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?

Half a King Review

I recently read Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, a story of a prince with a crippled hand who becomes king due to circumstances he had not expected…

I enjoyed the story, even though it was highly predictable. I guess once you’ve read one kingly fantasy about the guy that you didn’t expect becoming king, well, they all kind of sound similar. That said, Abercrombie’s writing was solid and the story had enough new details to the standard coming-of-age fare that it kept me reading until the end (which, of course, isn’t REALLY the end). Oh yes, this is a series. It’s all “He Left a Boy; He Returned a Man.” There are shades of George R. R. Martin all over the place, but then Martin is stealing from years of fantasy worlds with kings in charge. The women in the book are few and far between, and somewhat troubled, but then it seems ALL the characters are troubled. The female minister seems a replacement mother, but isn’t. The king’s real mother is Cersei Lannister all over again, minus the incest. There are two romantic figures who show up and are dealt with. The boat’s captain is female, but a drunkard and more than a bit crazy. It’s certain some of those will show up again.

It’s listed as Young Adult AND Adult Fantasy, which is interesting in itself (where is the line anyway? I don’t seem to be able to find it.). There are two more books planned for the series, which seems to focus on Yarvi, the second son of a king who dies in the first few pages. Yarvi is an interesting character, definitely morally good in general, although near the end, he does become a bit more heartless about sacrificing the lives of a few to get his vengeance. A few parts of the story are a bit unbelievable, but it is fantasy, and I enjoyed it anyway.

Would I read the next two? Oh yeah…if they are written in the same way, I will. Abercrombie is not a Faulkner…his turn of phrase is short, to the point, sometimes even brutal. He has written other books that are of a different style and focused more on the Adult Fantasy crowd, and I would definitely try one of those. His writing is interesting enough that it distracted me from the standard plot, so definitely worth a second read. That’s probably any author’s hope…that the first book of theirs that you read brings you back to try another (and then you hope the second one keeps you in).

Stop and Let Me Be

Having a full-time job and being a single mom and being an artist means I never feel like I’m caught up with anything. My ex made some snotty comment about the state of my house yesterday…he doesn’t bring his job home with him, that’s for sure, and I deal with most of the kid stuff. Plus he actually cleans house on the weekends or at night, and I obviously don’t. I’m doing art instead. I keep meaning to schedule 30 minutes every other day or so to pick up, or even 10 minutes each day to focus on one small area of the house, but then reality kicks in and I don’t get to it. Time gets sucked up by stuff like making tonight’s dinner last night or dealing with some stupid tax thing or yet another college thing or an expired prescription.

This is why I can’t pick a new camera, even though I have birthday money to pay for it. This is why I can’t figure out the car situation. This is why the house is not clean. Because I have a brain that would rather be picking fabric or drawing or even reading a book than straightening up the house. I solve so many problems during the day that at some point, I run out of problem-solving ability. Literally, my brain just stops working on that stuff…it’s like a puppy who doesn’t want to walk any further. It pushes its feet into the ground and no amount of pushing, prodding, cajoling will budge it.

The only thing it wants to do is wander off into that calm arena of artmaking.

So I let it. Maybe that’s not the best thing to do; certainly it doesn’t get the house clean. I have a plan for the damn car. I don’t have a plan for the damn camera. And I think some of this looming depressive cloud that is settling over me this week is summer coming. I’ve never been depressed about summer coming. But it’s just another unstructured break that reminds me of badness. Yesterday was sad day. I thought maybe part of it was lack of sleep, so I made an attempt to go to bed earlier last night…which is why this post is happening NOW rather than last night.

I did make a decision about the main figure in quilt…she’s flesh, not gray. She’s still alive. Barely. So I stayed in sorta grayed-out flesh tones…nothing bright.

The other two figures are more on the pink side of flesh, and I’ll use those fabrics for the two hands grabbing her thighs. Need contrast.

The biggest problem with picking fabrics for this section is that there is no way I can pick the whole body out in one night, and I don’t want to iron a bunch of flesh fabrics and then have to re-iron those fabrics with the next batch of flesh fabrics every night. I need to see the WHOLE thing. Usually I lay out the whole body and then iron for hours. Like I would budget a weekend day (in reality, I would have done this during break). Not happening this time. So I started laying them out…

And I realized that I could do all the bone pieces and some other things on the leg, like a stitched scar. I have to cover everything during the day, because I have cats who like to sit on fabric and get things all messed up, so I didn’t want to lay out too much flesh last night. I think I did about an hours’ worth, and I know I’m in the 900s now, but I still have a bunch of random 800 pieces to do, like the eyeball on the leg (you know, because legs have eyeballs) and the grabby hands…oh yeah, and pubic hair, which means I have to decide what color hair she’s going to have.

