The Difficult

I wonder sometimes what makes the teen years so difficult for me. I don’t seem able to communicate correctly. Honestly, I’ve spent the last two years feeling like the majority of what comes out of my mouth is just wrong, not allowed, I am misinterpreting everything, and I never say it right. There are about 15 drawings in my head coming out of that…most have tape over the mouth or the mouth is just stitched or stapled shut. I don’t know if it’s worse because I am me, and that me is depressed, or if I am alone in this, and the alone compounds the wrong feeling, or if, as the girlchild says, I am just more sensitive than most. In some conversations, the wrongness seems to swirl around in my head. I wonder what protections others have that seem to keep them whole. I feel like those are missing from my arsenal. My counselor tries to help…but what she tells me to say, the script, it angers the girlchild.

It seems I do it all wrong. I don’t think anything I’ve done in the last two years was right. Except draw…and turn those into quilts.

Is that good enough? Is the art I make good enough? Does it make up for whatever I don’t seem to be able to do right? Ask my children in 5-10 years. They may be able to answer. Maybe they will write my retrospective. My previous writer has been fired from the job for not paying attention, for falling asleep on the job, for not actually listening to what I was saying. Is it so hard to hear me?

It is just a matter of surviving these years I think. But this surviving…it is hard…harder on my own. I asked today for help. I tried to explain the things that set me off…and maybe that conversation went well…hard to say. I feel so ill-equipped for my own existence.

So. The summer: artmaking, house-fixing, room-painting, lesson-planning, sanity-finding (any chance of that?), book-reading, muscle-moving, heart-mending (not sure I believe this is possible).

Parenting is a bitch.

I cut stuff out today. I’m almost there. It’s a good thing. Progress. It’s movement…better than stagnation. I try to keep moving towards something…something healthier than what occupies my brain most of the time. Here’s where I was last night…

I did hike last night, a mere 4.5 miles; it barely felt like a walk. Fine line between what works for me and what hurts my knee. I’ll be testing it further in the next 7 days, for sure. More on that later.

Today was a giant mess of grading and managing things, but fell into this wormhole: Strong Female Protagonist…because I NEED more distractions? Naw, because it let me leave my head for a while…another troubled female trying to make sense of the world, but she can kick the shit out of robots. I bet I’d be less depressed if I could do that.

I was supposed to go to the gym, but I read instead. And I graded stuff. And then input grades. And there was the parenting thing that threw me for a loop. It doesn’t take much.

We have dinner almost every Sunday night at my parents’ house. I keep thinking it will get easier to be there on Sundays, but it is a memory of what I had that apparently I didn’t really have. Trust is an issue for me. Can you tell? I don’t even know how to draw that. Maybe when I figure that out it will get better.

I throw the ball for Calli as long as she puts it in my lap.

She makes this funny face, where part of her lip is up under her tooth. Love this dog. Love all dogs, who am I kidding? We had my parents’ dog, Katie, here this weekend…she was well-behaved but terrified of the cats (as are we all)…it was nice to have another dog here. When the girlchild goes to college, my first expense will probably have to be a dog. I don’t have one of my own and Calli will probably stay with the girlchild’s dad…we’ll see. She goes back and forth with the girlchild at the moment. My grocery bill will go down and so will the dog quotient?

Most of the year, I’m grading while she does this, but during vacations, I sew instead. And I was done grading (well, at least for a while…until all the kids who were absent dump stuff in my lap tomorrow)…so I was stitching. I managed a whopping 5 bullion stitches before I gave up. I am so far behind on this thing that it doesn’t really matter any more.

So then I came home and cut some more…

I really am almost there. And I have a plan for some smaller quilts that might go up on Etsy this summer…maybe. I want something that’s marketable. Well, as much as my stuff ever is. So watch for that. Don’t hold your breath or anything…it might be a few weeks…but I did go down into the garage and hunt around for some of the drawings that might help with that. I don’t need to remake the wheel…just re-trace something and iron it down. And see where that takes me.

Down a rabbit hole. Did I mention I am trying to write an actual novel? It will probably crash and burn, but I am starting. I have an idea…a start…a burning coal. Something might come of that. Strange that a visual artist has always wanted to write a book. Where does that come from? Words v. images. A constant war in my brain.

Yup. And then there’s Babygirl. Speaking of The Difficult. There she be.

I Am Sorta Here

Maybe. I think. It’s hard to know what day it is or what’s coming next. I don’t seem to have a handle on the big picture. Grades are due soon. I need to do those. Like today. We set out yesterday evening to try to deal with Father’s Day and graduation clothing, and we flailed massively on the former and succeeded on the latter, although I think I have to go back today because the one thing we were supposed to look for, we didn’t, because I think I was so tired and low-blood-sugar that nothing logical could happen. Dinner consisted of whatever we could find at Trader Joe’s to supplement what was in the fridge already and that wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to prepare. I hate eating like that, but it was a necessary thing. I should remember that Friday nights near the end of the school year are a giant clusterfuck and prepare accordingly. We’ve already decided that when both kids are at college, I should spend the first Sunday of every month cooking meals and freezing portions so I can eat normally all month without having to think about it every night.

