Not Good with the Waiting…

So one of the triggers for my bad moods, the sad stuff, is not getting anything artistic done. I know this. I tell myself this all the time, but I get to this place where I can’t DO anything…except pick up a book, even though I know I need to. I’m physically tired, mentally exhausted, and the only thing I can handle as I’m standing in the chaotic space that is currently my house is a book. So I’ve read a LOT of them in the last two days. I really just need to shake off the mood and DO, and I think it will be better. There’s a lot of waiting around when you’re doing renovations though…waiting for contractors to show, waiting for things to dry. I hate waiting. I suck at it. Really. I do. I fidget and I can’t get anything started because I don’t know how much time I have, and I hate that.

I don’t wait well. Best if you don’t make me wait if at all possible, or if you do make me wait, give me a fairly accurate time of unwaiting or I will get irritated. I try to deal with my dislike of waiting by playing stupid games on my phone or reading blogs (they don’t take long to read), but at some point, I’m fairly sure I have better things to do than wait. Really, it’s rude to make me wait beyond a certain amount. But there are plenty of reasons why you have to wait…I’m better when I know there’s a reason (like the carpet has to come from some other state or the contractor already has jobs lined up). I get those. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t bug me. I don’t like waiting when it’s just because you forgot or you lost track of time…and yes, I know there are people like that. I gave birth to one. You tell her we’re leaving in 5 minutes, and when that 5 minutes is up, THEN she gets up and gets ready. Which is why I tell her “5 minutes” when it’s really 10. Yeah. Someday she’ll figure out that I’m doing that.

Anyway, this house stuff is a shitload of waiting. My life, honestly, is tons of waiting without really knowing what I’m waiting for or how to make it stop being waiting and instead being. Remember that interview question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Oh hell. Fuck if I know. With both kids graduated, me completely broke (like worse than now). That’s all I can see. The rest is unknown. I can’t predict it. I don’t even want to hope for anything, because then where are you at when you get there and that’s not where you are? I thought I knew where I’d be this year at this time, and I was completely wrong, and that still feels like shit and probably will for a while. So what’s the point of that question? I know, they want to know what my ambitions are: “I see myself more sane than I am now, and hopefully the house is cleaner because the kids will not be living here.” Beyond that? Don’t know. Can’t see that far. Don’t want to see that far in case it’s just more of this.

So yesterday I waited for the mirror guys…see that wall o’ mirrors, the wall o’ 70s flashbacks?

They showed up with their fancy tools and their hang-loose hand gestures (seriously, he did the hang loose and then said “ciao”…) and in 20 minutes, they had all 4 panels down and out of the house.

OH MY GOD. Why didn’t I do this 17 years ago when we moved in? I thought it would be a lot more expensive than it was. The kids say the room looks smaller, but I don’t see it. I just see a Lack of Mirrors and I have to tell you, that is the closest I’ve gotten to happy happy joy joy in a year.

It didn’t last long, though, because then I’m looking at this.

Giant Sighs of Drywall Damage Hell. The plus is that my college art degree qualifies me to fix this. OK, really, it’s not that hard, right? There is texture all over this wall, so I’m going to have to patch the texture.

The carpet guy showed up in here too (didn’t have to wait for him…he just showed up without calling, which honestly is better). Unfortunately, we’re not getting carpet NEXT week, so I will have to live with chaos through the middle of July. AARGH. Sigh. I knew that might happen and I have a plan to move stuff a bit more slowly and stash it in my bedroom and the boychild’s bedroom (because the girlchild’s room looks like a hurricane hit it, which technically it did, and there is zero available floor space. It’s just damn scary in there)…and then the day before, we will deal with the major furniture issues. But I need to get those two walls done first…

I spent yesterday scraping mastic off, with dad helping, and then when I went off to an appointment, he started patching…the hole on the right had a speaker wire in it. I don’t know why. We don’t have speakers. It didn’t appear to be attached to anything.

I had book club last night, which turned into an interesting discussion of women in science and how it’s STILL an issue to be a woman and to do science, and so many people, men and women, believe that it’s so much better, when really, it’s not. After the last few book clubs I’ve gone to, I find it impossible NOT to evaluate a book’s ability to be fair to female characters, and the comics industry is even worse when it comes to this because of the art involved…you aren’t just imagining what a character looks like and what they’re thinking, you have a freakin’ picture of them. So now I read both comics and literature with this eye towards how we represent women, how we treat them when they are dealing with things that are purely female (periods, pregnancy, sex–which is different for women, menopause, aging). What questions do we ask in interviews of women that we don’t ask of men? Can you tell the gender of an author merely by reading their text? Dan Simmons? Obviously male. Robin Hobbs? I thought she did a relatively good job with males and females. And dogs, for that matter, although she needs to stop KILLING them. OK, it was for the story. I get it. I thought it was interesting to read LOCAS II, because Jaime Hernandez is a male Hispanic artist, but almost all the characters are female, and he does a relatively good job of portraying a wide range of truly female emotions and actions. His men? His men are a little freaky. Ray’s probably the best…

ANYWAY, I came home tired and ate and exercised and read a whole ‘nother book, because it’s all I could handle, and then went to bed and was awakened by the phone ringing, which I ignored, but probably shouldn’t have, because it was followed by dad knocking on the door to finish spackling.

Well, and there was THIS noise…I don’t know what the damn cat was doing, but I came in to this.

