Those Damn Monkeys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up? 10 yards of Wonder Under probably.

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

This is the face of menopause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, it was kindness that was appreciated.

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

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

Expressions in Equality Exhibit

Sheila Frampton-Cooper is curating an exhibit titled Expressions in Equality, to open at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego, California, January 17, 2015, in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The idea for the exhibit comes from Sheila’s statement below:

What drives people to undermine whole populations that they deem different and therefore unacceptable? From racial, gender and sexual inequality to ageism and classism, progress has been made, yet discrimination still abounds. This show begs the questions: What are the issues we’re challenged with, and what would a perfect society look like that’s sustained by pure, unconditional love?

For those that know Sheila, it makes complete sense that this is the show she wanted to create, and I’m glad to be a part of it. Here are the participating artists she’s invited to make a piece specifically for this exhibit:

Alice Beasley

Carol Beck

Jenny Bowker

Dawn Williams Boyd

Blake Chamberlain

Hollis Chatelain

Shin-Hee Chin

Marion Coleman

Randall Cook

Ife Felix

Sheila Frampton-Cooper

Laura Gadson

Valerie Goodwin

Jerry Granata

Deborah Grayson

Sandra Hankins

Pam Holland

Sherry Davis Kleinman

Pauline Karasch Salzman

Patricia Kennedy-Zafred

Judy Levine

Kathy Nida

Mary Pal

Pam RuBert

Susan Shie

Susan Wessels

So this will be my summer project (or at least one of them), although what I show on the web will be limited, per instructions, so if you want to see the whole thing, you’ll have to either come to VAM in January/February next year, or apparently this show will be traveling for a year after that, so you may have another opportunity to see it. My plan is to start drawing over Spring Break. It is always nice to be asked to be part of an exhibit; with my subject matter, it is not often the case. I will be doing gender equality (no shocker to those who know me), and have been letting ideas percolate since I knew about this months ago…it should be good.

It’s Not Pretty

My head’s in a weird place tonight. Girlchild’s surgery is tomorrow. I’m off work for at least three days. Work is absolute chaos with Chromebooks arriving and testing starting, but the plan is still up in the air and nothing is working right…and I’m not even there to mess around and try to figure it out. I don’t know if I’m testing or when if I am or how or what. I play my entire life by ear. I know I will be staying in the hospital overnight tomorrow. I have grading, stitching, a few books…I will preload some photos for the blogpost on the hike I did Sunday. I need to deal with food too. It was an incredibly stressful day. The kids were not focusing. They channel the nervous chaos that the teachers are projecting, because we are up in the air, no plan. So that didn’t help. I drove off, thought I had left all my plans and everything set up right. Went to the post office to pick something up and realized I had left my computer and hadn’t hooked up the guest teacher computer (mine won’t work for her). Dammit. Drove back to school. Had the wrong dongle (huhuhuh…dongle…). Another teacher had one I could borrow. Set THAT up. Went and copied the two sections I fucked up on Saturday night…they worked this time…

The whole thing is about 34″ wide x 73′ high. Not a small beast. What to do next? I have two quilts to cut out (hey, I could take one to the hospital…). So I started numbering the big drawing…there’s three weeks until Spring Break. That’s enough time to trace this sucker…maybe. Have a plan, Kathryn. When you have a plan, you function better. Not normal. There’s nothing normal about my staying up until 2 AM some mornings on a work night tracing Wonder Under or ironing fabrics. It’s not a BAD thing…it’s just not normal.

Meditation right now is all about putting happiness on other people, on trying to see what other people look like when they’re happy. You’re supposed to pick someone you respect and then someone you deeply care about. I had a hard time with these at first. I would try people out in each position and see if they fit. I’ve jumped around on the people I respect. I picked women who are strong but who need support, who have talked to me about needing support. I don’t know if I really provide it, but I imagined them filling with happy warmth, like Mr. Meditation told me to. It’s finally getting easier (like 18 days into it). The other? I picked the girlchild. She needs it most at the moment. She needs to feel the happy. The boychild seems more stable, more OK with his existence. Although he’s hiding what he really thinks and feels, because that’s what he does. Hopefully he won’t do that when it’s important. I hope I’ve gotten him to think that through…to avoid what happened to his mom. God knows I’ve talked to him about it. Who knows what sinks in.

My right eyelid is twitching like a bitch. Oh yeah. There’s some stress. Damn surgery + school. I take deep meditative breaths all freakin’ day long. The only time it stopped today was when I was putting the damn drawing together and numbering it…so I started numbering.

Mar 17 14 003 small

It’s not rocket science. There’s some thought of the order of pieces…because I lay them out in the 100s…trying to think about how I will iron pieces is kind of important…not REALLY important though.

I made it through the 500s somewhere about a 1/3 of the way up the drawing. You can see the thicker black lines where I had to transfer something I had drawn on an overlapping piece between two pages.

I’m not sure what I will do about the octopus tentacles. Those sucker pieces are freakishly tiny. They may need to be embroidery instead.

I added some stuff on the sand after I taped everything together…

Mar 17 14 002 small

It was looking too empty down there. I’m guessing there will be about 1600 pieces. It’s not a small beast.

