Yeah. I Know. Whatever.

Crying in the morning? Sheesh. Thanks brain. Stop repeating the same phrases over and over. You need to get through the week without all this trauma. It’s only Wednesday. You shouldn’t be panicking yet. Yes, the Have-To list is huge, scary. I hear Julie telling me to Be Brave over and over in my head, but I don’t have Brave left. I just have Survive. Survive will work for this time of year…it usually does. I remember to breathe.

Buried in meetings doesn’t help…I’m having real problems with afternoon meetings at the moment. It’s never been my best time of day…I’m fine if I’m standing, but if I sit down, my body thinks it’s time to nap. I’ve always had this issue with afternoon staff meetings. My solution was to draw…it’s the same thing I did in school when I had afternoon classes (or if the class was really boring). I drew all over the agenda, in the margins, wherever. At one point, I drew on my feet and on someone else’s jeans (high school and college). Drawing keeps enough of my brain focused so I won’t fall asleep. It entertains the part that gets in trouble otherwise.

So in today’s union meeting, while taking copious notes on the meeting so I could repeat the info to my team, I drew…

I didn’t really have a plan when I started with the turtle, and it just went from there. It kept my brain occupied for about 45 minutes (in between the notetaking). When I put the drawing away, the woman sitting next to me asked what I was drawing. OK. YOU look at the drawing above and tell me what you would have said. My answer? “Lots of things.” She was offended. Like she thought I was blowing her off. Girlchild said I should have just shown it to her, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain anything. Whatever. People have the expectation that artists want to share everything we do because we hang art up on the walls (or put it on a pedestal or suspend it from a bridge…whatever), but sometimes I’m just drawing and it’s not yours just because I’m an artist and share some of my stuff. I’m pretty private about my drawings until they’re done…or sometimes until they’re actual quilts. Ironic that I say that, because I put them on here all the time…but that’s not the same as you in person asking me about it. There’s some distance here. I’m really talking to myself anyway…because I need to spend more time doing that? Yeah. I know.

Or maybe I was just tired and misread her tone and look. I think she said, “I see.” But in that tone. I know. Whatever. Meditate your way past other people’s responses. Just deal with your own response. The drawing helped me in the moment. That’s all I needed it to do, and it was successful.

Because otherwise I would have had to say that I was drawing a turtle with a cat on its back and a bust of some woman whose hands weren’t really attached with a sunflower growing out of her shoulder and a UFO buzzing her head, as she flicks a fish out across the eyeball tree that is growing out of the turtle’s head, as a volcano erupts and a bird tries to avoid the lava and ash, and a small thorn bush grows out of a rocky landscape. And that just wasn’t going to fly. Plus I don’t think I could have said that with a straight face.

This was after a long day at school of presenting, duty, chasing down my errant computer cart (apparently reserving it is not enough). Technology frustration today as the server again crashed. The new system we’ll be using next year in February or so will not have this problem because it won’t go through the server. God knows what problems it WILL have, but that won’t be one of them. I am the Queen of Adaptation, though…we made it work. The next 5 days of school will be a lot of adaptation on my part and my students’ parts as they get a big project done for science. Fun stuff. Solving the world’s problems.

Speaking of solving the world’s problems, Sion posted a link to this video describing depression as a black dog…it’s really well done…

Mine is never a black dog. It’s a cloud or a hole…or both. I like dogs too much to saddle them with that. I usually feel like I’m in a hole. It’s cold and muddy most of the time. Sometimes it’s very quiet, but not in a comfortable way. Sometimes everything is muffled and I can’t hear anything right, let alone feel it right. Occasionally something pokes through and really hurts, but mostly it’s like being wrapped in cotton balls…again, not in a good way, but sort of a suffocating way. I wonder how long it will be like this. I do all the right things. Good Kathy. Bark.

Yeah. Whatever.

I’m managing Christmas decorations at home (I still have Halloween up at school…if it weren’t for Janet, I wouldn’t have any appropriate holiday decorations at all in my classroom) very very slowly. We got the tree and I got the lights up. I managed the mantle yesterday evening. Tonight I did 10 ornaments. At this rate, I’ll be done by January 10. Maybe some kid will stop by the tree and hang some things. You never know.

I had this discussion in my head of highlighter colors. I like orange and blue. Purple is too dark. Yellow and pink just suck, but I’d rather use pink than yellow. I used 10 colors of whiteboard marker at school today. That made my day a little better. Stupid stuff. I didn’t even know I had two shades of brown. The teacher just wants to color.

It was pajama day at school today, my favorite day of the year. So comfortable. I even went to the meeting after school with them still on.

I’m hiding from my email at the moment. Trying not to read anything from anyone. Hiding from Facebook. Hiding from school email. Can’t handle anything rocking my boat emotionally. Not feeling stable. Just feeling. Meditation says if we never acknowledge and spend time with the bad feelings, we won’t really understand the good. I do believe that. I know people who think they never feel bad, never feel cranky or irritable when they obviously do. I am less cranky now…the sad doesn’t leave much room for anything else. It’s kinda big. Encompassing. Overwhelming.

I cut out pieces tonight. I didn’t have the energy to draw the rest of last night’s drawing…

Maybe tomorrow night. I didn’t cut out very much…I didn’t have much time.

The leftovers are sometimes more interesting anyway.

We’re worried about Calli tonight. She is in pain from something…hard to tell whether it is her hips (she has a bad dysplasia and will need surgery sometime in the future) or her stomach or something else. We’ve decided to watch and wait until tomorrow morning. Trying to fit a vet visit in right now is a little crazy. I have so many things on my work/home calendar that I probably shouldn’t attempt sleep at all…until the 22nd maybe.

She couldn’t get up onto the girlchild’s bed, which is where she always sleeps. We couldn’t even lift her up…it hurt her too much. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow morning. Poor baby.

Looks like I will have a piece in Ojai, California, February-March. I had to look it up on the map. Besides knowing it was in California, I drew a total blank. More on that later…for now, I need to try to sleep. More sleep good. Maybe then I can hold off the morning weepies.

Braindead…

I’m feeling more and more braindead this season. Intellectual conversation? With whom? Occasionally a kid or two, but on nights when they are with their dad, the conversation is missing. I talk to the cats. I read. I talk to nothing human. Seriously…I have talked to no one since 5:25. Before that, it was the guy at Petco who wanted to know why I looked so tired (gee thanks mister). That’s it. I joined some groups where I might be able to get some of that conversation, but it’s hard to fit it in to days when I don’t get to the gym until almost 6 PM. Am I really thinking I’ll be going out after I work out, shower, and eat? That’s after 9 PM? Yeah. Not happening. The non-gym nights are taken up by kid stuff and soccer games.

Then I realized it’s already December 10 and I haven’t dealt with Christmas much…I usually send a letter (um. yeah.) and I need to do the online shopping like very soon. Plus there’s all the holiday parties with potluck stuff, because I have time to cook as well. Sigh. I’m not a fan of this time of year. I say no to lots, but there’s some things I just can’t get out of.