I did manage exercise both nights I blew off writing. See, I can do THAT. That’s brainless. I had a stitching meeting on Thursday…

The stocking that will take 20 years to stitch. Progress is so slow. We did talk about many things, most of which I’ve completely forgotten, although I remember photo cards and female comics and grandbabies and travel plans and cool quilt and art exhibits coming up, like Quilt National will be at the Oceanside Museum of Art, but not the part with my quilt in it, which is up in San Jose right now. So I’ll still go to the opening down here because I couldn’t go to the one up there. Make sense? Yeah, not to me either.

My mood is a mess…overwhelmed still. Keep saying no to things like that helps…it doesn’t, because the have-to’s are way bigger than the ones I can say no to. Organized art entries slightly to make sure I had stuff to enter where I WANT to enter for sure. I mean, who doesn’t want to get rejected by the big shows over and over? Yeah, I know. Sometimes you get in. That’s why I keep entering. But it means finishing the two that are in process AND starting the one for November AND getting those house things done for the border show…I don’t even know where to start with those.

Bleeding money, that’s for sure. Everything costs money.

Anyway. Deep breaths. Taking one day at a time. I have a list for today and I’m going to go on a short flat hike to see if my knee is improved. If not, I’m going to call the doctor, because it’s not OK. Going to get the damn grades done. All that will help, and then I can focus on the artmaking like I want to. Stop panicking about the other stuff. I’ll figure it out. It was the counselor’s advice to just take one day at a time, but I laughed…because then I will never ever get the stuff done that I don’t WANT to do. She reminded me that it’s my vacation and I need to recharge before starting a new year with a new principal, a new team member, a new curriculum style and classroom function, etc. She’s right. Doesn’t mean the stuff won’t need to get done though.

On Thursday night, I managed a few minutes of cutting…

I really am SO CLOSE to finishing that it’s kind of lame that I haven’t. Of course, then I’ll have to do the hard part: sort a million pieces and then iron for a week or longer to get it all together. Mind-boggling. More overwhelming. Except I want to see what it looks like. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know what it will look like. Kind of a strange way of working.

I have some other plans for smaller pieces this summer too…maybe I am planning too much. Looking back at last summer (which I hate doing, because it was such a nasty beast of trauma), at the end of school, I was still ironing pieces down to fabric on Wise Choice, and I had Buried Under partially quilted I think? Then I had to make Babygirl and a couple other smaller pieces. Plus I started working on Love (not). So I am further ahead on the Menopause quilt, which is actually about half the size of Wise Choice, so it shouldn’t take as long. I’m a little further behind on the Mammogram quilt, but it won’t take long to stitch down and catch up to that stage. I know how many hours I put in last summer…art quilting is about all I did. And I don’t have that kind of time this summer…too many other things to do. So we’ll see.

I can’t really take it one day at a time. I have to be able to see the big picture. I’ve spent the last three months with my head under the pillow, not thinking about the big picture, and now I have to deal.

I think I’m calling in sick this week. Seriously, my brain just wandered off again. It doesn’t want to manage all this crap. It wants to hide. Reading books is a good way to hide…it’s another world, a protective space, somewhere I can live that doesn’t require me to constantly be picking up after people, where things aren’t demanding my attention. Really, I am only sorta here. Just checking in. Expect more calm sanity after the end. (four more days) I should have a blog category for overwhelmed, it’s such a common occurrence. I think I’m doing it wrong.

Dammit Seriously.

That seems to be my mantra at the moment. Or is it Damnit. Go look here. Because I am that ubergeek who googled it and then tried to decide whether ubergeek should be one word or two or hyphenated.

I got an email yesterday about a fiber show coming up and I also got my new issue of Fiber Art Now, which is an intriguing magazine…not as highbrow as the Surface Design Association magazine, but not as crafty as Quilting Arts is. I find I barely read these any more…I TRY to…really I do, usually while cooking, but sitting and reading short articles seems to work better with an electronic device these days than with a pile of pages.

Anyway, the email and the magazine sent me down a rabbit hole of shows coming up and possible entries and due dates and size requirements, so girlchild cooked dinner (late! she walked in and asked if I was planning on cooking any time soon…oops) while I bounced around websites trying to figure out if it was worth entering. I don’t mind being invited to enter a show, but when entry fees are exorbitant for a short show? That seems crazy…maybe I’m reading it wrong. I did manage to find some other shows that sounded interesting though, and I almost got excited about art for a moment there. Until I realized how late it was and that I had grades to input and my computer was being a slow-ass beast, which is another thing I need to deal with this summer, along with EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE FUCKING WORLD.

