Stay Gold, Ponyboy…Stay Gold

I have 12 posts in draft mode at the moment. Two of them I will never write, one because I don’t care any more and one because I care too much. Some of it is because I get an idea about something I’m working on (like that stupid journal that I have to do, which some people might really enjoy, but is giving me mental ulcers at the moment), but I’m not done with the thing or I’m not ready to write it yet…it has to develop itself more. Some need more photos or research before I can write them, and extra time is kind of short at the moment. I do write fast, and sometimes I just save up half-written posts for nights when my brain isn’t working, although that doesn’t happen often. More often than not, I get a phrase or feeling or idea midday and I write a quick draft or outline or even just a list of words or a phrase on a draft post, and hopefully that turns into that night’s post. When my brain is really in a mental slump (can you say DEPRESSION, kids? Say it WITH me! I know you CAN!), I sometimes preload a bunch of posts with pictures that I can use for nights when I can’t even pull my brain out of the gumbo…I have at least one or two of those in the wings at the moment as well. Then I get a wild hair and try to clean out the repository of drafts and post a bunch of stuff. Writing is like meds for me…it clears out all that muck that doesn’t need to be in my brain all the time. Drawing does too. Writing and drawing are therapy…I need more of the latter. I probably write enough at this point…I may even write too much.

Today was a lost day. School starts tomorrow and I’ve been trying to ignore it all day. Couldn’t ignore it completely, but I haven’t done a couple of things I always WOULD have done by now on the Sunday before we go back. Oh well. The New Kathy says Fuck That. School will start up again whether I’m totally freaking out about it or not. My biggest worry is actually being able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, unlike last night’s sleep calamity. Was that sleep? Who knows. Does it count when you start it that late? Sure…it counted somewhere in the world, like celebrating New Year’s in 12 different time zones. I celebrated bedtime the same way…except I woke up in between each one. Dammit.

I did a lot of pre-cooking today, trying to get ready to survive the week. I’ve got multiple casseroles and crockpot items going, because the ex is going back to the UK for his mum’s funeral and I have all kid duty, all the time, and I’m really trying to be better prepared this time, especially since my head will be in a stress spin due to school and quilt deadlines and financial aid deadlines and who knows what else. I haven’t scheduled any hikes for the next two weeks because I don’t think I’ll have time. I did schedule the gym and tried to make sense of all the food stuff, because it’s so complicated…boychild will have to put this thing in the oven at that time and because the oven temperature thing is totally fucked, you have to permanently leave a thermometer in there and monitor the temperature until it’s right (can’t afford to fix that right now), and then girlchild can pop the other thing in there, and odds are I’ll be home somewhere in between all that, but the timing doesn’t work for me to do any of it. Luckily, boychild is motivated to do well by the potential arrival of food he can eat.

I went to the gym, and instead of crying at Hip Abduction, I cried at…crap, I can’t remember the name of the machine…actually, the whole gym thing was rather painful today because the muscles I used on the hike yesterday had apparently never been used in the entire 46+ years of their existence and today they had to tell me about it (which was part of why I WENT to the gym in the first place, because I could tell last night that it was going to be bad…it was going to be walking-like-an-old-lady bad). But I did read an entire book there…more about that in a later post, since it’s an official review. Yes, I was actually ASKED to review a book…probably not because it’s me, but because I put something in my profile that matched their key words for reviewers, like “reads a lot, no really, a LOT.”

I did actually quilt today, although not until nighttime, because grades and dinner at parentals and gym and cooking and kid stuff. Yeah. I wanted to do 2-3 hours and I did 1 1/2. Better than nothing. What was interesting was that when I started, I noticed a problem…

There are many problems, but this was kind of a big one. In the center, where that weird line in the fabric is? That’s a wear mark of some sort, and the fabric was trying to tear in three places. Crap.You can see the three holes here…

It’s OK. I’m a quick thinker. I thought about just patching something on top of it, but instead I made another crack and put it on top…

You can’t even tell. Plus it’s all fused AND quilted. I quilted the breasts and heart and lungs and the left arm and the entire staff…

I’ve been quilting this pretty slowly. There’s a lot of detail and I don’t want to mess it up. I’m trying to be a NEAT quilter. Crazy that.

There’s the heart and the lungs…

I can never decide what color to make the lungs. I know what color they are in real life, but that doesn’t work to set them off from the heart and the flesh, and the heart has to be red, and I’ve only recently added the yellow layer of fat on the heart, so usually the lungs are blue and there are fish in them, but this time, they were green with pink flowers. WHY? Why the fuck not?

I still need to do the right arm and the face and the cat and the owl…not a small amount of work…lots of fussy details. Then I can start on the background. I think that’s why I just reserved the upcoming weekend for finishing my stuff…for one thing, I have the kids all day Saturday, and for another, grades are due next week anyway, so if I’m not working on quilt stuff, then I’m doing grades. I also want to keep working on the cleaning I’ve been doing around the house, slowly but surely, and maybe buy those roses I was thinking about. Money’s super tight, though…the septic tank needs to be pumped and that ain’t cheap. I also got the next quilt drawing ready to go…I had to go copy some filler parts that I missed the first time around, and I got those taped down on Friday night. When this one is done, I will either start the next big one or a smaller one…I have about three of those taped up, but none of them is screaming to be done yet.

I’ve been really missing my regular drawing time…I had managed to integrate it really well into my life on a fairly regular basis, and the change in my life screwed that over. I haven’t been able to revise my practices to allow for it…I could draw at soccer games, but there are too many people hanging around for me to feel comfortable with it (I used to draw at indoor soccer and it caused some strange issues)…so maybe I will have to schedule one night a week for that. I don’t usually find that to work for me, because I do need to be in the mood for it, but maybe if I go back to the smaller drawings for a while, there will be less pressure to make something AMAZING on the first try. Maybe Friday nights need to be drawing nights from here on out…except those are notoriously low-energy nights. Sigh. Sometimes I think too hard about everything, and then I feel bad about the hermit existence as well, because I know it’s not a good existence, but I have so little time for myself as it is, and to spend it trying to be happily sociable in situations that I don’t really want to be in just seems stupid. I do miss art openings, though…not sure what’s up with that, but maybe with the holidays over, there will be more of those.

Anyway. Fuck you, sad. Fuck you, tense and stressed-out. You’re downers. Go mess with somebody else’s head. For this week, I need to be SuperMom and Teacher Lady (I don’t aspire to be SuperTeacher). Oh yeah, and I need to be The Finisher for the art stuff. It would be nice if my brain would get with the program and remember all the stuff it needs to remember this week as well, but barring that, can I please just remember to put it on my calendar so my technology will remind me? I would settle for that. And the first thing I’m going to remember to do is drop that little sketchbook back into my work bag, just in case my brain tries to explode at school. I’m sure there are meds for that, but drawing seems the safer option.

So that was it, Winter Break. Three weeks, survived. It was eh. I can’t even enjoy vacations any more. That just sucks. I’m not sure what reminded me of this, but…this…

Message to the brain? Who knows.

Draw More. Make Art. Be Content. Find Happy.

From my first post of 2013: A year ago, I wrote my 2013 resolutions: Draw more. Make art. Catch up. Sleep some. Clean up. Throw out. Use up. Be content. Find happy. 2013.

Wow. Nothing’s changed except the year. Well, and me. Sigh. It’s good that I have the same goals, even though my life is a fucked-up mess and so is my brain and everything in between. It sucks that I didn’t really achieve any of those in 2013, but I do still have them in mind. I sleep less now. I am less content, less happy. I make more art. Not sure what to say about that. Haven’t figured it all out yet. Maybe I never will.