More pieces…the big ones are all leg bones and pelvis…

It’s really hard sometimes to explain to people what I do in the middle of the night, when they ask how much I sleep or how I stay up so late, while they are obviously thinking how fucking crazy I am. When I’m ironing, I’m not tired any more. I’m not stuck in a bad place in my head where some 6-second Vine of derision and uselessness runs over and over again, berating me for my mistakes. I’m in a place of peace. So it makes sense that I would want to stay there for as long as possible, to make that feeling the largest part of my brain, especially as I get ready for sleep; having that be the prevailing thought as I fall asleep helps me stay asleep, helps me have good dreams instead of bad. Helps me wake up in an OK mood instead of the other kind.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get the good sleep last night, despite the early bedtime (“early”…make that 1 AM instead of 2 AM). I have been reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak…

It’s a beautiful book. The words, how Zusak writes a phrase, the visuals of the sky and souls, are absolutely wonderful to read. Yes, it’s a WWII book about Germany and Nazis…but it’s really not. But it is. Death is the narrator, and it’s surprising how human death seems…more human than some people I know. I was reading it at the gym and came to the last 50 pages and started to get very emotional…now have I cried at the gym? Heck yeah. Regularly. Sad, really, but it happens. Too much brain time. Proof that this is a significant depression, because the serotonin levels from exercise should be helping with mood, and they don’t. Not really.

Anyway. I chose to stop reading, because I figured the last 50 pages would be pretty sad. And I was already in sad mode. So I came home and cooked tonight’s dinner AND last night’s dinner (god I hate all that cooking) and ironed for a while and thought I would put off reading the end until another day. Except I couldn’t. So I sat in bed at 1 AM and I finished the book (I read fast). And I cried during the whole last 50 pages. So I guess it’s a good thing I waited until I got home. It’s a good book. Don’t care about the movie.

Anyway. So I’m not really starting off today in the right mood, and it’s kind of a crazy day. I wish I could regulate my mood better, but despite taking all my meds and trying to eat and sleep right, best I can, and exercising every day, my moods have a mind of their own. I’m standing off over here watching them fight and piss and moan, wondering when they will just stop and let me be. Deep sigh.

Quagmire

I really do need to go to sleep. I shouldn’t be up this late. I’m debating leaving this and writing the post in the morning. I could do that. I finished grades; I finished that silly essay for the damn application for a summer job (short…a little bit of money to supplement, but still leaves me time to get the quilts done that I need to get done…talk about the ultimate balance…I need money, but I also need to make art. So I don’t sleep enough and I work too much. It’s all wrong.).

I’ll type for a bit. I’m not quite tired enough yet. I like to be so tired when I go to bed that I can barely find the energy to set the alarm. That’s the best, because then I fall asleep right away and sleep straight through (well, almost). I hate waking up and evaluating my level of tiredness with the level of darkness.

I got started late today. Girlchild and I did a short stint at the gym. She’s allowed to bike and go on the treadmill now, and she’s chomping at the bit to get exercising again. Me? I just want an excuse to get serotonin going and to read a book. I love to read. I really love to read. I had a conversation on the hike this weekend wherein I tried to explain how much I like to read, and when I told them how many books I had read last year, they were a bit shocked. And then I said I read at the gym…so they said, what do you do at the library? Work out? Yeah. Well. I read a lot. I guess that makes me some sort of freak. Here’s me being a freak.

Then girlchild was nice enough to make dinner (this was after we had a screeching argument about how many years of foreign language she needed AND the data plan on her phone AND something else that I don’t remember. I’m kind of done with the part where I know nothing even though I don’t know nothing, although there are apparently lots of people who think I know nothing and most of them are under the age of 18, except for a few who are my age or so and have decided that I know nothing, that my knowledge is always wrong.).

ANYWAY. She cooked and I input grades. It was ugly. I’m not being nice this time of year. Turn the work in. Remind me over the summer to analyze the numbers of kids turning homework in this year vs last year. If it hasn’t changed by a significant amount, I’m not doing these damn detentions next year. I don’t think it’s working.