It does not look good for relaxation and mai tais by the pool. Like I ever do that. The to-do list is miles long. Plus I started reading a book about blended learning (the new code word in education) and realizing I need to get my entire curriculum onto Google Drive and Docs by the end of the summer, which is not a small task, and I won’t get paid for that, by the way, you idiot politicians who think we’re in it for the money, but I will do it ANYWAY, because it’s best for the kids, so maybe you should give me a raise, and then in a year or two’s time, I will also MAKE UP new curriculum all by myself when the science standards switch and we don’t get new textbooks until never. So. Yeah. This job. Sometimes…sometimes it’s the best thing around and exciting (it really is kind of exciting to be getting everything online and making things collaborative in a way I can track, instead of trying to figure out who wrote what, when the overachievers did the whole project while the other kid picked his nose for three days), but sometimes it is a huge drain on your brain.

In the middle of all this thinking and reading and stuff, I realized that my phone had disappeared some important notes from the Notes app (this was in the middle of riding the stationary bike), so then I had to try and find those, which meant restarting and installing a backup, which took forever (see note about screwed-up computer…you know, sometimes it’s just easier to buy a new one than figure out what the fuck is the matter with the old one, but that’s not an option, so figure it out we will). Plus the boychild was in here analyzing his yearbook at 11:45 at night (really, we are both night owls…I told him how I used to read under the covers until mom would come yell at me…he should be glad I’m his mom), which really was about analyzing his high-school career, because the twit is graduating in less than a week. GRADUATING. Fuck. And then moving out and never really coming back.

So not where I wanted to be right now. I’m a fucking mess these days really. I have spent the last two days showing one of the pregnancy videos to my students, and post-birth, I always tear up when I see someone give birth, but it’s usually OK, very controllable, because prior to a year ago, I wasn’t a CRIER. I really wasn’t. Barely ever. So I had picked the video with like 3 births in a row, and I almost lost it yesterday…over and over again…because I saw 15 births yesterday and I am not as in control of my crying tendencies as I used to be. It was a real struggle holding it together. By lunch (6 births down), I wanted to huddle in the bathroom and sob. It’s OK…today we move on to STDs. No crying there.

I know my head’s a mess, and I was hoping to MAKE art yesterday, but by the time the technology was all fixed and boychild was back in bed, it was almost 1 in the morning. My sleep app tells me I’ve averaged 4.5 hours of sleep a night this week. Um. Not good. But I’m wired at night, totally awake (unlike in the afternoon meetings). So that’s not conducive to lying down and sleeping. I try it and then my brain ransacks the emotional storage area and I end up crying myself to sleep because the SUMMER sounds overwhelming. My vacation time (vacation, ha!) sounds like it’s going to kick my ass. I’m crawling into bed on June 20 and pulling the covers over my head. Wake me up in 2017. OK, maybe I’ll get up to deal with the girlchild’s graduation.

Then this morning, the computer wants to tell me about the updates it’s installed. You don’t understand, you asshole…I don’t fucking CARE what you installed…are you working better than you were last night? Because that was a clusterfuck. The grading program was writing line by line and I just had to sit there WAITING for it to process to the alphabetical letter that I needed it to get to, and I don’t know whether it was internet or the grade server or my computer. I don’t CARE…it took forever. Just knock it off.

I’ve decided Clash of Clans (which I really do play sort of half-heartedly and then the boychild yells at me for even playing it) is a metaphor for life. I wake up every morning and my shield went down overnight and some total stranger attacked me and somehow I won. Because my defenses are OK (they aren’t really), but somehow I won without doing anything. But if I go out and attack anything, first of all, I suck at attacking…I just deploy everyone AT ONCE (GO! KILL! DESTROY!) with absolutely no strategy except to get them all running on the screen at once, little cartoon goblins and archers and barbarians (what are they all doing hanging out together anyway?), and then I get creamed. Because I suck at attacking. I go to sleep though and all this stuff happens and I wake up and I have more trophies. It feels kinda empty. So maybe entering shows will help…unless I get rejected from all of them and then that will be worse. Or maybe I won’t care. Who knows.

Yeah, I know. It’s a stupid game. I’m OK with that. I need something that doesn’t mean much, that isn’t that important, that I can do while waiting for the stupid grade program to respond.

I wish I could say that tonight will be better, and maybe it will…but it’s looking kind of fraught.

I was sitting at the union meeting last night (did I mention I didn’t even get home until almost 6 because of the union meeting?) and they had brought us ice cream, because it’s the last meeting of the year, but it was chocolate and sugar, so I’m allergic to the first, and I’m diabetic, so lots of the latter is not a good plan, and the woman next to me asks why I don’t have any ice cream, so I tell her those two things, and she says she’s diabetic too, which I didn’t know, and never would have guessed, because she had already eaten her ice cream and she always has a giant soda everywhere she goes. And I’m thinking, well, maybe it’s sugar free? But seriously? I do everything right, I lose all the weight, I exercise, I watch my diet, and I get stuck with symptoms that are worse than before, way worse, and there she is…poster child for bad diabetics, making me look bad. Dammit. Seriously.

I love this picture in the yearbook…

Yup. Those are my two. Boychild says they didn’t ask him about the words at all, and I guess if “closest of friends” includes yelling “Calm your asshole!” at the other one in the morning (that’s what I heard just before they left), then yeah, they might be. Certainly, the last part is true, and is why we will have to get a new monitor with a webcam so she can Skype him for math and science next year, because AP Physics is beyond me and Calculus makes my brain explode. Seriously, there are no spare brain cells for that stuff any more. Damn. I’m going to miss them. Seriously. I’m a mess.