So once I had finished the gym and feeding the body (don’t really care much about food any more), I had an internal debate between the brain that wanted to draw and the brain that was worried about getting everything cut out before Winter Break. Drawing won.

It’s been a while. I have about 17 drawings in my head. I’ve taken notes on some of them; they’re on my phone. This one obviously isn’t done. More crone/menopausal stuff. I do have a couple more in the sketchbook that I still haven’t finished, though. I need some concentrated time to draw without other things weighing on me (cough school cough). I’m already thinking ahead to what’s next, trying to make plans.

I’m hoping to finish the quilting of the Love quilt sometime in the next week (it’s probably only an hour or two), plus finish cutting out all the Celebrating Silver pieces. There’s a soccer tournament right before Christmas that will eat up a ton of time…I’d like to have the quilt all ironed down before Christmas, but I’m not sure I can pull that off. I need to have the Silver piece done by the end of break. I think I want to do a couple smaller pieces to start the new year, but there are also two larger drawings I’d like to make into quilts. BUT, I have another piece I have to finish by November as well. I haven’t drawn it yet…maybe my goal over break is to just get it drawn. I think I’m OK on time even if I toss another big quilt in there somewhere.

Of course, reality usually kicks my ass, so we’ll see. I like to make plans, though. People always tell me how impressed they are by how much I get done. I write it down. I have time spreadsheets in my head. I hold myself accountable here. I probably chastise myself for not getting stuff done too much…obsessive? Yeah. I guess. It’s a drive, though. It’s so strong, I feel sick when I don’t make/create. It’s worse now…miss one DAY, and I start to get antsy, like I’m coming out of my skin. It really is my sanity at the moment.

I finished Kevin Hearne’s Hexed tonight…

It’s the second book in the Iron Druid Chronicles…easy but interesting read…vampires, werewolves, druids, witches, and a variety of gods and goddesses…always fun. Quick to read and enjoyable. Not sure what book is next on the list…there are quite a few. There’s another book club book, plus the third book in a series I’m reading, plus I don’t know what else. Hard to choose sometimes. I have about 6 real live paper books on hold at the library, some are on their way for pick up and some are hold 43 of 280. I don’t know when I’ll see that one. Then I have another 4 books on hold through the online library, which is the same library but a separate lending system, which is often confusing. Then the girlchild has a couple real live books for me to read and wants to loan me a series of three or four books that are on her Kindle, which means I have to be able to read them within 14 days, because that’s how long she can loan them to me. Confused yet? I am. I see so few people reading these days…except for Facebook and email. It’s sad. I love reading.

I also seem to be getting back into reading graphic novels, partially because of NetGalley, but also because I just like them. I don’t have the money to go to the movies as much as I used to, so this is the next best thing, when I can find them free…which is hard sometimes, because I like the more alternative stuff and it tends NOT to be available that way.

Anyway. I blame my braindead status on reading and drawing tonight. Oh and the gym. I don’t know if braindead is good or bad. I did meditate too…it talked about change. Do I want it? Yes I do. I just don’t know how or when. That’s always the problem, though, isn’t it? I don’t want to change so much that I am no longer making art or spending time with the kids. I don’t need something big. I need a change IN me more than outside…a change in how I feel about life, because this isn’t fun. But that’s the harder thing, isn’t it? Being able to change this cloud over me, the hole I’m in…that’s just slow and plodding. There’s no magic wand or pixie dust for that. Meanwhile, my brain is blank. Maybe it’s just tired. Try again tomorrow.

Apparently Balanced

My brain is kind of drained at the moment. All the activities of the day have sucked out any relevant thoughts for now. I had plenty of them before. I’m not sure where they went. Maybe they got bored and wandered off.

It was a really busy day. I have duty before and after school for two weeks, which tends to suck up a lot of time and energy (morning duty at the tables? Makes me want to shoot myself. It’s early, I’m not really awake, it was bloody freezing this morning, and it’s all about picking up trash and their high energy vs my incredibly low energy at that hour and temperature…they win). We had a meeting about students, then I had tutorial after school, which is like herding peeing puppies who are constantly yapping and snapping at each other. I did manage to get work out of them today, though. Miraculous. It restores my faith every time they do that…I guess that’s why I can teach, because I constantly believe they can do it if I just work hard enough to persuade them to do it…and many of them DO. Freaky. We have meetings galore in the next two weeks to deal with kids and grades etc…which sucks up a lot of time too.

After school, I booked it to the girlchild’s soccer game. I’m actually glad I was only there for the last 27 minutes, because I almost froze in that short period of time, even though I remembered boots, two sweatshirts, and gloves (two sweatshirts were not enough). Plus I was trying to sew and had to take the gloves off. Mistake.

Home to make dinner…oh no, no you don’t…back to the ex’s house to retrieve Biology book and practice shorts while girlchild tries to get her head (and nauseous stomach) ready for tons of homework. She literally has tons of homework. Realized today that with ex gone for two weeks, I will have to provide dinner EVERY NIGHT. What the fuck? Shit. Not ready for that. Can barely manage what I’m doing now. Would let the girlchild cook, but she is buried in schoolwork. Need Meals on Wheels for busy working mom.

Made dinner, had argument (discussion? is it ever a discussion with two teenagers or is it always an argument?) about sexist portrayals in fiction. Read some examples. Confirmed sexism. Don’t know if I care…the books are good so far. Did grades for a while, then onto the bike for nightly exercise, followed by meditation aka crying and breathing. At the same time. A feat unknown to man? Well sure, but woman is pretty damn good at it. Then finally…49 minutes of cutting out pieces…

I’m only 3 1/2 hours in. I’m not getting much time at night at the moment. Sucks. Not home enough. Anyway, I’m doing it. The green? Lungs. Yup. Aren’t your lungs green with pink flowers? I’m sure mine are. There are some bitchy pieces to cut out in that bin. If I’m tired, I just cut out the easy pieces and leave the hard ones for when I’m more awake. I think I’m hoping cutting fairies will come by and do those. I guess that’s unlikely.

Busy. Tired. Telling the brain to fuck off. Half of my brain says one thing, thinking logically, making plans and decisions, seeing the Big Picture. The other half is a fucked-up mess and is just flailing around in emotional crap so deep it can’t get out. It wants to draw. I almost let it tonight, but then I saw how late it was. Need to sleep. Maybe I will have time to draw tomorrow night…I’ll be minus the tutorial, the soccer game, and the grading…or will I? Huh. But I will add the gym. Another time sucker, but definitely a good cause. Trying to just sit in the emotional half of the brain and let it do what it needs to do. Either I’ll understand it more or the emotions will be less of an issue. Or something. Meditation helps. Even when I sit there thinking about 1-2 1/2 hours spent every night meditating and exercising, I wonder if that’s sustainable…it has to be. If it keeps me sane, keeps me moving, keeps me calmer, it’s worth it. So just do it. My priorities have changed. More art, less school. Less work at home. More exercise. Meditate. Fewer people (that might not be a good thing). Apparently cry…that’s a daily thing. I could do without that one. Wonder if I ever will.