It’s not going to fix anything, making this quilt. It doesn’t stop me from hurting. It doesn’t bring world peace to warring nations. It won’t provide anyone with clean water. It seems kind of pointless when I look at it that way…like what is everyone else doing with their Monday evening? Did they finish all the dishes in the sink (I didn’t)? Did they straighten up the living room (I didn’t…you can see some of the messy floor in one of the pictures above)? Did they write part of the Great American Novel (is this my novel? This blog?)? Do you know that on these hikes I rarely meet people who talk about books they’ve read (I will start asking this, I think) or people who show any interest in art or people who seem to do anything but hike. And go to work. Don’t get me wrong…I love to stomp around in nature on hikes, but it’s not the biggest part of who I am. It’s not all there is. It’s a tiny piece.

I don’t know where my people are. Well, some of them are on the Interwebs. I hear from them occasionally. Pretty often.

Girlchild has spondylolysis, by the way. Hardest word in the world to spell. Genetic abnormality in the vertebrae. She has two fractures that kinda look like this…

Tomorrow, they will put two small pins in across the fractures, then put bone grafts in from her ileum, plus some growth factor to promote healing. She wears a brace for 3 months and then should be able to go back to everything she was doing before…no fusion. It’s kinda scary. But she’s been in pain for almost 3 years now and they won’t heal, so it’s time to fix them. Here’s hoping she has a pain-free senior year. Here’s hoping I don’t have a panic attack in the waiting room.

Boychild is watching for college admissions. Some of the UC schools have notified, but not the two he applied to, so we wait. These are his backup schools, so he needs to get in to at least one of them.

There is a lot of wine in my house right now. I’m sure you can see why. I wonder if the hospital has a workout room? That made me laugh. Of course they don’t have one.

Sigh. Big deep fucking sigh. I’m surviving. It’s not pretty.

In Which I…

I’ve read a bunch of books lately with chapter titles that all start with “In Which I…”, as if someone asked what you had been doing and why, and you tried to come up with an explanation for your behavior of the last two days, 15 minutes, 43 years of your life. It made me start to classify the parts of my day, my life, into things I could explain with a phrase starting with “In Which I…”. It’s an interesting exercise…maybe silly also. It’s OK to be silly occasionally, as I remembered during the 2+ hours I was in the car with the girlchild yesterday, and the 2 hours I was with myself in the car today, because everyone else fit in the carpool car but me. Sigh. Because I didn’t yell loud enough fast enough. It’s OK. That’s who I am. The loner. The chick who drives by herself. I can be that person. “In Which I Carpool with Myself…” (cue Billy Idol…)

Oh yes. That was worth it. “In Which I Learn to Sneer like Billy…”.

Anyway, the hike will be posted later, when I can rip off the group photos that someone else took, because I never take those. Strangely, although I made sure to charge my battery the night before, it looked uncharged when I started taking pictures on the hike and died about halfway through. I had the phone with me, though, and took OK photos with that. Me and my birthday money are looking for a new camera, although the one that was recommended to me is way out of my price range. I’ll figure it out, though. Gotta go read some websites. “In Which Kathy Buys Yet Another Camera…”. Seriously. I’m deadly to cameras. They just don’t last.

I managed to keep the blood sugar under control today, unlike yesterday. Ironic in that I could do that while burning a million calories on a long and strenuous hike, but couldn’t manage it while sitting on a soccer field watching the girlchild play. Stupid that. Oh well. I emailed the doctor finally. I had talked myself in and out of sending the email about 10 times, and finally did it so that if more tests were needed, they could be done at the same time as the others that I have to do, and I won’t have to go in for the bloody poke more than once. Hopefully.

Most of the rest of the day was the Have-To’s…”In Which Kathy Does the Shopping…”. Not exciting. Annoying really. I graded a bunch of stuff. I got ready for having three days off of school, the longest I’ve ever been gone in a row. I tried to get the girlchild to calm down enough to go to sleep. She won’t admit to being worried about surgery. I’m worried, not because I think something will go wrong, but because I just worry. I wish I didn’t. “In Which Kathy Worries about Worrying…”.

Then after all that stuff was done and I had meditated, I decided to try to finish cutting and taping the newest drawing, just because I know I have to copy one piece again, so I wanted to see if anything else didn’t match up…

It didn’t. Sigh. Oh well. I’ll do it tomorrow afternoon. I want to get the Wonder Under traced and cut out before Spring Break, so I can iron all the fabrics down in a concentrated chunk of time.

Then I came into the studio to try to deal with that damn bird, get it ironed down. Apparently I hadn’t ironed the lips or the eyeball either. It didn’t take long for me to be done…here’s everything ready to be cut out for the Mammogram quilt…

I should start doing that this week. So that means I finished ironing all the fabrics for that quilt. Someone said something to me about artists being free spirits. Well, yes, but then there’s that other part of my brain that likes to record and document and catalog everything. The part that keeps track of how much time I spend and how many fabrics I use…that’s a bit more of the OCD or at least the controlling logical part. “In Which Kathy Uses Both Sides of Her Brain…”. I won’t say I’m using ALL my brain, because obviously that’s not true.

Only 44 fabrics were used…

Mar 16 14 020 small

And it took 6 hours and 18 minutes to pick them all…that’s kind of long for me. I usually can do about 100 an hour. I think it’s because I did it in small chunks. It takes longer to get my brain into the right place to pick stuff on weekdays too. “In Which Kathy Tries to Make Art and Be a Responsible Teacher…”. Yeah. And add “Mom” into that as well. Consider “Homeowner” (no yardwork done at all this weekend, despite oath taken to self LAST weekend. Yes, I am that lame.).