Outlast…

First of all, I stayed up too fucking late last night because I was reading a book. Yes, I am still that geek girl I was in middle school. Nothing has changed. I finished it though, and I didn’t have to hide under the covers with a flashlight to do it. And then I finished another one today. Read it in one afternoon. I’m sure there’s something really helpful y’all could say about my avoidance tendencies at the moment…wanting to hide in fictional worlds isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but it could be. Ironically, one of the books I read was about a girl who did just that. Life imitating art. Actually, my art imitates my life. Doing it backwards yet again.

Second of all, please make that goddamned mockingbird shut the fuck up. I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. (I think it finally stopped around 2:30 AM, because that might be when I fell asleep). Tonight? Tonight I don’t hear the bird. Probably a neighbor shot it. They’ve threatened to before (yes, that means my neighbors have guns).

Thirdly, this is what overwhelmed looks like: Me. I got a bunch of stuff done, but then my brain melted down and lost itself in fiction, because it’s nicer than real life. I ran 14 errands, cooked dinner (BOTH kids are sick and stayed home yesterday…it is a wonderful place, my house, at the moment…full of snotty kleenex and me popping Vitamin C), did all the dishes, exercised, AND input a million grades. At that point, it was after 11 PM and there was no way I was getting anything else done, and I wanted to know how the book ended. It had been a particularly frustrating teaching day and I needed a break. I worked many hours. I worked more this morning, which is why this post isn’t getting done until later…dammit.

Whatever.

Both kids made it to school today. One’s slightly better, although he sounds like crap. The other claims she’s horrible, but I haven’t seen her since this morning, so I have no evidence to support that claim. She can’t be TOO sick, because she answered texts from me. Teenaged-girl indicators of illness: if they can still text, they’re fine.

The blog title…if you can stand it for long enough, the really shitty stuff will roll under the moving car, it will disappear, it will wander off, it will resolve itself. That’s not always true, but if it’s something you can’t change, you can either leave it (if that’s an option, and there are times when that might be easiest, but doesn’t make the most sense) or you can wait it out. Outlast…remember the Survivor motto? Me neither. I had to look it up: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. I guess that’s my new mantra. For the end of the year. For my life. For all the stupid little shit. Actually, just the two on the outsides…I don’t need to outplay. I don’t have those competitive issues. Suffice it to say, I have now outlasted (and possibly outwitted) one of the heinous parts of my life. Moving on. The next will be the last day of school. Almost there. I’ll have some issues with summer…they are already raising their ugly little heads. God forbid I finish what I NEED to finish. Oh well.

So. I was at the gym tonight and an entire drawing basically dropped into my brain. Seriously. It’s right up THERE. Now the hard part is getting it out. Sometimes my drawing ability does not match my mental ability. I show this process so you realize I don’t always just draw the whole damn thing out in one go with no edits. Here’s what I drew first.

Yick. Don’t want her to look that angry. Plus she needs to be looking down at what’s in her arms. Tilt! (As Mr. Peterson said in high school…)

Try again…

Fuck. That nose sucks. Not on a woman. Restart. Maybe if I start with the mouth?

It’s a nice mouth, but facing the wrong direction. I’ll use it for something else…try again.

Huh. Maybe. Not sure about him. It’s a start, though…much better than what I had before. He’s kinda angry though. At least I have something down on paper at this point. I’m feeling much better about that. This won’t be a huge quilt, but it will be detailed…I need to get going on it.

I made the first college payment tonight. Freaky. Scary too. I miss them so much when I don’t see them, like on days when their dad has them and I have a late meeting. I don’t want to think about their being gone all the time. I had a plan for that. I was looking forward to it in some ways. Now I dread it. Sad but true. I didn’t want to be that mom.

So the books I’ve read recently…Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice for book club later this month…really liked this one and already have the next one on order from the library…not formulaic (well, much), interesting fantasy story. Love the link to the dogs.

Then this showed up from the library…Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl…

Yes, I did just read Eleanor and Park. Coincidence. One came electronically and one in real live paper. I enjoyed this one too…it’s the one I read last night until the wee hours. Definitely YA nice falling-in-love stuff. Not sure that’s a good idea for me to read, so it makes total sense that I should move on to this one…The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer Smith…

(Just between you and me, I think it should be The Geography of Me and You…I keep thinking of it that way and getting confused about it.) This was a Netgalley book, so I’ll be reviewing it separately. I hadn’t read her stuff before though…if that matters. It seems like the majority of my summer reading list is the next book in a series I’m already reading or the next book by an author whose stuff I am constantly reading. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There probably is something wrong with reading the YA lovey-dovey stuff…it’s not realistic at all and just throws me back into the wishful-thinking stages of middle school and high school. I don’t need to go back there with all the girly drama and inability to communicate and little boys running away from reality. So yes, the next book on my reading list is fantasy recommended by boychild. That said, he has a huge crush (OK, he would be mad if I called it that) on the women of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly (hell, so do I)…so who knows what this book will be like.