This song kicked my ass today…

That’s the problem with quilting. I need to have something on to occupy my mind, and it used to always be music, but music just fucks with my emotions now, and there’s no way to tell Pandora to lay off the sad stuff. It doesn’t know what will set me off, stuff from high school or last year. I don’t even know until I hear it and have that bad reaction. I finally gave up and turned the TV on, which is distracting in another way…but at least I wasn’t crying and trying to move a needle up and down at 500 miles an hour around my fingers at the same time. It’s really better that way. I think.

Fuck, I don’t know.

I hiked this morning, early. The mountain (San Miguel Mountain) tried to kick my ass too, but I’m way more fucking stubborn that that. I’ll post about the hike later, once I get all the photos dealt with, but I did it. And it was good. And I’m feeling it now…some serious muscle pain for tomorrow morning. Oh well. It’s a good thing. My counselor wanted me to promise that I would admit to being an artist at the next hike, during all that stupid introductory conversation stuff that happens, instead of always answering the question of “what do you do?” with “I’m a science teacher.” She says that’s not who I really am. Yeah, but who I really am is a really long explanation and uses more words than I want to right now. Anyway, this was not a talking, chatting hike. This was a kick-your-ass hike with very little talking, so I failed at my task (not the hiking, but the admittance of being an artist). Oh well. She says I am isolating myself. Damn straight I am. I’m trying not to, but honestly, people kind of drive me bonkers at the moment. I just want to crawl into a hole most days, even now. Depression is a fucked-up monster. People suck. I can’t deal.

I managed to quilt some today, about 3 1/2 hours’ worth. It’s also not easy, but I got through the rest of the Mother and all of the Maiden, plus up the Crone to the breasts, and one of the birds. I wanted to be further, but it is what it is. I need to deal with school tomorrow, but I’m hoping for two or three more hours of quilting. I am trying to pretend school isn’t starting. It’s not working.

All I’m doing right now is outlining things. I have to decide what to outline and what to leave alone. I don’t think too hard about it. I just stitch and it tells me what wants outlining. I missed part of the milk ducts below…that’s why the pin is in there…to remind me to fix that.

I managed grocery shopping too, but hell…there is something so depressing about grocery shopping on Saturday night by yourself. It makes me want to just eat desserts. Not healthy. But at least I don’t have to deal with it tomorrow.

I ate Brussels sprouts instead of desserts. I don’t really like food any more. Girlchild was upset because her dad didn’t want to go somewhere interesting for his birthday dinner. I tried to explain to her that her dad likes his routine, not change. I think I will just take her out for mine. She and I can go somewhere interesting. Maybe I will be able to afford dinner out by March.

Meditation: I’ve made it a third of the way through a year of meditating. I finished the Discovery series and now they are moving into 40 days of Creativity. I probably don’t really need any help with that. I’m pretty damn good at it. It might be the only thing I’m good at. He talked about visualization and the connection to creativity. The first thing he says is, “Imagine the body is transparent.” Wow. He’s channeling my art. He says too much thinking and tension restricts your creativity. No shit. That’s why I can’t draw right now. Too much stress. I’m going to schedule some of this stuff out tomorrow, the stuff that HAS to get done in the next three weeks, because the next three weeks is a little ugly fugly. Then maybe I can fit some freewheeling creativity into my life.

It was 7 PM and I was feeling low. I was dealing with some lame-ass dinner and finishing a book (more about that later), and was just not feeling happy about life. Girlchild texted two words: “love you.” That’s it. Some day in the future, I will be able to explain to my kids how they held me (pulled me) up this year without even really trying, how their mom wanted to give up on everything about 400 million times, and they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t think all this shit had really affected the boychild, but he said something yesterday that made me realize that he HAD been affected and he would basically beat the crap out of people for me. Nice to know. They got my back.

We just recycled almost all of the college crap the boychild has received over the last three years…it was two huge piles of brochures and cards (and that doesn’t even count the hundreds of emails). It’s a whole new world. One of the things he asked for for Christmas was The Color Purple…I’ve been watching the movie tonight and it still makes me cry after how many years? Awesome story.

This is the rambling post for the week. My brain is kind of a mess.

I finished All Clear today…

It’s the second of two books, starting with Blackout, by Connie Willis. Honestly, I don’t think you can read the first and NOT read the second, because they are the same story…and I think she should have edited better. I am not a history fan, and there was way too much history and worry going on. There were about 500 pages in each book that were engrossing and good…and really good, honestly. The book club I’m in is only apparently reading the first book. It will be interesting to see if most people read both, because it’s about 1200 pages total, but you can’t read one without the other. That said, the story was good, even with my dislike of history, especially war history. There were too many words. This could have been one fucking amazing book with a good editor.

So there we are…life, reading, and a fucked-up mood. Nothing new.

Dear Self

Dear Self: thank you for ever so briefly getting your act together in December and copying everything for the next two units of school. I went in to school today and it was all there, ready, planned. Seriously. Like I had a brain at some point. It’s nice to know that someone is looking out for me sometimes. Am I done with the grading? Heck no. But I can teach for the next 6 weeks with very little planning. And honestly? I needed that. So it’s nice to know that my brain CAN kick in and behave at times.

So yeah, I went in to school this morning and learned a little bit about the silly tablet we’re supposed to be using and then signed up for computers for some of the upcoming assignments (because we won’t have access at all for some portion of the Spring, due to Common Core assessments), and I sort of dealt with my classroom and organizing and putting stuff where it belonged, and then I went home, because there’s a plumbing issue, and it should have been something small, but it’s not…it’s not difficult, but it’s expensive, because expensive is something I need at the moment. If we’re eating something besides ramen at the end of the month, it might be a miracle. Who knows what will die or need to be fixed next…I’m ducking at this point.

I did quilt for a little while…

Not as long as I wanted, but some. I always want the stressful things to stay away and leave my brain in peace, but they don’t. They keep me from getting the art stuff done, tying my brain up in knots. I finished the whole dirt area, the little black and white bird, and about half of the Mother. My goal is to get a ton of it done tomorrow afternoon and evening. We’ll see if that flies.

I’m about 3 hours in…I think. I had my stitching meeting this evening with friends and my kids…I worked on the binding for the Love (not Love) quilt. It’s STILL not done. I’m slow.

Julie brought a cool coloring book of flowers and leaves and birds…

There were lots of owls. I’m developing a fascination with owls lately…

It makes me want to draw…I really miss drawing. I used to draw more. Now I don’t find the time as easily. It’s a place thing, I think. When I was waiting, I would draw. Now I am waiting less. Plus I am incredibly overstressed about deadlines at the moment, and so I find myself either rushing around dealing with those or completely immobilized by too much. So I do very little or I read a lot or I clean a lot. That might be beneficial to the house, but it’s not beneficial to my brain. My brain needs to do a better job of clearing all that stress out.

Julie also gave us bird ornaments for our Christmas trees…but my ornaments are all put away in the garage until next December, so I will hang it on something else for a while and see if it notices that Christmas is over.

I think it will be quite happy being a Spring bird for a while.

Anyway. I’m going to bed early. I’m tired. I have an early hike in the morning. I want to read for a bit, even though it is still World War II, because the time travel has returned and the book is back to being interesting. And I want to have enough mental energy tomorrow to finish quilting, or at least get a lot of it done. I can worry about school and money and getting all the other crap done some other day. Saturdays should be for good stuff…not work and stress and sad. Yes sad. It’s there. It’s always there…lurking about and stalking me. Asshole.