OK, I need to do that sleep thing again. Make art? Don’t sleep. Don’t sleep? Get depressed. Don’t make art? Sleep. Get depressed because not making art. Damn vicious cycles. “In Which Kathy Does Her Best to Make Herself Insane…”.

The Rabbit Hole of Grief

I posted yet another picture today of my feet on a soccer field…where they often reside. I was grading papers. It’s girlchild’s last tournament before her back surgery, so some thoughts were going through my head. I noticed an old friend had commented on my Instagram account that I should hashtag my feet photos as #kathynidasfeet, since I keep taking these photos…and I was curious if I really HAD taken all that many Instagram photos of my feet…so I went searching through my account…which was a path into the rabbit hole of grief.

It seems that I will never escape this mess, as photos are everywhere that remind me of things that make me inexorably sad, so sad I fall deeper into a hole. I feel like I’ve got a grip on the edge of it at the moment, scrabbling at the muddy and slippery edge, ripping off fingernails as I try to hold on, gripping the sides of the wall with my knees, trying not to fall back down, to roll back into the gunk that fills the bottom edges of my brain. I hear the grief, like black dogs, vicious ones, Dobermans, not kind black labs…scratching at the sides of the hole, leaping up so close to clamp their jaws on the air by my calves that I can feel the rush of hot dog breath on my legs, smell their rotten dog food air. I’m trying to get out. I am.

So seeing photos of a former life, dead dogs, people who might as well be dead, a whole dead life that no longer exists and never will, a life I never asked to be removed from, never expected to lose…it’s difficult. It pushes me down, holds a pillow over my face, tries to suffocate me.

I can’t say that I’m all that successful at fighting it. My counselor says that I have a life. That I have a hold on things. That I have it under control. That I can control my stress reactions. And sometimes I can. Sometimes I take a deep meditative breath and I move on, I push the bad away, I breathe through the scary and come out the other side calm, ready, poised. Well, as poised as I ever am. Yeah. That’s not so much poised as Girl Scout readiness for disaster.

But it still doesn’t feel OK. Very little does. Last night, for an hour, a conversation with the boychild about poetry and literature, authors and types of poems (I have been categorized by my preferences, and I’m OK with that). At the end, he borrows a huge pile of my poetry books, including one volume of lesbian poetry that gets me a funny look. Then again, he’s used to my feminist rants, and this doesn’t fall far from that. I’ve told him that being a woman is different from being a man. We even talk about his childhood, what he remembers. I’m tired, lying on the couch in the dark post-exercise, deciding about sleep. I’ve been tired all week. I have stuff I need to do. Stuff I want to do. But this is more important. He will remember this feeling, if not this particular conversation. It will be part of what he remembers about his mom…much better than remembering her crying for the last 8 months. That can’t be a good memory. Will he describe me as the artist? The crazy sarcastic creature who draws all night? Or as a depressoid? I’m hoping that is just one short chapter (it doesn’t feel short at the moment) of a longer, fuller life. I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter…but as we get to the end of his being the kid at home, with college notifications happening in just two short weeks…I spend a lot of time wondering what my life will be like without these two around all the time. It was so hard when I divorced to lose them at all…it was the worst part of the divorce. I had been their primary caregiver every day for a very long time, and all of a sudden, they would go off with their dad and have a life without me and I would be alone. There’s a lot of that now. There will be more in my future.

A lot of this angst is trying to look into my own future and feel hope or excitement or a chance at happy. I can’t get there. I can deal with one day, sometimes a week. That’s it. Hiking really is only a delaying tactic, a way to psych my brain out from looking at the future. I can’t think about all that crap on a hike…I can just think about the step ahead of me. It’s an immense escape. I guess it’s a healthy one, but who knows.

I keep getting lost in the rabbit hole. I keep getting stuck in some room. I draw those rabbit holes, you know. They’re in my quilts. I just realized it. Are they hiding places? Or are they traps of some sort? Are they somewhere to go when you can’t handle anything? Somewhere to hide what you want no one to find? Or do I fall into them and find myself unable to back my ass out?

No telling.

I was in Temecula all day at the girlchild’s tournament. I have photos, but don’t feel like dealing with them now. Then I came home and got ready for tomorrow’s hike, and went to FedEx to copy that 3-page drawing…I seem to spend many a Saturday night with the other losers in FedEx copying stuff. Tonight it was an older couple copying receipts…he was wearing suspenders and glaring at me (and my naked drawings) from under thick gray caterpillars of eyebrows.

I came home and exercised and meditated (cried through the whole damn thing)…and then started to tape the thing together…

There are two pages that just aren’t fitting together right…I think it’s because I didn’t push the sketchbook down hard on the copier. That seems to help everything line up better. So I’m probably going to have to go back and copy those two pages, or at least one of them.

I got about 2/3 of it put together before I realized I was tired and I have to get up early for a hike tomorrow.

I’ll finish the rest later. It’s not crucial. Nothing is. It’s going to be about 35″ wide x 80″ high. I enlarged it only 200% because otherwise it would be really massive. It’s already big. And complicated.