Summer approaches. I’m making a list, checking it twice. I have a ton of crap to do. Wish me luck.

Falling Apart

I spent my weekend ironing her together…

Really, she deserves better than me. A nicer artist, one who doesn’t bitch so much about her parts. And once I’d gotten her all together, there was the issue of backing. Well, I had one left over from the Celebrating Silver piece…I’d originally wanted to do it on this dark purple batik…

which really IS dark purple in real life (my camera can’t handle it). And I couldn’t remember if I’d picked something else for this piece. I doubted it, since when I pick backgrounds, they go in a specific pile to the right of the door…and there were the two I bought for the Menopause quilt, which is up next in the progress pile, and then the purple was still sitting there from January or December or whenever it was I got ballsy and bought a whole ‘nother background for the first time in my life.

So I auditioned it…

And I had already convinced myself that it wouldn’t work, that the hair was too dark, and maybe I should pick a blue, but then that would make the lungs too important and the bird wouldn’t stand out enough, and fuck it, maybe now was the time to go with yellow, but I fucking HATE yellow.

Anyway. It worked. It’s a good thing I don’t really listen to my brain. It’s a stupid prat most of the time. It worked. I ironed it down. Total ironing time from start to finish? 6 hours and 8 minutes. This is not a particularly large or complicated piece. It’s good to have some of these in your stash…not huge but with a forceful impact. It has 366 pieces. That’s like nothing for me. So now I have two tops ready to be stitched down, sandwiched, and quilted. Hopefully I’ll start on one of those this week. Of course, I have to do grades too, and at the moment, I think I have a meeting every night this week…close to it anyway. So I’ll try. Then I’ll start ironing the big one together, and maybe by then, I’ll have enough brain power to draw the one that has to be done in November. Plus there are like three other drawings that want to be quilts right now. These two were just the least challenging emotionally. The next one will be a bitch to make and a bitch to finish.

Such is the artmaking at the moment. Bitchy.

Last night, I did a night kayaking event…

We loaded up on the kayaks at about 8 (there were a lot of us) and then set out in Mission Bay towards Sea World…

Why? Fireworks. On the water…for free.

It was awesome. Well, except there were a LOT of kayaks in a small space, so that was difficult. There was one kayak of two young girls who were always in sync (unlike my partner and I, who had never met, let alone kayaked together), but overcorrected like crazy, so it looked like they were tacking a sailboat directly in front of us. Avoiding others was a challenge.

It was about 6 miles and 2 hours. And did I mention how awesome it was? We were sopping wet by the end.

Kayak oars just drip water on you. But it was June in San Diego, slightly chilly, but not too cold for flipflops. The lights on the water were freaking beautiful, my kayaking partner and I had a lot in common (divorced moms, kids the same age, etc.), so we had a good conversation while waiting for the fireworks to start. I had never kayaked at night, and I loved it. The peaceful feeling of being on the water and not really being able to see anything was great. Plus it didn’t hurt my knee. I might try a baby hike next weekend to test the knee out. Who knows.

Anyway. That was a good thing.

I got notification on Friday of yet another rejection: “Your work isn’t quite right.” Yeah. Whatever. I had actually forgotten about it…a European magazine that was interested in writing an article about my work, but not everyone was on board, so there we are. I’m not trying very hard at the moment to put anything out there. It takes too much energy…energy I don’t have. So much energy wasted dealing with teenagers, trying to negotiate shit. That would be my own kids, mostly. My counselor said I should just ask her (them?) to tell me what they want from me. So often, though, the answer is “I don’t know.” It’s true…they don’t know…they just know to pick fights, to push away, to make it difficult. Again, I know it’s normal. I just can’t handle it.

And then one of the teenagers in question turns around and offers to cook every night this week and comes up with recipes for every meal (OK, every night I have her anyway). I might have to cook one or two of the meals, but I didn’t have to come up with them. That’s a gift in itself. I think I try to take every positive interaction and hold it close to kind of cushion me against the negative ones. It’s hard, though. Very hard.

Meditation talked about being present throughout the whole day, this concept of being mindful (sometimes I think I am Way Too Mindful, that I would be better off if I were a bit more oblivious…there is no Obliviousness Training). He says that everyone wants to be happy, but negative emotions can be so strong that we can’t banish them. That’s where I’m at, I guess. Although I do manage some days to banish the negative, but there’s no positive to fill up that space. I get brief snatches of enjoyment: when I was kayaking, when the lights of the fireworks were reflecting off the water, when I hung up the new quilt top. Then reality kicks in and tries to brush all that aside. “You didn’t prep for school. You should have graded more. You shouldn’t have spent money last night on kayaking.” That’s a hard one, the money. I have to really budget for any frivolities. Seriously. Like how many book clubs meetings can I do a month, because each one wants money for parking and money for anything I might eat or drink there, and I can’t just put off eating for hours any more…my blood sugar raises its ugly head (actually, it sinks like a stone), and on good days, I remember and feed myself or carry food, but every $20 on a glass or two of wine or a kayak for a night…it all adds up. Everything I have planned for the summer is going to cost more money (renting a wallpaper steamer for the two bathrooms, painting interior of the house, steam-cleaning the disgusting carpets from the 1980s, going to life drawing, making quilts). I so much want to take a week-long trip somewhere away from all this shit and just recharge, and that isn’t going to happen. There isn’t money. And where would I go? I would probably just fall apart.