And there’s dad, sanding up a storm. He finished all the spackle, but I’ll be spending Independence Day texturing stuff. And hopefully ironing, because REMEMBER?

This is my road to a decent mood. Not the wall. The art. I gotta do some waiting before that though. Sigh.

I Can’t Opt Out of the Tree-Killing…

Hello Internet. I have talked to very few people in the last 24 hours…in fact, I think all of them were either related to me by blood or they were providing a service for which they were paid. Hmn. That sounds bad. I went to look at carpet for the living room. I said “No Thank You” to the Kohls’ lady who wanted me to get their rewards card, and I ordered a burrito. I said yes to salsa. The guy at the gym talked to me because I can never get my card to scan. Apparently it takes special skills for that. I also talked to my mental health insurance company about the plethora of trees they are killing by sending me three pieces of paper in the mail in an envelope every time I go to counseling. I feel sorry for those who need counseling multiple times/week…I mean, first of all, because they need that much therapy but also because of the trees they are killing.

It turns out I can’t opt out of the tree-killing. I must endure it. I do not understand. It’s like the silly yellow immunization record I’m supposed to bring every time the kids go to the doctor. We lost boychild’s years ago, and I never remember girlchild’s. Why is it not all accessible on the web? Well, it sort of is, but they still want that yellow piece of folded paper in its funny plastic cover.

So the plus with going to work every day is that I often have substantive conversations with humans I’m not related to, and I don’t have to pay them to have those conversations. Instead, I spend a lot of time hiding in books or avoiding the darkly dank bits of my brain. Not fun.

When I woke up this morning and opened my blinds, this is what I saw…

Now yes, I know, it’s a nasty bit of dirt that used to be a lawn, and it will eventually be something nicer, but I’m not planting things in the summer because it’s silly in Southern California when there will be no rain for the next four or five months to plant things unless you plan to water them a lot. You can see where the trees belong though…in the place where I don’t have to stare at my neighbor’s truck. So dad found some trees, maybe, and hopefully later this week we will deal with that. Or next week. Because at least I can plant the trees and something else to block delivery guys from wondering where the fuck my front door is (because that ain’t it). And yes, that’s where they left the box. Right there. In the middle of the dirt.

The box was addressed to the boychild and had this lovely tape on it.

Jul 1 14 002 small

Yes, this is how my life is at the moment. Tape is exciting. And uses the word pilfer. I’m betting none of my students know what pilfer means. Although I did teach them irk and vex, so I could have taught them pilfer as well. Next year. I’m also going to teach them how to make a proper British cup of tea, so they can stop asking me about my coffee (if it has milk in it, it must be coffee?). The next most common question in my class besides “Can I go to the bathroom?” which is always answered with, “Yes, I believe you know HOW, but not right now,” is “What’s THAT for?” while pointing at the eyewash. Hate that thing. I bump into it constantly, it’s in a stupid fucking location, whole room is designed by a blind dehydrated poodle, and it doesn’t matter that I demonstrate how and why to use it on like the third day of school, I will get asked about 148 times during the year (there are only 183 school days; you do the math) about what it’s for. I’m thinking of making posters for the most annoying questions so I’ll just have to point at them. Of course, one of those posters would simply say, “It’s not coffee; it’s tea.” Maybe I could have one of the Doctors saying it. David Tennant would probably do that for me. I’ll text him.

OH MY. I can actually have my tea in a David Tennant mug.

Unfortunately, the link goes to a mug with not quite as much handmade character, but here it is…and really, if I got this for school, I’d just have to explain who it was to 95% of my students.

Yes, I need to get out more. I’m going to be doing that tomorrow. Maybe. Because the girlchild started texting me at midnight about her bee sting. She stepped on a bee at the soccer tournament yesterday afternoon, and it didn’t start swelling until last night, and tonight it’s bugging her again (please don’t make me say something about how walking around on a bee sting injury at the Del Mar Fair might have made it worse, because you honestly can’t tell a 16-year-old anything like that…they will just turn it into some drama about what an awful mother you are and did you call her stupid?). I gave her some recommendations (ice, Benadryl, Motrin, cold washcloth), but she’s leaving tomorrow for Anaheim for a huge Key Club convention, so inevitably the foot will go south once she’s up there, probably in the middle of the night, so I’m expecting to have to drive to Anaheim in the middle of the night tomorrow to take her to the hospital. Seriously. Sigh.

Meanwhile, boychild and I finished painting another two walls. All that’s left is the long 22-foot wall where the mirrors are…they come down tomorrow. Worst-case scenario, we’ll have to replace drywall. Which I don’t know how to do. Minor issue. There’s the little piece of wall next to the fireplace too. It has a mastic issue. I’m hoping for carpet installation by the end of next week (I can hope, can’t I?). Then put the house back in some semblance of order, because it’s reminding me too much of an episode of Hoarders at the moment…like the season finale.

I did iron a bit today…but not until late…

These bits are fussy. And very light. I think that was on purpose. I did manage to do the hand on the right side too. Up into the pelvic bone next, then into the torso. The uterus…it’s not in the body. She’s holding it. This is a quilt about menopause and how it fucks with all your systems…including the mental crap. Really, between the hormones and the diabetic stuff, it’s amazing my mind isn’t totally crumbling. Well, maybe it is.

