To Write or Not to Write

For those who have been reading for long enough, you’ve seen my moods swing all over the map. I wrote out an entire year and a half of recovering from depression. Was I recovering? I think so. Is it recovering when it’s depression, or just reclaiming the self you were before, which doesn’t exist any more, because you went through whatever it was you went through? So surviving might be a better word. It’s like a tsunami: major damage in the beginning and then you rebuild and it takes time and everything looks a little different afterwards. It will never be the island town it was before. Mine was a tsunami anyway…a major unexpected change in my life that I apparently couldn’t process for a very long time. For some it’s maybe more like climate change, slow and deliberate and mostly out of your control, but inherently world-damaging.

And I know now that I didn’t cause the tsunami…and I’m the one who did the rebuilding. So I guess that’s useful information. And I know that my own health issues, whether hormones or thyroid or iron deficiency, didn’t help the post-tsunami destruction, and I still am dealing with some of those health issues, because you can’t run away from perimenopause and it fucks with a variety of body systems.

But I had many people tell me I was brave or thank me for writing about what I was going through, commiserating with me, telling me how they felt the same way.

But they couldn’t write about it.

I wrote myself out of that hole. I can’t live in my head with this stuff. It drags you so far down that it’s like there’s no way out at all or ever, and if I didn’t write, I don’t know that I would ever have gotten out of bed. Art helped too. So did having two kids who were standing around trying to figure out where their previous mom had gone and whether she would ever come back. I think some version of her did.

And I don’t want to go back there. But you can’t control all the physical things that affect depression and you certainly can’t control a ton of external things, so once you have been depressed like that (and here’s where I admit that although that was the worst I had ever experienced it, it certainly wasn’t the first time I had to seek help for that), then you are at a higher risk for experiencing it again. “Experiencing” it. Like it’s a roller coaster ride (it’s not). Surviving it. Having it wallop you in the face. Throw you down that hole again. Send the wolves after you. Rain on your parade…endlessly.

You can choose not to say anything to anyone. I think at some point it’s obvious to those who know you. Or maybe everyone.

Why write now? I’m teetering on the edge. I can’t even tell you all the things that have pushed me to that edge, although the biological shit is just fucking annoying. If I could control that stupid shit, I’d be a lot better off. But I can’t at the moment.

Know that I continue to make art…although last night, that consisted of sewing bindings, because honestly, after having been gone from the house for over 13 hours, I was mostly braindead. So my goal of an hour ironing pieces? Yeah. Didn’t happen. Because I didn’t have the brain power or the desire and I was in my head, racing around like a wounded dog, snapping at everything my brain tried to push at me to mollify me. This is when having deadlines and being a responsible artist (ha! Not an oxymoron) comes in useful. I have to finish this shit. I told people I would. I do what I say. So I have to do it. And I will.

And I’ll keep writing about it because it helps me. And maybe it helps you to know that a lot of art comes out of this need to heal oneself, to remove whatever is inside from festering and spill it out onto paper or onto the screen. Put it where it can’t hurt me any more.

I don’t know. Maybe I just write. And I would do it no matter what.

Some Peace and Forgetfulness

So my original plan of getting all the fabric picked for the Women at War quilt did not happen. That whole watching-soccer and planning-for-school thing just kicked my butt. Plus digging holes and trimming dead branches off trees. And maybe sleeping. But only a little. Sleep is still not my friend.

But I’m not giving up. I set these goals to keep me on track. Like writing…I am still trying to do some every day; I’m just not worried about hitting a word limit every day any more.

This is what my NaNoWriMo graph looked like…

I was pretty consistent. I’m happy with what I did.

Then Saturday night, after late-afternoon soccer, I started ironing again…here’s the 4 different flesh piles I had…

Because this quilt has more bodies in it than I think I’ve ever done. Well, maybe not. I have some with tiny bodies…but these are big…and there are about 9 of them. I think. Hard to tell, honestly, down in the pile. By the end of Saturday, this is what I had in the bin to cut out…

And these are the other fabrics I’d used besides the flesh tones.

And here’s the pie I had in the middle of all that…

So the last two nights, I kept ironing, trying to stay on top of it…

This is Sunday night…and honestly, I wanted to be done Sunday, and I wasn’t…

Here’s all the fabrics I’d used by then…not very colorful.

Lots of browns and a ton of flesh colors (which aren’t even in that pile). Here’s the box of pieces to be cut out (guess what I’ll be doing next?)…

Monday night, I laid them all out so I could see them…again, this is still without the flesh colors…when you realize the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces are little tiny pieces in the big picture, it really is a mostly brown and flesh-colored quilt.

I finally got to the main figure last night. Usually, I number so that the main figure gets cut out first. I don’t know why I did it differently this time. I only had this much of the lightest fabric…

I had to fussy iron the pieces on there…but I really wanted to use it. So I made it work.

As of last night, this is what’s left to iron.

Here’s the pile of fabrics I used for the main figure. That tiny pile on top is what’s left of that light fabric. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…

Make a really tiny flesh thing. So it was after midnight when I finished cutting out all the flesh of the main figure. This is what was left…

The bones, hair, nipples, lungs, heart, bandolier, and bullets. Oh. And a gun. Fun stuff. I was too tired to deal with that many choices, so I left it for tonight. And it’s only Tuesday, so I’m two days late. Not so bad. I should set another goal now. I plan to have all the pieces cut out by (Kathryn, think this through…you have gym and a soccer game in the rain and a meeting and a hike)…let’s say Sunday night. Then I can iron it together next week and (holy crap, I was looking at my calendar and freaking out about how much time was left, and then I realized it was still on November. Damn.) start stitching down the following week, and get it quilted Christmas week. Right? Sure. No problem. We’ll see what that looks like in real life.

