The book I finished was The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey…

Yeah, more dystopia, with aliens! It was well-written, actually. I enjoyed it. It’s the first book in a series, so there will be more. I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the series I’m reading at the moment.

I should have drawn tonight or ironed fabric, but no, I graded papers. So now I’m sad. Depressed. I can say that word, can’t I? I am depressed…and not the one-day phenomenon when you got an F on your test or when you didn’t get into a show you wanted to get into, but the depressed that goes on for weeks with no end in sight. I know it’s better than it was, but…a friend today asked me about Houston, about whether I enjoyed myself. ENJOY. What does that mean? I think I got through the days there just like I get through the days here, one step at a time. I had a couple good conversations. I had one good night’s sleep. I read a lot. I saw some quilts I liked. It’s probably no different than a day here when I might read, get some sleep, and iron a quilt together. I probably get more of a sense of achievement out of putting the quilt together. But the trip was planned long before all this crap happened…so I can’t really read a lot into the experience, except to think that maybe planning trips for depressed people isn’t so helpful.

Who knows. We probably need to get out of the house occasionally, but who knows if that’s what will tip the boat, toss me into the water of real life again. Doubtful. I think it will just take time, and lots of it. Time to put pieces back together and figure out the huge knotted mess in my head that all used to make sense…what I thought about love and my future and where I’d be in five years. That’s all trash at the moment. Thinking more than 24 hours in the future is dangerous these days.

Not so for Babygirl…she’s trying to clean herself up, get herself ready to sit on my lap again. Little does she know that I’m going to bed early tonight. No really, I am. It will probably backfire on me and I’ll be awake at 3 AM for an hour or so, but at least I will have tried.

I try all the time to be normal in one way or another…not too normal, because that’s not how I roll, but normal for me. Who am I now? I don’t really know. Kathy the artist. That’s all I can hold on to today.

The IQF Houston Experience

You read about the quilts…now let’s talk about the entire experience. Overwhelming. Yup. Totally. It doesn’t help that Texas is two hours later than here, which means I keep having to wake up at ungodly hours to do stuff, so I’m only half coherent. It really didn’t help that it was Halloween, because crafty women (whether quilters or stitchers or whatever) are often a truly frightening tribal experience when in a large group, wearing similar clothing, or weird hairpieces, or sparkly light-up hats. I can’t deal with that stuff…although, if mom had a hat like that, I probably could have kept track of her better.

So there’s the hotel experience. There’s the flying. There’s the classes (I don’t take those any more). There’s the famous people (in the quilt world). There’s a million quilts. And then there’s the vendors.

Now I don’t really use a lot of supplies in my quilting. I have a light table to beat all light tables (after 23 years of quilting, I do not consider this a bad thing…plus it was free). I have my mom’s hand-me-down sewing machine, which is a pretty damn good machine. I do buy fabric (although not a crazy amount, despite what it may look like to the uninitiated), batting, and thread. I don’t actually have a massive thread stash…it all fits in one plastic doohickey container (if you saw my mom’s stash, you’d realize this is NOTHING). I have some pens and a ton of embroidery thread (remainders from my crazy-quilting days). I have those applique ironing sheets…I have about 5 or 6 of those. That’s probably more than most people, especially when you consider the big ones aren’t cheap, but I use them a lot and I need that many on your average quilt. I have pens and sketchbooks and paper. I have Wonder Under. I have my stitching gloves, pins, and safety pins for pinbasting. I have scissors. I don’t have a ton of scissors, but it’s probably more than your average noncrafty household. I have colored pencils that I occasionally use on fabric, usually because some handdyed fabric ran and I need to cover what it did. I have needles…lots of those.

People often give me doodads and stuff for quilting, like special holders for quilting or different fusibles to try, but I’m kinda stuck in my creating ways at the moment, for whatever reason, so I don’t really use a lot else. I do like handdyed fabrics, though, and I’m often looking for more of that.

So when I go to a massive vendor mall like IQF Houston, I’m mostly overwhelmed…and underwhelmed. I don’t really buy patterns. I did buy two this time, and I’m not really sure why…

I sat there and listened to a woman ask the seller about 5 times, “but what are they FOR???” and the seller kept saying, “They’re not really FOR anything.” Well, yeah. Do I need a candle mat? Not really. Whatever. They’re cats. And owls. And apparently I needed cute cats and owls. Don’t judge.

I wandered into a lot of booths, mostly embellishment stuff and threads (hand embroidery, which I really don’t need more of), and then I got to the handdyed fabrics of Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson. Now you’re talking…and this is the ONLY place that really got my business…

I know how to dye fabrics. I just don’t have the time or patience to do this stuff.