This morning, as I was updating some of the website, I was feeling all cranky about only getting into 7 exhibits in 2013, but then I realized that it was 8 exhibits, and I already have pieces in 4 shows in 2014 and 2014 hasn’t even started yet. So shut up, stupid brain. You’re doing fine. Stop being such a mope about stuff. Make the work. The shows will come. And if they don’t? You will still make the work. That’s the logical half talking to the emotional half. They don’t really get along at the moment. The logic is frustrated with the emotion, and the emotion thinks the logic doesn’t listen…because hey, most of the time it doesn’t.

Here’s a video Luana Rubin of eQuilter did of the SAQA exhibits at IQF Houston, including People and Portraits…

You can decide if that quilt is truly whimsical, or just plain old disturbing. Funny that it’s about being Fully Medicated, but I keep trying to get away from meds, and I keep having to take more. I should do one called Over Medicated, except I’m not. I have this Tshirt that says USDA Organic…which is ironic, because I’m not organic…I’m full of meds that keep my systems apparently balanced because my body doesn’t know how to, even though for half the ailments I have, I was told if I lost the weight, they would all go back to normal. Fucking liars. Well, the meds are supposed to keep everything balanced, but I don’t think I’m there yet…I’m freezing again. Under Medicated also might be fun to draw.

Apparently balanced: despite all the mindfucks that are going on at the moment, I seem to have found a balance between art and work that is somewhat functional: basically do very little grading at home. Do art every night. If there’s a question about how to use my time? Art wins. That’s sustainable. I hope.

That Road Is Burnt Out…

Remember those mornings, few and far between since becoming a parent, the ones you used to covet…dozing in the morning? Not awake yet, but you don’t have to be awake either, half dreaming. Those are my enemy now…that’s when my brain dreams stuff I don’t want to dream, stuff I can normally push to the back of my brain and ignore, because honestly why waste time on stories like that, trying to answer the whys…there’s no fucking point now in knowing the whys. Even my counselor said it would be helpful for me, though, since it makes it even more difficult to traverse my own healing with none of the questions answered. But if you realize, again, that there is only one person you have to deal with for the rest of your life, maybe what other people think doesn’t matter…of course, that’s not true. Which sucks. So the morning. It kicked my ass. But I got up anyway. The cable guy was coming to fix something. I had to be up and showered. Probably a damn good thing, because I’m not sure what I would’ve done if he hadn’t been coming.

I slept badly. Which also sucks. Damn cats. Damn brain, mopey piece of shit. Damn life…damn job. OK, but my students decided Friday was National Hug Day (it wasn’t) and about 30 of them hugged me. I think it was a conspiracy. My counselor was trying to talk me out of a label someone else gave me, of being negative, and she finished by telling me those kids wouldn’t be hugging me if I were at core a negative thinker…kids don’t like that. She’s right…it wasn’t me. I may be cynical, but I’m not inherently negative. Depressed? Damn straight. That’s fixable. I hope.

We’re still working on my stress reaction. I do all the right things (exercise, meditation, get outside, see people, write about it, try and manage whatever the fuck is causing it)…I’m missing the stress relief that comes from being in a good relationship, but the goal is to be self-sufficient, to cope with high stress without being reliant on someone else for how you feel. I don’t trust anyone else right now anyway and probably won’t for a while, so I should probably become even more independent than I already am? Except I was told I was too independent. I don’t know where to draw the line…independent as fuck on certain things, vulnerable and willing to get help on others? Confusing. Wish I could just go back to sleep…quiet sleep, no stupid dreams that wake me up sad and confused.

Meditation talks about the intellectual vs the emotional…the intellectual tries to fix what’s causing the emotion, ties it down and tries to get a confession out of it. In meditation, I am just supposed to rest in the emotion. I do. I do that all the time with the sad. I sit right there in the sticky marshmallow sad fluff and let it try to suffocate me. I just cry until the crying stops and the sad is still there, it comes in waves, sometimes so big they almost drown you, but always like a puddle of sad that you’re standing in, every fucking day, rarely do I get out of the puddle. Sticky mud grabbing my feet and keeping me cold. That’s sad. That’s depression. I can hold it off, stand in a mostly dry spot, for a few hours if I’m drawing or sewing…actually, that can be problematic. I sewed today and for the first hour, cried. Then I got the alpha waves. I get there faster at the gym with a good book. The physical drain helps more than the art drain. I need a treadmill with a sewing machine…

I did Quilting Impossible today: dark navy blue thread on dark navy blue background, right eyelid still twitching off and on, bad blinding light coming and going from cloudy day to sun, crying intermittently, blocking all necessary vision. Really stupid. But eventually it got me out of the stupid place. Remember how I said Sunday was going to be mean to me, fight me about getting art done? That’s why I quilted this morning…

for an hour and a half…

probably got a third of the way through the background quilting.

That bit has a lot of hair on it, fluff maybe too, which is why one of these is always on my machine…

A roll of packing tape for picking up hairs before I quilt over them, best I can. I remember going to the mountains once and forgetting that. Big mistake. Had to pick out all those hairs by hand. Pain in the ass. So the number-one use for packing tape in my house is not taping up packages…just so you know. And mostly at the moment, it’s because of this beast…

Who believes tea was put on the Earth for her consumption…

And gets mad at me if I do not allow her to sit where she likes (on the quilt that I’m currently quilting, in case you were wondering). Yup.

I kicked her off three times. She’s a stubborn beast. I bet you can imagine what she’s saying to me right now. Yes, she knows all those swear words.

So I thought I had beat Sunday, that the rest of it would be a piece of cake, because I had planned my day and managed to get myself up and out of bed and deal and actually do art-related stuff. Yeah. Stupid.

First of all, the toaster just died. I’m sure this was God telling me how he disapproves of me. If you actually believe that, please don’t tell me about it. I’m sure it was just its time to go. Deep breaths, though, because that’s more money going out in a month when it seems like I am bleeding cash. No, we cannot survive December without a toaster. Lame, eh? The electric teapot or the fridge will be next. I hope not. So I had to go out on another errand and find a new toaster. Girlchild was doing research at one of the local universities, SDSU, which if you live out here and know where I live, is west of me on the freeway. She had permission to drive, her dad had given her a map, and she was meeting people there. She was supposed to be home at 5. At 5:30, now dark, I called her dad because her phone wasn’t picking up…she’s notoriously bad about charging it. We started trying to call friends, but didn’t have the numbers for the people who were supposed to be with her (yes, we actually had to call one of her soccer coaches to get one number). Time kept going on and we were trying to decide what to do, since no one knew where she was, and she finally called, an hour late…freaking out…crying…from a Barnes and Noble in Mira Mesa (25 minutes north of here…not west…not even on the right freeway) because she had recognized it from my monthly stitching meeting. She borrowed a stranger’s phone and I told her how to get home (yes, I offered to drive up there and she said no). She walked in the door and into my arms sobbing 25 minutes later. Hard to be mad…but easy to be scared, both her and me (and her dad). So we’re revising some rules…but definitely making sure the phone charger is in the damn car is one thing. Scariest part is knowing that we will send her off to college in a year and a half and she will have to negotiate this stuff on her own. Make good friends, kid…meanwhile, we’re also having her memorize the freeway maps of San Diego County…she said the sign for Riverside is what scared her. Yup. So I grew at least 400 more white hairs tonight and my stomach is still a mess and now I’m grinding my teeth (yo, counselor…where do I put this into the stress scale?), but she’s here and safe and hopefully appropriately freaked herself out so she will pay better attention next time to phone and directions. Some things we all need to learn the hard way.