Saturday’s soccer…

was playing against the team whose coach is the same for my daughter’s high-school team. We’ve never liked him, so it was awesome when girlchild made the first goal against them…

And I think we went on to make 4 more…

I was grading papers. I also wrote some of the novel. It was not particularly warm.

Yes, we had soccer yet another day…

Girlchild is playing well, no back problems at all. She starts the high-school season this week.

So I’m going to be spending a lot of time freezing and/or wet on metal bleachers.

But it’s the last year of that, which is kind of weird. Guess that’s part of why I’m an emotional mess all the time. Oh yeah, well, and there’s other stuff. But whatever. I’m getting lots of art made. And entering more shows. And reading a lot. It could be worse. I could be holed up in bed and never taking a shower. You’re thankful I’m not like that. Hell, I’m thankful I’m not like that. I wish I could say that making all this art makes me feel better, but all I can say is in the moment, while I’m picking fabrics or drawing or stitching, in the moment, there is peace and some level of forgetfulness of all the shit, and that is a good thing.

Ever-Changing Mood

I hear the wind blowing. It’s blowing quite heavily at the moment. I considered sweeping leaves up in the driveway this afternoon, because trash pickup is tomorrow and I never finished from last time (weeks ago). Ran out of room in the green recycling bin. But then I thought, what’s the point? I had seen the wind advisory. I knew I’d have a million more leaves by the morning. Better to wait and do it later this week. I don’t like to waste energy on things that need to be done more than once in a short period of time. I don’t have much time.

I don’t know how to feel about today. I don’t know how to feel about most days. Those questions “How are you?” or “How’s [insert name of current project] coming along?” or “How was the hike?”…I don’t know how to answer those. The hike was good, because I was outside and the rocks were really cool, but the last two miles kicked my mental butt, and yet I kept moving, but I’m debating that 14-miler I signed up for, because I’m not sure I can hike that far. Is that what you wanted to hear? Or did you just want to hear “Fine. It was fine.” I can’t answer the “How are you?” at all. I don’t have the words. I could draw it, but we’d be here for a while and you’d be frustrated by my answer. The projects? They’re moving along. There’s nothing I really want to talk about in depth about any of them at the moment. I’m just progressing, moving forward, continuing the process. I don’t know.

NaNoWriMo, for example: I totally forgot to write yesterday. I wrote for a short period while waiting for something, I don’t even remember when, but I only did like 400 words. I’ve haven’t done that few words a day all month. But I was busy yesterday and I got into art-brain mode and I just plain forgot. So this morning, I wrote 2500+ to make up for it. I have a little over 4000 words to go to hit 50,000. And I figured out how to kill off one of the characters. While I was watching David Attenborough’s show Life in the Undergrowth (fascinating, by the way, and kinda creepy), he talked about how ants use formic acid to attack plants and predators, and I had a lightning bolt hit my brain. It’s gonna be SO COOL. OK. I know. This book, it’s just plain weird how it’s inhabited this part of my brain. It’s writing itself. It really is. By Thursday, I will have hit 50,000 words this month, which I think means the book will be at 75,000 words. And I’m in the rising climax part of the book or whatever it is when all the good stuff happens that makes your heart race. I know the book itself won’t be done on Thursday. My goal is the end of the year. Then edit its ass. Then start the next one by next November.

Meanwhile, a car had a brake issue, so it went to the mechanic, my body went to the doctor and we tried to diagnose all my frailties (elbow brace, toenail collection, weird exercises with soup cans and hammers, more blood, changing meds. Holy moly.). I picked up my quilt and the photos. Warned him there was another one coming in December. Heard the story of his dog and cats.

The hardest part…parts…it’s been parts…about this vacation have been my mood swings (down, down, down) and the girlchild’s moods. So moods. The theme for Thanksgiving this year is MOODS. And none of them particularly good. I say everything wrong. I do everything wrong. I get irritated by having to stand in line at the post office to sign for a shirt she ordered (my name on the package, so I have to sign for it, plus she’s not 18), and then she’s out to lunch and at a friend’s for hours, so she doesn’t clean, and because we’re down to one car, she’s texting me to hurry up while I’m in Target trying to do all my errands in one place (I failed at that, by the way). Big Fucking Sigh. This is not fun. I have been on the verge of tears (or just outright crying, let’s be honest) more times in the last few days than in the last month. OK. That might be a lie. It’s been an emotional month. Blame hormones. Blame my thyroid. Blame the fucking moon. I mean, how could they ever have looked at the moon and NOT seen that it was a sphere? I just don’t understand. It so obviously has the sun reflecting off of it in crescent stage. It’s such a beautifully awesome thing. And yet it’s obviously fucking with me.

See. This is how my mind works. It’s on a crazy train.

I guess the good thing is that I worked. I finished tracing all the Wonder Under, despite almost needing to walk out of the living room twice due to girlchild’s intolerance for ANYTHING or ANYONE. (I do live here. I do. I have rights. Inalienable rights.)

It took almost 10 hours to trace this beast. Only 768 pieces, so you know the pile of men really did slow me down. It should have been 8 hours. Julie says I should copy the pile and color code the bodies. She may be right, but I feel like it’s time I don’t have. On the other hand, then I’ll waste the time trying to figure out what piece goes with what body. GAARHHH. Cannot Decide.

I also traced two more birds that were on order…

I’m hoping to finish them by the end of the year as well. By the way, there are three birds that have not sold. I should put them in their own post. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.