Boychild and I spent some time looking at cars online…still trying to deal with that issue. Running out of time. Then the Franchise Tax Board is still messing with me over my Head-of-Household status for one year out of the 10 or 11 I’ve claimed. Assholes. Such a waste of taxpayer dollars.

So I thought about not ironing tonight, about taking a break, but my head was swirling into the abyss…and I just don’t want to be in that place. I want some peace, dammit. Some happy. Some content. Some quiet. A portion of time when my brain isn’t berating me for bad decisions and bad people and just plain bad. A moment when I feel like I’m doing something right. That’s it. That’s what I need.

So I ironed.

Electrical thunder bolts…I finished monitor head.

Then I started on the arm I showed yesterday…with Dr. Scully looking on…

These are all the same flesh colors used in the two other smaller figures in the quilt. I’m still debating the large figure…do I make it a different set of flesh fabrics (the original plan), or do I make them all shades of gray? I kinda did that in the Earth Stories quilt, but I don’t know if I want to do that for this one. I’m still debating it. Flashing an image behind my closed eyes of the large figure in gray and then in flesh tones. Two very different images. Two very different commentaries. Flashing back and forth between the two.

I ironed pieces 626-720…

Not EVEN 100 pieces tonight. Oh well. I did the whole arm on the right of the quilt. I still need to do the DNA and then the headphones, and then I’ll be able to start ironing the larger figure…

Which should take me about a million years.

There’s the left leg. With a hand grabbing it. That hand is attached to no one in the quilt. It creeped me out when I drew it. It creeps me out now. This whole quilt creeps me out sometimes. I know where it came from, the depths of the bad shit in my head. The pieces of menopause that are scratching at me. The sense of loss and grief. The splintered mind. Trying to reconcile the brain that is sad and depressed and disconnected and hopeless with the part that makes the art, that doesn’t give up, that doesn’t stop, that is always re-evaluating and trying to find The Way Out.

Deep breaths. Making art shouldn’t make you cry. Life shouldn’t make you cry (nonstop). I showed a video in class today of a family affected by Huntington’s Disease as part of our genetics unit. The mom with HD talks about how she can’t be a good mom because of the disease, and she’s so sad and fragile. I almost lost it about 5 times today.

Am I doing it right? Are my kids going to be OK? Did I hamstring them by putting them through divorce and another bad relationship? Will they be able to do it right with absolutely no role models? Neither parent is competent in relationships, whether it’s the actual BEING in one or PICKING the right person. Either way, we both failed. Me, multiple times.

I hope not. As a parent, all you want is for your children to be happy. The boychild is so observant and aware of human interactions…I’m impressed, because I know it is a learned behavior, not built into his wiring. I did that. Girlchild? Sigh. Emotional hurricane still. She will figure it out. She’s better than she was. I pick my battles, and unfortunately, today there was more than one battle. I fought them all bravely and with minimal emotional investment. I feel it NOW, but in the moment, I was OK.

Here’s the current pile of fabrics…growing…steadily.

Sigh. I wish I could say this process is making me happy, but it’s not. I am in a quagmire. Hey, when boychild and I were in New York, we saw a real quagmire. One with a name. It’s such a lovely word, quagmire: a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. That’s kinda like my brain. Boggy and giving way.

Next step? Big body. Need a decision about color. Then it will take me a few nights…because the body is pieces 744-1347, a little more than 600 pieces. That WOULD be 6 nights, but all the fabrics will be the same for the whole figure. Let’s hope I have a better chunk of time Wednesday or Thursday.

Yeah. Sleep. She’s right there, tugging at my arm. Begging me to head down the hallway. Claiming a warm bed and trouble-free thoughts. Wish it could really do that.

Fish and Seaweed

I tried to post last night, but WordPress was being cranky. I finally gave up trying. As the week drags on, my brain is more and more challenged. Tiredness kicks in harder, kids are more frustrating. They’re testing right now, the first version of Common Core, but they don’t count this year, so it’s kind of a strange place we’re in. Usually testing is a really big deal, like you don’t teach anything that might challenge their brains, so they have all their brain power for the tests (honestly, there isn’t a lot leftover for anyone after 2 hours of staring at multiple-choice questions). You don’t give homework. Usually it’s also about 3 weeks later in the year and NOT right after break (a challenge in itself). None of it applies, this year, though, so I’m trying to teach genetics when they’re spending two periods a day testing. Not necessarily the best choice. Hopefully it will schedule better next year. Hopefully they’ll be done soon.