I read a lot today. Couldn’t deal. That’s what happens when I can’t deal. I finished this…

Locas II by Jaime Hernandez. I’ve read some of the Love and Rockets series, and couldn’t find Locas I in the library. It was OK, sometimes really good and sometimes just crazy and even unintelligible, which might just come from not living in that world. Plus I couldn’t always tell the characters apart, especially when they changed hair color. But the graphic style is really nice.

I also read Relish by Lucy Knisley, which is the next book-club selection. I really liked this, and will hand it off to the girlchild, because it’s all about being in love with food…

It’s a really nice story about how Lucy fell in love with food over the years and the influence her parents had on her food connections. There’s even a few recipes in there. Her drawing style is really nice and clean.

Anyway, I suspect there will be less time tomorrow to lose myself in words (I even wrote tonight…over 900 words of the book, plus the 1400 I’ve written here). So all those things should add up to good. My counselor often asks me if things are good, if I remember what happy or joyful feel like. I have some vague memory of it, but I always have to stop and think about it…the third book I started today, Allen Zadoff’s The Lost Mission (or I Am the Mission, depending on what you think they might title it), had this to say: “I’ll give you a hint…if you have to think about it that long, it’s not happiness.” Yeah. I’m with you on that. A lot of it is just filler. And yes, I realize that reading actual books makes me even more of a tree killer…

I Had Cement for Her…*

I cannot find my head. It’s lost in a book somewhere, or under a pile of things to be filed, or perhaps I left it in Google Docs where I’m apparently writing a story of my own (best to wish you aren’t in it). It could be on a soccer field with the girlchild’s flipflops or in the hotel room in Corona where I left my nail scissors (dammit). It’s not here, though. It’s not engaged in anything. It’s performing tasks as told, based on a list. I guess the list is logical: Keep working on getting the living room done. Keep working on getting the big quilt done (and then moving on to the next logical step in the quiltmaking process). Keep checking things off that are supposed to get done. Keep reading, just take up the next book in the pile or the one that’s due back to the library next or the one that has to be read before the next book club meeting.

I’m stressed. I know that. There are many things that I am juggling and I don’t feel good about it. There is no relief when one is done, when it is retired from the juggling horde. It seems every time I get rid of one, two take its place.

Where is the part of my life where I lie by the pool with a drink and birds chirping and a nice book in hand? Having an intelligent conversation with someone I enjoy? Feeling at peace with the world, content, happy with my lot in life?

Fuck me. I really suck at this.

I think I need to find more time for exercise, meditation, and drawing. Funny that. It’s vacation. I should have plenty of time. I know I don’t have any peace…not much at the moment. Even ironing tonight gave me fits…

So I didn’t do a lot of it. I’m hoping to do more tomorrow. Hopefully I will feel less tired and more successful at crossing things off my lists. This is part of a leg…a sorta crazy chaotic leg. It will make more sense when the stitching outlines the appropriate bits.

I think what I really need is a new life. Still. All year I’ve needed that. I keep trying to make one, but it just doesn’t work out. I think it’s because I’d just rather stay home and draw or read a book or make another quilt. Even those don’t make me feel good, though. It’s escapism. People are just not in my current life formula.

Escaping your own existence. Seems like a bad TV mini-series. I don’t have the clothes or makeup for that.

Girlchild tells me every time she sees the sign at the grocery store for the shingles vaccine, she reads it as “singles vaccine” and is confused. “Dammit,” I say…”I forgot to get that when I was younger. That’s the source of all my problems right there.” She tells me to shut up, but laughs as well. She doesn’t like it when depressed mom comes out, even when she comes out making jokes about herself…which honestly, is probably the best way to be at the moment. Sure it would be great to just magically slough off the depression, but failing that (and that does fail, by the way, don’t wiggle your pretty little nose at me and tell me how if I just SMILE, everything will be fucking perfect), this is better than the alternatives. Really. It is.

So. Today was the last day of the soccer showcase, driving up to Pomona yet again…

Girlchild stepped on a bee. Because she was barefoot. Because she left her flipflops way the freak over THERE and mom had to go get them. After the bee incident. And then there were tears.

Today was the day I finished two of these guys…

I think that means 11 out of 30 are done. Not great, considering these are from last year. Whatever.

I listened to 10 parents talk about their kids’ college plans. Poor girls. So much pressure. I try to minimize that. I gave birth to a stress monkey, so I tell her I know she will get in somewhere decent and she will be happy wherever she goes, and she freaks out about it, because her brother got into an Ivy and that means that’s what she wants. I don’t know if that will make her happy. I don’t think it would have made ME happy. Then again, I have such a vague memory of that emotion…when it touches me, that feeling, a reminder of that feeling, because I don’t have it now, it just hurts and I cry. I know a college wouldn’t have gotten me there. Hard to tell that to a teenager though. They basically don’t listen to a word you say.

I worked on these guys…

They are closer to done than they were. In fact, a couple of them are almost done.

I also finished this book…

in fact, if I had read less, I would have gotten those damn birds done, but my brain, it was in that bad place (spending three days dealing with soccer games, parents, and girlchild’s related moods will do that to you, unless you have a magical outlet, a rejuvenating place that brings you back to normal)…so I read instead. I’ve always been a Stephen King fan. He messes with his characters like no one else, and this detective story is good, although somewhat formulaic…King-style, though. I still really enjoyed it (and read it really fucking fast, so there).

