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

Revisions…

So. I’m stuck in a hotel in Corona tonight for a soccer tournament…and girlchild is in a mood…although feeding her Indian food seems to have helped. This is somewhat depressing, being here. I’m stitching, reading, even wrote for a while. Tried to meditate. It’s hard to keep on an even keel with someone squealing at you about everything you say. I brought my sketchbooks, but I’m not in the mood. I drew a little to deal with the aftermath of girlchild’s third or fourth cranky session…

But it’s not done. I brought the big sketchbook too, but forgot and left it in the car. Plus I’m tired…long car drive, lots of traffic, getting squawked at, but now she’s fine.

Girlchild is doing awesome though, first games since the back surgery. She’s tired but kicking ass while she’s on the field, which is a very good thing.

Anyway, two more games, two more days, but going home tomorrow…on the off chance that I can get some work done at home.

This hotel room is weird…a bar in the center of the room goes between the two beds…

Girlchild keeps moving furniture to revise the room.

Wish I could revise my head as easily. Probably best to just take myself to sleepland.

I Could Get Back Up…

I haven’t written much about meditation lately because the current sequence on my app has been difficult for me, and because of that, I haven’t been meditating as much. I’m trying to get back into it because it does help with my nasty moods, but also because if I keep going, I’ll get past this section that I don’t like. Not entirely altruistic, eh? Whatever. I know why it’s hard…he wants me to be all kind and benevolent towards someone that I dislike…and the fact is that there are very few people like that in my life at the moment, and the few that are there, hey, well, I really don’t WANT them to feel better at my expense, which isn’t exactly how he words the meditative process, but I have an anger bomb inside me at the moment and it’s making these sessions difficult to swallow. He acknowledges that, but says I just have to get past it. Um. OK. Mostly my mind wanders when I’m supposed to be wafting good thoughts and happiness towards the person I dislike, but I can’t even picture the person(s), so my brain just takes a breather and goes on about something else.

I get what he’s saying about feeling and mood and crap, I’m just really not there. I suspect I’m not doing it right. Whatever. In general, the meditation has been helpful and I’m sure it will be again. I just need to get past this section.

I have other ways to find meditative peace. The ironing continues…

Albeit slowly. Here I am ironing the parts of the face on the drawing, to be placed eventually on the face itself to the left. At first, I thought I hadn’t gotten much done tonight, about 100 pieces in two hours? It didn’t seem like much…but I forgot that the face was in the 1200 box and consists of about 43 pieces (OK, that’s precise, not about). Then I ironed from piece 470 to 618 or so…about 190 pieces in two hours makes more sense. I’m 8 hours in now.

Jun 26 14 003 small

This was slow going. Lots of little bits and pieces…once I finished the woman, I ironed her onto the background…

She’s still missing a fingernail. Apparently she’s missing an elbow shadow as well. There’s an eyeball in her hand now too. Can’t see that in this picture.

I wasn’t going to go on to the next section, but then I realized it wasn’t very late, so I told myself I’d do another 30 minutes (you should know that “not very late” was 11:08 PM).

No one should listen to me…this is an hours’ worth of work. Tiny pieces…and no, it’s not done. I thought about trying to finish it tonight, but I’m tired.

I spent three hours this morning at life drawing…

There was something wrong with every drawing I did…this one has one leg that’s too small and too short.

That’s the wonder of drawing in pen, though…you’re stuck with it. I did all the short poses in pencil, but still erased nothing. Her right arm has giant issues. Just imagine the drawing without it. I still enjoy the process though, getting your head into looking at the figure and the shadows. It’s more about the process than the product. I’m planning on going to these all summer. It’s cheap, just $5 for 3 hours. Not a bad deal. Even when the girlchild is texting you the whole time because she’s BORED. Holy hell, child.

I had the two of them clean out the cupboard in their bathroom…it’s a catch-all for art supplies and kid crap…I still had their painting aprons from when they were little. I packed up some stuff for the thrift shop (all the big kiddie paintbrushes and the aprons) and tossed a bunch of dried-up paint and mismatched containers…then managed to find space for some of the art supplies that had been stored on top of the piano (this was the original plan)…because yes, in all good Hoarder’s houses, that IS where you keep random art supplies. So now the 10 palettes we have (between me and the girlchild) are all in one place with all the paints and inks…in case you’re coming over and need to find them. We have the mother of all palettes up there now (inherited from Aunt Betty, who really WAS a painter…mom of Babygirl, in case you’re wondering). I kinda wish I were more of a painter so I could use this thing.