Luckily, last night’s ironing was pretty simple. Of course, I didn’t DO very much ironing either. I was too tired. I ironed fish and seaweed…

That’s it. Can you see the seaweed? Exciting. I also ironed some blood. There is blood in this quilt, ironic, since it’s about menopause, when the blood is supposed to stop. But that’s not the only blood out there, of course. (A vision of Dexter pops into mind, probably a disturbing thing)

I stopped watching Dexter eventually. It got old. I stopped watching a lot of things in the last year. I’ve been watching X Files while picking fabrics. They all start to melt together, but basically I’ve got weird images and events and aliens on my mind. And I read a lot of fantasy/sci fi as well, so that doesn’t help. The kids are both watching all the episodes of House, so if I’m in the living room in the evening, that’s what’s on. When I was a kid, you couldn’t serial-watch all these shows like you can now. You had to wait each week (or all summer) for the next episode, and if you missed it, you missed it. We didn’t even have a VCR. We couldn’t tape anything.

I don’t know if this is better or not, being able to access so much right when you want it, but I’m sure it changes how we deal with the world. A relative made a comment about “this generation” (speaking of her own kids, who are about 7 years younger than me), that when the going gets tough, this generation bails (she spelled “bails” wrong though, resulting in hilarity in MY household, where jokes about baling cotton and hay ensued. You can’t be a bad speller here…you will not survive). Huh. I don’t think I’ve bailed. I’ve been bailed upon, but haven’t bailed myself. I don’t know what that means, and technically, her kids are a generation younger than mine. My students don’t have persistence, many of them, true, but they are in middle school. It takes time and energy to develop persistence. I do know adults my age who bail. It seems like an easy childhood makes it more difficult for some people to deal with hardship. Then again, I think some people just know how to step up and some don’t. How much of that is the generation, how much is parenting, how much is the world we live in now, the environment? I’m sure someone is writing self-help books about that.

I was reading an article about how the Brits assumed there would be all this psychological trauma during the Blitz in London, with all the bombs dropping, and the people in charge set up all these psych centers to help people deal with the psychological damage, but in the end, most Brits just went on with their days, going to bomb shelters at night, going back home in the morning. Suicide rates went down. It actually helped them feel better about themselves if they continuously survived the bombings. There was some sense of achievement, however illogical that seems. Obviously, those that died…well, they died. But their psychological health wasn’t an issue any more. Those that survived seemed to rally in a way that the government really hadn’t expected. The psych centers closed because they weren’t needed. Interesting, that.

Anyway. Yes, it’s possible I think too much. Or read too much (naw, impossible).

I didn’t iron for long. I was tired. I mentioned that. Tired. Still tired this morning.

More fabrics in the pile now…added orange (fish), green (seaweed), and red (blood).

I would have ironed more, but the next thing is one of the large figures or the guy in the boat and that requires way more brain power, time, and energy than I had last night. I try to iron all of each section before I move on, so it would have been another hour and a hundred or more pieces, and that wasn’t an option. I did grade, exercise, and meditate…all good. See, I do better with a routine. Or do I?

Part of the problem was the night before. I went to bed and had crying issues. Not sure why. Couldn’t sleep, brain goes into overdrive, unhappy. Finally slept, woke up, that mood is still there. Cried going to work, couldn’t get it to stop even in the damn parking lot. Don’t know why. I hate that. Used to be I could pin that to hormonal stuff, time of the month, and it would be really short-lived, but who knows at the moment? Body doesn’t know if it’s coming or going, thyroid meds finally kicking in? I hate not being able to figure out where a specific emotion is coming from. That’s the stuff that makes you feel crazy, out of control. If you hear something sad or feel something bad, crying makes sense, sometimes is even a relief. But just randomly? That’s just crazy talking. It’s been a salty year. So done with it. Someone says something or I hear a song or see a stupid ad for a stupid movie and I’m almost bawling (that happened last night with the girlchild in the room…I got up and walked out…don’t remember what movie…just know I won’t be going to see it).

I had to go buy some AP study guides for the girlchild, which meant venturing into an actual bookstore (because she left it until the last minute). This is just as dangerous as going into a fabric store at the moment (can’t just buy ONE), so I rewarded myself (and the boychild) by buying Saga Vol. 3 (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples), which came out recently…

It was good. More weird alien stuff and creatures making moral decisions plus things haunting you and making you crazy. And wings and horns. Nothing bad about that. That’s the kind of crazy I can handle.