I am falling apart. I’ve been falling apart all year…like a constant tipping over and pieces falling to the ground, then cycling back up to do it again. Nasty shit that. Falling apart over and over again so I can fall apart again. Broken.

Hermitlike

Hermit mode. Grading and ironing. Head barely comes up for air. Or communication. I’m not sure this is the healthiest place to be when you don’t have some sort of anchor at the other end of the making. I used to have that, something that pulled me up and out when I was done making for hours and hours, that would make me be out in the world and talk and make decisions that weren’t just fabric-related. Now I have to force myself to do that. It feels painful sometimes, like, dammit…I don’t WANT to try and be social with other people and make small talk and try to NOT think about the art in my head. But I know I need to do that fairly regularly, or I will be that hermit. It’s not a happy place to be. It’s too much like hard work. I’ve done a lot of hard work in the last year…

So tonight I am headed out to an activity that sounded fun, but it’s with a ton of people I don’t know. I’m OK with that. I could have played it easy and gone to the other gathering with all the people I normally hike with, but this sounded better. I picked the activity, not the people. Hmn. Not particularly healthy if I’m trying to not be a hermit. Oh well. The brain does what it wants.

I spent about 4 hours ironing things together today…

I graded in the morning too…up way too early because the girlchild had SAT subject tests. But it meant I got a bunch done in the morning and then rewarded myself with hours of artmaking time.

I’m wasting time playing Clash of Clans…I’m not very good at it and I don’t really understand it (yeah, I know), but some people from school are playing. There was a war today and I was supposed to fight two battles…I’m better at defense than offense, shockingly.

I don’t spend hours on it. I don’t spend hours on anything except for art and reading books and drawing. Maybe sleep.

Putting the lungs together was kind of a pain in the butt…lots of little overlapping pieces that tried to drive me nuts…

But eventually I got most of the torso ironed down.

Yes, those are fish on her arm.

Then I managed to make the face fit where it was supposed to fit, although I needed to add two little pieces of hair color under the ear for some reason…

The bird was the last thing I ironed together.

My real problem is that I don’t remember what I was going to use for the background. I’m not sure I ever chose a background fabric. So I might have to find something here or go shopping for something that will work. But it’s ready to iron to the background fabric. Success! Wah. Whatever. I think I am looking too hard for that feeling of fulfillment. I think I have to wait patiently until it arrives. What kind of artist am I? The tortured kind. The drawings spill out of me in some attempt to heal the breaks, the cracks, the dust of a former self, but it does not stop. It’s shattered. It hurts to finish things.

I’m almost done cutting out fabrics for the other big quilt…you can actually see the bottom of the middle box…the stuff to be cut out. So maybe another couple of hours? It’s deceptive to see that few pieces…they don’t get cut out quickly, unfortunately.

Kitten is still coming out to visit in the living room at night. It’s nice.

OK. I have to try and be sociable now. You can’t make me.

Exorcising Demons

It’s interesting how angry I am at this piece. At all of them maybe. Certainly at the Earth Stories piece…I don’t ever want to see it again. I may get over that. I’m angry at myself for letting my emotional existence affect my enjoyment of making art. Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. There’s no point in being angry at myself for something I don’t really have any control over…despite all the happy shit on Pinterest that says it’s my decision to be this way. Fuck you Pinterest. Seriously. Who asked you?

Yeah right. Anyway. I’ve avoided this sucker all week…too tired to stand after work. Seriously that tired. Somehow today, when I taught just like always, then went to finish up the refi after work (this might be how I survive the summer), then came home and went directly to the gym, came home again and cooked and did dishes…plus graded papers. On a day like that, you’d expect me to just collapse on the couch, never to rise again.

Fuck that shit. I’m not going to be that person. It may kill me to keep making art when it feels so sucky to do so, but hell, it can’t be worse than sitting around and doing nothing. So I ironed…and I wasn’t sure about it at all until I saw the photograph.

Oh yes. That’s nice. That’s going to kick some butt when the fingers are all stitched down and outlined. I am liking that hand. It’s a pain in the butt to iron, of course, because the overlaps aren’t logical and nice, but I’m getting there. This is about two hours in (with the torso already ironed below). Not a lot of pieces…just a pain in the ass. Nothing new in Kathy Art world. Welcome to my ability to punish myself with my own artwork.

I also cut pieces out…

a little of both worlds tonight. I’m 16 hours into this, and probably still have at least two to three more to go. This is the biggie that will eat up a large portion of the summer. Plus the next one, which doesn’t exist. Then there are at least 3 drawings done in the last year that want to be new quilts. Plus I need to do some smaller ones for shows that don’t like boobies. Assholes.