I keep telling myself that. Some things you have to learn the hard way, and apparently over and over again.

So it was a good thing that I had held true to my promise to get the damn tree…

It’s a little frazzled at the bottom, but it won’t be for long…

I started putting lights on it and it smells up the whole house in a good way.

I sat and cut out crazy-ass pieces for the Silver quilt…yes, that is the bottom of a bird wing…owl, I think. Call me crazy. You won’t be the first. Sad, scared, frustrated. It was a day. It tired me out. I’m taking it to bed. Hopefully the early wakeup call for work will scare off all the stupid dreams that betray my heart. Give it up, babe. That ain’t the way to happiness. That road is burnt out and a wasteland. There’s nothing there that will make you happy. Walk on. Once you get through all the sharp pointy rocks and the charcoal, there will be new growth. Next year when you’re putting the lights up, you’ll feel differently. You’ll be looking forward to the boychild coming home from college. It will be different. You will be different. All you have to do this year is get through it the best you can.

The Haiku of Exhaustion

I was too tired last night to even write the Haiku of Exhaustion. I seriously had the whole thing written in my head, but I fell asleep while meditating, and then I decided that multiple nights with less than 5 hours of sleep needed remediation. Intervention. Luckily my brain went along with it, because god knows I’ve thought that before, and my brain doesn’t always put sanity first. But I slept…hard…and well…until Kitten wanted to pee. But that was in the morning. And I had slept…the sleep of exhaustion. Meanwhile, I can’t remember the damn haiku. Maybe I dreamed myself writing it. I’ve dreamed myself writing novels before…dreamed the entire plot and outline and writing it and then woke up and lost it all. I’m probably a pretty amazing person in my dreams.

I drew tonight…

I drew at the South Park Walkabout. Yes. I went by myself. I went Christmas shopping and actually managed One Whole Item off my list. I ran into a friend and her family and got to answer the question of “are you here by yourself?” with clarifying questions twice. I held it together…although at one point I said something about being alone forever. I hope that’s not true, but it’s not off the table…that’s for sure. I did correct myself. I guess you’re never alone when you teach middle school. You’re never alone when you have kids…even when they move out. You’re never alone when you’re a cat lady in training. So there we are. Plus in my head, I might never be alone. Yes, her eyes are crooked. I was drawing in the dark…

I was drawing at the Station Tavern. One of the pluses of being alone, dammit, is that it’s easy to find somewhere to sit at restaurants where there is never room for two. The waitress asked if I was alone too (I guess I need a shirt…or a hat…or a sign…yes…yes, it’s just me…alone…thanks for reminding me). Then I got glared down by many bearded hipsters and their leather-clad vixens for taking up space at the table. Whatever, bitches. I was here first and I’m not taking up that much room.

Yes, that is Hipster Santa awkwardly flipping you off. That was what I was drawing to the glaring people. Let the old lady eat her dinner, people. It’s her treat for the month. She deserves it. Be nice.

The food was good. I brought half of it home. I felt OK. Then I got in the car and sobbed the whole way home. Whoops! Oh well. Shit happens. In my case, tears happen. Move on. I came home, built a fire in the fireplace, meditated, and started writing this post in that room (it’s warmer than this room…I’m in my office with my sweatshirt hood on my head, wishing I knew where my fingerless gloves were right now.).

So tonight was marginally better than last night…I cut out fabric pieces last night for a whopping 17 minutes (OK, that’s more than I did today). Work stuff got in the way…work holiday party. Sigh. Such a complicated thing, my work existence. Yes, the eyelid is still twitching. The last two weeks before break…brains are mush. Grades. Sigh. Wish I still had that mental buffer against work issues that I had back in September. But now our team has been approved for the first round of one-on-one computers, rolling them out in February or so. Deep breaths. I’ll get my head around it during Winter Break. We’ll have tablets for monitoring the kids and their work. And somehow magically everything I teach is going to migrate to the web. In three months or less. Yeah. And the Easter Bunny still exists. Santa too.

Today was gym, rain, soccer, rain, and errands, and yelling, and wow. Girlchild’s whole game was in a monsoon, I think.

OK, this was in between monsoonal bursts…there was one before the game even started. I went and sat in the car and graded during that one, only coming out about 5 minutes before the game started. Then we had about three downpours in the first half…

But I stitched through them.

I didn’t stitch much. My hands were cold and I was trying to keep stuff dry. I had the big umbrella, but it’s not made for rain…only sun…so it leaks. And then the rain was going sideways for a while…

It’s really a miracle I wasn’t more soaked through…

It’s blurry because of the rain. The monsoonal rain.

The girlchild made a really nice left-footed shot at the goal…she’s on the right with her leg in the air. Everyone is looking towards her, and I can’t figure out where the ball was.

It was cold and wet, but at least I wasn’t in the mud like some people.

I’m in charge of laundry. Away games they always wear white. Nice. The friend I saw at the Walkabout said Martha Stewart would have a recommendation for removing the mud stains from the socks…they do always seem to come out of the shorts, but not the socks (different materials). Sigh.

Anyway, they won. This is a pre-official-high-school season tournament…two more games next week and then semis and finals on Saturday, which ought to be interesting, since that’s the extended family party. Not looking forward to that either. Except I’ll get to grade or stitch in the car on the way up. Sometimes I have to focus on the little things that please me…like Christmas lights…

Which is my favorite part of this season. The trees and lights…

I draw those lights all the time. Seriously, they’re in lots of my quilts. I tried to explain why once, but I don’t really know why. The mood? The color? The shape? The long string of them that can be wrapped around things? Don’t know. They’re just there. I don’t think of them as sinister, but as safe. Happy even? Maybe. I don’t know that I can qualify anything as happy.

I finished a book today, The Round House by Louise Erdrich.

I’ve always liked Erdrich’s books. Most of this book was amazingly good…there was some drifting off into history or something that lost me for a while today. It deals with conflicting federal, BLM, state, and Native laws regarding rape on Native land (or land that has territory issues, as in the book, where literally take a step one way, and it’s federal law, a step the other way, and it’s not). Her books aren’t happy, but there are happy moments. There are also tragic ones and painful ones, but there is always a good dog. It was a good book.