I have almost dropped out of tomorrow’s hike about 10 times. I’m worried about my blood sugar, so I decided to be much better about packing a variety of food, including sugar, just in case. I had another low blood sugar incident today. I’m trying to figure out what’s causing them so I can prevent them. I didn’t have an issue last weekend on the hike, so I will think positively about tomorrow. Plus it’s a hike I really want to experience…mostly for the location.

As for that damn rabbit hole…there weren’t a lot of foot pictures on Instagram, so I guess now I know she reads my blog probably…that’s where all the foot pictures are. It’s silly that my trying to assess the number of foot pictures caused me to fall backwards, to slip downwards. What a stupid trigger. In reality, I was already slipping, been slipping all week. I’ve been quiet on here, inwardly processing some level of worry and panic about balancing school and the girlchild’s surgery and subsequent needs. Being the mom means you have to hold it together and I seem to suck at that lately. Or do I? I don’t even know. I do often feel like it would just take one more thing, one more task that needed completion, one more responsibility loaded onto my shoulders, and it would all come tumbling down.

Except that’s just life. Life says, “Do this.” “Deal with that.” And you do. And then you move on. I’m trying to really adopt that attitude. Counselor says I have to. To survive. The blood sugar thing? It’s not the universe trying to take me down. It’s just a combination of medications being off and probably menopause creeping in and doing its thing. I can do my left-brain control thing and collect data and control it the best I can with that information, and prepare for its vagaries when it’s uncontrollable. Trying to plan for school over the next few weeks with the surgery and not knowing when I’ll be back at school and with testing starting? Fuck it. Does it really matter? I can wing it this week. I will deal with next week when I have to. The world will not end if we don’t finish DNA before Spring Break. Seriously. It doesn’t all have to make sense. I can give them a packet and it won’t even matter.

So yeah. I’m trying. I’m trying to let things go. I’m trying to let the crying happen when it needs to, because obviously it needs to. I’m trying to put the art front and center and not worry about the rejections, because they don’t really matter. I’m trying to stay out of that damn hole.

Drawing and Fire

Calling on all powers of patience, of calm. Remembered to meditate tonight. It does help. My weekend just blew up. Sigh. Oh well. Such is being a parent. I will deal. The next two weeks are kind of a mess anyway. Why not drag the weekend down into the morass? Meditation helps me deal with all the crazy uncertainties, all the things for which I cannot plan. I’ve never been good at the not-planning part. I like to know where I’m staying, when I’ll be eating (which is so much more of an issue now apparently), what the plan is. There is so much uncertainty in my life that I am always looking for the certain, for the dependable, for the things I can count on. I tracked my blood sugar all day. Interesting how drastically different it is from a year ago. I’m not happy about that. That’s something I don’t want to deal with right now and I have to deal with it. So I will. Growl.

So I could have ironed the bird tonight and been done with that quilt. But I was watching interesting television (The Amerikans or however they spell it…) and felt like drawing anyway. I just wanted the thing done. So I did it…here’s the top section, which I started drawing on December 10, continued on the 14th, and finished tonight…

The middle section was started on February 17, and then continued on the 20th and the 25th…that’s a pretty big gap between the top section (which is interesting in itself), but remember I finished some major quilts in that time period.

Then I started drawing the bottom on February 19, continued on the 28th, and finished (?…still not sure that part is finished) on March 11. I’m not copying it yet, so I can add to it if I want to. You wanted to know how the drawing goes, right? Assume an hour or two each night, so that’s 9 nights, somewhere probably around 15 hours. Wow. I used to be able to crank out a drawing in 2 hours, maybe 4. Of course, those were one-page drawings.

I seem incapable of one-page drawings at the moment. This sucker’s got a lot going on in there. What’s it about? Menopause. Loss. Pain. Grief. Anger. Genetics. Aging. Me.

Fun stuff.

I drew during the union meeting too (AND took copious notes. Because I am amazing like that)…

I am really trying to take deep breaths and go with the flow. Every day there is something else that someone needs from me, something else I need to manage. I’ve decided the classified staff at the high school are idiots. There are issues at my school with testing. A giant cart with 38 Chromebooks showed up in my classroom today. There was no room for it where it needed to be; suffice it to say that I had to make room for it. Higher-ups don’t consult staff. I think it will be OK though. I’m looking forward to being able to use technology whenever I want, and not just when a cart is available. I will have to migrate everything I do onto Google Drive though. That might be my summer project. Better yet, maybe I pay the boychild (with my nonexistent funds) to do that. Funny that. AP exams are coming up…between the two kids, they are taking 7 of them…at $89 apiece. I emailed about a fee waiver. Seriously, is there not a bulk discount? You can only be smart if you are rich enough to take the tests apparently. By the time we get the scores, boychild will already have acceptances and rejections and will have picked a school. What’s the point again?