I’m not sure reading horror is the best treatment for depression, but neither are rom-coms or YA books half the time either. Or 90% of what’s on the telly. I seem to do best with fantasy/sci fi, but even that’s a stretch sometimes. No books that remind me that at one time I had something approximating a life and now, well, now I don’t know what I have. It’s not really there, ethereal and sad, but insubstantial, feather-light in the hands. Whisks away before you can close your fingers on it. It’s not even real.

Cat puke. Laundry. Bills. Mold. Those are real.

Today’s blog title is brought to you by my favorite poet, writer, thinker ever…e.e. cummings…

Seriously. Reading him is the closest to happy I get at the moment.

You Must Read…

So, if you were my neighbor, then just a few minutes after midnight, you saw me wandering my front yard, barefoot with a flashlight (actually, the first time I was barefoot WITHOUT a flashlight). That’s because Amazon claimed they delivered my tea (very important) and my book club selection (also important, since the library will not be coughing up a copy for a good long time) yesterday, and we hadn’t seen it…and it’s not a small box…I get 480 teabags (British) at a time…although Amazon sells them for half of what I used to pay locally. Since tearing out three tall skinny trees to put in the new septic leach field, there’s an opening to my front lawn that did not used to exist, and increasingly, delivery people believe it’s the access to my front door. I had even checked out the door from my bedroom that goes to the tiny deck off that front area, which is normally enclosed by bushes and trees and completely invisible to everyone but the gas meter guy, and I don’t think they even check that any more. Sure enough, once I had the flashlight and started checking all the available greenery, I found the damn box in the middle of nowhere, hiding behind a tree.

Yo Dad. I’m buying trees this week, if even to just put them in their pots where they will eventually be planted, because this is getting silly.

So. Yeah. Soccer. Driving. Dry wind. Hot. Hotel room. Stomach-cramping breakfast. Tired. I managed to finish yesterday’s drawing while sitting in the middle of the soccer team before the 2nd game…

I don’t usually draw with people around because they ask questions, but my head hurt and I was tired and it was what I wanted to do, and honestly, it’s not as rated R as most of my stuff. I also stitched and read, but I was reading Stephen King, which is like a whole ‘nother issue. I think the only benign thing I did, the only thing that no one could question, was the stitching. I’ll photograph them tomorrow after the third game (and 4+ more hours of driving…I drive half, girlchild does the other half).

We could have stayed up there another night, but I needed to get stuff done here, like sanding and washing the next set of walls…we moved a piano!

The next two walls to be painted are the one on the right, where the piano used to be (seems almost pointless to paint it when it will be 80% covered by piano and bookshelf, but whatever) and the wall with the sliding glass door and giant window. Then all we have left is the wall with the mirrors, which are coming down on Wednesday, and the one next to the fireplace, which has a mastic issue at the moment. Carpet is next on the list. Picking it this week, hopefully installing next week. I can only handle this level of chaos for a short period of time, and then I start to go a bit bonkers. (GO…ha ha ha. very funny)

So the soccer…this is the first tournament since girlchild’s back surgery in March. She didn’t do physical therapy, because she didn’t need to. They put two pins in her back and some growth hormone to persuade the bone to heal, but this is it. And it’s a joy to see her play…

Because she was really playing, seriously kicking some people’s butts, even though she’s totally out of shape…

And that girl jumps way higher than she does (the LA team was a little frightening in many ways)…

But she played half the game today and is physically tired, but not hurting in a bad way, despite all the contact during the game.

This one…our player and the girlchild both hit it with their heads, but both had their eyes closed, and it basically rolled down the girlchild’s body.

You can see the goalie behind them. If some other player had had the brains to be standing right in front of them, it would have been a goal, but no such luck. This is not really a tournament you win…it’s a college showcase, and basically girlchild has decided (quite intelligently) that she will be picking schools for their academics, and once she has her short list, she’ll start contacting the soccer coaches there. Soccer doesn’t bring the big scholarships, but I think she’d still like to play if she can.

So while we play in these, she’s not really super-bothered about who’s watching her…as she puts it, mostly it’s local schools (Southern California) and she wants to go farther than that.

So there’s one more kamikaze drive tomorrow and then we’re done for a couple of weeks, when there’s another one. Meanwhile, she communes with her friends…

Listening to music and talking and snapchatting, all at the same time.

We saw this sign up in Pomona…

Which reminds me, I’m making a phone call tomorrow to see if I can get a scholarship for a mindfulness class locally. It’s way too expensive otherwise. The director asked me to call, though, so we’ll see what they can do for me. Maybe nothing, but if you don’t ask? Then you don’t ever get…right? I don’t know if the Bible says that.

One of the reasons I wanted to come home tonight is because the ironing is talking to me, the talk of the artist-addict. I finished ironing this guy together…

And then did the arm on the other side…

It was about 100 pieces. I’m 9 1/2 hours into the ironing, a little less than halfway through the pieces at 720 or so. I found two of the missing pieces, but am now missing two more. There’s some weird universe-balancing aspect going on there…not sure I understand it. I do know I want it done and that I need to get working on the birds too.

Moodwise, spending time with the girlchild falls halfway between really nice (at dinner, at one point in the car) and absolute hell (when you can’t say anything right, it’s all wrong and I often just can’t deal with that). I know that’s normal for teens…wish I could manage my own reactions to it better, but it is what it is. It does make it hard, though…because I feel like I don’t have anyone I can check in with on weekends like this, there’s no one to commiserate with, to help talk me through it, through my emotional reaction to constantly being railed at. There’s no mood stabilizer. It’s all on me, and I don’t have it in me.