And then I sat down and started cutting Wonder Under out.

I only did it for an hour, because it was getting late. And some of it is releasing from the paper, which is always annoying. And I need to buy background fabric or decide if what I have in house will work, because inevitably, I will be ready to iron on Thursday and nothing will be open. Must Plan Ahead. And I have to clean house and straighten up my studio so I can tear it apart again, and now I have a window screen AND a screen door with issues, and for every one thing I solve or resolve, two more pop up in its place.

And dammit. I’m still depressed. That’s the only thing to call this blob in my head that keeps raining on my parade. That keeps dragging me into the mud. That keeps eating at my peace of mind. That won’t shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

Knowing that this is not how you want to be? It doesn’t really help make it stop. This war quilt I’m doing, women at war: it’s women at war with their own bodies, with failing uteri and thyroid glands, with fluctuating hormones and clogged ducts and irritated tendons and pus-filled pores; at war with their children and their parents, with people trying to push them into holes, into slots, into places they think you should fit, telling you what to do, how you’re doing it wrong, constantly getting at you; at war with men, the misguided, the nice-guy misogynists (so many of those), the crazies, the assholes, the arrogant, the self-centered, the clueless; at war with society, which is trying to control my parts, my mind, my place in the world. Nature vs nurture. There’s outliers and I guess I’m way the fuck out there. Like in outer space outlier. I’ve never wanted to be easily categorized or explained, but that makes it harder…to just be, honestly. Sometimes it just makes it harder to exist. I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because that’s where I belong. I never meant to be here by myself though. And it’s hard. It’s hard to deal with the girlchild’s drama without any support. I often just want to crawl into bed and never ever come out. Just put the pillow over my head and ignore all of it. Never fucking come out.

I don’t know how many times I have to scream “This is not where I want to be!” before someone hears me.

That’s why I keep these guys around, the furry ones, even though all they did today was sleep, bat at me with claws out, and vomit. I swear I cleaned up more vomit today than I did anything else. It’s just not right.

So this looks like a picture of the girlchild messing with her hair, but look closely.

What is that in the back, in the corner of the couch?

I do not know how to explain the dog.

Then this evening, the scary bitchy cat ventured out again, and this is the closest I’ve ever seen her to any living thing that was not human without her trying to kill it.

It’s not even that cold tonight.

But I had both of them for a while…

It’s hard to cut out Wonder Under with her on your lap, but again…she’s old and I feel sorry for her, so I tolerate a lot. Besides, she didn’t vomit today, so she’s on my good side.

Tomorrow I finish cutting out Wonder Under and hopefully start ironing to fabric. Dammit. That means I need a background. Aargh.

And the song the post title comes from…one of my favorite bands…

The Style Council. Weird-ass video. Great song.

Philosophy on a Monday Morning…

There’s something about nearing the end of making a quilt that is sort of a letdown. You’ve spent all these hours, you’ve beat yourself up about not meeting this or that deadline that you arbitrarily set in your head, it’s been your life for months, and then…then it’s gone. It’s done. You’re done. It abandons you. It’s no longer the focus of your life. And if you don’t have another one, Right There, ready to take over the part of your mind that needs that level of distraction, of creativity, of something that gives you satisfaction in a world that is incredibly frustrating at the moment, then it can be depressing. And I think sometimes the brain needs to lie fallow a bit in between projects, not that I’ve let it do that in the last year, because for me, where I am, fallow means significant depression, falling into a nasty hole that I have to then drag myself back out of, and that happens even WHEN I’m creating. It’s worse when I’m not.

I have a project to start right now, though. It’s drawn in my head. It’s not on paper. I just emailed my photographer, so this current thing has to be done by Wednesday (I’m almost done with the binding, and then I will deal with the bleed). And I have quilt class on Thursday and I need something to take by then, so that means I have to draw the new one and copy it and tape it by Thursday after school. HA! Yeah. I know. But if you set crazy-ass deadlines like that, worst-case scenario you fail and you say, well, it was crazy anyway. But I’m behind where I wanted to be right now. I wanted the gender quilt done by Saturday. Now it’s Monday. That is obviously a giant fail (not). I’m doing OK. I’m a little worried about time, but I’ll figure it out.

After spending an entire weekend essentially working (second one in a row), I’m a little tense and cranky. I realize that. I don’t have a lot of outlets for that any more. I do stupid things to make myself feel better, like change the sheets on the bed to flannel (it’s getting cold), or throw out something someone gave me that I never liked but was useful, but hell, I really don’t like it and I don’t need it really, it’s just useful, and being raised to be somewhat of a hoarder is a difficult thing to break. But it’s gone now! Now if I could just get the rest of the crap under control. I read. I go to the gym. It’s not enough. It will have to do at the moment, though.

I went over 30,000 words on the novel (understand that I actually have over 56,000 words…but I started with a bunch written in the first place). I added an isolation tank last night. Who knew? I had to go Google them and how they worked, but the idea came to me from watching Fringe episodes. My brain is doing this, “What would you do if you needed to get this reaction?” thing, and it searches all the old databases in my head, and then I Google something like “What’s the name of that water tank that the doctor in Fringe used to use?” which is like the worst Google search ever in the world, but popped up exactly what I needed (previously known as sensory deprivation tanks). And then I was searching “epsom salts and plants,” which was another revelation. I love that the world we live in is so knowable on some levels, so searchable, even though it makes other parts of my life a pain in the ass (how easy it is for my students to contact me at all hours…the dating spreadsheets you now need to keep just to figure out if you want to date someone…the fact that you still have to pick up registered mail from the post office during their stupid hours because there’s no way to do that online).