Dear Self: Get rid of that sad guy. He’s a jerk.

At the End…

My mood is low. It probably isn’t particularly helpful to be reading a huge long book about World War II in London during the Blitz. I keep reading up on depression and tactics for getting the hell out of it. I know I’m doing everything I’m supposed to, mostly, except it’s funny…they recommend getting more sleep and eating right, but admit that two of the significant symptoms of depression are the inability to sleep well (either it’s too much or interrupted or too little) and digestive issues (eating too much or too little, or just differently). So I should fight the symptoms by pretending they aren’t there? And it’s depressing in itself to realize that you are doing everything you’re supposed to be doing, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Am I doing it wrong? Probably.

I just keep doing. It will hopefully eventually work. I’ll wake up one morning with fairy dust sprinkled everywhere and the world will be sparkling and new and everything will be pretty and happy and full of butterflies and nice smells.

Sigh. I’d settle for waking up and not thinking, “Oh God. Another day to get through.”

My ex guilt-tripped me today for not having sent out the kids’ school and soccer photos to his mom before she died. Little does he know that I already felt bad about that, that I had started a letter to her about 5 times and couldn’t manage to write anything about my life and the kids’ lives in the last 6 months. I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t send a Christmas letter this year either. Same deal. How to summarize months of depression and grief? You can’t…not without sounding really fake or whiny or pitiful or pathetic…and maybe I am all of those things, but I didn’t want to put it down on paper (says the woman who blogs about it every night…I can’t say that it makes sense). So I procrastinated. It’s not the only thing I’ve procrastinated about over the last 6 months. Things that are hard…I just can’t summon the energy or motivation to deal with them. I’m trying very hard to stay on track with the financial aid stuff for college, because I have to. Same with school, although I’ve let some things slide with that…nothing crucial. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to work, so it’s hard for me to let anything go, but I talk to myself about what really matters all the time. Just do what really matters. Let the rest go.

So I told my ex, I’ve been suffering from depression (I’m sure he knows this already) and couldn’t deal with it and many other things in the last 6 months, and I already had a mental conversation with his mom about this in my head and she was OK, she understood. I don’t know if she would have understood or not, but I can’t fix not sending the photos. It’s done. I’m carrying enough guilt at the moment. I don’t need more. And he could have sent them himself. I never seem to attach myself to the people who will DO. They just expect me to DO. And if I don’t, if I can’t, because my brain is messing with its serotonin and dopamine levels and not working properly, then they complain about it or they don’t complain about it, they just feel bad that I’m not DOING and that sucks too. So give me a break. I’m doing the best that I can. And then I handed him all of his photos. I usually put the kid’s name, grade, and date on all the photos, but I didn’t. That’s why I hadn’t finished packing them all up. It was too much like hard work to write all that. Sigh.

I still feel bad.

I got up eventually this morning. I actually got one kid up early (the other one got herself up) and then went back to sleep, because I went to sleep way too late last night. Then I took a cat to the vet…Midnight has some infection and the antibiotic pill I was supposed to be giving her, well she was being evil and spitting it out after we thought she had swallowed it, so she’s not getting better as fast as we’d like. Hopefully the shot they gave her today will help, because otherwise there might be something else going on.

Saw this sign near the vet…

Made me think of Game of Thrones.

When I got home, I started going through my stash of batting, looking for something big enough for this quilt. Sigh. NOTHING. I have lots of weird-sized offcuts, but nothing long enough or wide enough. Damn. I should have figured this out earlier this week. Now I have to waste possible quilting time going shopping for batting. I did find one piece of batting big enough actually…

But I have no idea what it is. I usually use Warm and Natural, but this was something with a scrim in it and loose layers on top…

Not sure why I have it. There is a smallish rectangle cut out of it, but I have no idea what I used it for. Sad but true. I was too paranoid to use something that I wasn’t sure of the results on, so I went and bought more, came home and washed and dried it, and ironed the top and backing while I was waiting…

I have two drawers of pieces big enough for backings and backgrounds, but most of them are old sale pieces that weren’t wide enough. I used a batik for the background, so they run wider than the normal print fabrics by about 4 inches…so I needed a batik for the back as well. I could have used the purple I originally purchased for the front, but I think it will work really well for another quilt, so I saved it…why waste it on a background? I’ve had this batik (off the sale rack) for a very very long time. It’s about time it got used.

And because I had even more time, I started cleaning up the office, putting away all the fabric from this last quilt and straightening up all the mess. There was a lot of mess. There’s still more mess, but it’s better.

By the time I got back from picking the girlchild up from school, the batting was dry and I laid the whole mess out on the entryway floor and pinbasted it. Apparently I only took one very blurry picture of this process, probably because I only had 45 minutes before girlchild would stomp through the entryway with muddy soccer cleats, and I wanted the quilt off the floor by then.

Anyway. I did all that and managed to start quilting between dropping her off amid her many complaints of the car shortage in the house (boychild has piano lessons…I offered to let her have my car and ask her dad or grandpa to take me, but apparently she recognized my plan for the guilt trip I really didn’t mean it to be and let me keep my car). She really likes being able to drive herself places.

I didn’t get far on the quilting. I didn’t have much time before her game.

I took lots of crappy blurry pictures during the game until I realized I was on some crappy blurry setting (why do cameras have settings like that?)…

and then it got too dark to photograph anything (they won 3-1), so I sewed instead.

I finished two more bird feet and about a million pink bullion knots. OK. Not a million…

Not even close. I am still revising my finishing plan for these. Going with the uber-positive, hopeful mood I’ve been in all week (cough cough), I have decided that it will take me a decade to finish three birds, and if I am any faster than that, I am an amazing stitching dynamo and should be worshiped from afar for my masterful stitching skills.

At least I know I can achieve that.

I came home, went to the gym, read about 300 pages of depressing wartime novel (sigh…for book club…even the time travel is boring, because IT’S NOT EVEN HAPPENING), ate dinner, and then quilted for a while.

I’m done with flames and smoke and am up in the rocks…

Tomorrow looks ugly, but hopefully I’ll get a few hours in. That’s my goal anyway, but I need to deal with school stuff too. Yuck. Not ready. Never ready.

I did get the postcards for the new California Fibers show, which will open on January 13 at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California (Orange County, for those who don’t recognize the name).

I have two pieces in the show…it’s a wide variety of fiber work, from baskets to weaving to quilting to lace netting and dying and lots of cool work. Unfortunately, it’s only open Monday-Friday, so I probably won’t be able to go up until Spring Break…luckily, it’s open through May 8, so that is an option. The opening is Thursday, January 30, from 5:30-7:45, for those who live in the area. This is one of three California Fibers’ shows in the next two months. I have one piece in the show that will open at the Visions Art Museum next month, and we haven’t heard the jury results on the third show yet, which will be in Ojai, California. Anyway, it means lots of getting work ready for exhibit, but also having to finish and ship for two other major exhibits, so if I’m a little stressed out and feeling overwhelmed, that would be why. At least I have a good excuse.

Anyway, sad day. Whatever. Move on to the next one. At the end of it, I’ll have some quilts done. That’s better than most depressoids do…at least I can do that. Make art. At the end of it…reminds me, we are at the end of Winter Break as well. And I’m almost at the end of two quilts. And hopefully boychild finished the last college app tonight because it was due today…we’re at the end of that (but that signifies the beginning of a lot of scary and expensive future shit).