Who needs a personal life. I’ll just keep making art and hiding in my room, coming out for work and the occasional something or other. Fuck the world. I wrote that all over my notebook in high school. FTW. Not sure my attitude’s changed much in 30 years. I guess I’m more likely to say it out loud now.

I’ve spent all week explaining to my female students that Nature isn’t fair, that there isn’t an equivalent to their 40 years of periods and giving birth for the boys…although I personally think that giving birth and nursing babies is one of the most fucking awesome things I’ve ever done (not wanting to do it again, though, and pregnancy was hell for me, like want-to-die hell). But it would be nice to not have the rest of it. They’re pissed, my girl students. They don’t think it’s fair. They want payback. I don’t blame them.

I was ironing and the cord was hanging down in front of Babygirl. Apparently she thought she needed to play with it (smart animal) and got her claws stuck in it while I was ironing…

Sigh. She is not particularly bright. So she’s semi-yowling and trying to rip her claws through an electrical cord, and I’m trying to free her from the nasty beast, and she’s trying to kill me in the process, because that’s how her tiny little brain works. I do feel sorry for her. We take in the losers and the mutants here.

The mood is still bleak. Then I look back at that ironed breast up there and smile, slightly, to myself. That’s good. Keep doing that. The smiles might stick if you do it enough. You don’t have to like them once they’re done. The Earth Stories quilt? It can travel for years. I don’t particularly want the memories of making it under duress back in my house. The quilt itself is fine…it’s all the emotional shit that’s sewed INTO it that can go fuck itself. So yeah. When you make art to exorcise your demons, it’s better if they stay gone, out, far away. Don’t let those assholes come back home.

Trying to Find the Way Out.

The boychild trying to amuse me in the morning (because he didn’t take the recycling out again): Shows me his super-expensive (required by the course) graphing calculator, which you can program to do certain functions, pushes a series of buttons and tells me to hit enter: his calculator then tells me it sees dead people. Sigh. Grin. This because last night Calli (the Golden Retriever) seemed to either be scared of her shadow in the entryway or telling me there were ghosts outside the door. Not sure which. Put her to bed so I wouldn’t have to think about it. Then thought about the fact that my protector, the dog, is hiding behind ME. Hmn.

I’m trying to control parts of my life so that the uncontrolled parts don’t feel so vast and empty. In trying to explain yesterday to one class why kids cut themselves (yes, teaching sex ed covers a wide range of topics, including suicide and depression and cutting), I tried to talk about the need for control, and how in some people, it gets messed up. That their need for control is so strong and their own lives are so out of control, that what they choose to control seems crazy to the rest of us (anorexia, bulimia as well). I left school and went and controlled some stuff (refi’d my mortgage). Then went home, where the chaos reigns, and tried to deal. I can control the errands. After that, it’s questionable.

My knee is having major problems. This is not good. I’m not hiking until it stops. I may need to deal with a doctor on this one. It sucks. I hate that the body gets in the way of treating the mind, because hiking and walking treats my mind, the depression, and I’m not going to be able to do that for a while. Not sure how long. Hate this.

Girlchild had her followup back appointment, post-surgery. She’s cleared to start soccer practice and running in two weeks. She was hoping to be cleared yesterday, so she ended up being depressed about that. Mad because I had scheduled it then and not when she would be allowed to play. I don’t think that’s how we planned it, but whatever. So it was a weird day, because I only taught half the day, but I had to get up early and deal with freeway traffic and crap.

Back to that place where it feels like the sky is pressing down on your shoulders, blocking your ability to breathe. It feels like a heavy blanket…ironic, because it is a beautifully sunny day out there, it’ll be in the mid-80s. It’s spring going into summer in Southern California…where depression feels completely out of place, because nature just laughs at you. Not only am I going to fuck your KNEE up, but I’m going to make it a beautiful day! So fuck you. Wow. I see how it is.

I try to pull myself out of these. I was dancing in 6th period to 70s funk (some of the kids know some of it). I graded a bunch of journals when I got back early from the doctor’s appointment. I can’t send my sub home early, so I might as well use that time. My goal was to not have to work last night. Turns out I didn’t have the energy anyway.

I did manage some cutting, about an hour (it’s always about an hour…).

It’s getting there. The pile in the middle, the to-be-cut pile, is getting noticeably smaller. There’s a lot of big fleshy pieces in there now, which are easier for me to cut (and deal with mentally). For some reason, the small tiny bitchy pieces just depress me. I pick up a piece with a ton of tiny pieces on it and I just feel overwhelmed. But when I pick up a huge piece that probably has just as much complicated cutting going on, it seems more doable. Makes no sense. I haven’t managed to go back to ironing the other one together either. I’m just too tired these days. Ironic. I’m sleeping more. The other side of depression? Sleep instead of wakefulness? Or something else? I’m always having to second-guess what my body is doing. And the brain. What does THIS mean? What did I do to cause this? Blood sugar, sleep, weight issues. All so uncontrollable. Maybe I will have to clean something to make it better in my head.