Anyway. I’m managing things. There’s some magical thing that’s supposed to happen now where I have everything under reasonable control (ha!) and happiness just appears, like a leprechaun and his gold or a genie in a lamp. I think it’s some switch I’m supposed to pull inside my head, but I’m still looking for it. Still trying to get all the crap out from before…an analogy between my brain and my house. I don’t have the time or energy to get everything put back or dealt with from the remodeling over the summer; I can’t get my office clean all over, just 2-foot square at a time; the garage is a scary time warp that seems to breed bizarre half-broken items that I might need in the zombie apocalypse, and even if I don’t, I don’t have time to go through and figure it out right now. I’m not sure if the brain or the house comes first. Which can I get cleaned up for real? I do have time planned over break to deal with the house. If I knew how to do the brain part, I would…but I don’t. I don’t think I was built to just be content with my life. I think I was designed to ever be looking to change, adjust, make better, clean up, improve. I don’t know that I could do the art the way I do without that. Is the creative part of my brain, the part that’s always reflecting and searching and making and observing, is it why I can’t just sit back and say, OK, this is OK? This will do. Because it won’t. It’s not.

Philosophy on a Monday morning…always an issue.

Official Title #3764

Can’t title things today. Brain offline. So my view last night of the world was this…

Yes, Glee…don’t judge. It’s light, it’s easy, and they sing. And their entire life experience is so far removed from mine that it doesn’t bother me. Everything else that was on Tivo felt really heavy and dark or light and fluffy and I decided I couldn’t handle it. And much as I’d been loving Star Trek lately, that means watching on the computer and fighting the tiny mean black cat for the chair, and my body was having an issue with being female yesterday (actually, it continues today…another symptom of the thyroid giving up the ghost), so I was in some pretty extreme pain and trying to sew. On the couch was better than in a chair that is only vaguely comfortable on a good day. It was fun. Really. And by fun, I mean, I got through it. Working on that needle-poke callus on my right middle finger now.

I spent all day yesterday (many hours) at an educational tech conference. It was long, but there was one very good workshop I went to and I think I saw the light! Or I have a bunch of new ideas about how to do something online that I have previously done on paper. But I only have three weeks to implement it, and that might not be enough. And I’m not really sure what I’m doing. See, that’s what you want in a teacher…someone who is willing to change it up by the seat of her pants. I want the kids to learn not only the content, but to stretch beyond it and be able to use it elsewhere (some of us have been teaching common core the entire time we’ve been teaching), AND I want them to be tech-proficient (beyond Facebook and video games) AND I’m willing to put my butt out there and hope it all works. So much of the admin and the petty bullshit we deal with as teachers is what chases creative teachers off. I’ve seen too many of them leave because of the shitty pay and the job uncertainty and the harassment by parents and admin (and kids sometimes, honestly). Those of us that tough it out, we are some level of crazy, yes. Luckily, I got the email address of the presenter, so if I have major issues, I know where he works (not far from here).

So that sucked up a huge part of my weekend, and today I’m at the Salk Institute (I always pronounce it SOCK…and then point to mine) to get trained on their DNA kits so I can check them out and do cool experiments with my kids. So it’s a weekend of school stuff that I didn’t get paid for, which again, underlines the crazy. This is what teachers do. If you are one of those people coming after my pay or my pension or my “vacation time” (I don’t get paid for the summer, people), then realize this is what we do. We lose an entire weekend to stuff that benefits OUR STUDENTS. And we do it for free. Because it benefits our students. I am doing what’s best for the kids. It would be nice if the politicians would do the same.

And this morning, I’m trying to persuade my body that it can go to the gym, despite its current tendency toward hemorrhaging (wow, a word I really can’t spell without help). Because I know I will feel better, but ouch. Ouch. And OUCH. Plus how do I staunch the flow long enough to actually be there? These are the fun questions perimenopause brings to you: How much black clothing do I own? How many menstrual devices can I use at once to avoid a wardrobe issue? How can I get better pain meds so I can actually stand up? Seriously, when the alarm went off this morning, I was curled up in a tiny pained ball yelling (probably a good thing the kids aren’t here) until that wave stopped. I think childbirth was easier…at least it seemed like there was a purpose to it.

If that’s all TMI, then you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog anyway.

So yeah, I’m almost done with this quilt, which feels a little weird. I really like the quilt though, so that’s good. And I’m ready, I think, to draw the next one this week, so I can spend all of Thanksgiving week cleaning house (whoo!) and starting that one plus a few smaller ones I promised to make (three. I promised three. Please slap me around a bit, because I am crazy).

I did write a little of the novel at the conference yesterday, and then I came home after dinner with friends (a slightly contentious dinner, interestingly), and I wrote some more. Today (in the story) is when the big bad shit starts to hit the fan. More people are going to die…not because it’s fun to kill people off (although it will be fun to kill ONE person off…yes, I have revenge fantasies at times), but because the deaths are going to highlight how dangerous it is for our heroine and why the Government Must Be Stopped. I’m really not a raging anti-government person, makes me sound like a cultist, but in this story, they aren’t nice or good. They’re bad people. They started out OK, but you know, lost humanity, lost perspective, blah blah blah.