I do use palettes, just not very often. Some things are just harder to get rid of…my SIL and I had a conversation about this last night, and she told me about cleaning out her grandmother’s house, which she thinks cured her of hoarding…I’m a packrat…my whole family is. But I think a lot of mine is just a lack of time. I’d love to clean out every cupboard in the house but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. And she did allow as though my second job (artmaking) required quite a few supplies. Oh yeah. I guess. Shall we talk about all the other artistic pasttimes that are in this house? I’ve done all of them, I think.

I kinda lost momentum with the kids today, though. I pretty much did all the clearing out on my own once they had gotten it out of the cupboard, and they only did the top section…then I went and did the whole of the next living room section. Tomorrow is pretty chaotic, so I’m not sure I’ll get through the whole next step, the spackle and wash. But whatever. It will get done. I boxed up all the stuff we took down off the mantle shelves too, so it’s not like I didn’t get anything done. I just didn’t get the piano and bookshelf moved before the kids left today for their dad’s, and I really couldn’t move them by myself.

Still controlling moods with distractions…good books and drawing and ironing and cleaning. The bad times are when I’m trying to fall asleep, which is partly why I stay up so late, so I’m so tired when I get in bed that I essentially pass out from exhaustion. Also when I’m waking up in the morning…no lying around and contemplating the day. I used to really like having time to do that. Now it’s just torture. And at the gym, when I’m lifting weights, because I can’t distract myself with a book or something else. I was trying to persuade myself to write my book in my head during that time, but then I couldn’t remember everything afterwards. I can’t really type into the phone while lifting. I need some sort of memory recorder…like I can just think stuff into a folder (Google Drive in the brain!) and then access it later? I don’t know if that would be good or bad in the long run.

Anyway. Probably need to attempt sleep soon, but the brain is wide awake. That’s one of the problems of ironing at night…my brain doesn’t want to let go of that alpha art brain mode…it just wants to keep going until it passes out. It even considers all-nighters. But I know I have to be up relatively early tomorrow, so I need to at least try to get the brain to shut down. Maybe that’s the core problem with getting rid of the depression too…that the brain doesn’t know how to just drop something…it worries it like it’s a little dog. I’m hoping sometime in the future that the part of my brain that is wreaking all this havoc will come back into the herd and be one with us. It’s kind of annoying having it being so mopey all the time.

I had this song stuck in my head this morning…I have no idea why, but when I told the boychild, he started singing it, so all I can think is that he was standing over me in my sleep, singing softly to me.

You know. Like they do. I am an optimist. Really. It’s hard, but I’m always trying to find the positive. I don’t always say it out loud, but that nasty part of my brain that is sad and hiding…it’s not really who I am. Like the daily crying. That’s not me. Except if it goes on for a year, then is THAT who you ARE? Or are you still the other person that you used to be? I don’t really have an answer for that. I do still have some part of me that is hopeful, that is trying to make a future picture in my head that doesn’t feel awful. So yeah. I guess that’s optimism. I could get back up (from the song)…

it IS that late…

The book I’m reading has these characters, the slake-moths, which have hypnotizing wings, so to avoid being hypnotized and then eaten, essentially (they actually only suck out your dreams, leaving you a drooling lump of flesh that needs diapers), the characters have devised a way to look at the moths using mirrors, looking backwards at them, which protects them from being sucked dry…but two mirrors doesn’t work. They counteract each other. Strange concept, I know, but the thought of viewing everything through mirrors, trying to distract oneself from the hypnotizing death wings, that’s where I’m at today. How many things can I get on my plate that will distract me from the things that drag me down? Lots. I made the mistake of trying to nap (too many late nights and not sleeping enough) this evening, and finally gave up, because my brain was falling into that depressive hole and it was hurting me. So I got up and made yet another cup of tea. And here I am, again, at holy-shit-it’s-late, still awake. Brain is fucking with me.