So I cry. Again. And then I get to iron for an hour or so and things get calmer, more peaceful. Note to self: less drama and teens, more artmaking. Oh, if only that were truly possible.

I finished a book this week. It took me a long time to read this…China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station…

partially because of all the work on the house and partially because it was long and DENSE (boychild’s words), but really good. What’s also interesting is googling images for the characters in the book. I think the artists have done fairly well with Lin, but I didn’t see a good Garuda, as far as I had seen Yagharek in my mind’s eye. The slake moths, yes, and the Voldyanoi…but the Cactucae? Not so much. I work really hard at visualizing a place and the characters, and I think part of what makes this level of fantasy/sci fi difficult for many readers is that it is hard to do that…Hyperion was the same way, with all the different planets and species. I will read more books by Mieville, although he apparently wanders genres like my brain wanders during staff meetings, so who knows what that will look like. Again, these literary worlds are much nicer places to live, even when filled with nasty creatures out for your brain’s emanations, than my brain is right now…so I’ll keep reading.

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”
― Giovanni Boccaccio

I Am Stumbling. I Must Not Fall.*

Two places are safe at the moment: deep in a storyline like the one from the blog title, or way up in my artist’s brain, tracing or ironing something. There is nowhere else that I can be at the moment that doesn’t hurt. I’ve been divorced for a long time–the separation took place in 2002–but there are still things that can happen related to the divorce that are reminders of that stomach-dropping nausea of realization, that cut you deep and make you wonder why people behave as they do. It’s convenient, I guess, if you don’t have to consider your actions and how they relate to other people. I guess if that’s how your brain works. Mine doesn’t. I’ve spent a million years considering my actions.

So yesterday. Yeah. I read, I meditated, I traced Wonder Under…

because otherwise I would crawl into a hole of WHY? and never come out. I’m not in a good place; I know that. I’m trying. I’m staying busy, too busy probably. I am letting some things drop, just because I can’t seem to do ALL the things. My brain. It sucks.

I traced the last three birds, which were bigger and more complicated than the others, but still, I’m at about 30 minutes for the larger birds…the quickest bird I’ve traced was number 3, in just over 7 minutes. The next step is to cut out all the Wonder Under…and then I’m supposed to iron to fabrics, but I think I need to finish ironing this big quilt, which I haven’t touched in a few days. So maybe I force myself to do that today. It was overwhelming last night. I couldn’t get my head there. It’s easier to trace Wonder Under, a kind of brainless task that also engages a huge part of my brain that would otherwise wander off into rumination ruination. Tonight it will have to deal, though.

So we did finally finish painting the smaller room…two shelves ended up needing 3 coats to cover the previous layers of dirt and yucky. Then we started pulling apart the dining area…the boychild really is a slavedriver in some ways. He seems to enjoy the archaeological-dig aspect more than I do. We’re tossing and recycling a ton of stuff, and then the girlchild came home and started on her piles, so that helped. Here’s where we’re at now…

Lots of furniture moving around and books being boxed. Still need to deal with the piles on the table, but honestly could paint with all that there…but today is wash and patch day…because I need to deal with this…

this remnant of trying to find a water leak that wasn’t a leak at all in a part of the house that has no water pipes. Long story. I have the stuff to fix it, but need additional stuff, which might be coming from the Dad Store…you know what that is. It’s the pile of stuff your dad has in his garage that helps you finish your project without having to go back to Home Depot for the 10th time. I just didn’t have it in me yesterday. I went to Dixieline (closer) to get plug plates for the walls, handed them to the boychild, and he promptly broke two of them by overtightening the screws. Nice. Anyway…today I fix that hole and a bunch of smaller, less-challenging ones, and we wash walls (if you never move your furniture, you never know how disgusting it is behind it, which might be a good thing), and tomorrow we paint, because we will have three of us…although I do need to go back to Home Depot for more paint (I knew two gallons wouldn’t be enough, but I was having a hard time envisioning three…no longer having a hard time with that.).

Then the mirrors…damnit, the guy I called is flaking on me, set an appointment and then didn’t show up or return phone calls, so I guess this is one of those jobs that people don’t want to do. So I will call someone else today, but we can’t paint that last bit until we get those down…although we could do the other two walls in the main living room. Here’s the offending 1970s crap…

Yeah. I know. Wall ‘o Mirrors. Been staring at them for 16 years. They’ve been covered with kid art all that time because I really hate them. Plus the mantelpiece. Sigh. It’s going.

Anyway, speaking of going, I’m supposed to be at a temporary art install in 32 minutes, so I should go. Summer is not low stress, for sure, but hopefully I can keep my head away from yesterday’s bullshit. People suck. OK, not all of them suck, but enough of them suck that I feel like staying away from lots of them for long periods of time. With books. And art instead.

Back to my high-school epithet: Fuck the World. Not the healthiest mantra, but occasionally useful. At some point, I will replace “the world” with the names of the people responsible for my current state. And then I will kick their asses. In art, of course, not real life. Oh yeah, you piss me off? I will make unflattering art of you. Expect it. Whoops…that sounds sorta vengeful. Sorry.

*Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Send the Poison Rain Down the Drain*

Another late night. My brain refusing to shut down. It seems to need to process at the moment. Lots of that. I don’t know exactly what it’s processing. I just know it makes me feel sad a lot. Wish it would stop. Like, brain, just get OVER it. Move on. Accept the shitty stuff and find a new way to be in the world. No no no…don’t go back in the hole. I didn’t mean it. We DO like you. We DO want to be your friend…even though you’re a total downer. Look, we can fake it. We do it all the time.