I honestly don’t know if the story will be finished by the end of the month. I’m fairly certain I’ll hit 50,000 words, though. My stats from the NaNoWriMo website…

I was over 28,000 words yesterday. I’ve had a couple of lighter days, but then kicked ass on days afterwards, so the story never stops flowing from my brain. It’s more that I get too tired to write. As I’m writing, I wander off into random shit and then find myself sitting there with my eyes closed and my fingers on the keyboard. Friday night was a little like that. I should have written before I did the binding, and I kept MEANING to do that and then not doing it, and so when I wrote, it was midnight. And I woke up with a start at some point (and honestly, at that point, I gave up, short for that night, but I had a cushion from earlier in the week), and when I read it the next morning, it was a whole different kind of writing. It wasn’t Bad, but it was Different. I left it. At this point, I’m just trying to get the story out. I’ll go back and revise later. I know it needs a ton of work, if just for basic editing and continuity. Did I tell you that Book 2 (not a sequel to this one) is poking at my brain too?

Anyway. I’m a few steps closer to getting my butt out the door to the gym. Need to eat and finish the tea and then gird my loins in black and cotton absorbent things. I know exercise will help, so I am going to do it, even though I’m tired and have lots of stuff to do before I go to the science thing. Sometimes you have to do what’s right for your body or brain, even if it’s not easy. Motto of my life, I guess. I personally don’t think there’s a guarantee for easy, and I’m not even sure easy is the best thing. If we never stretch or challenge ourselves by dealing with the hard, then I think we are never as strong or amazing a human being as we could have been. That said, I could do with some easy for a while. Bring it.

Apparently Adam and Eve…

So. I can’t show you the trimmed quilt. I can tell you some things about it though. First of all, apparently I made an Adam and Eve quilt. I guess that makes sense when you are looking at an image of gender equality and you have a society with all these images of Adam and Eve together, who really are not quite about gender equality (or ARE they…you don’t have to read the pictures with scripture supporting them), but the tree…I wasn’t thinking when I was drawing. I just like trees. But there are so many trees in the Adam and Eve paintings. I did leave the snake out! Interesting that, because I often include a snake. In fact, I just realized the snake in Love (not) probably has more symbolism than I even had thought about. This is why it’s kinda funny to watch the video my mom took at Celebrating Silver when the nice woman asks me what the skull symbolizes and I snarkily say Death, but I’m not even sure that’s the case. When I draw, there are things that have power, weight, meaning, that I plan on including for just those reasons, and then there are the things that sneak in when I’m not really thinking about it. Subconscious symbols just wandering around and plopping themselves on the paper. Because if it took both Adam and Eve to make all humanity, and that’s from the biblical times, before we understood the genetic implications of that, before we knew there were factors from Mom AND Dad that became a part of each human child, then at what time did one become more important than another in any part of the world? Why do women have to be the cookers and cleaners and the baby-minders? Why do men have to be the money-wranglers and decision-makers? Why does anyone have to be in charge? Why this perennial argument over who is REALLY in charge? I’m not really arguing about religion here, but about the images that religion has co-opted or paid for to support their doctrine (because a lot of religious paintings were paid for by the church, and you can’t piss off the boss, so you paint what you’re told unless you’re a rebel). Yes, I had to study all that stuff in school. Years and years of That’s All There Was…religious paintings. And they are fascinating in the ways they are different, but also in the ways they are the same. The Madonna, the baby Jesus, God in his sky, Adam and Eve on the ground, the tree, the animals, the snake.

So yeah, all that to tell you I made an archetypal Adam and Eve quilt. That you can’t see until January. It’s cool, though. Even the girlchild said so. I trimmed it (and ouch, I think I lost 3 inches with all that tight quilting, so don’t tell anyone, but I think it’s gonna be about 1/4 to 1/2″ too short. SHHH. I’ve never had one too small. Crazy.).

I wasn’t going to put the binding on right away. I was going to write first. But somehow, I just kept ironing, and then cutting, and somehow sewing, and then I might as well pin it…and it was done.

I asked the girlchild to help me out by wrapping the UK Xmas gifts for me…did she finish? Fuck no. This happened…

So it’s still not done. Sigh. Tonight.

I promised a photo of the skateboarding skellies…

I’m in love with this, especially the guy who is skateboarding over skelly parts.

Tonight? Sewing bindings. Very exciting. Yup. Got bug videos to watch. Seriously. I do.

Call Yourself What You Like…

So I entered this art show recently that wanted me to categorize my art as fiber, textile, or weaving. OK. Well, I know it’s not weaving, because I’m not fucking weaving anything. There’s no under over under over bam bam bam (I grew up with a weaver. That sound is embedded in my brain. Try watching TV with a weaver in the room.). That said, the fabric is woven. Technicality. Now I usually call myself a fiber artist if I’m not calling myself a quilt artist, because I use the methodology and techniques of quilting, but then people get their gramma’s quilts in their heads and what I do just makes their brains explode, so I call myself a fiber artist because it gives me some distance from gramma. But sometimes when I say that to people outside the fabric world, they think I mean the fiber you eat that cleans out your colon, and I’m like YES, THAT kind of Fiber. I make art with Metamucil. Yup. So then you say you’re a textile artist, but I’m not sure that’s a whole lot better, because what the fuck does that MEAN? So I ask my daughter, and she says, “Call yourself what you like.” Wow. I raised that child, didn’t I? So I start looking up the definition of fiber, which seems wrong, except in a holistic sense, more like thread, so if I were a basketweaver or a knotter maybe, so I look up textile, and it says something about weaving fibers, and fuck. I don’t freakin’ know which these are and then I wonder if I should even be ENTERING, but the description definitely says anything using textile materials or techniques, and before I run around the house ripping my clothes off and RENDING them into materials I can use in my next quilt, screaming, and rolling myself into a tiny urine-soaked ball in the corner of my incredibly messy studio that definitely needs cleaning, I click TEXTILE on all of them and thus define myself for the rest of my life.