The house destruction and reinvention is part of it, the distraction…but ironing was a good bit today…a difficult bit…and still not done. I had time in between painting tasks, so I started ironing earlier than usual…

That human figure in the middle actually has almost 200 pieces in it, I realized today. And when I numbered it originally, I forgot to number the face and hair, so although the body runs from piece 316-469, the face and hair are in the 1200s box. Hmn. The view above is the other direction from where I usually photograph the ironing, so you can see how small the space is for my butt between the ironing board and the table where I lay my pieces out. There’s a lot of stuff in this room. Scares me sometimes.

Anyway, so while I was waiting for one coat of paint to dry and for the girlchild to come home from somewhere, I started ironing the figure that’s kinda down in the water…or is she just in front of the water? Hard to say. I kind of imagine her sitting in front of a glass aquarium somewhere. Just so you know. When I drew her, that’s what I was thinking…not that she was IN the water, but that she was IN FRONT of the water. Not sure why that’s important.

Here’s the 400s laid out in groups of 10.

There’s some freakishly tiny-ass pieces in there. Piece 470 and on is an eyeball and then some tears. I haven’t ironed them together yet. I only got through 469. I ironed for about an hour or so before dinner, although I think I did two more coats of paint on the window moldings during that time period too. Girlchild cooked (oh blessed child), so I didn’t have to. She and I ate out on the deck because the kitchen table looks like this…

Actually, it doesn’t look like that any more. We managed to paint the whole dining area today and put some of the furniture back. Because the next step is carpet, we can’t really put everything back. It will be chaos here for a few weeks more, whether we like it or not. Boxes everywhere. Boychild is watching some weirdo webcomic that’s kind of a gif/video thing as well, so he hid in the computer room for dinner while we were sociable. Sort of. As much as any of my people ever are.

Girlchild helped for about 40 minutes before she had to go out. She dances and sings while she paints…

Can you tell? Unfortunately, it does not make her a better painter. Boychild pitched a fit about painting near the asbestos ceiling, so I did that…he did edges and corners and bottom…so that wasn’t bad. The next step is the main part of the living room, probably in two sections, because of the mirrors and the stuff next to the fireplace that needs work. I think the drapes are coming down and out. I never use them, I hate them, the color sucks. If I sell the house later on, I’ll deal with it then. Or I’ll buy some crazy purple stuff and hang it with beads or something. Whatever. Boychild hates them too! It’s not just me.

We may not be the most efficient painters in the world, but we get it done. It’s a 3-day cycle: Day 1-remove and pack stuff up. Day 2: spackle and wash. Day 3: paint. Rinse and repeat for the next section. Two sections done; two to go. At least in this iteration.

After dinner, I did my exercising and then my SIL called. She was driving to her parents’ house back east and it was really late and I think I kept her entertained for two hours on the road. I ironed while talking, which was nice…

I don’t have a lot of adult interaction during the summer. This is really harder this year than previous years…well, last year was bad too. I need to remake my life. This really has been a bitchy section to iron…probably won’t be the last (as I blaspheme against the designer yet again)…

Yes, I am the designer. Ironing always makes me angry at the designer…OK, not angry, just irritated. Couldn’t I have done a better job of drawing this? Wasn’t there a better order for numbering? What the fuck is my problem with the tiny pieces? Do they really add to the final piece? I can’t answer that. I draw it the way it’s supposed to be. Everything else is just fate.

The whole body is done, minus the head (I did actually finish the hand later). Lots of fussy pieces in this section. I’m about 6 hours into the ironing and about a quarter of the way done with the whole thing, so my original estimate of 18 hours of ironing pieces together seems a little low…it’s hard to say, though, because this was a significantly fussy section and I was on the phone as well, and I know I’m not as efficient with ironing when I’m talking on the phone. I get distracted…distracted from the distraction! Didn’t I say I wanted to be done with ironing by the weekend? Yeah. That’s not happening. I always set these goals that I don’t achieve…but I find I am better when I set some goals than when I don’t set any at all.

I’ve also been writing; I’m up to a few thousand words on my story, most of which will probably be edited out, but that’s OK. It’s a start, and that’s all I need. If I write a little every day, then there will be something substantial in existence by the end of the summer…and that will be a good thing.