I like to use the cover of the book I actually read when I post about books. Strangely anal, I know. Whatever. I read it as an ebook, too, so even less relevant. So that’s the cover I had. Then I saw this cover…

Interesting. The snake? The tree? The religious connection…tenuous. I do like the graphic quality.

And then there was THIS cover.

This is my favorite, although probably also not relevant. The book is about the plight of raped Native American women, but told from the perspective of a 13-year-old son of a rape victim…so the cover is good, but? I don’t know. Maybe relevant. I have now officially caught up with all the Erdrich books I had missed in the last 8 or 10 years. I need my reading app to tell me when my favorite authors have a new book out. It sort of does, but I have to remember to click through. And then I don’t like to list a bunch of books in my To-Read list…I don’t know why, really. Because I’m afraid I will end up with a giant list of books to read and no time to read them? I do have a list…it’s on my phone. It’s just not in the app. I have to think about that…consider why I’m resisting using that function. It might be really useful. Maybe.

Anyway. That tired sleep thing is back. I got no art done today. It was a lost day. Not really, because I did a lot, but the art centers me. So I will have to make time for it tomorrow. Wow. Tomorrow just laughed at me. It doesn’t think I can do it. Well, fuck you, tomorrow. I’m a stubborn old bitch and now you’ve gotten me pissed off…so there WILL be art tomorrow (hopefully more than 17 minutes of it, but you never can tell). Sleep first though.

Sew Together the Days

You know, I used to get really excited when I’d finish picking the fabrics for a quilt…it was a turning point past really the most difficult part of the visualization. I basically color the whole drawing in my head and hold it there until I finish ironing, sometimes for days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months (really hard and not recommended). That said, it is also probably the most creative part of the quilt, besides the drawing itself. I can’t actually SEE the finished quilt, but each fabric is going to go with the one next to it and behind it and make the image in my head. It’s challenging…I need mental energy of a certain type to do that step, but it’s also somewhat meditative. I get lost in my alpha waves for at least some of it and it brings me some peace…sometimes even joy when I finish a particularly difficult section, especially like flesh tones.

Sigh. Not so much any more. There is a certain sense of relief that this stage is done this time, just because I am so tired and stressed right now and this seems to help and also hinder. The need to get it done keeps me up late, and once I’m ironing, it’s hard to stop, and when I do stop, I can’t get my mind to stop. It just wants to keep going. Pros and cons: the high of the creative buzz but the low from not enough sleep and the NEED to keep going. I had more buffers before, more balance, more things to do that would give that part of my brain a break, but also a break from the stress. I don’t have many of those any more.

I finished ironing the fabrics for Celebrating Silver tonight…finishing the owl up.

There were 88 fabrics in this quilt, mostly browns and grays by the look of it. Lots of flesh tones too…

Not in numbers, but in volume. Now I have to cut them all out.

I currently have almost 38 hours into this quilt. It took 13 hours and 12 minutes to cut all the fabrics for about 1250 pieces. Not bad. I usually figure an hour for 100 pieces for that. It will probably take less time to cut them out, although there are some significantly bitchy pieces to cut, if you look at that bin up there…the tips of the owl’s wings, for example. I’m figuring about 10 hours for cutting, and I already have 2 hours in. So maybe I’ll be done by next weekend? You never know. It could happen.

Meanwhile, I did spend time with my stitching friends, geeky stanchions of my sanity. We played with technology, googled Katniss’ cowl/shrug from Catching Fire, which the designer calls “woven, then knitted,” which makes no sense…but whatever…

I think we finally decided that they had woven something and then knitted the woven something together. Or whatever. And all the knitted versions suck.

We talked about stitching and children and Christmas ornaments (I never did look at the damn Just Cross Stitch ornament issue…Kathy will have to bring it back in January). It was a good two hours of not having to be the sad Kathy or the stressed Kathy. I finally restarted the girlchild’s Christmas stocking (originally started in 1997, don’t laugh). I couldn’t find the cream thread at all…it must be hiding somewhere. I must have pulled it for something else, but now I can’t find it. Sigh. This is how we end up with stashes the likes of mine. I lost two pairs of embroidery scissors in the search, but found two other ones, one of which I didn’t even remember owning, sad but true.

It’s a very exciting start. It’s actually fairly large stitches, which helps with my blindness, and I’m actually doing it on stretcher bars. It’s been ON those bars since 1997, so obviously I haven’t needed them. I told the girlchild not to expect it until she turned 21 (she’s 16. I should be able to meet that deadline). Every Christmas she would complain that everyone had a handmade stocking but her. Yes. I suck.

The right eyelid is still twitching, although off and on now. Ironically, I got in a screeching argument with the girlchild before I left for the stitching meeting where I was working on her stocking…OK, she was screeching. I was holding my brain together just barely. Typical for me at the moment. Just barely held together. Just by a thread. Grades. Cars. Something else. I think I knew everything when I was 16 too, so I get it…but I could use a break. I even asked her dad (jokingly, honestly, because I already knew the answer) if he could handle the grades conversation. He said quietly, “It won’t work if I do it.” Dammit. I don’t know if I have the mental strength to lay down the law right now.

I have about three drawings in my brain…not sure when they will be allowed out. Hopefully soon. I have been picking at the Christmas shopping…not happily, but getting it done. I’m buried in Have To and distancing myself from the emotional swamp that is my brain. Let it meditate. Let it psycho dance over there in the corner. I exercised tonight, but not at the gym…I’m scheduling the gym as often as I can. I slog through the days. Too many art show rejections lately. They don’t usually bother me, but at the moment, I could use some encouragement. Is the only purpose to my artmaking to fill the days so I don’t get more and more sad? Or is there actually an audience for my work? Or is it just too damn difficult to process? Who knows. I don’t usually care, but I’m feeling purposeless at the moment. WHY am I doing this again? What do I gain from it? Is it really sanity, because if this is sanity, well honestly, it kind of sucks. I think I need to work on some goals beyond “finish this part of this quilt.” I don’t know what those goals will be, though. because I have to want something to have goals. I’ve given up on wanting, because it just hurts. Wanting is sharp stabby things in the soft parts.

Shitty week. When you feel useless and worthless and like you’re doing it all wrong. I know that’s not true, but I need to find some piece of something that makes it all feel better at the moment. Time for a hike? Wish I had time. Or life drawing would help. Also no time for that. Maybe I just need to go get the Christmas tree…that smell. Sitting with the tree, lights on, in the dark. That always helps my mood.

“Searching for a light, a thread that will connect this moment to that one, a way to sew together the days so that they make sense.” Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

I’m trying. I suck at it, but I am trying.

The Expiration Date on the Milk Is All That Matters…

I only managed 9 1/2 minutes of ironing tonight…all I really have left is the owl…

I couldn’t get my head around his coloring tonight (I always think of owls as being male…strange, that), so I did the thorny bushes around the Crone’s head instead…

Red thorns…gray twigs. The box is almost full.