Or not. Really. It’s hard to say. Probably I shouldn’t be allowed out though.

So. The good news is that I FINISHED QUILTING. Fuck me. I am relieved. And saddened. But I think the saddened is mostly unrelated hormones, so ignore it.

I had guessed 15 hours, but that was before some psychotic bitch took over my brain and made me do teeny tiny squiggles all over the background, so I clocked in at 17 1/2 hours instead. Yup. Two point five hours of squiggling. And last night, when I looked at the clock and said, Fuck yeah, I can do it and who the fuck needs sleep anyway? Well, then the thread broke and the bobbin thread ran out and the thread broke again and I just continued to bully through until it was done. And that was the 2.5 hours right there.

Back only. You wanna see the whole thing? Come to the opening in January at Visions Art Museum. Or hang out here until then. I’ll post it then. I promise. It’s kinda cool. Now I gotta draw the next one. Cuz I’m starting it! Like NOW! Because I keep saying yes to things and at some point that means I have to do the things I said yes to.

Sigh.

And in the hopes of continuing to drag my depressoid brain (thank you, thyroid, for being a stingy asshole) out of the mud and into something like a life, I went over 25,000 words on NaNoWriMo yesterday…which means I’m over 50,000 words for the whole book. Halfway done with both, really. And what was weird was that I just started writing and she fainted. And I didn’t even realize she was GOING to faint. It just happened, and then I thought, why is she fainting? And that answer came too, and it was part of the story, an additional point in the plot, foreshadowing leading up to tomorrow’s action, tomorrow not being today or Saturday, but tomorrow in the story, which is now today, because I got to today in the story. Confused? This is why I have comments telling me in the story what day it is, because Saturday lasted for about 40 pages. Sunday was not as long. There was more sleeping and less action. As there SHOULD be on a Sunday, right? Today is a Monday, and Mondays suck. So this one will suck too.

I haven’t actually decided whether there is a happy ending. I think there is not. I know there is no sequel. So I think it is not. Maybe it is a hopeful ending, but maybe it is an ending where a dozen young women send me hateful contact email about how I killed off their favorite person ever. (see Divergent. She had to die guys. Oops. Spoiler.)

Because that’s how I roll. Crazy. I know.

Binding on tonight. Seriously. It has to. And then I start hand-sewing it, because this thing has to be done. Which means Sunday morning, I need to figure a way to deal with where the blue batik bled. Although it’s minor on most of it, there’s one place that’s bad. It’s OK. I have a plan. Sort of. I am trained for these maneuvers. I have the technology. (Technology just means tools, by the way. Someone told me that. Tools. I got ’em.)

Boychild is texting me about Cambodia and snow! Snow! Not here. No, he’s not in Cambodia. He’s in New York. Here we have drizzle. Well, we HAD drizzle. And my feet are cold (thyroid) and I need to switch the bed over to flannel (thyroid) and there’s a shitload of things I have to get done this weekend around the two school-related things I’m doing that are totally eating up the whole weekend anyway, so there (job that takes over life). And girlchild wanted me to drop her off at the other high school for the Magic Mountain trip at…GET THIS…4:30 AM. Really? Because I probably just went to bed. I think I’d rather have her leave her car there all day and have it stolen (because it probably would be) than do that.

At least you don’t have to listen to me complain about the quilting any more.

Timed Frustration

I ran out of time. You’d think with a 4-day weekend, it wouldn’t be possible for me to run out of time, but when you spend 20 hours or so grading, plus a hike, plus trying to plan for the week when you have a sub one day, and all the new class changes with the new trimester…it’s not surprising. It’s just frustrating. At 11:20 last night, I was folding fabric (I did manage to buy the binding fabric yesterday, even though I couldn’t get to the point where I was putting it on, which is where I was SUPPOSED to be yesterday). I did not try to continue quilting after that for a variety of reasons…first of all, I have the wrong thread. I went out to the store to get more yesterday morning (after they drew blood from two different places, thank you very much, yes, I drank my bottle of water…that’s why I’m going to pee on your seat in a minute if you don’t get on with it.). I had the number of the color, but apparently they are now selling two different weights? And I didn’t notice? And I got the wrong one? And it’s super fine (and I don’t mean that in the 70s way), so it’s breaking all the time (rhyme that: super fine, breaking all the time…nice, eh?), plus I don’t know if I can tell the difference on the quilt or not, but FUCK.

So I was doing all these tiny little squiggles (OK, I know they could be tinier, but they’re pretty damn small and very time-consuming…my fault of course).

And really, I’m pretty close to done, being up in the tree section. But NOT done. And today is a bitch. It will be a bitch. There will be very little time in which it will not be a bitch (do not predict bitchiness. Predict Lack of Time. I predict Lack of Time, which may lead to bitchiness on my part AND the day’s part, but I cannot predict that. Maybe someone will bring me a donut and that will reduce said bitchiness. Ha! That’s not enough. I think someone has to come hand me a winning lottery ticket for said bitchiness to be truly removed.). Fucking big-ass giant sigh of frustration.

WANT TO FINISH QUILTING.

I don’t want to go to school. I want to finish this. But I’m a big girl, so I will do my job…which today involves sheep hearts. MMM MMM GOOD.

Cats are no help.

Yes, she’s lying ON the quilt while I’m quilting, and complaining as I move it. Although they do answer when I talk to them. Saw girlchild for maybe 2.1 minutes yesterday. Said maybe 10 words to me. I talked to my ex more than her. Hell, I think I talked to the ladies at the quilt shop more (they wanted to see my quilt, I warned them about the nudity, they hesitated, said something about “in the name of art”. Not sure if theirs was a positive response…whatevs. I’m not doing it for the likes of you.).