So I entered an art show last week and was all proud of myself, but it came back yesterday short of postage, and now it’s too late to send it out again. It needed a postmark date. Dammit. I even weighed it though and checked amounts online, so I’m not sure what happened with that. It motivated me to get another entry in today, though (online! much easier than the mail…y’all should pay attention to that if you’re putting on a show). I will be entering shows all summer. It’s good to get the work out there into the public.

OK. Tomorrow? Life drawing, more cleaning/furniture moving, plus ironing I hope. I’m being purred at right now. Surely that’s a sign that it’s bedtime (it truly is. don’t look at the clock. it IS that late).

Demolition Day

Today was all about demolishing things that have been driving me nuts for the last 16 years. Seriously. And then I ironed. So that’s like putting things back together. Plus I need more fabric.

No really, first I went to a meeting, kind of a pre-installation of an exhibit that will be up for 2 months in the fall…it was interesting, and I have tons of ideas rambling around my head right now, but I really do need more fabric. And a drawing. And some wire. I was just at Home Depot (yes, again…it’s currently a daily occurrence). Forgot the damn wire. The drawing? Maybe this weekend.

I did iron tonight…

I love to write about what I did backwards. It makes sense as I think about the day backwards. What did I just do? What did I do before that? This is probably more than you need to know about my brain and its lack of function. Seriously, I’ve screwed up payments this week and postage, and god knows what else. My brain has wandered off again. I forgot to eat too. Luckily, my blood sugar reminds me of that, kind of boisterously, honestly. Yo! Bitch! Eat! Now! It’s kinda rude.

So I ironed more on the big quilt. I quit doing everything else (there was plenty to do, trust me) and just walked in the studio and ironed, which was a damn good thing, because that’s where my head went. Into the artspace.

Out of the bad place. Into the good place. I could live there, I could. It’s peaceful and I barely think about the shitty things that shitty people do. Plus my brain is fully occupied by the ironing of tiny bits that need to fit together and numbers of pieces, and then X-Files in the background takes care of the part of my brain that would normally wander off and try to find things to upset me. It’s not allowed on Facebook any more. It just makes trouble. Really, it’s better to just give it television and let it watch.

I managed to iron all of the water down…

There is a fairly obvious human figure in the middle of all that…it will get ironed next. Plus there’s a huge eyeball. You know. Like there is.

This is where I needed to be today. In art. Making it. Letting all that poison sad shit wander off somewhere else while I accomplished something of note. Well. Accomplished something anyway.

We actually accomplished a lot today. For instance, the house is now a giant mess. Really. It is. If you thought it was messy before, now it’s a fucking disaster. But it’s a move in the right direction. I think.

Dad came over to help with that giant-ass hole in the wall, which he fixed while I demolished shutters that had never been used. And then I spackled. Or maybe I spackled first. It’s all a fucking blur, this home improvement shit. It’s all the same, day after day. What day is it? What phase am I on? I did manage to find someone who can take the mirrors out, but not until next week. I’m OK with that. Then we started looking at the mantle. The mantle and shelves to the right of the fireplace are this godawful pinky ’80s crap and it’s in totally the wrong PLACE as well, hung too high. The previous owner, the wife was an artist, but apparently she never learned not to bisect the vertical plane exactly in the middle. So it’s always bugged the crap out of me. Plus it’s fucking pink. It’s just wrong.

After telling Dad about 5 times that no, I did not want him to saw through the screws, thus leaving big metal pieces poking out of the stone of the fireplace, he and the boychild and I manhandled and pried and pulled the damn things off with pure brute strength (I am a beast at times, yes)…and then went after the paneling, which turned out to be two layers of paneling (which was better than more mirrors, which is what we found behind the first set of panels).

I must have a picture somewhere of the mantle. It’s in my driveway now. Feel free to come take it away.

You can’t really appreciate the ugly while it’s lying there.

That’s asbestos flying through the air. You think I’m joking.

So. Mirrors are still there for another week, but paneling is gone. Let’s assume I can deal with the mastic and paint that sucker, and then Dad said if I drew something up for bookshelves, he would have the boychild build it (um. Does the boychild KNOW how to do that?).

Maybe all this destruction is a good thing. I mean, at least I will be able to look over at that space and not be annoyed by it. I still need a replacement mantle, but I will deal with that eventually.