But I’m down to just a few pieces left to iron, maybe 25. Then it’s done and I move out of the studio into the living room to cut them all out. This quilt is progressing quickly. That’s because I have no life. Oh well. Actually, tonight, I pretended to have a life. I went to a book club meeting with total strangers. Yup. I did that. I should clarify that this group is for “geeky women” (their term) and so I wasn’t sure I belonged (I am always the alien, no matter the group). Girlchild said that because I spent over an hour worrying about whether I was a geek and googling definitions of geeks and nerds and dorks that I WAS in fact one and I should just shut up and join. Sigh. Anyway, the plus is that it’s a group of women who read A LOT and FAST, and I got about 400 book recommendations just tonight (plus TV and movies) and sat next to a woman who said something about listening to audiobooks while IRONING FABRIC and what are the odds? She does costumes, but where else do I go where that happens? (nowhere)

The book we read, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, was pretty good…it had its flaws, definitely light fiction, but I’ll read the next book in the series…

I still have questions and the character wasn’t horrible…she had issues, sure, but hell, so do I. There are some interesting characters and it’s not often you get urban fantasy AND mystery in one book.

Anyway. I ordered the next book for the January book club from the library system. And yeah? We met in a bar. Books and wine. You cannot go wrong. There was food too, but I didn’t have a lot of money. And good music, which was free.

This week is full of social events…tomorrow night is my favorite stitching people and I don’t want to talk about Friday night. Sigh. It can’t all be good. Sometimes it just has to be.

My right eyelid started twitching yesterday. I googled it (see geek reference above). I don’t know WHY I googled it…I already know what’s causing it: fatigue or stress. You know what’s interesting is that even though I am getting even less sleep than last year at this time, I’m often not tired. Weird. Some brain chemistry thing? You Don’t Really Need All That Sleep. I know that’s not true, but I still think it’s strange.

So yeah, eyelid is stress. I spent 2 1/2 hours at Children’s Hospital this morning with the girlchild and we are now taking the next step towards surgery, a CT scan. We think we can schedule surgery between the high-school soccer season and the beginning of the club season. Yes. That’s crazy. We’re also scheduling between the ACT and SAT. Really crazy. The doctor did answer all our questions and we trust him, though, so I’m hoping this is relatively easy.

At school, we are getting closer to the kids being 1:1 on technology…which is more than a little scary. What does it look like? What is the purpose of the technology? It can’t just be a toy we trot out to make admin happy…it has to serve a purpose within the content. So the thought of flipping how we do stuff in the classroom is sort of mind-boggling at the moment. My head is trying to wrap itself around it. So it was not at all amusing today when the server went down and we were on computers doing research all day, and I had to log in 22 kids in one period on a server they shouldn’t be on (don’t ask) and there were a lot of deep breaths and meditative thinking and seriously deep brain stuff about Is This Really What I Want to Do? This is what using technology is to me in the classroom right now: a management nightmare. I can’t even deal with content issues because the technology issues are so vast and varied and fucking frustrating. You always have to have a backup plan, because inevitably, something won’t work. And the kids may be digital natives, but they give up SO easily when stuff doesn’t work right the first time and they suck at LOOKING for stuff…like a tabbed menu on a website is apparently invisible to them. WHERE does it say CAUSES? I wonder. Key words. If I put them on Facebook, they could find it immediately, but the Mayo Clinic website? Completely incomprehensible. I’m thinking of rewriting the medical websites to LOOK like Facebook with status posts on some beautiful woman who has had a heart attack or has atherosclerosis, just so they will READ them, and then turn a bunch of it into Vines so they’ll watch all SIX seconds, and then only then maybe will we be getting somewhere. Training them to be observant. It can be extremely frustrating. I’ve gotten very good at it, and I kept my cool today (even after spending most of the morning at the hospital, where they were running an hour late). I blame the meditation. I can deal. My eyelid can’t deal, but the rest of me can. I have not found eyelid-specific meditation.

I just found all these Thanksgiving food pictures.

Girlchild cooked almost everything…

We had another family over, friends of ours that we’ve had Thanksgiving with for a million years…

The food was good; we played that silly word game we always play.

Everyone is getting older.

That was Wednesday (of course) and then Thursday, we went to their cabin for a spaghetti dinner (of course)…

Where there was more food (girlchild did desserts this time)…those are not just rice krispies treats…they are brown butter rice krispies treats. They make you want to curl up and die, they are so good. They are gourmet rice krispies treats. She has to really like you to make those. I rate.

And there was more talk and lots of Snapchat (not my generation…the younger).

That’s my mom and the girlchild. And it was relatively good. I still have issues with gatherings just because of my alien status…but these were people I had known for forever. They accept me. They are kind. So I’m working on it, not being a hermit. Coming out and not moping around. Some. It’s hard.

So I’m still distant, numb, probably not a bad place to be this week. I had a good book-related conversation with ten total strangers tonight and an even more focused book/fabric/life conversation with two of the women. I talked to both kids about future stuff and driving and cars and college and soccer and stupid people and whether or not I should let the girlchild take penne a la vodka to school (it does have alcohol in it, per se, although it is cooked off/down/something). I just thought about it and wondered…is this OK? Should I worry? Naw.

I would have liked more time for art, but such is life. Life and art…a balance. I can’t just have one. I need both. The art alone is very isolating, very lonely, very in my head. Sometimes I have to get out of that dark gloomy place and wander outside in the real world. I did cry, though. Still. That doesn’t seem to have wandered off. Strange. It’s still hard to exist in some moments. Lots of them still. I don’t know when that shifts…or perhaps it’s shifting so slowly that I can’t even see it.

To bed, eyelid twitching and all…tomorrow is another one of those days. From the book we read for book club tonight: “All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.” Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire.

Uncomfortably Numb…

My head was spinning itself into a panicked mess today…yesterday…whenever. When I get like that, all harried and freaking out, just drive me to the gym, shove me out the car door, hand me a book, and make me work out until I’ve finished the book. Or hand me my sketchbook and a pen and put me in a locked room and don’t let me come out for a few hours. There should be an emergency meditation program for days like this…you press a red button on the meditation app that says Emergency and it runs and runs until you come up for calm air and the panic is gone (21 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack). I did the first one, the gym and a book. And meditation. I only had time for 26 minutes of ironing tonight, but the exercise helped numb the crazy and push it down into some hole, shove it in a drawer, wrap it up in a box and hide it on a shelf. Whatever. I’m numb now…not comfortably…just pushed everything back over THERE. It’ll come out again, but maybe by then I’ll have some distance, some ability to deal. Some strength that I am lacking at the moment.

I ironed lungs and a cat (21 Objects You Can Find in Kathy’s Quilts). It’s all I had time to do.

I was so numb after everything that I just full on gave up on removing the cat from the ironing board (21 Ways to Remove a Cat from an Ironing Board).

She’s expecting me to pull her off, but I just don’t have the mental energy. I just dehaired the board when I was ready to iron (21 Uses for Tape).

