Celebrating American Independence with an Iron

Yesterday, I ironed. For like 5 hours. So shockingly, I got significant portions of this beast done…because that’s what it takes, standing in front of an ironing board for 5 hours. In case you were wondering about my process. Yes, it’s mostly crazy. Trying to explain it to non-art people, they mostly just nod their heads carefully, like people do when they think you’re crazy, and then they say something about how they could NEVER do that, because they’re not creative.

OK, well, I disagree with that. You obviously don’t have the fucked-up, obsessive mind that I do, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing at the moment. Me and my mind have not been getting along. I started by working on the ribcage. The uterus was ironed separately, to be placed properly later.

Sometimes it’s just easier to do it that way…I can’t see through fabric once it’s ironed on. And this whole central torso is pretty complicated…

There’s lungs and a heart and two hands and that uterus…I still do the whole thing while watching X Files…finally made it to Season 6.

I started ironing in the morning, then continued during the afternoon in between sanding plaster and filling holes and waiting for them to dry and washing walls and then starting all over again, although not in that order. There’s more of that happening today. Ugh. Tired of remodeling. Can’t really stop now, though. Not motivated. Until I walk into the room and realize I can’t stand the mess. It’s easier to hide in my studio/office/room at the end of the hall where all the animals congregate.

I have the same problem with ironing…if I get to a really hard bit, a complicated section, it takes will power to keep myself standing at the ironing board and working. It’s easier to walk away and come up with something else to do. You saw how many books I read earlier this week…total avoidance of ALL things, art, house, etc. Just make it all stop. I’m doing better with it right now, but that’s also because I got through the really hard bit yesterday with a whole lot of bitchy persistence.

Sometimes I don’t know where that comes from. Sometimes I know it’s genetic. Sometimes it’s just the drive in my head, the artist finally coming out of the cave where she’s been hanging out with depressoid brain. She hasn’t been around lately. She claims she was tired, that the end of the school year and boychild graduating and all the shit that came with that…she couldn’t deal. And that often happens at the end of the school year.

I’ll give her a break, as long as she doesn’t wander off again. She needs to be here. She’s got a lot of stuff to do. No excuses.

I posted these on Instagram/FB last night to see if anyone could tell what they were…

I often iron all the bits and pieces (lungs, heart, etc.) off to the side and then assemble them all into the big picture in one go, because otherwise this is overwhelming, trying to fit everything in there with limited view of the drawing below.

Here’s the heart…I cooked dinner somewhere in between the last picture and this one…or maybe I prepped it even before the last picture. I got halfway through the heart when the timer went, so I stopped and ate with the boychild, who actually stuck around at the table with me after he finished eating (oh my god, he DOES have manners) because the girlchild isn’t here and I guess he decided it would be rude or mean to leave me out there on the deck alone (we’ve been eating out there because the kitchen table is a disaster…I thought we would only have to do that once or twice. Yup. It’s been over a week. Whatever. I always underestimate home renovation time.). Then I realized we were leaving for fireworks in 20 minutes and I still needed to pack up water bags and find my hiking boots from yesterday (you’d think that would be easy), so I speedily finished ironing the heart together…

Got some crazy colors in there. My hearts are never simple. Ironic that.

I had persuaded the boychild and ex to try a new firework experience. We’ve been going to the same park for the same display for the last 16 (15?) years, with a few years off to go to Lake Arrowhead’s display. Actually, we probably started going to this one after the divorce, when Arrowhead was no longer the family destination, so maybe 12 years. Anyway, I wanted to hike up a mountain to see fireworks, multiple displays. I liked the idea of working for your 4th of July. And they crazily agreed, so at 8 PM, we were at the bottom of the back side of Cowles Mountain (Barker Way entrance). I had mapped everything out trailwise and my ex had been up one of them with the boychild before, so we weren’t completely blind and stupid. Plus we weren’t the only people doing this…which is kinda cool, if you think about it.

It’s a 1000-foot gain no matter where you start.

This is halfway up, looking back at El Cajon. It’s getting darker, but no need for flashlights yet.

The sun definitely went down.

All the local fireworks displays start at 9 (the big ones, anyway), so that’s what we were aiming for. There were a ton of people at the top, mostly facing west towards the bay. We decided to face east, towards what we usually see in El Cajon, plus we could see Santee, Poway, Mira Mesa, and some smaller ones as well, plus it must have been Viejas Casino (we are totally going there next year…not the casino, but somewhere nearby, because from what we could see behind the hill, theirs was freakin’ awesome).

Night pictures have their own weirdness.

And it’s honestly not the same as being right under the big booms and cascading lights…

And we wouldn’t have known that if we hadn’t tried…that’s the display we normally watch.

Getting blurry. It was a good experience though. Burned 750 calories for the day, so you can’t argue with that. We got a little lost on the way back because we are a family who is easily irritated by other people, and the groups that were stretched all the way across the trail and giggling like drunken maniacs (really, carrying your drink in one hand down a steep slope while you carry your child on your hip? Whatever.) annoyed us, so we sort of kamikazed our way down. Saw two baby scorpions on the trail (don’t think I’ve ever seen those in the wild before, at least not since I was a kid). That was cool.

And when we got back, after 10 PM, I decided to keep going on the ironing. That might have been a bit crazy, but if you’ve been here for a while, the crazy will not surprise you. I got it to here before we left…

All those bits and pieces ironed down, except for the Fallopian tube that lies over the hand on the left…it’s not attached yet because the hand goes under it…so when we got back, I did the hand and the stuff on the right shoulder/arm.