Meanwhile, I’m making art. The house is getting painted. There’s art in my head. And I found the missing cat (no idea where Babygirl was for the last 5 hours, but she just showed up…good thing…boychild would be pissed if I lost her). Fuck the rest of it.

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

Uninspired Title #17

Staying focused on the things that keep my head in the right place…is apparently a challenge. I hadn’t been to the gym in way too many days and my muscles have apparently all atrophied. It doesn’t seem fair that two weeks away will do that much damage, but it felt good to go back. Now to get it back on the regular calendar. I cried while I was there…too much time alone in my brain. Bad place.

I wanted to start painting the smaller room yesterday, but barely made it through washing the walls and then found more parts that needed spackle. This is the part I hate. You can’t just paint. You have to prep. And most of the prepping activities have to dry afterwards and it just takes forever, and everything lies around in chaos during that process and I just really hate it.

We’re painting today. Hopefully this morning. Then we can put the room back together tomorrow and move on to the next chaos-making space.

Yesterday I also went to a writing workshop…well, I wouldn’t really call it a workshop because there wasn’t anything planned or taught…it was more like a writing networking/critique/brainstorming event. It was interesting. I’m not sure what I’m looking for in writing support, and maybe the answer is just that I need some accountability to actually force myself to write and to complete some sort of outline. I don’t know that I need a group for that. I know I can’t go to the next meeting, but it did help me solidify a plan (sort of), so maybe I’ll just hold myself accountable. I do a pretty good job of that with my art, so one would think I could translate that into writing as well. Word count per week or something. I’m still the oldest in the group by far. And you know what? I just don’t understand electronic cigarettes. At all.

Being really tired is always part of the first week of vacation after school. It’s like I’m trying to make up for months of sleep loss. Because I am. But then it’s hard to fall asleep as well…last night I was just so sad but I wanted to go to sleep, but then I couldn’t, and crying yourself to sleep multiple nights in a row starts to really suck. Plus it messes with the dreaming and I wake up in a bad mood too and I don’t know how to make it better. I was talking to someone yesterday about the negative effects my depression must have had on my kids this year, and she reminded me that the worst I had done was cry a lot and forget a bunch of stuff…that they were fed and safe and clothed in clean clothes and I wasn’t a raging alcoholic and I didn’t attempt suicide and I didn’t stay in bed for days on end, and if that meant that they had to see their mom sad and worry about her and all that, well that wouldn’t kill them. It might make the world a bit more real for them: here’s what really happens when people treat each other like shit and someone doesn’t just bounce right back up all perky and getting a new haircut and wanting to go out and make love to the world. This is what sad looks like. And this is what you do when you feel that way. You keep going.

She’s right of course. Part of the book I’m writing is about this. It’s hard for me not to write (and draw) autobiographically, at least on some level. Here’s me and there I am on paper, in fabric. The quilt I’m working on right now, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to talk about it without crying. I’ll write a script and someone else can read it for me.

I did want to start ironing last night. I don’t want to NOT be making art just because I have to do all this other stuff. Being tired doesn’t help…but I drank some more tea and made an effort…the biggest issue was that before I could start, I had to put all the fabrics away. Ugh. Hate that. Especially since the containers are crowded at the moment…boychild actually came in a few days ago and asked if there was any possibility that I would use up all those fabrics before I died. Hmn. Probably not.

Inevitably I will need to pull some of these back out when I can’t find a piece. I’m currently missing a finger bone. It may show up…a few pieces have been in the wrong bin so far. It took about an hour to put all of these away, to find all the bins and shove stuff in best I could. I don’t really need to buy more fabric these days, except for backgrounds and backings and binding. Even backings, I try to do those from the stash, even if I have to piece them. I don’t really care what’s on the back. I might as well use up those larger pieces I bought for some bizarre reason way back when.

Then I finally started ironing around 10:30 or so, maybe later.

I really liked how the dirt fabrics were fitting together colorwise…such a complicated section, but satisfying when it all got together.

Then I added skeleton parts. This one is really broken into pieces, no ribcage or pelvis at all, hands reaching out, broken skull.