I’m Not Very Magical at the Moment…

Things I said to my sewing machine today (and yes, you’re allowed to say, “Well at least you’re talking to your sewing machine today.” True that.):

1. Why do you have to be such an asshole? Why can’t you just TELL me when you’re going to run out of thread instead of continuing to sew along like a happy jerkwad?

2. Why do you hate me so much?

3. Why can’t you go faster?

I finished stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt top today…it took 5 hours total, with 4 of them done today.

This is what it looked like before it started…Babygirl was not thrilled about my messing with her sunny spot. I started in the morning after I took my car in for what should have been a simple oil change and turned into a brake job…luckily, my parents could pick me up and bring me back home in between. So I stitched until the first kid got home (minimum day),

then sent him off to get the second kid…then she needed a ride somewhere (she thought she could have the other car, but it was now the ONLY car, so she had to give it up to mom)…so I dropped her somewhere, came back, got the boychild, drove to get my car…

(No, Calli, you are NOT helping)…waited for a while…my car guy is nice but very thorough.

Girlchild texted me for her pickup during my wait at the car place, so I told her to call boychild, who then apparently had to drop off three other teenaged girls (so glad it was not me)…

Which he complained about. Because? Anyway, by the time he got back, I was home and stitching again. I stitched until I had to leave to watch the boychild’s Academic League meet…

He’s on the far left…this picture shows the back of their official shirts. It’s true, too…there were two questions on Mamma Mia! of all things. It was the only musical they knew, besides Cats!. Everything has exclamation marks.

I love how little I know when I go to these things. I did get pseudopod right. They are all carefully listening to the question being read…or they are constipated. Hard to tell. The guy in the white sweatshirt never picked up his buzzer. The guy in the gray sweatshirt knew lots of really weird stuff and would answer before they even finished the question. The guy in orange is a freakin’ math genius. Boychild knows current events and literature, and often argues with Genius Boy about math and science.

I stitched bird feet while I was watching. I have finished 10 bird feet…

I have 50 to go. Seriously. But my goal of finishing 3 every 2 soccer games is so completely not happening. It it were, I would have finished the first 6 at last night’s game, and as you can see, I am nowhere near done. I did not calculate her actual playing time. I get more done when she doesn’t play or when it’s dark, because I can’t photograph in the dark. There’s another game tomorrow night…yes, that’s three in a week. Usually it’s two. This week has been a little crazy. I should finish some of the birds tomorrow night, but not enough of them to meet my crazy schedule. Oh well. Technically, they should have been completely done and sewn together, with the borders done, like a week ago. Uh huh. So there we are. Now I have two male parents at soccer games who are bugging me about the birds and quilting or knitting or whatever it is I’m doing. Freaks.

I came home and cooked and then sewed some more.

At some point, my back was really killing me. I stretched a little. I danced a little (this is really good for relaxing back muscles that have been held in the same tense position for too long). I sewed some more. At some point (OK, many points), I wanted to quit. This is like a marathon. You have to psych yourself into finishing.

And I did.

At some point, it’s just easier to finish than to think about doing more tomorrow.

The back is pretty exciting. It’s kind of ironic, because tomorrow I have to pinbaste it (kneeling on tile floor for at least an hour) and then start quilting (more back pain). And quilting will probably be at least 10-15 hours. Actually, the plus with this piece is that there is very little background to quilt…it’s mostly outlining the image, which will take a while but is not as labor intensive as the background stuff is. Or it’s not as boring. Not sure which. Anyway, my plan is to have it done Saturday. HA! No really. Don’t think about the other stuff that needs to get done in that time period. And yes, I still have a binding to finish on the other one, but I am going to call the photographer. I have faith. In something.

So you’d think I’d feel all good and stuff about getting one step closer to finishing. Mr. Meditation calls it fulfillment…yeah, I remember that feeling, sort of. Far away. I just really get a sense of panic, though, that then there will be unfilled time, time that is not focused on getting a project done that has to get done. I don’t like that. Work doesn’t give me a huge sense of fulfillment. Art sort of does at the moment…not really, though. It feels empty, meaningless on most days. My brain is more at peace when I do art stuff than on the days I don’t. I think it’s a better path towards a decent life than the work path. That’s why I’ve been prepping other quilts for the next stages. I need to have stuff in the pipeline so there’s no down time, time where my brain is all wandering and trying to find a purpose and trying to solve problems and be happy. I don’t know how to be happy at the moment. I would have to be better at acceptance, and I’m not. I mean, I do accept what my life is at the moment, but I don’t like it. And the depression just makes it harder to get through the days. It drags me down. Into a hole. I keep looking for art or books or comics or anything that will pull me out, push the depression back down, carry me out. I feel like I’m missing an instruction manual for the next step, like it’s something magical that no one can explain to me. First you do this and then that and then magic happens! And you get to be happy! That’s what it feels like. And I still cry every day. When does that go away? Is that magic too?

I’m not very magical at the moment.

And that was my chair and my sweatshirt. Now she’s actually sitting on my lap. She scratched the crap out of my face last night, blood everywhere (sounds worse than it looks today…puncture wounds…lovely kitty), but today she is my best friend apparently. Old ladies unite. Sigh.

Holy Panic Attack, Batman…

I think today needs to be wadded up in a tiny ball and thrown in the garbage disposal. I had a list of things to do, and even finished some of them, but then the day conspired to pick me up and throw me into a blender. As Robin would say, Holy Teeth Grinding…in case you are Batman-deficient, here’s a great compilation of some of Robin’s exclamations of holiness…

My favorites? Holy Sudden Incapacitation and Holy Knit 1 Purl 2. I wonder if Robin knits?

I think stress started in last night, and I’m not sure why, except that there are a lot of deadlines pressing on me at the moment and not enough time. So I couldn’t fall asleep until after 2 AM sometime last night, and then I was awake again at 4. I think I slept a little between then and 7, but not a lot. The kids went back to school today, so maybe that was it…who knows. I vowed to stay in my pajamas (something I really haven’t been able to do all Winter Break) at least until the health coach called. I started stitching down the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I really thought I was going to be able to get this done today. Ha! The universe looks down on me, puny and small, and steps on me. Seriously. I got about an hour in. I was hoping the health coach could help with the sleep stuff, but she says I’m already doing everything, although she pointed me towards aromatherapy, which I did once upon a time. I just went and checked the medicine cabinet (which is not actually a cabinet any more, just a hole in the wall between studs because the old cabinet’s glass was slipping out, so I just took the whole mess out before it killed someone, and I’ve never been able to find a replacement that wouldn’t require changing the hole size in one direction or eleven), but there’s nothing. It’s OK. I got a glass of wine instead…because it’s 12:20 AM and I am WIRED. Like I’m going to vibrate out of the room. Not good. Grape aromatherapy.

So at 10:30 or so, everything was still according to plan. I showered (I got to stay in my pjs for a little while…the simple pleasures) and got my list together, and went to the auto-part store (windshield wipers), the hardware store (lightbulbs and replacement keys and extension cords), and the grocery store (boychild has expressed a shampoo preference that is DIFFERENT than his sister’s for the first time in 18.013 years). I came back, changed the wiper blades in 14 seconds flat (it has taken me 46 years of practice to be able to do that), filled up the car with all the oil I had (it’s going in on Wednesday), installed the lightbulb, threw out the stomped-on extension cord, put the keys together for the girlchild (who has been complaining about not having her OWN car keys), and declared the kids’ bathroom a national, no, INTERNATIONAL disaster area (I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with them in the future…and I think I know what they will be doing this weekend, if I have to scream and throw cat turds at them until they do it).