Yeah. I’m faking it. Every day. Don’t get me wrong. I do like you…I just don’t know how to feel normally or even to behave normally most of the time. I just pretend.

Yes, we painted today…

Exciting picture, eh? Yeah. Well, the smaller room is mostly done…two shelves and windows need a second coat. Then we can put all the furniture back and start on the next section of this big area we call the living room. It’s less overwhelming in chunks…just like I teach, eh? But still overwhelming.

I made it to book club, a discussion of Dan Simmons’ The Fall of Hyperion, which I liked (the book AND book club, held outside in a park on a gorgeous day, what could be better?). Book club seems to help me by injecting some intellectual discussion into my life…I get some of that with the kids, but I’m not around enough people during the day, especially during the summer…I like to think about what I read and figure out what it really means. Or doesn’t. Or if it’s any good. And why? During the school year, I often read the book club selections and don’t go to the meetings, because I don’t have time to go to all of them…all of them meet on days when I have the kids, which is problematic…at least for now. But summer gives me plenty of time with the kids, plus I’m not trying to balance lesson plans and grocery shopping on Sundays with 2 hours spent talking about books, so that helps.

I decided to work on the birds tonight instead of the big quilt. The boychild was using my computer because his is under the dropcloth in the room we painted…so I needed to be in another room anyway. This room, to be specific…with the dogs…

Who needs people friends on your couches when you have dogs? It is true that there may be no ROOM for people with these dogs in the house. So instead of sharing room with the two goofballs, I worked on the light table behind Jake…tracing birds. First I numbered all of them. More importantly, first I entered all of them into my task-measuring app, because if I’m going to sell these, I need to know how much time I spent on each one, so I can come up with a reasonable price. Artists undersell themselves often, make their work worth nothing when you look at the time put into it. I find it easier to have the time totals up front, so I’m not just randomly making up a price based on my mood that day. It’s just easier.

I keep track of each task separately. It helps me to know how long each stage of the artmaking takes. What’s funny with these little pieces, though, is that some tasks take so little time that it seems like a waste of time to track it…like 30 seconds to number the pieces…in contrast to the 2.5 hours it took me to number the big quilt I’m working on now…the one I maybe should have worked on tonight? Yeah. Whatever. My motivation for getting the painted room put back together tomorrow is to get the boychild out of my office, so I can keep ironing.

Calli agrees.

Jake? Not so much.

I don’t know why they’re so sleepy. All they did all day was try to come in the room where all the white paint was.

So I started by numbering all 10 drawings, and then I began the tracing onto Wonder Under…

None of these has a lot of pieces or is particularly big. It’s kind of relaxing to trace Wonder Under…but when it’s this quick to finish, it makes it even nicer. Look! I accomplished something (really small)…

That’s 7 of the 10 traced. I decided it was getting late and it would take a significantly longer period of time to finish the last three (they are the biggest ones), so I quit. For now. I’m aiming for July 10…to have at least some of them ironed down. All of them would be nice, but I need to be realistic. I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment and trying not to drop any of them…all while my brain is doing its stupid depressoid shit, which would make anyone normal drop everything.

Just keep making. Eventually it will make you feel better. Honest.

I also stitched feet again…

The birds fill time. That’s 8 feet I finished…or 8.5. Not sure. Oh. It’s 8. What’s lame is that I was supposed to be outlining the eyeballs with the same thread as the feet, but I didn’t realize that, so now I have to go back through all the birds and do the eyeballs. There’s one bird whose feet are not that charcoal gray color. I have not figured that out.

Today’s painting session included the only ceiling that needs painting, I’m glad to say. Textured ceilings? Yikes. Super hell. Textured walls are bad enough. Tomorrow we will clear out the next room/space. Prep Tuesday, painting again on Wednesday, I think. I need the mirror guy to call back so I can deal with space number 3…because I think that will be the most challenging space to get done.

This song popped up on Pandora while we were painting today…it gave me the post title…

Which has got to be better than yesterday’s. Sad song, though…

*Elliott Smith, Miss Misery

The Geography of You and Me

I read this in one day.

There’s a couple of reasons for that…first of all, it’s not particularly long. Second, it’s a fast read. It grabbed me and kept me. It’s the story of two teens who meet while trapped in an elevator in New York City, but most of the book is about their not being in the same city and thinking about each other. It’s definitely YA teen romance, coming of age, all that…it’s on the light side (as I fall into summer vacation a few days early?), so good for summer reading. I’m sure it will be a movie soon. Don’t read it expecting world revelations or super-smart intellectual classic. Read it with a sense of remembering high school and what that felt like, but leaving out most of the bad nasty stuff (there is a little, just for tension), and you’ll enjoy it.

This is the first of Smith’s books that I’ve read…not sure I’m compelled to read more (I’m a little older than the expected audience I think), but I suspect the girlchild might enjoy her books.