Frustration. I’m running out of time. I need to get this thing done and to the photographer and I need to start the next one. The have-tos are starting to pile up. This one is done. Essentially. I think that’s the problem. In my head, it’s done. Why isn’t it REALLY done? Damn reality check.

OK, so I’m mood-managing this week. Turns out (after lame-ass blood withdrawal yesterday) that my thyroid is yet again out of whack, and I have like ALL the symptoms. Blame my crazy moods on that stupid nonfunctioning organ in my neck. Doctor in two weeks. Then she can fix THAT, and my elbow and my toenail and maybe my life, because that’s a giant clusterfuck. Is there a prescription for that?

PROS: NaNoWriMo. I rock baby. See, I can do one thing right. I’m over 21,000 words. I wrote another 2400 yesterday…got on a roll. Started on the bike, did a little on the elliptical (harder to type on the elliptical), came home and did more while dinner was cooking, and then while I was eating, holy crap, it just spilled on out of me. And the first kidnapping has happened, which leads up to the second death (well, really, there were 8 other deaths, but that’s different…they happened before the story started). I’d really like to do one of the write-ins that are local, but I can’t fit one into my crazy schedule. All the flash write-ins are on Sundays, and I don’t have a clear Sunday ever apparently. The night ones that I could go to are all far away, like La Jolla. Ugh. Long way to drive to write. And maybe writing in public ain’t my thing (except now I’ve done it in meetings, at the gym, in an airport). So whatever. The story progresses. There might even be an ending in my head at some point. You never know.

Speaking of endings. This. It needs to end so I can go to school and make seating charts. Because I live for that moment. Yup. I do.

Craphole

It IS a word. Shut up.

Oh holy craphole of days, in which I plan on xyz and manage to only get through a, which wasn’t even on the list. And xyz languish, unfinished, unfortunate, because I would probably FEEL better if I had managed xyz. I had a two-hour respite last night hanging out with stitching friends…in which we analyzed our children and our failings (or not) in regards to them. Since I’ve been yelled at in person and via text every single day this week, I’m obviously failing big time (or succeeding, depending on how you look at the parenting spectrum). I have to admit that I’m running especially low on parental tolerance, and it feels awful to be sitting on the couch as they scream away from you and you really just need to have someone hug it away, because I only have so many resources within me to deal with the crap that is thrown and I guess I’m on the low end at the moment. And of course, a lot of that is hormones. It’s hormones, I think, that take whatever small emotions I’m feeling about being overwhelmed, too much work, not getting it done, irritations, rejections…the hormones take that messy soup and just charge it with crazy electricity and make my head spin and spill salty water over the world.

Holy crap. I just got an amazing idea for a drawing. Dammit. I have to leave for school in 34 minutes. There’s no way I can draw it in time. And grades. I’m buried. I can’t draw today. FUCK. It’s OK. I wrote it down. I typed it down. Whatever.

So I found out yesterday that I have one day less than I thought to complete grades (competing calendars…I should have know better than to pick the one that benefited my crazy schedule), so basically I just need to grade until it’s done. Then, if I’m lucky, there will still be part of the weekend left to quilt. But previous experience with long weekends is that it gets frittered away, wasted by lame-i-tude and whatever. Mostly OTHER people’s crap, not mine.

I’m confused by people with a constant positive attitude, like they’re never angry or down. I get there eventually. I talk myself out of the crazy downer that tells me I can’t get it done. I yell inside, yes you can and here’s how. I know I will get there, but it’s hard for me. And when people say they want “no drama, positive attitude,” I think, well fuck. You must just have an easy life. Or you’re genetically wired that way. And I’m not. And if I were, would I make the art I make? Fuck no. I don’t know what I’d make. Maybe nothing. I realize my responses to overwhelming shit are part of having a positive attitude, but hell, sometimes people have a rough day or week (or year). Being positive to me means you still got up and took a shower and packed a lunch, and tried to figure out how to manage the day without assuming it would all go to hell in a handbasket, and if it DID go to hell (like all week has), then you get up the next morning and you do it again, trying to figure out what to change to avoid the handbasket part (because doing the same thing again is kinda stupid if you want to avoid what you don’t like.). So fuck you for reminding me that I’m broken in that way too. That there’s something wrong with me for not being perky Pollyanna. Look at my art. Do you like it? Where the fuck do you think it comes from? Then don’t tell me I’m doing it wrong.

So I didn’t quilt last night. No time. Too late. Too tired. Wrote a little bit, not enough (see why I needed the word cushion?). Graded a little bit, not enough. Should have blown off the social stuff, but since that was the only thing all day that felt calm and nice, that would have been stupid. Didn’t read. Didn’t meditate. Didn’t exercise. Didn’t clean. Didn’t fold the fabric in the dryer. Didn’t eat healthy. Didn’t solve the world’s problems or even my own.

I did. I did throw away my trash. I did enjoy that episode of Dr. Who. I did (not) clean off the kitchen counter. I meant to clean off the kitchen counter. I did feed animals. I did take my meds. I did brush my teeth. I did finish the UK Xmas shopping (I should actually jump around a bit on that one, because that’s been hanging over me and I get no help on that front and now it’s done and I need to get someone to help me wrap it and pack it all up. I WONDER who that will be. Yes, the screamer. Fun times.).

I did.