Ten yards. Did I need 10 more yards? Don’t ask that. I walked past a million other fabric, doodad, pattern, and machine booths and this is what I got. The Artfabrik store is here if you like this kind of stuff. I got 8 of Frieda’s and 2 of Laura’s. I don’t know what that means. Mom was an enabler. I would have probably only gotten two or so if it were just me, but they were offering one free yard with the purchase of four, and then mom mentioned my constant need for more browns (as she said, something about my obsession with DIRT at the moment, like it’s a BAD thing). So I got more brown. And green. And there you are. I should admit that I didn’t pay for them…mom gifted me.

I look at the long-arm machines, but don’t really need one. If I can push and pull a 72″ by 84″ quilt through my machine, it’s unlikely that I need anything fancier than that. If I did, I have friends with such devices…but they probably would take issue with my need to quilt at 1 in the morning. So I walk past all those long-arm booths.

Mostly I would kamikaze through an aisle of vendors, avoiding the crazy people, going into maybe one or two booths each row, and then waiting at the end for mom to make her way through (she’s not a slow woman, trust me, but she likes to look at more stuff than I do). I lost her multiple times. She must have run past me somehow. I was watching the man who had to guard the mens’ room (I love that…they needed a guard because the line to the womens’ was so long). She must have snuck by me.

Food in Houston: we ended up at one of the same restaurants as last time, with a longish wait because there are a million women in town and they will only walk so far to get food. Every restaurant you went into had long tables full of quilters. I have not heard the tribal call, so I usually just eat with mom. She’s going deaf and her hearing aids don’t work well in noisy restaurants, so I get to translate the Southern waiter accents for her. Really, I’m not yelling at her…she can’t hear unless you yell.

I did go to the gym one morning…amusingly, there were only 4 other people in there, and two were men (I recognized one as the husband of a well-known quilter…that was a little creepy…the wonders of the blog world).

I tried to find plain milk in a variety of places, but Houston apparently thinks milk should be chocolate or it should go home. I finally had to buy milk in a cup from Starbucks, paying more for the milk than for a cup of tea…crazy, that. Houston also doesn’t believe in sourdough bread.

The view of some office building seemed to fascinate me…

Or maybe it was just the sky reflected in the building…

We stayed in the Hilton this time, a much shorter walk, which was nice…plus everyone staying there seemed to be a quilter…and you could see the Convention Center from our window…

Of course, when I hung out with friends, I could still see my hotel, so I’m not sure we needed to be THAT close…

I’m not a social-enough beast to really use this experience the way I probably should. I did better this year about talking to people, but I think I still prefer the intimacy of the Quilt National experience, where there are fewer people, but all the artists are there in one space.

And today, in the mail, the announcement for Portland’s new version of the show, Quilt! Knit! Stitch!…so Long Beach (so close! so convenient!) is gone and Portland requires money for a flight and hotel and food. Not happening the summer before I send the boychild to college. It’s OK. I will survive. I have all of you here, on the net. I probably talk to more of you here than I do in real life.

A Slow and Sloppy Process

I didn’t think I would have the energy (mental or physical) to make art tonight, but my post-meditation mood was so dim and dreary that I knew I just had to push through that and do it. It’s the same stubborn streak that had me running cross country with multiple stress fractures in high school. Some people might call it driven, some might call it just plain stupid. I don’t know what it is, but I know I feel better with some art under my belt every night, so I just need to do it…just like I need to exercise, meditate, and apparently eat food (I’m not keen on the last one, but my body seems to require it).

So at 10 PM, I got my butt off the couch, wiped my face…multiple times, because I couldn’t stop crying for a while there post-meditation…and turned on the iron. Part of why I was apprehensive about starting so late is that the next section was hands…fingers…complicated little buggers…

But I decided to iron the arms off to the side and then put them on top of the legs, which worked pretty damn well. An hour later, I had both arms down about halfway up the biceps…

I’m about 200 pieces in, about 2 1/2 hours done. I like how it looks. More tomorrow.

While the pieces are laid out, I have to protect them from a cat lying on them, so I use the bins with sorted pieces to cover up all the other pieces…

Progress. Deep sigh. It really does feel better to do that. I need to write that down somewhere so I can remember. It seems like a duh moment, but some days, I really have a hard time remembering to do the things that make me feel better, push the misery off my shoulders and into the trash. Not that it will stay there, but it’s the thought that counts.

Midnight has been guarding my stuff…

Not really. She threw up on the Wonder Under and she leaves dirt everywhere…need to change her flea meds. I did clean up the light table, though, figuring I won’t be tracing Wonder Under for a while…need to finish these two quilts before the next one is due. Deadlines first, I guess…although there are two or three drawings from the last three months that are clamoring to be quilts. We’ll see…after December, when I get these two done.

I didn’t get much stitching done on the trip to Houston…I was more into reading, I guess.

But I did get some done…the backgrounds for the orange birds and getting the green birds sewn down…now they just need all their parts. I have another post to write about the vendors and shopping at IQF and some other stuff…like the apparent milk shortage in Houston.