I’m Never Where I Want to Be…*

I spent over 8 hours yesterday grading. The night before, I spent about 5 hours. Today, I’ve already spent 3 hours dealing with school stuff, although not all of it grading. It’s time to pay the piper? It’s not pretty, that’s for sure. I’ve still got at least another 6 hours just in science journals probably, and I think I’m officially about to kill someone. This isn’t healthy. I am trying to get it all out of the way so I can get some art brain on this week, because I’m still wallowing in deep sad shit from hell in my brain; in fact, the responsible part of my brain just stood up from her chair, where she is quite sensibly knitting a scarf (I don’t knit) in scrubs (I don’t own scrubs), and she pulled the curtain around the bed where the rest of my brain is connected to tubes and looks quite beat up, and she told me that now is not a good time. Come back later.

Well. OK then. I need to draw. Or something. There’s no fucking time! Groceries and errands and organizing shit and someone needs to take the tux back (boychild) and I’m supposed to go to a work thing tonight and probably I should bring a gift but I don’t have a clue what and then I’m supposed to go over and pick some stuff up from my parents.

Let’s talk realistically about how much can get done in one day (not much).

Last night, black cat (hard to see) lying upside down on the couch near the pile of crap I was grading…

See that pile of notebooks? That’s one class. One of my smaller classes. I have five classes. It was a long night. And then when I finally went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep.

I did try to settle my brain before bed. I cut stuff out for a little less than an hour…

Left pile gets higher. Middle pile gets smaller. See the uterus? And I think heart parts are on top of it. Yes, I keep all the trimmings until the end. I am well known for dropping real pieces into that box by accident. Didn’t I say something about being done this week? What a joke. I’m over 14 hours.

I took breaks during the day…I did go to the gym, where I finished this…

So I’ve read both Hyperion books now (yes, I know there are more)…and I really liked them. When I didn’t hate them. When I wasn’t slogging through vocabulary and world-building that was heavy and torturous. Yup. I know. It doesn’t sound like a recommendation but it is. Just because something is challenging to read doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. These are worth it. This is a book club selection for me, and strangely, the book club organizer has set up the next meeting by saying it’s going to be about why we shouldn’t have read these. Interesting.

Then I got the boychild ready for prom and followed him somewhere to take pictures…

He went with a group of kids (this is a small portion of the group)…

And I planted some stuff that was going to die if I didn’t plant it soon. So I took breaks. But it still sucked. I’d like to say I got a lot done (and I did), but there’s still so much to do and I am just behind all the time.

I had plans for today and they all got fucked up. Sigh.

I’m trying so hard not to feel like this all the time. I have all these inner conversations that just suck, and during the last 2 minutes of meditation, when he says to let my brain go and do what it wants, it literally SCREAMS at me, at the top of its brainy little lungs, just full on screaming. That can’t be good.

So last night, as an additional break between grading, I read this…

Short. Really good. Made me cry. I guess the Wall Street Journal might make me cry right now too, but this was good. Sigh. Took me 11 days to read The Fall of Hyperion and less than 12 hours to read this one. Take what you want from that.

Boychild is mad that I’m posting that picture. He’s mad that I won’t take his tux back for him. He’s mad that I exist at the moment, although I did all the grocery shopping for him. So. Whatever. Teenagers. Sheesh. Oh yeah, and he’s only had 2.5 hours of sleep and he’s NOT cranky (my ass).

I’m cranky and I had 7 hours…really shitty hours, but mostly sleeping. Maybe.

OK. Tonight. Sigh. More art, less work. After I go to a work-related party. Yeah. I know. But these are the good people. Maybe I will leave with the brain in a better place, cuz it ain’t there now.

*Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill (Sion’s fault)

Better Moments…

Happy Mothers Day to the moms…and the moms of moms…etc. This day has always been bittersweet to me, at least a little, because I never have my kids on Sunday mornings, or at least not since they were 4 or 5 years old. I don’t think I ever had the breakfast in bed or the kids doing something special in the morning. I always had a kid-free morning. Of course, most of my friends with kids are insanely jealous, because all they’ve ever wanted is that kid-free morning, no noise, no clean up after the breakfast, no crazy activities. I get it. I really do. But every Sunday morning is kid-free for me, and it gets kinda old…and TOO quiet. It’s been over 12 hours since I talked to any human in person. I talked to two on the phone briefly, my SIL and my ex, both last night. That’s my life right now. I didn’t want to go out and do stuff. I needed to grade and I did iron last night, but the quiet starts to get to me. The being alone part…the part my SIL and friends crave…it gets old.

I spend too much time in my head as it is.

I did manage to finish the tax board appeal yesterday, except for getting it notarized. I’m waiting on approval. I also did LOTS of really painful math (this is why I had to call the ex…financial forms confuse the fuck out of me, and I needed another brain to bounce the confusing words off of, just to try to figure out what they REALLY wanted); this was for the financial aid appeal. All I do is appeal these days. That one is done and ready to be mailed. I even graded papers for a while.

Then I ironed. This was last night. I was really tired though. I hiked in the morning, long hike, I think I’m finding my limits. I went to the opening at Visions Art Museum…more about that later.

I only ironed the bird, the hawk. I actually pulled some photos of a red-tailed hawk up on my phone and used them as a reference for picking colors…

It may be the only thing in the quilt that is colored realistically…OK, maybe the humans. Sort of the wolf.

I do this sometimes, drop an almost-real animal in there with all the fantasy stuff…in Disrupted, I was watching lots of Big Cat Diary and really loved how strong and even vicious female lions are, especially when they are protecting their young…so that’s why there’s a lioness in that quilt…she’s the ultimate protecting female.