An old friend of mine bought a quilt from me back in I think 1995 or 1996, somewhere around there. This was before I was doing art quilts really…I had taken a class in that watercolor technique, where you used squares and tried to move the shading from dark to light. I actually have two or three finished quilts lying around here like that, and this was one where I did that in the background, but then appliqued this bridge on top; if you drive north on I-15 from here, you see this bridge over the freeway north of Escondido…and then I did all these silk-ribbon-embroidery flowers in the border and at the bottom. I had a studio space downtown, and was working downtown at the time. It was very convenient, before kids. I would leave work and go screenprint at the studio afterwards. I loved that space. I probably couldn’t afford the rent now…it’s all near the new ballpark and probably horrendously expensive. But back then it was cheap and kind of unsafe at night, but it was all artists, and we would do Open Studios during ArtWalk, back when ArtWalk wasn’t just crappy stalls for blocks in Little Italy. And my friend, who was another editor at Harcourt, where I worked, loved this quilt and put it on a payment plan (you don’t even want to know how little I sold it for), and she bought it. And then I left Harcourt and had kids and we lost touch, but I’m pretty easy to find, apparently. She emailed me two years ago to tell me that she had been living somewhere back when the wildfires of 2007 were blasting through San Diego County and the quilt was in the fires…

Seriously. It survived, but only barely. I don’t even have digital photos of this quilt, it’s so old. I plan to document it sometime soon, when I can chase her down (and a decent camera…working on that…)…but it was actually in the San Diego Quilt Show in 1995…

This is before I had kids…I think I was pregnant with the boychild that year. I was. I was so sick, I was off work from early June until late August or September. Ahh…pregnancy. Ugh.

Anyway, she wants to know how to preserve it…and my understanding of burning is that it leaves the fabric so acidic that there is really nothing you can do long term…but even in terms of storing it? I personally would frame it under plexi or glass and let it continue to deteriorate until gone…but anything else? I’m not sure what to tell her.

Interesting to finally see it. I’ll have to poke around for photos of it pre-fire. They would be actual PHOTOGRAPHS. I know. Weird, huh? I didn’t have a digital camera back then.

So yeah. That took about 10 seconds. I have a shoebox in the bookshelf in my office that says “Stitching/Art photos.” Guess what I found? Really CRAPPY photos of the original…

And a closeup of the hand-applique of the hills (which look surprisingly like breasts to me now)…

And the embroidery…

And there is one of my very early “art” quilts. See? There is a process…I did evolve. This was April 1995 (that’s what the photos say), almost 20 years ago…the month I got pregnant with my now-18-year-old. Kinda looks a little different from what I do now, eh? I was such a different person then. It’s not all bad. I think I’m much more of a fiber artist now than I was then. Then I was a screenprinter for the art, and the quilting was more of a hobby…just trying stuff out and messing around with fabric and fiber techniques. I took lots of classes with famous teachers and dipped my feet into a lot of techniques (Hollis Chatelaine, Ellen Anne Eddy, Laura Wasilowski)…it took me a while to find my voice, my place, in fabric. I was lucky in that I had already found it in drawing and screenprinting. It took Joan Colvin and Wasilowski to help me figure out how to do it in fabric…that was probably around 1995 or so. Maybe soon after.

Anyway. It’s an interesting story of a Nida quilt. Next step? See it (and its owner, more importantly) in real life.

Mood Management

Managing my moods is becoming a full-time job. There’s food, there’s situations, there’s stress, there’s exercise. I’m now carrying my blood sugar tester thingie (it needs a name, like Ralph…or Daisy) with me everywhere I go. My meds get tested again in another three weeks…I’m suspecting my diabetes meds are off. I’ll email the doc before testing so she knows what to look for. I’m a little paranoid about hiking this weekend…in fact, I’m not sure I will do this hike, because it’s supposed to be really warm, but I really WANT to do it. So. I can pack carbs and sugar and…dammit…sigh. It’s not like I didn’t hike last weekend with no blood sugar problems. In fact, I’ve hiked ALL the weekends with no problems. I’m just paranoid now. The last thing I want is to be in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of people I barely know and have a major problem like last night. That would be bad. I remember one hike post-divorce with two guys I knew fairly well and my blood sugar dropped (it was also hot), and they dealt remarkably well, but I had all the right stuff in my pack and was coherent enough to tell them what was going on. And I’d warned them beforehand. It really has been a long time since I’ve had issues.

The moods are tied to blood sugar, but also to hormones and then the emotional sine wave that I seem to live on…I had the wave graphed earlier today (in my head, of course), with a listing of what made it zoom up and down and hold steady at numbness. Trying to control the seemingly uncontrollable (blood sugar and mood swings) tosses the curve downwards. Yet another art rejection (too many of those lately) sends it downwards even further. Analyzing my own life? Hell, should just stay away from that most days. It’s down down down, all the way down. Girlchild tells me I am in a bad/sad mood on the days I have detention. She’s right. I should just give up. Is detention creating world peace? No the fuck it’s not. Then why do it?

But I didn’t give up. I got my hairs cut. They needed it. They are getting fussy in their old age. And then I made it to the gym and that was good. I read. I cooked and ate dinner. I forgot to do a bunch of stuff (sigh. I always forget a bunch of stuff…I am the Queen of Winging It). But then I was ready.

So I drew.

And I can’t even describe the peace in my head, my heart, that drawing gives me. It’s like a wave of calm washing over. It’s therapeutic. It’s stupid that I don’t do it more often (I run out of time, no more hours in the day). I haven’t meditated in a few days (more time/energy issues). I completely forgot tonight, but it’s OK, because I drew. And that is Kathy Meditation. It was so worth it. So the bottom is mostly done. I think. And the middle section is done. So now I need to go back to the top, to the first page, the one I started in December…and I need to finish it. I don’t know if this is next in line to get done. I haven’t decided. Maybe. It could be. It’s kind of a crazy beast. The ones I love don’t get into shows. At the moment, nothing gets into shows. Artistic angst. Why am I making all this art if it never gets out to be seen? You make the art because you have to. It keeps you sane. The getting out and being seen? That’s the least of your worries. Just keep making it.