All good. It still wasn’t even lunch time. I was doing well.

Yeah. Then I got an email about the journal for the Earth Stories project. Shit. Dammit. Fuck. I bought the journal two weeks ago. I started trying to find photos for it, but I had stopped filing photos properly last March (normal for me…I usually only clean them out about twice a year, when I have to), and honestly had put off dealing with it because going through photos was just too damn painful. Fuck. Cannot put this off any more. She wants it now. What she wants doesn’t exist. She’s perfectly within her rights to want it now…I said I would do it by early January. It is early January. I did not state which year, but I suspect that doesn’t matter. Unless I can manufacture a deadly illness or necessary surgery right now (not a joking matter), I’m stuck. So I started going through photos…I thought I was going to be able to do this whole Google Docs thing (trying to get used to it for school purposes) and maybe work on it at the soccer game on the iPad, but I’ll write more about all that when I write a good long horrible post about how NOT to make a journal after the fact.

Boychild arrived home, criticized my lunch fare, and I went off to get the girlchild from school and fill the gas tank. While I’m pulling up to the gas station, my cell phone rings from Upland, California. I don’t know anyone in Upland, California (OK, maybe I do, but I don’t KNOW that I know they’re in Upland). I’m going to ignore it (I am driving), but girlchild asks to answer it, and promptly uses goofy voice and tells them, Yes, She IS Kathy Nida. Oops. Then quickly hands the phone to me when she realizes that pretending to be me is a big mistake, because the universe is after me today and I just don’t know it yet.

Thus begins a strange conversation. It’s Road to California, an annual quilt show. They want to know if I’ve shipped my quilt. Um. No? I didn’t get in. Yes you did. I didn’t get an email. It’s in your spam folder. It wasn’t, by the way…I do check all my spam and it never came…now I could have apparently checked online to see if I got in, but it meant logging in to my Road account, not just looking at an online list, and that was early December and apparently it never crossed my mind…I just assumed because they said they would only send emails to accepted artists that I hadn’t been accepted. Luckily, they did call me and were still willing to have me ship the quilt, because it was due back on December 27 (oops). So I’m in Road. Which I guess means I’m going to Road. And they took the naked one! I was shocked. So one of my uteri will be in Ontario (not Upland), California…January 23-26. I’m not going to show you a picture of it, because if you’re at Road, it will be the ONLY quilt with a uterus that is at Road. Seriously. Wanna bet?

So I walked in the door with the girlchild and realized I had no boxes, drove to UPS while girlchild went to her soccer game, then back home, packed up the quilt, had to ship through Fed Ex, drove to Fed Ex and dropped it off, then drove back home because I had forgotten my tea (crucial for surviving January soccer games), then to the soccer game (I was only 11 minutes late). Watched the girlchild play, stitched some feet, no fucking way is my plan of finishing three blocks in two games going to work at all, because I am too slow. Whatever.

Yes, we are playing midgets here (not really…and we’re not supposed to call them that…this young dear thing actually pulled my daughter down later in the game…at least I think it was her…it might have been one of the other midgets).

It was late afternoon…hence the pretty light…but most of my pictures were fuzzy crap due to the declining light. I don’t know why I try.

I especially like how everything is tinged with orange, their team color…probably there was a very pretty sunset going on behind me, but I was too busy freaking out and stitching bird feet. Stitching does actually calm me down. Imagine how messed up I’d be right now if I hadn’t done that. At one point tonight, I sat down with the last of the heart disease comics to grade, opened them up, brain vomited panic and anxiety all over the page, and I put them away again.

Ironic that, because if I don’t get through all the grading soon, there will be a whole ‘nother level of anxiety going on.

I need time, dammit Spock…TIME. Spock seems better for that request than Robin…Robin doesn’t seem capable of helping at all, except to make me laugh. Holy Inappropriate Comment, Batman. Holy Pointy Ears, Batman. I hate being anxious like this. On the other hand, I often am uber-efficient when I’m this stressed. Holy Adrenaline Rush, Batman.

Luckily dinner was in the crockpot (I did that in the morning too) when we got home, and then I spent two or three hours manhandling photos and Google Docs and finally giving up and importing into Word, which was bitchy in a different way. Am I done? Fuck no. Don’t talk to me.

Oh! And I cut up a Christmas tree in the middle of all that, with the boychild’s help. In the dark. With a saw. And tried to fix the oven using the weird MacGyver device the oven guy left me (I failed at this attempt). And exercised, and meditated (in the 20-30 seconds when we are allowed to let our minds wander wherever they like, my brain performed dangerous karate fight moves and beat the crap out of someone. It’s OK…he deserved it…and it made me giggle.). And then I made the mistake of looking at college financial aid stuff, which just makes my head spin, and they want everything done by February 15, and that includes tax forms and statements and all this crap that has to be up-, down-, and side-loaded in 14 different locations. I guess the only people that get financial aid are those who have stamina. I have stamina, dammit. I do.

No more quilt action happened today. I did copy the missing pieces from the drawing I was taping yesterday (Fed Ex is where I copy, so I had the presence of mind to bring the sketchbook with me when I shipped the quilt).

I do wonder if I missed some crucial email from Road? I searched all my folders, including spam and deleted items…I have the confirmation that I entered and the email they sent today, but nothing else. I could have sworn I saw a rejection email, but maybe not. I just don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m going crazy with all this stuff…I can barely keep track of what I need to get done on a minute-by-minute basis, and then this stuff happens…makes me wonder if I’m all there. Where? There. Over THERE.

Anyway. I’m hoping tomorrow is better. I’ve made a to-do list already. It makes me feel better, more organized and calm, to have the list. I have timing issues tomorrow, but if I’m wide awake in the morning, then I will take advantage and do the gym early…I work better on the art stuff at night, and that will free up time for that. Presumably the exercise will get rid of some of this crazy anxiety too. Hell, some of this is probably hormonal (I just realized this…you’d think I would learn that any crazy seesawing from one mood to another is of course that stupid-ass estrogen fucking with my system again). Holy Uterine Involvement, Batman! Anyway, just be glad you don’t live with me at the moment, although it would be nice to have some calm influence who rubbed my feet and back and made me a bubble bath and a cocktail (I don’t actually drink those or sit in those, in either order) and told me everything would be all right…not that I’d believe them…I don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone who says that to me again. Sad but true. But someday. Maybe. Maybe I will be allowed to have that. Fucking universe. Go fuck with someone else. You’ve messed with me enough.

The universe says, Yeah, but you got into a show that you didn’t even know you got into. Isn’t that a good thing? Well, universe, wouldn’t it have been OK to tell me on the normal date and have me be able to plan ahead to ship and all that? Yes, yes it would. And then I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering how crazy I really am.

All right…it’s 1 AM and I’m still wired. Holy Melatonin, Batman (doesn’t work on me), what next? Read a boring book…breathe deep…maybe the quilt fairy will come in the night and finish my stitching, or even better! Maybe the financial aid/tax fairy will come and do all THAT for me. Now that would be a useful fairy. Don’t even ask where the depression was today…front and center…when I write about creating the journal.