Are you noticing a theme? I actually had a rant in my head the other day about all the posts with numbered lists and how they were driving me nuts…Ten Ways to Use up Turkey, Fourteen Ways to Wear a Scarf, Twelve Ways to Screw Up Your Life…but then I ran into one where I didn’t care that it was a numbered list, because it was actually a well-written and useful list.

I shared this link on Facebook, but it got deleted and then reappeared (FB Gremlins beware)…21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You’re Depressed…by Rosalind Robertson, in response to all those happy lists about how to be freakin’ happy, like it’s something I can buy in a spray bottle at the grocery store and just never got around to using. I liked what she said about creatives and depression: “we ARE the ‘creative’ types around you. We feel more, we see more, and for that we suffer.” I don’t think being depressed made me creative or being creative made me depressed, but being creative gives me a better path OUT of the depression…so maybe I’m the more obvious depressiod in your circles…the rest are hiding in bed and not telling you what they’re feeling or thinking, because they may not even know. I’m out there in your face about it. I’m actually paying attention to how I feel instead of running away or hiding from it. Dammit, I’m going to write my way out of this depression…

It is thoroughly annoying to have people tell you that you make a choice to be depressed when you are doing all the things on that list, like you’re an even bigger failure than you already thought you were…or putting a time limit on your depression. “Well, it’s been X months now, so you really should be moving on.” Rightio. Getting on with that right now. Now get the fuck away from me.

Robertson refers to an article about the upside of depression from the New York Times in 2010, which you can read here (yes, it’s a lot of words…they are interesting words, though, and there’s lots of science in them, and science is often good).

“He cites as evidence a recent study that found ‘expressive writing’ — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes. The reason, Thomson suggests, is that writing is a form of thinking, which enhances our natural problem-solving abilities. ‘This doesn’t mean there’s some miracle cure,’ he says. ‘In most cases, the recovery period is going to be long and difficult.'” Great. Well, that’s what my blog has been since mid-July…expressive writing about how I’m feeling and a little bit about what I’m getting done. I wish it were more “getting done” and less “having to feel shitty,” but there does seem to be a purpose to my madness.

What I find really interesting is that I am already doing most of the things on the list…that I have some inherent ability to know what will pull me out of depression, a toolbox, as it were, and I employ the tools in it as needed to get out of that damn hole. It’s not just up and out, though…it’s up a bit and fall back in. Sometimes you make it further up the muddy wall, just to fall further back into the hole, but up the wall you continue. Slowly. Bleeding fingers, nails pulled back and ripped from trying to hold on, covered in mud from the repeated falls…but up the wall you go. I would argue for me that my natural state is not in the hole. I know what “normal” for me feels like, and it’s not this constant melancholy, as Robertson calls her natural state. I know I don’t belong in the hole, that I’ve spent most of my life out of it. I’m hoping that with increased iron in my diet and an adjustment to my thyroid meds that I’ll see some improvement in moods…I’m not expecting miracles, but some more sleep would be good. I can’t do anything about the hormonal stuff except survive it…the wonder of perimenopause. Fuck those who don’t understand that transition. It’s so easy to be someone who doesn’t have to deal with the hormonal fuckitude.

In positive news, the girlchild finally passed her driving test today and has her license, thus freeing me from spending every night sitting in the high-school parking lot to pick her up. Just to clarify, she didn’t ever fail…her dad’s CAR failed to start and then the second time, his registration hadn’t been renewed, so this was the third try to actually GET to the DMV with paperwork in hand, and she was finally successful. Life will change as we know it. Tomorrow, we go to the orthopedic doctor to talk about back surgery…it will be a difficult conversation, since all three of us are on different pages…should be interesting.

Anyway. Definitely a numb night. From the book I’m reading, “A dreadful array of feelings yawned. Which should I elect to overcome me first? I could not decide. The dog came and put his head in my lap and we sat there until I realized that one of the reactions I could have was numbness.” Louise Erdrich, The Round House. I’m going to let Louise take me and my numbness to bed now…tomorrow is a long day and I really need more resources to survive it than I had today. Sleep might help with that…I read that in a list somewhere.

Damn, I Wish That Were True…

I managed to go to bed at an almost reasonable hour last night, after a few nights of 1:30-2 AM bedtimes (which really doesn’t work when you have to be up at 6:30)…but then spent the next hour NOT sleeping, but crying instead. I tried meditative breathing…it must have eventually worked (or pure exhaustion did…who knows), but I don’t even really know what set me off…some sense of futility. All’s not right with the world. No real sense of purpose to the days. That plodding feeling. Get through this day? Then there’s another. And another. And another. And they are all largely the same. Getting through. Getting by. Making stuff, but none of it feels that good to make…I can’t iron fabrics for 18 hours a day. And the ironing never made me feel GOOD…it was at the end of the ironing, when you would see what you achieved and THAT would feel good. That only happens once a quilt. It’s not enough.

I don’t know how to BE…be happy with what I have and not want more. I want more but I don’t see it ever happening. I don’t even know what I want more of. I don’t hold out much hope for more. This might be it. It seems a very empty life. There are too many Have-To’s and not enough Want-To’s…mostly because I don’t have many wants any more. And then my brain kicks in and tells me I really should be cleaning house. Fuck you, Brain. If I wanted to clean house, I would. When I am already unhappy, why make me do something that makes me more unhappy?

I say that, but there were two floors today that needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. That’s how my cleaning works. It’s not obsessive. It happens in small spurts…out of necessity.

Today. Back to school. I’m thinking I need to make a voodoo doll. I got to a point with this one school issue where if I didn’t meditate, I would have to kill small furry things (not really, but that’s how it feels). The anger, the work stress, the unhappy…I just needed to focus and get it out of my system, so I used the meditation for that, and again, it asked the one question that upset me so much yesterday, and today I tried to change the answer…my brain tossed in another answer, a perfectly reasonable answer…honestly a BETTER answer, because yesterday’s answer was just plain stupid. And yeah. Crying again, because my brain and I don’t agree.

Who am I if I am not my brain?

Healing is such a fucking slow process. I can’t hurry it. I just have to go with it, move what I can, change what I can, do the things that make the day more bearable.

So I ironed…

I did not make the voodoo doll (or five)…yet. Give me time. Those are heart pieces and arteries. I managed to do those and some fire and a spider and web and a uterus and two tattoos and three thunderbolts…I stopped right before the lungs because I realized that even though I was not in the least bit tired (strange that), it was getting late. That was the problem last night…I went to bed and I wasn’t tired yet. I mean, I was sort of tired, but not tired enough to just fall asleep and not have to work at it. So my brain got itself tied in knots and took me underwater into the murk of melancholia. Fucking stupid brain.

I need more exercise I think. Traveling messed with my exercise plan.

So the stuff in color is what I got done…it’s not much, actually…

An eyeball.

It’s kind of pitiful. Oh well. I’m at 12 hours now…at least one more to go, maybe more.