Yeah, no imagery there. Shut up, you Freudian. I use the applique sheet on top of the drawing for the big pieces, but then pull the drawing out so I can see it when I’m trying to iron stuff on top of it, like the skelly parts. I spent about an hour and a half and finished about 150 pieces. At that rate, it’ll be about 18 hours to get everything together, and then another couple of hours to iron it down. If I’m focused, I might get it done in a week…remembering that I do unfortunately have a ton of painting to do and the cleaning and stupid prep that goes with it, plus there are actually OTHER things I’m doing. Shocking, I know. I’m not looking forward to next weekend, because it’s a whole lot of soccer a long way away and I don’t have anything I can take with me, unless I get all those birds traced (huh, motivation for that?).

Anyway, at this point I am just procrastinating the painting. Of course. Here’s to hoping tonight’s mood is better than last night’s…not sure what I can concretely do to make that happen…it seems that being busy and checking tasks off a list is not enough. Neither is getting some artmaking done or meditating or exercising, all the things they say will work. Sometimes I think “they” should just go bite themselves, honestly. If any of their magic lists for pulling oneself out of depression actually worked for anyone who wasn’t just a little blue because they had a bad day, someone who had serious depression clouding their mind, well the world would be a different place, wouldn’t it? I wonder how much of the art and music that surrounds us would still be here. Is that a good trade-off? I don’t know.

Seen on a car on the way home yesterday from the writing thing…

Found it sad. Then again, I find everything sad at the moment. At least they’re taking responsibility for their actions.

When I Wake Up, Let Me Be*

In the past, summer vacation has always brought a sense of relief. Teachers and students get tired of each other, of the high expectations on either side. We need a break. It’s a lot of hours to be with a lot of kids, and for them, it’s a lot of demanding. I usually need to decompress for a bit after school gets out, just hang out and sleep in and don’t demand a lot of myself. But this summer is different than the last 12. This summer, I have to keep my brain and body out of the hole…that depression hole. I also have a ton of stuff to do. Hopefully those two needs will work together, but I also need to make sure I recharge myself this summer, which means not working myself into the ground just to keep myself distracted. I need to relax and rest and make art and get my head straight. And not slip back into a deeper depression.

Easier said than done. I try to tell the depressed part of my brain to leave me alone, to go the fuck away, to get out of here.

It doesn’t really work.

I checked out of my classroom today…took longer than usual because I had to lock up EVERYTHING so the summer school teachers and kids don’t get into the science materials. I’m not pleased about that, but I dealt.

Last night, I managed to sort all the fabric pieces for the big quilt…it took 2.5 hours… Here was the layout of boxes (with Kitten guarding them)…

That’s a lot of sorting…I use mostly shoeboxes, but then I never have enough, so there are some weird things in there, like an ice tray from my fridge, because there’s no water hookup for the fridge, so the box never lived in there. There’s also a silverware tray in there and some bins from a kids’ shelf. It’s so much easier to do this now on the light table, standing. I used to put them all on the floor and sit on a cushion and try to lean over all of them to put pieces in. On a quilt this size, my leg would fall asleep and I’d pull muscles in my back (holy crap, old lady talk there).

Kitten was in there, pissed because she likes to sit ON the light table and I wouldn’t let her up there.

Here are all the pieces and papers that came detached from each other. Most of them found their partner piece, but a few were left at the end…oh well. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Here they are, all sorted out, ready to be ironed together next. Not sure when that will happen. Starting soon. Eighteen boxes of pieces.

Kitten spent a lot of time sprawling about while I sorted.

So today, in between cleaning my classroom and waiting for the tech chick to show up so I could check out, I went to Home Depot, where I will be living this summer apparently, to get painting supplies. We are in fact painting a huge chunk of the house this summer, so I had wandered my garage (which is like a Hoarders episode all its own self) looking for painting supplies, realized the hallway had last been done in 2007 and everything else was older than that and mostly trashed (I have never painted the living room, which means it probably hasn’t been painted in over 16 years). Anyway, we had picked a color. OK, I lie. I picked a color. The kids each picked colors I didn’t like. Boychild went gray-white, girlchild went yellow-white, and I stuck with Fresh Popcorn. I couldn’t paint it a color if I didn’t like the name. So I refused to pick Predictable. Yes, that was a color name.

The coolest thing I got was a spackle that goes on pink and turns white as it dries.