Until the Feeling Sticks…

I planned a hike for this morning. I figure once school starts up again and the soccer season hits me fully upside the head (that starts tomorrow), I won’t have as much time to be wandering all over the place. I’ll write about the hike later. But I was sitting in a parking lot getting ready for this hike, and I had had a bad night and a bad morning, and I was already trying not to cry (as usual, what’s new), but…my ex emailed me (and a little while later, the girlchild texted me) that his mom had died last night…and I lost it. I’m not the most emotionally stable person at the moment, and I haven’t seen her in years, and yes I’m divorced and all, but she wrote me every year, usually more than once. And even when it was getting hard for her, she still wrote…to me. She kept up that communication for 10-plus years post-divorce and I always greatly appreciated her doing that, for not cutting me off completely, for keeping the lines open, for her news of a family I no longer officially belonged to. She was a caring woman and I will miss her spidery handwriting with her tales of music and fruitcake.

So I guess I didn’t start the hike out in the best frame of mind.

I’m not processing most of the day any better. I hiked…well, walked really. I went to the store. I weathered the teenaged girlstorm of last-minute planning (I’m kind of tired of that storm, I must say). I graded papers. I read a little.

More importantly, there was art. I think no matter the pain in your heart, whether sadness or loss or just a plain old bad day, being creative, even in a stupid paperwork kind of way, is good for all that. I’m not happier right now, but I am less anxious, more at peace.

I managed to iron down the whole Celebrating Silver quilt this afternoon…

I did it all on the entryway floor (luckily I chose to do this BEFORE we removed the very dead Christmas tree from the house, thus scattering pine needles into corners where they will not reveal themselves until some time in August). I had the whole quilt ironed together in a few large chunks: the earth base, the lower torso of the Crone with the Maiden and the Mother attached, the one bird, the upper torso with arms and staff, and the head and hair entwined with cat and owl. There were also some smaller loose pieces that couldn’t be attached until the whole thing was down on the background fabric.

It took a couple of hours, maybe three, to get the whole mess attached. At one point, I was looking at it and noticed the one dirt piece was much longer than the others…

Why? Fuck if I know. I cut it off.

Once I had everything sort of tacked down on the background, I moved it to the ironing board and tried to do a better job of attaching it, spraying each section with water and heat-setting it for at least 30 seconds.

I can’t show you the whole thing until the exhibit opens…in October. Seriously. I’m sorry. It’s really cool though! Seriously. It is. I’m happy with it.

Of course, I have hours of stitching left, so I should hold on to my feelings of relief for a bit longer. The happiness is a temporary feeling, chased away by anxiety over getting it done this week.

Despite having prewashed every fabric in the quilt, about three of the darker browns bled…

It’s not too obvious and I don’t know if I care. I have used colored pencils in the past to deal with that. I can do that again.

I set up the machine for the stitch-down phase, to start tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s under that towel.

Which is under that cat. Yeah. I know. Damn cat. She has a T-shirt that says Occupy Mom’s Quilts.

My brain is already thinking ahead to how it will stay occupied when this one is done…I have the breast drawing I showed you yesterday? Friday? Can’t remember what day it is now, let alone when I posted about that…I had enlarged it months ago and started taping it together tonight…

Once again, brain short-circuiting reveals itself. One section is copied at the wrong percentage (how the hell did I do that? Must have been unconscious) and I missed another two sections completely…so tomorrow, I will be going back to the copy place to deal with that.

I also started cutting and taping some of the smaller drawings I copied earlier during break…

I want a whole stash of drawings ready to go…this one needed to be filled out on the right. I often run out of page (I have been drawing things off the page since 4th grade, maybe earlier…the problem is not solved by bigger paper) and have to tape bits on to finish the drawing. I need to draw feet for one other one I got taped…

Anyway. These smaller ones are about 14×17″ or so. Maybe I will do one of those first? I do have another smallish quilt top that needs to be stitched down as well. Maybe I will find time for that this week…just continue the stitch-down process after finishing the big one (the big one with tons of pieces that will take me forever to stitch down, who the fuck am I kidding?).

I only got three of the smaller ones done, and now I need to fix another copy issue with one of the drawings. I really did not have full brain power when I went in to do these…amusing (or not) since they were done on two different days, about four months apart. Apparently my brain will not be returning soon. It has left the building and wandered into another time zone.

I meditated with cat on lap.

At least she’s warm. I’m always cold these days. I take my iron pills and the higher thyroid dosage, but it’s not helping. I’m constantly freezing. I need a fur coat (not a real fur coat, but a grown one, like Babygirl has…just carry it around on your skin). I’m OK with genetic modifications that might keep me warm in winter.

Meditation is focusing on feelings still…I’m good at the feels. I’m not good at good feels, just the feels themselves, mostly sad or anxious, occasionally angry. Some people think I should be angry more…more often, more angry. I can’t find a lot of anger. So the meditation says that intellectual, rational thought can obscure underlying feelings…yup. Not mine, though…I told you. I’m good at the feels. I’m not so good at the rational part. I can be intellectual, but I am ruled more by the emotion, the instinct, that gut feeling…Mr. Meditation says that feeling is about knowing what’s right for us. Sigh. That’s the part I’m having issues with right now. I know what’s right, but it isn’t making me happy. It doesn’t feel particularly good. I get little twinges of it, I remember what it feels like…sort of, when I got the whole quilt ironed down (yes, the one I can’t even show you right now)…so that is a good thing. I will just keep doing that until the feeling sticks. And if it happens to stick around for any other part of my life, awesome. I don’t expect much at the moment. But I will be prepared with lots of artwork to pull me through the coming months. Art Saves Lives. Seriously. It does.

Sleep…It’s What’s for Dinner…

It’s funny how depression messes with your ability to remember things, like the part of your brain that’s normally engaged in “oh hey, you need gas,” or “wash the damn bras, ” or “take down the stupid Christmas tree before it spontaneously combusts,” that part is on vacation. I’m not really sure where it goes or what it’s doing. It did not leave a note. There’s some sort of short circuit there that is different than the “I’m so busy” short circuit that I normally have to deal with on a daily basis. My calendar helps with that, as long as I remember to put it in the calendar in the first place (always an issue).

I’ve found that I am having other brain short circuits, though. I usually pick background fabrics for my quilts before I start ironing Wonder Under to fabric. I have the background fabric sitting right next to the table where the pieces are laid out, so I can compare and make sure the new fabric will work with the background, as well as with everything else. I am usually really good at picking appropriate background fabrics well before the rest of the fabrics are chosen. The quilt colors itself in my head, and I just follow that diagram.

Not so on this quilt. I still love what I picked, a deep dark rich purple…

But a lot of what I picked to go on top of it just isn’t going to work. Or even show up. I had a giant brain fart, I guess. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’ve never changed the background at the last minute like this. EVER. What IS that? Demon possession? If I weren’t so afraid of what I might find, I’d go back in the blog and find out when I picked the purple fabric and see what was going on then (nuclear disaster, dying pet, stroke).

Anyway, despite the brain fuzz, I finished up the ironing today…putting the owl together…

I was missing a piece, the leg above one of the claws, so I pulled the fabric for that (this is why I keep all the fabrics I’ve pulled for a specific quilt in a separate box until the quilt is done…then they can go back with the general population), opened it up, and found…

The missing piece…still attached to the fabric in there. Lucky.

And then all the thorny branches (which still don’t look good on that purple)…

And then I piled the whole mess up into a plastic box and drove to the quilt store, where I messed around with a couple of fabrics, all the while knowing what the background wanted to be…

That blue…which is much more turquoise in real life…and is now washed and ready for ironing (new blue on left, old purple on right). I had a not-work party (not a required work party, but a nice party where a lot of people from work just happened to be) tonight, and managed normal social interactions (shocking, I know). I came home and folded fabrics…

Because you can’t just buy one…and then tried to decide which I would do tonight…ironing or sewing binding on…because I also trimmed the Love (not Love) quilt (I really need to pick a name on that one)…

And sewed on the binding this afternoon…I still have to do all the handwork.