Part of the evening got tied up with work prep and cooking and picking the girlchild up from soccer…

Pretty skies, every year. I stopped to appreciate the sky. Tomorrow, hopefully I will appreciate the sky from home, because girlchild is supposed to finally get her license (I will believe it when I see it). She’s been in a mood lately…stress from soccer and life and everything…so she snaps at me for just about anything, and I try not to react…because when I react now, it’s usually with tears, and that upsets her. Then again, she needs to learn not to always snap. She needs to see that her mood causes other people pain. Or maybe I am just super sensitive. I am.

One part of the meditation question that makes me cry is the reminder that her brother will be gone in less than a year to college, and she follows the year after. And then there is just me. And this little psycho…

Yup. There she is, on the ironing board. Pulled her off another 4 times tonight.

Then she landed on my lap (three times tonight, once during meditation, claws kneading my thighs the entire time, try concentrating with that going on…I have a mind of steel, really).

And finally she tried the back end approach to the ironing board while I was working…she eventually ended up on the back of the chair with front legs on the purple fabric until I jiggled the board a few too many times and she gave up.

Mr. Meditation wants me to appreciate things, be grateful. I’m grateful to my ex for putting up my Xmas lights, even though we have been divorced for a million years now. He knows it scares the crap out of me, so he just does it. Thanks to my coworker who sent me a tiny, live Christmas tree for my classroom…it even has sparkles. Thanks to the kids who remembered their homework from before break and brought it today…and to those who didn’t and still showed up to detention to serve their time. I appreciated the sky this evening. Thanks to climate change and pollution for that. Oops. I didn’t mean that to be negative…but sometimes the ugly is indeed beautiful. Thanks to the kids for continuing to watch stupid TV series with their mom every night they’re here, connecting with me on some lame level that centers me at night and makes it easier to get through the rest of the day. Thanks to meditation for helping me be calmer about the stupid shit that swirls around me both externally and internally. Thanks to the two girls I had as students a million years ago who still remember my name, even though I’ve forgotten theirs (sigh).

And thanks to the part of my brain that pushes past all the sad and yuck and depression and makes up drawings and colors them in and finds the fabrics. I know it was some sort of genetic mutation that caused that part of my brain to exist…most don’t have that talent…and it was sheer stubbornness and willpower that made it as strong as it is today…and that, people, was all me. That’s mine. May tonight be full of sleep and empty of tears…for enough tears have fallen for today…hell, for this year. I don’t have any left to give.

Damn, I wish that were true.

Ironing the Crone

I originally named this post “I Just Want to Sit on Your Ironing Board, Bitch: Stories of a Petulant Cat,” but it seemed like a really long title and I didn’t have a photo that went with it. Just know that a certain cranky old-lady kitty had to be forcefully (claws in the cover) removed from the ironing board about 7 times today. She’s a stubborn bitch. I don’t like cat hair on my ironing board…plus she tends to knock fabrics down onto the floor…

She doesn’t like my telling her what to do.

When I’m not actually ironing, I move the board out of the center of the room…but she still jumps from the back of the office chair to the board (which often ends in the board hitting the floor, because it’s not very stable). You can see all the fabrics I’ve used so far piled up on the right side, some more in the middle. I leave the drawing up where I can see it, so I know what I’m ironing. I’ve had to draw about 10 pieces that I apparently missed before. Whoops…some were double numbers, but some I just plain old missed completely. They weren’t even numbered.

So I have 11 hours into the ironing at this point. I managed three hours today…mostly I got the flesh part of the Crone done…

I used almost all of the lightest flesh color…there is very little left of it…

just little tiny bits in between the other pieces. I still have about 40 or 50 pieces in the Crone that I haven’t done…the heart, lungs, bits and pieces that aren’t flesh or hair, because I finished all of those. So I’m through piece 1122, but I haven’t done all of them. You can see some of them below…

And now I have a bunch more to cut out…which is what I’ll probably be doing a lot of this month.

I managed to finally get my head out of the emotional mud today, at least once I picked the kids up. The morning was a mess, but when I started ironing, I was able to distract the mopey part of my brain with X-Files and a complicated part of the drawing…it really does require a bunch of concentration to try to figure out what color each piece is supposed to be. Sometimes I write notes on the pattern, like what number in the color range a piece is (1-6 on this one), in case I forget. I like to iron an entire body in one go, so I don’t forget where I was…so I have to figure good places to stop and start. So it took three hours today JUST to pick out and iron all the Crone flesh pieces…she’s about 400 pieces, so that’s reasonable. I’ll get the lungs, heart, etc. done tomorrow hopefully…it’s almost done. I have to do an owl and a cat (like you do) and some thorny bits…maybe another 2 hours? Hard to say.

Unfortunately, I also have to go back to school tomorrow. I’m mostly caught up on grading, but the next three weeks will be challenging. I’m going to try to be really efficient so I don’t have a ton of stuff to deal with over break…knock on wood. We’ll see how that goes. I always make plans and get screwed up by real life.

Meditation has moved into a new series, focusing on the mind (like they don’t ALL focus on the mind?)…

Mr. Meditation changed his clothes for this series…there isn’t a video every day…it’s usually every 5th day before the actual meditation. But he wore the same gray sweater for the last 40 days, which was the Discovery Series, and now we have a blue shirt for the Mind Series (another 40 days). I thought maybe you’d like to have a picture to go with my descriptions of what he tells me. No, his name isn’t really Mr. Meditation…I don’t remember what it is. It doesn’t really matter. Mostly I just listen to myself breathe and sometimes he tries to talk me through some process of reflection or being in the moment with my feelings or letting my brain go do what it wants (usually a mistake at this stage of my life).

I was feeling actually fairly settled when I started meditation tonight. I had spent those three hours ironing, although I made dinner and hung out with the kids in the middle of it…I even drew a little. So I’d done everything I could to help my brain settle a bit, but then he starts talking about training the mind to appreciate and reflect (I do OK with that…the reflection at least. I’m working on the appreciation)…and he asked one simple question and I started crying. Not just a little trickle of tiny tears, but a full-on waterfall. Damn brain. I know why. And it’s interesting, because we’re back to the thinking vs the feeling, and I am very good at allowing my brain to have the feelings and work through them. Sometimes my thinking brain gets angry about WHY I’m feeling, why I haven’t been able to get OVER it, and why I can’t just ignore stupid anniversaries that aren’t anniversaries any more, but I think I just have to accept that part right now. And it sounds like Mr. Meditation will be making me work on that for the next 40 days.

Two of my pieces will be at the SOKA University Art Gallery in Aliso Viejo (Southern Orange County, California) from January 13-May 8, 2014, as part of a California Fibers exhibit. I will unfortunately miss the opening; it’s on Thursday, January 23, I think (that’s a school night…not driving that far), but I will probably go up at some point to see the exhibit. It will be a good variety of fiber work from this group. It was juried by Kevin Wallace, director of the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, California. That’s good news, getting work into shows. I will keep working on that.