It probably has chemicals in it that will hasten global warming. There’s nothing green about painting. It’s a shitload of chemicals and smells and fumes and yuck. I don’t enjoy painting. It’s a lot of prep and it annoys me. Always has. That’s why I do it so rarely. Plus it’s expensive. OK, it’s cheaper than buying a new house, but it’s not cheap. Boychild and I demolished the room we call the little living room, a smaller room that used to be an outdoor patio, but was built into a real room a million years ago. The ceiling was not flat and the moldings had gaps of almost 1/8 of an inch from the ceiling in some places, so I spackled the whole damn thing.

I’m a little wacko that way.

Boychild lives in this room, because that’s where his computer is. We had to recycle a bunch of stuff, toss a bunch of stuff, sort a bunch of stuff (girlchild isn’t here and I can’t just toss her stuff without her looking at it)…and then move a bunch of books out because the bookshelf is screwed into the wall and needs to come out for painting reasons. So we boxed all those books for now…

You don’t want to know how many books we have. And a bunch of the knickknacks the boychild had accumulated as well had to be boxed (soccer trophies etc.). If you thought the house was messy before, it’s turning into a disaster area now. Hopefully that will be shortlived. Ha! Yeah, I know. Now I have an excuse for the mess? Boychild was really helpful, a good worker. No complaints from him at all. He motivates me to keep going, because I really do hate this stuff and would totally give up if he weren’t there pushing me to do the next step. So that’s good.

Jake’s here too, so he managed to lie on the floor in all the most inconvenient places…

Anyway, tomorrow we wash walls and then hopefully start painting. This is the only part where we have to do the ceiling as well…as the boychild says, the rest is toxic and doesn’t need painting (ah, asbestos popcorn ceilings that I can’t afford to remove…). Then when the girlchild comes back, we’ll do the dining area and the rest of the living room, which needs some major work…that damn mirrored wall is coming DOWN bitches! Finally. After how many years? So.

All that seems like enough work for the summer, but I do have other plans for my time. I’ve had a couple of requests for smaller quilts focusing on some of the birds I draw, so I pulled a bunch of my drawings and found the birds and traced them separately. They’re mostly pretty small and simple, so I figure I can make some smaller quilt tops and maybe put them up for sale for a reasonable price. We’ll see how it goes.

I got these traced off, two from existing quilts and three from drawings that are in the queue.

Then turned around and noticed Kitten…

Um. That’s the rest of the pile of drawings. I’m too nice. I leave her there. For a while.

Eventually she gets bored of my staring at her and she wanders off, so I trace the rest…

I did the eyeball bird with and without the eyeball. I personally prefer the eyeball, but I can understand that most people don’t.

The next step is to number pieces and then trace onto Wonder Under. Etc. Etc.

I’m trying to take one day at a time AND plan ahead. Talk about crazy. Tomorrow is a writing workshop where I will find out if my book-writing technique is crazy stupid or just nuts. I actually wrote an entire scene in abbreviated form when I was walking the dogs with the boychild this afternoon. It took everything I had to try to pencil it down in my brain and not stop on the hike and type it into my phone. It’s OK…it came out later on the keyboard. I’m doing the whole thing in Google Docs because I want to practice using it so I can transfer all my school stuff that way. It takes some getting used to…I like parts of it and I don’t like others. Kind of a normal response to change, I think, but I’m looking forward to having access to the documents I’m using across all my devices. Anyway, I was quite pleased with how the story developed in my brain today, and I’m hoping it keeps going into something more coherent. That’s always been my issue…what’s the purpose of writing this beyond the enjoyment of writing? I actually want a product. I do. And I think I can do the drawings for it as well.

So that’s a lot of progress. I’m trying to take some satisfaction from that. Keep up the momentum. Keep me out of the hole. Avoid the crash and burn. High expectations, eh? Whatever.

*Afraid, The Neighbourhood,

On Skunks and Graduation

I awoke yesterday morning to the sound of boisterous urination outside my window…barely awake, I rolled over and tried to go back asleep, assuming whatever animal it was would go away, now that it had christened my house. No such luck. I hear sounds in the leaves, and then more rampant peeing. Kitten is flouncing about at this point, convinced the intruder will be coming in the window, plaintively warning me (who needs dogs when you have Kitten?). Finally I get up, peek out the blinds, and see a cute baby skunk gamboling in the leaves outside the window.