So I got up this morning and I showered and I ate breakfast and I pondered my lunch options and I made a plan for the day, and at no point did I assume it would suck or that I would not get through my plan and I remembered that I did this last night…

And I told the part of my brain that is whinging about the fact that I will never ever finish this to shut the fuck up, because I will EVENTUALLY finish, but maybe the girlchild will be speaking to me normally by then and not assuming everything I say is a criticism of her existence. Because she’ll have kids of her own and she’ll realize how fucking hard it is to do it even with someone else’s help and yeah.

Shit, I’m having a bad time of it. Tell my brain to get all that emotional shit into the laundry basket and shove it in the corner, because I’m not going to make it through the day otherwise.

Because dammit, if I’m going to criticize ANYONE’S existence, it’s going to be my own.

Barely Awake

Started this on Thursday morning…days ago…so this is less than 3 hours of sleep. Hmn. Yeah. Don’t like it. Head is all swimmy. Brain thinks it’s still asleep. It told me to go lay back down. Stop this uprightness and just lay the fuck back down. On a bed. With a nice soft pillow. Yum.

I did this last year too…got up at 3:30-ish to get out of here. I just don’t remember it. You know why? I was asleep when it happened, that’s why. Just like I’m asleep now.

Did I go to bed early last night, like a normal person would? Nope. I quilted. Here’s Midnight watching me quilt…

I wasn’t tired. There’s no point in going to bed if you’re not tired.

I realized some things in Houston this year. One is that I’m not particularly stable. I mean, I’m not completely off my rocker, but stable, normal people do not stay up until midnight making art (stitching around a penis, let’s be specific here) the night before they have to get up really early and fly to Texas. They go to bed early. They schedule their time differently. They probably have a clean house. They probably seem a little less frantic than I do. I am not that person. I think of the unstable as the part that gets me to drop all the grading and grab my sketchbook one night. The part that blows off some Have-To for a Want-To. Not all the time…just enough times that I’m not predictable.

I also do a lot. I know that. I always have. It’s not a choice…some people think it’s a choice. I think I’m a little ADD and that doesn’t help, but also, my brain does not like to just sit in a chair by the pool and relax. It does not like peace and quiet. It can do that for a short period of time, but there still better be a purpose, a plan. Maybe there’s a book I want to read or a drawing I want to do, or I just want to enjoy the sunshine, but I’d still be better off DOING something. Not doing feels bad. As I attempt (and I say ‘attempt’ because quite honestly I suck at it) to venture into the dating world (again, shoot me now), it’s all online and there are all these questions and you have spreadsheets and graphs of info on your potential dates, and questions like “how does it feel to do nothing all day” or “normal or weird” put me in the small percentages. I feel like crap when I get nothing done. Workaholic much? Yeah. But a hike counts as something. And a drawing counts as something. And reading a book counts as something. And maybe if there were someone around, hanging out with them and doing nothing would be OK, but I don’t know. And weird. I’m definitely weird. And apparently intense. I guess that’s true. I guess…what’s the opposite of intense? Mild. Mild-mannered. Temperate. OK. Yeah. I’m not any of those. Nor am I calm. Or drama free. Look at my drawings. Seriously.

Houston: one thing that has been great both in Houston and as I post pictures of Awakening the Crone and You Make Me Wanna Die is that I am getting a lot of comments, positive comments about my work, my vision (for lack of a better word), my art sense. I have people coming up to me or messaging me and saying the work is good, reminding me of that, because deep down inside me, I know that. But when I am deep in a hole, it’s hard to see that there is a purpose to my work, that when it is done, it will go out there and cause conversations and thoughts (even negative ones), and people will come back to me and grab my hands and smile at me and make it feel worthwhile. So I guess I needed that. Because sometimes being an artist is such a solitary pursuit (and maybe that is why I write SO MUCH, talking to myself) that you forget that this is an image and you are putting it out there with your name on it and people will see it and then they will associate you with that piece (and no, that’s not always a positive thing), but mostly, the vibe coming back at me is good, keep it up, don’t stop.

So I have that. And that is what I am holding onto right now.

I read this…and Polly, thanks. I feel better now. I’m not one of those girls. I know that. I’m not trying to be what someone thinks I should be. Because she says it’s OK to be messy and have emotions and not be perfect and still to WANT to be part of a relationship but on my own terms. Even when people tell you it’s NOT OK. They’re wrong. Because life isn’t always calm and pretty and positive and perky, and if that’s the woman you want to be with, then maybe she’s just faking it because she’s afraid of rocking the boat. I don’t want to be with fake people. I’m spending a lot of time and energy trying to negotiate some level of balance with my body and my brain, and I’m open and will tell you exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and if you can’t roll a bit with that, if you are going to run away when there’s sad or mad, because all you can handle is happy, then I feel sorry for you…because you can’t really feel the happy, experience the joy, unless you’ve felt those damn awful really lows, those sads that make you want to crawl into bed. They are there for everyone. You need to experience them just like you experience the others. And own them. My sad…it’s mine. I know that. I hold on to it sometimes and it struggles and I just hold on until it stops and subsides and I can move on. Read a book. Have a cup of tea. Draw.

I had a great time at the Halloween party last night. It was funny, amusing, intellectual, and engaging. Am I still lonely and sad on either side of it? Yeah. I am. But I can hold on to that few hours of feeling entertained, amused, as a cushion…not a solution, not a goal, because I don’t believe all of life is like that or SHOULD be like that…but accepting that both sides exist, that the spectrum is normal…that’s what I’m looking for. Someone who thinks THAT is OK…meanwhile, I will keep being who I am, because I can’t really do anything else.