You’re so lucky. You get to hear all the conversations I have in my head.

Meanwhile, I remembered that I hadn’t finished ironing the Mammogram fabrics, so I headed into the office/studio/national disaster area and pulled everything out, reminded myself of what I was doing whenever I last worked on it (March 7), and started picking blood vessels and heart parts…

so often a part of my quilts, the heart. My heart, the one that’s destroyed, eh? So yeah. This drawing was done before all that. Broken hearts. Shattered. Cracked. This one is still whole. I wonder what that feels like. Maybe some day I will know.

I keep thinking I will be better. I am better. But I’m not BETTER. If you know what I mean. I’m someone else. That someone may never be truly better. She may just be OK. My hair person asked (sort of) if I was done with love, like how some (old) people say they have experienced great love and they feel OK with that after their great love dies and they don’t need to go through it again. But I don’t want to be alone for another 30 years. I still don’t feel like I’ve done it right…that sounds awful. But it’s not right if they can’t stick around, if they can’t make it through the hard stuff, if they can’t be supportive, if they can’t stand next to you as an equal. So no. I’m not done. I haven’t given up, but I don’t have a lot of hope. I’m not OK with any of it. I think I need a dog. Dogs are nice. Except then they die of cancer at age 6, and it takes you two years to get over that too. Maybe I just need to sit alone in my house for a long while. Quietly. In a corner. A dust-free corner. Then everything will start to make sense again. Or not. Because maybe there is no sense to be made.

I still cry every day. In case you were wondering. I don’t know when that stops. Maybe never. I was never a crier like this. This is hard. I would cry when really bad shit happened. I cried at sad bits in movies. I cried when I saw babies born (usually in movies or on TV…when I teach human reproduction, I cry every time the baby is born on the movie I show my students). I cried during PMS if something was really funky in my head or in real life. It wasn’t a daily occurrence. It was rare.

Now? Not so much in the rareness. I’m always on the verge. So if you’re wondering when you’re talking to me if you hear tears in the background, you do.

I ironed a lot…

And I was pretty sure I was done…until I started to fold up all the fabric…

And realized I hadn’t ironed the bird. That damn fucking bird.

I didn’t have the energy to do the bird. I couldn’t even imagine the bird, let alone decide on her colors (orange. black. maybe some turquoise.), so she will have to be done tomorrow. Thirteen whole pieces. I know. I should have just done it. But sometimes the brain just rebels and yells NO NO NO over and over again and you don’t really want to push it too hard, because it is your brain and it kinda controls all the important stuff, and you kinda need it to keep doing that. So maybe tomorrow.

Now that’s two quilts I have that are ready to be cut out (or nearly there). Maybe my goal for Spring Break will be to trace this one I’ve been drawing and then draw the one I need to have done by November, with the assumption that I will work on it over the summer.

Or not. I do know that the mood is better. Drawing AND ironing: the cure for a fucked-up mind. I don’t know what the permanent cure is. Maybe there isn’t one.

Poking the Finger

Wow. So that was low blood sugar. Not sure why, but I think that’s what happened the other night as well, both after exercising. Sigh. It’s so exhausting and scary to have blood sugar drop like that, especially when the kids were already in bed, so I had no one to check in with. I had graded tests with the girlchild helping me, and I wanted to get something art-related done, but I had exercised in between 7th and 8th period’s tests, and I was sitting there finishing the grading, trying to figure out why I was so dizzy. I was too shattered last night after the blood sugar dropped to do much of anything. It’s OK…I took care of it and it went back up to normal. But my bigger question is WHY…why now? What’s different? Who knows. I will log it and will bring it up with the doctor next time. I’ve had the diabetes under control really well for about 12 years now…I didn’t do anything different. And this was lower than I’ve ever had, unless I wasn’t eating or I was sick.

Oh wait. The Google says it could be hormones fluctuating with impending menopause. Wow. Really? So I could be dealing with this crazy for another year or so? Seriously? Sigh. Deep breaths. When the physical body is this out of control, it’s really hard to keep the mental body on an even keel.

Then this morning, I’m down on myself because I haven’t gotten any art stuff done in DAYS due to grades and being tired and fixing computers and grades and tired. There seems to be a pattern there. And yes, there’s no point in berating myself about what I didn’t get done. I just get more depressed when I feel like everything I do is just work and slog and clean and work and then do it all again. The art is what gets me out of bed and in a better mood. It’s necessary.

Yesterday was also girlchild’s pre-surgery appointment…she’s having two screws put into bones in her lower back next week. It was the first time we’ve seen a clear scan of the bones in her back and it was kind of a shock to see the two fractures…hell, no wonder she’s been in pain. So she’s going to have to spend at least one night in the hospital (which probably means I have to spend the night as well, which is fine). My work brain is trying to plan out in time in case I have to be out for more than three days (the worst-case scenario is that she’s out of school for 2 weeks, but we’re hoping for less than a week). Unfortunately, my parents are out of the country, so me and my ex will have to juggle work and the girlchild best we can. She’s convinced she will need no help; I’m on the more cautious side (let’s see…how can I move a bed into the prep room at school?). I warned my students…but there’s always chaos when teachers are out for more than a day. Plus I’m teaching DNA and non-science guest teachers are notoriously non-science-educated, so it’s got to be easy, yet engage the kids and give something that keeps them on task. Not an easy job. I can’t show movies for a week.