God Damn It. If there’s one baby skunk…and if anyone remembers the Great Skunky Stinkout of a few years back when I couldn’t even sleep in my bedroom, it smelled so bad, because someone scared a skunk right outside the window. It was like a chemical bomb went off…eyes watering, it was so bad.

Sigh. Back to bed, pillow over the head. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do about baby skunks. They’re cute, they gambol, they haven’t done anything wrong but be born skunks.

Yesterday, the boychild graduated from high school.

Yes, their colors are orange and white…yick. I’m hoping mom’s pictures are better than mine. I have a few. There were over 500 kids graduating…

and it’s a kamikaze seating event…they open the gates at 7 and people run for spots. Grandpa didn’t run, but he managed to have us in the shade for part of it, and it wasn’t too hot, so it turned out OK. Boychild’s random yearbook quote was used in the principal’s speech, which is amusing, because he had forgotten to get a good quote and doesn’t really like this one–“You can’t back into your future”–however true it might be.

You’re supposed to touch Odin’s hammer on the way down the steps (when they were freshmen, they were supposed to touch the hammer too…I’m fairly sure boychild boycotted both chances)…the school is Valhalla, the mascot is the Norseman. Odin showed up with no pants on, but I didn’t have the camera out in time. Wasn’t expecting that.

He’s in the bottom left…one of two long-haired boys in graduation. Easy to spot!

So he’s done. We did take family photos…will have to see if they’re presentable online. Probably not, knowing us. This is what we normally look like…

Well, except for the cap and gown, which we’re keeping for a Halloween costume. Midnight is the only one looking at the camera.

In typical Kathy fashion, I stitched…

I got 7.5 feet done. There are a lot of feet on these damn birds, and they’re all bullion knots. Who knew I’d be an expert on bullion knots? Not me. Next weekend’s soccer tournament could mean a lot more feet getting done.

Boychild got a quilt from Grandma…

Fabrics she picked up in New Zealand/Australia on their trip. He likes these colors…I don’t know if he’ll take it with him, but he will use it. He refused to put his face in the picture, so girlchild did instead. He also got a digital keyboard with stand and some other pedal thing for college. He’s taking it with him. He has a roommate, but this will fit under the bed and the stand folds up. He likes playing piano…has been playing for years. I guess the thought of stopping freaked him out…and this thing sounds really good. If you’re his roommate, don’t worry…he has headphones.

All in all, a pretty emotional day/week even. Apparently this is difficult for my brain…realizing he’s going to college in 2 months, especially after we spent time yesterday afternoon trying to figure out what he needed, looking at online pictures of his dorm and setup. It’s real. It’s time for him to go, and I used to look forward to this time, no more dealing with school stuff etc., but him going on to have his own life and be a grownup, and I still want all that, but it is harder to have him go now that my own future is so up in the air and messy. I know all of that is normal, but the depression makes it harder to handle…everything is right at the surface and hard to keep under control.

So today is the last day of school for me (except checkout tomorrow, which is starting to look like a clusterfuck due to the district deciding to put kids in the science classrooms over the summer without actually talking to us about chemicals and materials that can’t be locked up completely, so all of a sudden, I have about 5 hours more work than I usually do. I am so pleased about that.). I am fully in survival mode. I read a book yesterday and exercised and meditated (you mean you cried?) and then I finally…FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED cutting out the pieces for the big quilt for the summer…well, the first one at least.

It took 22 hours and 17 minutes. LOTS of tiny pieces. Some I haven’t cut out yet because they’re so small I don’t want to lose them. I’m hoping to sort them tonight, if I’m still standing. It’s always questionable after the last day.

This song caught my ear the other day…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomiOTdyCqo

I did start writing a book…or something. I wrote 383 words on the first day. I was tired. I don’t have a serious plot line yet. I have a general idea. I’m writing a love story. Really. Except, you know, this is Kathy talking, so not really. I figure I can write it; I have enough experience in it. I might have to break it at the end, though, because that is what always happens to me. It doesn’t to other people; I’m aware of that.

Anyway. How many words should a book have? All of them.

Going to finish off my 12th school year…well, as an adult.