I started this afternoon, but didn’t get very far…

Plus Babygirl wanted to sit on my lap…or chew a hole in the quilt. I noticed the eye was twitching again and I’d been grinding my teeth since yesterday morning. Apparently a ton of exercise and art completion and some wine and even good news from the doctor do not make the stress disappear. Not even meditation does that. The balancing is not working well at the moment, at least mentally (ironic, since I’m on Winter Break still)…when I take time out to exercise and hike, it leaves less time to get everything done. But exercising and hiking do relax me, give my brain a break. But then I get more stressed because I have less time.

This is a frustrating conundrum. Still a work in progress. Speaking of which, apparently I looked so pained at the gym this morning, the staff needed to make goofy faces at me and talk to me so I had to take my earphones out and then they had to ask me if I was OK. Shit. Did I look that bad? I’ve looked way worse than that, I know. Sheesh. Carrying all the depression around in my face.

Anyway, I looked at the clock, calculated my wakeup time for tomorrow’s hike, thought about how tired I was from not sleeping well the last three nights, and decided to try going to bed early…now I started writing this post at 11:18 PM. In a former life (as Ms. America? doubtful), I would have been heading for bed at 11:18. Nowadays, I’m still artmaking then. I start to worry around midnight and think it might be time to stop that stuff and move on to the blogging stage of the evening. I’ve been making it into bed between 1:30 and 2 AM for the last two weeks, I think…with an occasional early night, but mostly not. I go back to school in a week. I think I have to readjust the sleeping soon. Anyway, I wrote the post and I’m going to go to bed, kind of a New Year’s resolution on sleep: do more of it and better. Or something. Sleep…it’s what’s for dinner. Nope. That’s not it. Please don’t send me any studies on how a lack of sleep guarantees you will die a horrible and early death. It’s not like I have any control over the process. I’ll get into bed and my brain will revolt against me and wander off into wakey wakey land for an hour or so.

The point was, I didn’t sew and I didn’t iron. I folded. And then I tried to sleep. Wait. I haven’t done that part yet. The cat on my lap is simulating that activity for me. She does it so much better than I do (not hard).

Brain all over the map today. Really. It just sucked. Tomorrow I will force it to be focused and aim for some semblance of what Kathy’s brain used to be. As a backup, I put everything I needed to do on my calendar. All of it. Seriously. If I don’t do it, it’s not important. Until it is.

Guardian Angel

I’m sitting in the parking structure at Radiology downtown. I have 10 minutes before I need to check in. I cried all the way here. I know the odds of there being something really wrong are extremely low, but it doesn’t stop my brain from being upset. I’m not worried, because I know that whatever it is, it already is…something or nothing…I’m just scared. Not too scared to get out of the car…trying to get my eyes to behave, my tear ducts under control. If I look upset, the nurses will be more solicitous and I can’t handle that now. Better that they’re rude so I can be irritated or angry.

They won’t be rude. They never are.

This is the drawing I did back in late June after a followup mammogram.

In June, I had my normal mammogram, and then they called me at school (strangely, I answered) and wanted a followup, but they couldn’t say why. Way to strike fear into a woman’s heart. My doctor called later that day to explain. Whoops. Timing issues. So I went in for the followup (it’s not the first time) and they did 4 or 5 mammograms and an ultrasound and the doctor came in and said there was this thing, deep behind the nipple, but it had been there for three years without changing…but he was concerned. Not so concerned to biopsy it, but concerned enough to have me back in 6 months. So I did that drawing. Ironically, it’s the wrong breast…but I guess I drew it as facing, on the left side. Anyway. It will be my next big quilt, I think. Maybe.

So I went back in today. I wasn’t worried…I was just scared. Those are different feelings. I do my monthly exams. I have no family history. I breastfed for a good long time.

They did three mammogram views and then she said they would call me, and I said, um. Yeah. Can you just have him look now, because I don’t want to have to come back? So she did. And yeah, he wanted an ultrasound. I pack myself out to the “Women’s Lounge” (a separate room in Radiology, so I don’t feel weird about sitting there double-gowned with my clothes in a pile on my lap). I tell them my time constraints (girlchild had her CT scan for today too). They take me in for the ultrasound, and I watch her, watch the screen, watch what they’re looking for. I don’t know what is good and what is bad. She says, “It’ll just take 5 minutes.” Twenty minutes later and she finally says I can clean up, but she wants the doctor to look. “You can get dressed.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” Yeah. I got dressed, and then she came back with the doctor and I got undressed again. Everything is covered with that ultrasound gel now. I think I stopped breathing normally somewhere in there. I sent a message to the girlchild, told her to meet me at her appointment. We already had a contingency plan in case this happened. Her text back made me tear up. She said good luck.

Doctor comes in. His name? Lumpkin. Seriously? (OK, it might be Lumkin, but still!) She does the ultrasound again. Shows him something. He asks about something else. They stare at my breast, then at the ultrasound. Then he smiles and says, “It’s that same thing, a shadow. It’s been there since 2007. It hasn’t changed. I just want two more views on the mammogram.” Gel off, new gown (old one covered in gel), sit in the ~~waiting room~~ Women’s Lounge (I am still not lounging) again. Back in, another two views, which makes five total. Deep breaths. They do the twisty roll thing this time. I’m laughing. The woman is on her knees on the ground, trying to position all of my parts in the right place. I’m looking up at the machine, and someone has put some sort of scented thing on the machine…lavender…to calm us. I’m calm. I’m in pain, but I’m calm. I’m not breathing right, but I’m calm. Whatever it is, it’s already there. It’s been in me for 6 1/2 years or more. Flashes of Aliens movies.

It’s OK. He says it’s normal tissue. I go back in 6 months to my normal mammogram. As long as it stays the same, I’m good. That foreign shadow is part of me.

As I head out for the girlchild’s CT scan, I wish I had my sketchbook. I haven’t drawn all break. No opportunities, I guess. Other priorities. I haven’t done much of anything, it seems. Not true, but it feels that way. Achievement low. Must fix that in the next week.

So I came home and started ironing again…

Didn’t have much time in the afternoon, because I was wrangling with the FAFSA (financial aid for college). I was supposed to know city and state for every college the boychild applied to (I didn’t).

Damn breast is sore. I got all of the torso ironed to the staff, so I pulled it off the teflon sheet and rolled it up on itself…

That’s how I store it until it’s time to iron it all down to fabric. I wanted to finish today, but ended up needing to think about sleep. I am actually fairly wide awake, even now, but I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, so I can’t stay up until I’m done. I do want to get a different background fabric tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I’ll take some of the pieces with me and toss them down on the floor, thus freaking out everyone in the store. Yay me.

In between all this, girlchild had a game…

I graded for the hour before the game…I bargain with myself about work vs. stuff that’s more fun.

Because taking pictures during the night games is totally pointless. I did more embroidery on these.

I’m working on the first two month’s worth. I’ve done all the embellishment in the background color on all 6 blocks, and now have moved on to eyes and feet on all 6. I originally estimated 2 games to finish 3 blocks, so it would be 4 games to finish 6. I’ve put in 2 games’ worth of time on the 6 blocks, so I should be done at next Wednesday’s game. I might be done with grading by then too, if I’m lucky…or at least the grading I can do while sitting on the bleachers. She played half the game tonight, so that was good, but there was all this stupid coaching politics going on, so who knows. I stitch because it keeps me calm during games. Plus I like to stitch. The one guy who’s been asking me about the birds every game asked me if I was done today. You so funny. I’m never done.