Suffice it to say that I have art on the menu tonight. I also need to go to the gym, though, so I’m going to have to hope the low blood sugar doesn’t hit again. Seriously, both times it’s been after I ate a healthy meal and exercised. Everything’s out of whack. Sigh. Back to poking the finger three times a day. My doctor gave me permission to stop a few years back because my blood sugar was so controlled. Guess my body is telling me something else. Got the message, bastard. Whatever. One more thing.

The Weekend Saga

I feel like my weekend was a saga…

sa·ga

ˈsägə/

noun

1. a long story of heroic achievement, esp. a medieval prose narrative in Old Norse or Old Icelandic.

Synonyms: epic, chronicle, legend, folk tale, romance, history, narrative, adventure, myth, fairy story

OK. Minus the Old Norse/Icelandic. And maybe the heroics. Maybe my whole LIFE is a saga. I’d be OK with it just being a life for a while.

I had plans. Lots of them. Most of them disappeared. Well, they didn’t disappear forever…just for a little bit maybe. I got zero art done. I mean ZEEE-ROH. I managed to finish grades Friday night, except for one kid. That was good. I planned that and executed it and nothing got in the way. I got up really early Saturday morning and headed out for a hike south of here (more on that later) after waking the girlchild for the SAT. She apparently had to call her dad from the testing location because she forgot to actually BRING all the paperwork I handed her the night before and then handed her again on Saturday morning, because she’d left it somewhere again. So that was amusing. Yes, he got there in time with the paperwork. Yes, she has a 50% success rate in remembering paperwork. Luckily, they didn’t grade her on that.

I went on the hike. It was supposed to be 9 miles, which it was…but most of them were significantly canted upwards or downwards, with very little in between. Before my parental units left for Australia (which is where they are now), I remembered to borrow my dad’s hiking poles for this trek, because they were mostly required, and then…well…I forgot them on Saturday (my forgetfulness is actually out of character…hers? Not so much). So. I hiked the damn thing pole-free and only landed on my ass once (a miracle…I was sure I would face plant about 20 times). So I’m a tad sore today. Tomorrow it will be worse.

Coming home after hikes is usually a downer…my blood sugar is low, I’m tired from the hike, and my mood is usually not great. I was feeling mopey and down and blah, and then I got this in the mail…well, this is half my pages, because I can’t show you the whole quilt yet…

The catalog for Earth Stories, which will open in Michigan in May (and I’m not allowed to show my whole quilt until then, even though one is on the cover, so pretend you didn’t see it)…

(I’m only showing you my half with the words and the detail anyway…not the one with the whole quilt on it)…and then I was still mopey, because aargh…I’m not even sure I like this quilt…so I went on to read the juror’s statement, because she had emailed me for a larger-resolution picture of my quilt a while back, so she could see it all close up…and then sent me a very complimentary email about it…and what she wrote for the catalog made me cry…

Kathy Nida’s Wise Choice is a tour de force. The intuitive genius of Nida’s piece is quite arresting in its commentary on women and presents a vital and poignant message. Her captivating work bravely addresses one of the most important issues on our planet–population control. Earth Mother and family stand firmly rooted and intertwined with the earth. The piece represents all Earth Stories is about. –Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi

OK. I did something right this year. It’s OK. It will be OK. Because that’s what I meant to say, and she got it. So yeah, it will make some people mad and they might freak out, and someone already said something about my piece maybe not being in all the shows (it has nudity in it too, so that’s been an issue in the past)…but I did it. What was in my head will be hanging on the wall. Deep breaths.

I had vast art plans for last night, but ended up grading papers and then falling asleep early (body finally rebels against burning a million calories and not enough sleep). I was OK with that. I was going to get up, go to the gym, get all this art stuff done, post about the hike and a book I needed to review, get my lesson planning done! It was going to be an awesome day! Really!

Yeah. Well it was also my birthday. I’m not sure I really spend a lot of time worrying about my birthday any more, except I do feel like I should be able to do something I like doing, something I WANT to do on my birthday. I planned for it. I did . I had it all worked out.

And then the computer died. I was in the middle of getting photos transferred and emails answered for school, and I was finally installing the stupid external hard drives to deal with the memory problem, and I pulled the computer out from under the desk, and it shut off. And it wouldn’t go back on. And yeah. So I don’t know about you, but my entire fucking life is on the computer, including my job and my art and everything. And it’s my birthday. And the universe hates me. And I’m cursed. And karma.

So once I talked myself out of all of that, which is difficult when you’re in my world at the moment…depression is not your friend when it comes to persuading yourself that the universe is not out to get you…then I started googling things (with the iPad)…and watching YouTube videos. And first I figured out that it wasn’t the electrical outlet and it wasn’t the surge protector and it wasn’t the cord…and then I thought the CPU fan might have an issue because it was making noise a while back and I hadn’t cleaned it because that was somewhat frightening (software? I do well with…hardware? yikes.), but then it might be the power supply. So I drove out and bought compressed air and a power supply, and then I came back and cleaned the fan and the inside of the computer, but it still wouldn’t restart, so I knew it wasn’t that, and then I installed a new power supply, which was way easier than I thought it would be, except when I went to try to turn it on, it still wouldn’t turn on.