Today, I had my students study these…

Sheep hearts (reasons why science teachers need cutting boards, hot water, gloves, and big knives). MMM MMM Good. Not really. Lots of squealing and some stupid behavior. It gets them ready for the eyeballs, which are way more gross and gooey and squirty. Two more labs this week…exhausting, lots of cleaning up after students. They will survive. I might too. Who knows?

I finished a couple of books on the trip…Elizabeth George’s new book Just One Evil Act…

This was a bit weird…it had some issues…but I love me some Elizabeth George, so I enjoyed it. Barbara Havers is such a messed-up character and Lynley is such a good guy (well, he can be a mess too, honestly)…definitely worth reading.

And then I read Michael Scott’s 4th book in the series about Nicholas Flamel, The Necromancer…

still loving this series. I need to wait a while to read the next one, though, because two more real live books (as opposed to the electronic ones) just showed up at the library, and they’ll be due in a few weeks. Plus one is for a book club (yes, I’m trying to do that again…we’ll see if I survive)…so I’ll have to finish it sooner rather than later.

I also finally finished this book, Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser, which made me cry every time I read it (hence the length of time it took me to finish it)…

Every time I read it, tears. Not sure why. There didn’t seem to be any one thing that did it, and sometimes I just found her incredibly irritating, plus I’m not really a God person and he kept showing up there. It was recommended by a friend who had read it and benefited from it. She wasn’t wrong.

I have quotes from the book…”For a while I just went off the edge of the world.”

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.” Rumi (this is my excuse for making art every day and blowing off the grading…I shouldn’t say that…I graded for an hour and a half tonight, so I’m not blowing off ANYTHING. But making more time for art is never a bad thing.)

“Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning–get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of ‘closure’ and move on. I am not a big fan of ‘closure.’ It sounds so abrupt, so tidy, so final. I prefer old-fashioned words like mourning, lamentation, and grief. They suggest a slow and sloppy process–one that involves emotional upheaval, interrupted activity, and dark nights of the soul.” I don’t have closure. Apparently closure should have taken me a whopping 51 minutes or so…well fuck that shit. I don’t even know that closure makes sense…I think our emotional existence is a constantly changing landscape and you don’t get to close off one part of it and lock it away, and if people are doing that, I don’t actually think that’s healthy. We need to process through it, wade through the shit and mud and have it cling to your shoes and clothes for a while until you can get it all cleaned off, and even then, it will rise up and slap you around every once in a while. It’s possible that my existence is somewhat messy in general, though…so I’ve had to learn to deal with that. Where do the drawings come from? Well…there…not locked up…but vomiting all over the paper. I wanted to draw tonight, but didn’t have time, speaking of vomiting over the paper.

“Our tears, and the calm hands of grief that follow, are not signs of some tragic and evil reality…Grief is the proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us.” I’ve said this before, that my grief is a sign of how deeply I was committed…and I shouldn’t feel like that was wrong…I should keep my eyes on working through the shit, but I’m not wrong for the level of grief I’m experiencing…it’s related to the level of emotion I hold (held?) inside me. There’s nothing wrong with that. Without that depth of emotion, I probably wouldn’t be the artist that I am.

“Grief is often confused with depression or self-pity. While one can certainly go into a woeful tailspin during the grieving process, in the long term, grief is not the same as depression. If we gloss over our grief, we might become depressed. Unfelt feelings and unexpressed grief have a way of dulling life. It is as if with every grief we do not feel, we stuff another handful of our vitality underground, until we are numb or sick or embittered.” Yeah. That. I might feel dulled at the moment, but I’m really not…I’m feeling all of it.

For some reason, when I’m going through piles of emotional shit, I save quotes. I have notes on the phone and the iPad of quotes from books I’ve been reading. I have quotes taped to my office door from the post-divorce reading frenzy. They seem to help me focus. I don’t know why.

Toenail revisited: I managed to half rip my big toenail off on Friday night…it wouldn’t come all the way off though (yes, I tried), so I had to bandage it back down and let the ooze and blood restick the nail to my toe…goddamn, I wish it would just fall off. Sigh. What a pain. Sometimes I dream of a cleaver and my toe. Not good.

The most useful and exciting thing I’ve done in the last week? I managed to successfully pair my old bluetooth earpiece and the new phone. This was not as easy as you would think it would be, and required many bizarre maneuvers and clicking on and off in a particular order. But I was successful! I know. Simple pleasures. It took me a long time to get it done.

So. Mood all over the map today. Whatever. At least I was aware of all its wanderings…and I managed them. There’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s all getting me somewhere…Montana? Not happy yet. Mr. Meditation wants me to be happy. Content. Double sigh. I think Mr. Meditation has a simpler life than I do.

Make art. Save lives.