She’s the one you want around. She’ll kick anyone’s ass. A lot of the animals in my quilts are protectors. The birds aren’t and neither are the snakes. The birds are the talkers, the storytellers, or they are a sign of something, of bad or evil or death. The snakes are just evil, bad, the sign of badness in other people. They lie, they carry poison, they are inside all of us, coiled around each of us.

Some tiny birdwing pieces…

Of course, the next crazy step is to cut all those suckers out.

It’s not a small pile of pieces. I added some different browns to help make the hawk colors.

I do try to reuse colors throughout the piece, to repeat fabrics in other places so there’s a connection between all the bits. So I used some of the browns I’d already used (there’s a lot of brown in this quilt) and then added a few more.

Today…I managed to only cry a bit. I still do that, you know. Cry every day. I think it just is the new me. Part of it was feeling very alone this morning. Part of it was feeling like I missed out on something this morning. Yes, we went out to dinner for Mother’s Day and they bought me a really awesome gift (will show tomorrow), but I bought my own flowers and got into an argument with the girlchild and didn’t feel like anything good. I guess that’s the REAL mom existence, isn’t it? My SIL said something about needing a Teflon coating as a mom, so the really bad stuff, the stuff that makes you wonder if loving your kids makes any sense at all, because they are driving you so batshit crazy that you want to run away (we’ve all been there), the Teflon can just make it bounce off. And she doesn’t even have teenagers yet.

I’m back to not being allowed to talk. It’s kinda been a theme for the last two years of my life. You will not talk. You will not use this word or that word. What you say is bad, it’s evil, it should be stopped. There will be consequences for your daring to speak. You will not like them.

It’s so tiring to feel that way all the time.

So I wasn’t going to iron tonight, because I had grades to do and I’m physically tired from yesterday’s hike…but I really thought my brain needed it. I’ve been feeling depressed (for years) for days…I guess worse than before.

First, though…I picked up the last quilts from a show that recently closed, so I finally dealt with 4 boxes, a tube, and a plastic-wrapped roll of all the quilts that have come home in the last month…

I got rid of all the boxes and other stuff and put them in my bedroom to be rolled up with the others. It’s depressing to have so many come home, sure, but then I remember that they went out there in the world and hung up in front of people…that’s why they were gone…and that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will happen again (but I actually have to ENTER something for that to happen).

I cut out the dog and the giant eyeball with the skull in it.

I’m down to the last 100 or so pieces, and they’re all part of the octopus…so I just need to decide what color he wants to be…

I was going to do it tonight…was considering that purple by the scissors (I spent some time straightening up the fabrics…the mess was driving me bonkers)…but I’m just not sure. So I will let it sit overnight and see what I think. I will be done tomorrow though…that’s good. I think.

I finished this book today, Hyperion by Dan Simmons…

I had a hard time getting into it; the first 50 pages were dense with world-building and strange vocabulary, organisms from multiple planets and lots of unknowns. Eventually, though, when he settles down into the story-telling portion of the book, I was really fascinated. The book is an outer story with 6 inner stories by major characters, explaining their reasons for going on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, where they expect to meet the Lord of Pain, aka the Shrike. My favorite story was that of the detective, Brawne Lamia. She was also the only major female character, so that’s an interesting coincidence. She’s a tough but interesting character. The Shrike character is pictured on the front of the book I was reading…that is so not how I pictured it. I didn’t really connect the figure on the front with the description in the book until I was near the end. I will definitely go on and read the next one, as soon as I finish all the library books that have recently appeared. It did take me a while to get through this one, about a week…which is a lot, considering it’s not so long (but the font was so freakin’ tiny!). Anyway. It was a good read.

I meant to post this video of hail on the hike in Julian…

I was standing by myself at this point, up against the rocks, but listening to the rain and the wind (and then the hail) going through these oak trees perched on the edge of the trail. It was a beautifully meditative moment. I seem to be pretty good at pulling those moments out of the hikes I’m on. I guess that’s a good thing.

Moving on. I still have to be a mom tomorrow, but this time with no celebration, no card, no cheesecake (she did make cheesecake…definitely good stuff). It’s harder, but you know it will all turn out OK in the long run. I probably have a lot more crying to do, but hopefully that will get balanced out with better moments. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

I Am the Weapon/Boy Nobody Review

The book with two names…

I recently read Allen Zadoff’s I Am the Weapon, about a teenager who was raised to be a weapon, to go in and take out certain people. He is trained to blend in, find his mark, and quickly and quietly help them die of “natural” causes. Then he meets a girl he actually likes, and the story changes. He starts to question his training and it affects his ability to do his job. The psychological aspect of his hesitation is probably the most interesting part of the book, I think more because of the mayor in the story than his daughter.

The book was originally published as Boy Nobody, but was re-released as I Am the Weapon. He does plan a series with this one, and apparently it will also be a movie.

I liked the story. It was a bit short (I like really long books though) and definitely of the Young Adult genre. It kept my attention until the end and there were some surprises in the plot, which is nice. Sometimes I think the problem with Young Adult novels is that they tend to dumb down the emotion a bit, maybe to keep the younger reader engaged, and it seems an obvious difference to an adult novel…that said, the violence is definitely there, although not over the top. I appreciate how he makes decisions about violence in a very thinking manner.

I was a little disappointed in how they handled his original story of being taken for training, and for the assumption about his father’s death. Both seemed improbable, but he was young and the memory of the young is somewhat shady.

Anyway, looking forward to the next in the series, if just to hear what dad did that was so bad…and where the heck was mom?