Anyway, we had been smart enough to put dinner in the slow cooker, so it was ready when we got home. I exercised and meditated, and finally started ironing really late, unfortunately.

I’m finally ironing the crone’s face…I got all the hair and the cat done, and then constructed the eyes and complicated bits down below on the pattern, so I could put them on top after…

It’s easier for me to see the pieces that way. I think each eye had about 10 pieces in it. She’s a complicated woman.

And I really like how she turned out. Deep breaths. I think this quilt is going to come together and be what I want it to be. I’ll feel better when I see it all together. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to show the whole thing before the exhibit opens. I’ll have to go read the rules. You might have to wait until October. That would suck. I really don’t like rules like that.

Tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get it all together…there’s an owl to do and some thorny bits, and then I need to find a new background and iron the whole thing down. Not sure whether I can do that all tomorrow…and Sunday is a bit busy as well. But I’ll try. I also still have a binding that needs to go on.

I finished this book today…Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

I really liked it in the beginning, like 5 out of 5 liked it, but it really wore on my nerves by the end. He has a way with words, but nothing really happened in this book. It was interesting enough, but also irritating. So yeah…down to a 3 out of 5 by the end. It would have been better if it were shorter? I don’t know. I’m going to read some of his other stuff, because I like the words, but these two that I’ve read are apparently not his best, OR he’s all over the map. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really trust GoodReads reviews unless it’s someone I know who reads books I read. Otherwise, every book has been rated a 1 or a 5 by someone.

I have done a good job of keeping up with all the library holds that came in while I was on vacation…I’m not caught up yet, though. It’s been a good run…I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve also been watching Firefly, the TV series that is a Western in space. The boychild recommended it to me, and I’m almost through all of them. They grew on me. I wasn’t sure about the first two episodes, but the last four have been great. The dialog cracks me up sometimes…”That sounds like science fiction.” “We live on a spaceship, dear.” I’ll miss them when they’re gone…I guess that’s a sign of a good show.

So all the angst of the morning is still sitting in my chest, ironically, around about the same place as that shadowy invader, whatever it is. I’m calling it my guardian angel at the moment. Everyone needs one…she might as well reside in my left breast. But all the ironing helped. Getting the face done helped. It was successful. I need more successful, apparently. Eases the sorrow. The pain. The sad. I have this lockbox, open, inside my chest. It’s waiting for my brain to gather up all the feels associated with this pain and put them in the lockbox, close it up and walk away from it. Move on. Let go, says the counselor. My brain is like a pitbull with a steak in its mouth. The brain won’t do it. It picks up a piece here, a piece there, but as it’s reaching for that piece way over there, it drops one of the others. Goes back for that one and drops another. Comedy of errors, of lame-ass behavior, of not really trying? Who knows. I move on. I don’t, but I do. I move on and my brain stays back and tries to continue picking up pieces. I’ll come back when she’s ready for me.

Ironed My Way Out of a Hole…

I was OK. I made it through almost the whole day. Boychild turned 18 today…no longer a kid. Kind of a big deal. I was going through old pictures, trying to write a post about him turning 18, and I lost it. I read someone’s status the other day, summarizing their year…this is one reason I’ve been staying away from Facebook and blogs. People summarize at the end of the old year, beginning of the new…what was 2013 like? Was it good or bad? Will 2014 need to be a little better or a lot better? How can one year, one space of 365 days, hold so much power over us? If the first 6 months were good and the last 6 months bad, how do we evaluate the year? I don’t want to think that way right now. I can’t summarize anything…how to summarize what isn’t over? Anyway, this person talked about having her heart shattered last year.

Sigh. Shattered heart? Naw. That sounds fixable, like I could get the super glue out and put it back together. Just the heart? That’s only one organ…you’ve got plenty more. I feel like Chihuly glass, a whole huge strung-together sculpture of his, hung high in a building, in an atrium four or more stories high, and the cable holding it…it stretches and then snaps…and all the glass comes crashing down onto a stone floor, and shattered…yes, shattered and splintered and gone to dust even, spread all over the floor, impossible to gather all the pieces together, let alone to put them back together. Shattered heart? Nope. Shattered all.

Meditation had me come up with a question I wanted answered yesterday. Today, the same question is asked, but when I’m done sitting with the feeling that comes up (hello sad, my old friend), I am supposed to take the question and leave it on the chair. Don’t think about it and try to solve it. Just leave it and reserve it for meditation. Not trying to think my way to an answer; just noticing the feeling. Is it the right answer? I feel like some people think I shouldn’t still be sad, but I am. So. I am. I need to be able to trust my own feelings. Trust my sad. But I don’t have an answer anyway.

I took the boychild for a walk today…more about that later. Then I ironed…for a long time…

I’m getting closer to done…

and I’m finally feeling comfortable about what I’m ironing. I still think the background isn’t going to work, but I can deal with that pretty easily.

I have all these bits and pieces that can’t be ironed together until other parts are done…this needs the hand that holds the staff so I can iron the bottom and top section to the hand.

I finally started on the crone…

I do the big pieces lined up on top of the drawing, and then move it to the side so I can see what goes on top…

Makes it easier to put everything in the right place…then I finally had somewhere to iron the Mother…

And the other leg came next…with the Maiden attached to it.

This is where I breathed a little easier. It’s making more sense to my brain now. I think. It’s funny that I was so sure of the drawing and the ironing of the fabric, but when I am now putting it all together, I’m not sure. I felt the same way about the Earth Stories quilt.

I got the uterus done just in time to go out for boychild’s birthday dinner…

It must be strange having a mother who is saying, “Just let me finish ironing the uterus down and then we’ll go,” while you’re waiting for your birthday dinner.

Poor kid. We had dinner at his favorite Mexican place…

Grandpa and girlchild calculating tip. Math at the table. Boychild and I tried to find a geocache outside the restaurant afterward (yes, there was one), but we were unsuccessful. It was dark. Made it more difficult.

For his cake, we were thinking about what 18 means: he can vote, so girlchild put a little smiley Obama face on one side (OK, it doesn’t look like him at all) and a cigarette (great). She refrained from adding pictures for joining the military and hanging out at strip clubs and casinos, so I guess we were grateful for that.

He showed no interest in all that other stuff…just the cake.

They left after cake and presents and I started ironing again…

I was on a roll. When I’m ironing, I don’t have to think about sad or New Year’s or shattered anything.

I got most of the torso done, but ran out of steam…

Hands are complicated and that left hand is supremely so. Plus I have to get up in the morning for yet another mammogram to check the thing that keeps showing up and making them do followups. It makes me nervous, but at least they’re paying attention. My life would be so much better if more people were paying attention. So I’ll let them do their followup and hope for the best. It’s all you can do.

I’m about 10 1/2 hours into the ironing…I have about 30 pieces left in the 900s, but I’ve already used some of the 1000s too. I’m guessing I have about 250 pieces to go, so maybe another 2 1/2 hours. I don’t know if I even HAVE 2 1/2 hours tomorrow…maybe…doctors and soccer and counseling. Save the boob and the brain and watch the ball. Tired now. Ironed my way out of a hole. It’s OK…I know I’m going to keep falling into that hole, but at least I keep climbing back out.