Fuck. FUCK. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Yeah. So. I put it in the car and drove to Fry’s (our local geek supply house) and waited in line behind a woman with a dog (yes, in a computer/electronics store) and another woman with a tattoo on the back of her arm, on her triceps (is one arm just a tricep?) of a bottle of Jameson Whiskey and two shot glasses that had quite a nice example of both reflection and refraction on them (almost took a picture for my students, but decided it was inappropriate…and YES, I was going to ASK her before I took it), and then this nice young Indian man who talked faster than I do (damn, that’s fast) asked me what was wrong, and NO, I didn’t launch into my life story (although I considered it very briefly), and I told him what I had done, and when I said I had changed the power supply and cleaned the CPU fan, he looked at me and breathed out “That’s sexy” (no, seriously, he did), and I briefly considered laughing out loud at him, but because I am a middle-school teacher and have incredible powers of control, I managed to keep a straight face, and he told me EVERYTHING WOULD BE OK (gee, where the hell have I heard THAT before, lying ass…oh wait, that wasn’t you), and then he opened the sucker up and found THE ONE connection that I didn’t fully seat (BASTARD! the connection, not the nice man), and then we tested it and he wanted to know why my keyboard thing didn’t work with my computer thing, and I explained that I hadn’t set that up and it didn’t really matter and it was OK and I didn’t need him to fix that, and we confirmed that it worked and then he said something while his head was under the counter (I don’t know why), and I said, should I shut it down, and he said, “Wow, are you psychic? Because yes, I was thinking that, but it wasn’t what I said, and are you a Pisces?” And I rallied (because he was still talking faster than normal people), and said, “Why yes, I am a Pisces.” And he said, “No way, really?” “Way. Today is my birthday” And then he said “Happy Birthday!” and told me his mom was psychic AND a Pisces, but she was also bipolar (WHOA! Oversharing), and I said, “What are you trying to say?” and he tried to back himself out of calling me bipolar, at which point I just started laughing because I truly was messing with him. So we closed the machine up and I hugged it to my chest and said, “How much?” And he said “On the house.” At which point I told him I loved him and left with a big smile on my face, because even though it took me 3 hours and 2 trips to ~~Penis World~~ (oops, sorry) I mean Computers R Us, I managed to fix my computer. With only a little help (from boychild, who wielded compressed gas with gay abandon; from some kid who found me the right power supply; from YouTube videos and PC Magazine articles online; and from a goofy Indian man…from India, people…), I overcame all that shittiness and am currently USING MY COMPUTER. THAT I FIXED. SO THERE UNIVERSE. FUCK YOU.

Sigh. Deep breaths. And I eventually got some stuff done like laundry and groceries and breaking the glass loaf pan (not on purpose) and cleaning the kitchen floor (to deal with the glass), and then went out to dinner with my ex and the kids to Crazee Burger, which I always wanted to try, and girlchild had Wild Boar and I had Antelope (and yes, I googled sustainability of antelope meat before I ate), and boychild riffed on about meat we eat, because he says meat is just a vehicle for other food items, and doesn’t understand why I would want to eat antelope, although I drew the line at kangaroo…they’re just too damn cute to eat. And I explained what being on the top of the food chain meant and he quoted liberal media (hey, I am an omnivore). And I opened presents and had cheesecake and survived another day.

Interior shot…would I eat here again? Yeah probably. It wasn’t the most amazing burger in the world, but it was interesting, and the inside is kinda fun…including Mona…

and her doobie. On the bar menu…

I never did get his number…and now I am a prime number. And tomorrow is another day and maybe I’ll get to do something artistic.

Ignore ALL the Voices…

So the good news is that I didn’t eat a donut today and that I finished all my Trimester 2 grades before the weekend started and the whole house smells like garam masala and the girlchild cooked so I didn’t have to (why I was able to finish grades so early). And I cut out fabric too…

Although I’m still not done. Not sure why this fucking thing is taking so long. It’s only got 300 and something pieces, but I’m 4 1/2 hours in…usually I can do 100 pieces in an hour. I still have most of the 200s to do and a few 300s. Basically, I need to do the heart, the lungs, and the bird…and the eyeball still. Then I think I’m done…

Not sure. It’s really not crucial though. I’m not on deadline. I’m just filling time and space with artmaking so I don’t go totally depressoid insane. I have to get up freakishly early for a hike, and it’s supposed to be hot tomorrow. But I packed my bag already and my water’s even in the fridge getting nice and cold and I have a plan for breakfast so I don’t get the dizzies. So there.

Then I will come home and deal with the post-hike downers and try to figure out how to install these external hard drives and I don’t know what else I will do to hold off the nasty depression beast.

But tomorrow is another day. Actually, tomorrow started 36 minutes ago and I need to be up really early, so there we are. I’m mostly incoherent and wishing I could stay up and iron EVERYTHING down, but mom voice is telling me I need sleep. Trying to listen to the voices…all of them. They clamor for my attention. Sometimes I just ignore all of them.