I enjoy some parts of journal grading. It really is a relief to grade a perfect journal…

and then some of them are so creative…

Guess which one was done by a girl and which one was done by a boy. I wish that weren’t so obvious, but it often is. Not always.

I think my mood is connected to something disappointing that happened at school, disappointing because of the kids involved and because I had just talked to them about the three results of bullying in middle and high school: 1. the kid just deals with it and moves on. 2. the kid attempts to or succeeds in killing him or herself. 3. the kid stockpiles guns and comes back to school and kills you for being an asshole. (I don’t use those exact words, but…) And then it doesn’t seem to matter what teachers say, because they still do that shit and consequences still happen. So I already know I have to go to school today and be visibly and verbally disappointed in behaviors that are totally normal in our society (our brains really are fucked-up messes) for reasons of control. Because if you feel like less of a person, then you turn around and make someone else feel worse.

It’s OK, guys. My brain is doing it FOR you. You don’t have to do a thing. I can bully myself.

I will find a way out of this shit. I swear. I don’t want to live in here. I want to live somewhere else. Like out there. Where the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I can hear them; I just can’t find the way out there. Seriously, that was last night’s dream, running around school hallways, trying to find the way out, trying to find my kids (my students). I don’t know what that’s about.

An article about the Quilt National exhibit in San Jose is here.

An article about the Earth Stories exhibit in Michigan is here.

My work is in both, but you can only see mine in the second article.

You Don’t SOUND Fine…

I’ve never been a fan of the question “How are you?” People don’t really want to know how you are. They want to hear “I’m fine, how are you?” and then you move on to such other niceties as the weather and the kids. “Good morning,” also drives me nuts. I don’t do mornings well. I have learned how to mostly behave in these situations and parrot the appropriate words, but there are times when I wish I could just tell the truth. I had this conversation with a friend recently and it was nice to know that I’m not the only one thinking that all the time, but I wonder why we still go along with it. People don’t want the deeper relationship that means telling the truth. They don’t want to know that I slept OK, but only because I spent an hour or so last night drawing demons out on paper, and before that I had to meditate AND exercise, and that before that, right after I walked in the door, I was curled up in a ball in bed, in my flannel nest (it’s June in Southern California…I might have to give up on flannel soon, but dammit…that’s my NEST…it’s safe there), crying my eyes out because…well…teenagers. Girlchild knocked on the door at one point and said, “Mommy, are you OK?” “I’m fine.” “You don’t SOUND fine.” And yet I am. As fine as I was the day before and the day before that. Fine is some measure of average for the last X number of days. This is fine. It could be worse.

I’m back in the bathtub. (A series!) This image showed up in my head a few days ago, persistently and violently enough that I typed a description of it into my phone. I don’t remember where I was, but it was entirely inappropriate to be drawing bathtub pictures wherever I was.

It’s not quite done. I think there needs to be a rug on the floor and maybe a dog or cat, or both, curled up on it. Maybe. Back to visualizing different parts of the brain interacting with each other. Except one is asleep. Or unconscious. Don’t let Freud into my head. I won’t come out alive. I like how the water hides stuff.

I was up late last night because girlchild was at her first concert without adults…she wanted One Republic tickets for Christmas, so we bought three and she took two friends.

And I was the parent in charge of making sure kids got home…it’s late afternoon now, nope, almost evening, and she is zonked out in her bed…she’s supposed to be going to her dad’s house and I need to go to the gym (but I need my blood sugar to stabilize before I go). I will need to wake her up soon or she will never go back to sleep tonight (there’s a temptation to just let her sleep all night, eh?).

My mood is in that place, that empty place. I wonder how I get from uber-sad and down and done with the world to this flat place. It’s Flatland. There’s nothing as far as the eye can see. It’s just flat dirt, no rocks or plants, nothing in the sky to give you a heads up on where you are or whether you’re moving at all. Everything is flat and dead. Maybe I cried it all out yesterday. There’s no emotion here. It’s just empty.

Last night, I was being watched…by Kitten.

She is now coming out of my room at night to hang out in the living room with me and Midnight and sometimes Calli (they actually called her Calliope at the vet today…I had forgotten that was her name…Kitten’s name is really Holly…even more confusing). She hides from Babygirl…doesn’t like her. Barely tolerates Midnight…at least they can be in the same room together. I feel like I’m negotiating with enemy forces when dealing with the cats.

I had the chiropractor again yesterday, only two weeks after the last one…because the last one was so bad. It’s better now, but I got to be on the roller table again…

Yup, that sucker is ANCIENT, but feels delightful. It’s called the Spinalator…

which just makes me laugh.

See, I can laugh. And draw. And mostly teach and function OK, though not well…just OK. My decision-making powers are not great. I read a lot. I hibernate a lot. I don’t want to deal with things I should probably be dealing with. But I exercise and meditate and feed everyone and go to work every day. I have a to-do list and I try to do the things on it. I try to be normal. Well, normal for me.

So how am I? Huh. I don’t know today. That flat thing. I’m tired. I need to go to the gym. I need to work. I need to make art. At least I know those things. I don’t know much else. I guess that’s fine.

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)