We had closed Calli up in the girlchild’s room, because she freaks out over fireworks. The ones that went off the night before, apparently she hid under the computer desk and then tried to climb into the boychild’s lap. So when we got back, there was a lot of crying and neediness, and this is where she slept for the next 4 hours…

RIGHT under my feet. A little annoying, but she was better afterwards…hard to concentrate on ironing, though, when you’re trying NOT to step on a dog.

Yes, I ironed for the next 4 hours. I was a little obsessive. I started on the face, which meant trying to find tiny little pieces in another box, because the face straddled two boxes.

I eventually found all the parts and got the whole thing together.

So now I have the whole bottom section ironed in one piece, then two side sections that sit on/in the water, then the entire torso is one piece from knees to clavicle. Then the head is separate. I’m about 17 hours in and I made it to the middle of the 1300s…it was a logical place to stop. Unfortunately, it was about 2 AM and then my brain wouldn’t shut down. It was fully in art mode, and although I was too tired to keep ironing, I couldn’t shut my brain down enough to go to sleep, so I read blogs for a while…but Ms. Needy was on my lap requiring attention.

Could have been fireworks. Who knows. I gave her what she needed and eventually made it into bed before 3. Not good for today’s brain, but it needed to happen for yesterday’s brain. I’m trying to wake up enough now to handle the gym and more ironing and painting or texturing or something. Not sure of the order. One thing at a time. Another ironing day like today, though, and I could be done. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can pull off that level of focus today. We’ll see. It’s progress anyway, significant progress.

I found a list last night (ironically while trying to shut DOWN the creative brain) of 37 creative books to read…Here. I’ve read 7 of them. I don’t really need help with the creative brain. When it misbehaves, I know why and I know how to get it back, although it might take me a while. Those aren’t artists’ blocks or anything…it really is just a matter of what I can handle. You need times of fallow to counteract the times when the brain is going like gangbusters. It’s rest, just like sleep at night (which I also suck at doing properly). So. I might read some of these. I might not.

Cowles Mt Hike from Lake Murray Blvd

This is the first hike I’ve been on in a few weeks; I tried a short, easy, flat hike in mid-June, but my knee was still bugging me, so I’ve been paranoid to try again. I’ve done Cowles Mt from the Golfcrest access about a million times and don’t really like it because of the huge number of people, but this was supposed to be longer and sparsely peopled. I brought my poles just in case. We left at 6:30, which was good, because it was still in the low 80s and not a sweat-free experience. This access is from Lake Murray Blvd, which deadends at the trail entrance.

It’s a nice, big, wide service road at this point, on the shady side of the mountain, although the sun was distinctly in our eyes for part of this section.

From the service road, you turn left on Mesa Trail and take a narrower path across a stagnant creek and up the hill through manzanita and ceanothus. It’s steeper in this section, but still very doable. The next turn was a T-intersection, and we went away from Big Rock in Santee, toward the Barker Way service road. This is that intersection, so you can see the amazing view behind us of Santee.

Following the service road, you then look up to see the peak of Cowles Mt from the east, not the way most people come. You can’t see the trail on the mountain here, but it’s pretty brutal…at least my body, which hadn’t hiked for real in about 5 weeks, thought it was brutal, but it was starting to cool off, and as long as I can stop a few times, I can make it up anything apparently.

This is looking towards La Mesa and El Cajon…a lovely hazy summer’s evening.

Here’s what the climb looked like at the end…

Pretty steep. Thanks to Steve for the pictures of me sweating. Because I was. Because that’s what I do. And I turn red too. It’s very healthy.

Then we were at the top…

Too hazy for a good sunset picture…but still, it’s the top.

On the way back down, I took a panorama shot to the east…

I think that’s where we’re headed to watch fireworks tonight…hopefully it will work out and it won’t be too crowded. You never know. Anyway, it was 2 hours, 5.3 miles, 1000-foot gain. A good workout…could have done without the clouds of weird flying bugs that attacked on the way down, but they didn’t seem to leave any marks, although someone commented about those bugs who lay eggs in your eyes…

Yick.

Grabbing That Errant Eyeball

Well, first of all, I found piece 469, one of the tiny fingernails on that hand that is either reaching for or grabbing that errant eyeball.

I still have an elbow shadow, another fingernail, and a droplet of blood that are missing, but I’m hoping they’ll show up in the next 8 boxes. Holy crap. Do I really have 8 boxes left to iron? I am slow. Actually, it might be 9 boxes, but I’ve ironed bits and pieces out of the 1200, 1400, and 1500 boxes that were mixed up in the lower numbers because I missed numbering those pieces and had to go back and do it.

I haven’t ironed the damn octopus tentacles at all, because honestly, that scares me. I might need tweezers. And a magnifying glass.

Today was a much more successful day, and I was feeling pretty good about what I had achieved, and then shit from my past dropped in my lap. I’m trying to ignore it, like you would ignore an old smelly cat, but really, those are impossible to ignore, because they do that kneading thing with their claws in your lap and they’re purring and often trying to bump their head against your mouse hand and it’s just freakin’ annoying. Yes, I have personal experience with this.

I spent some time today at a friend’s house and cut out most of the Wonder Under for the 10 small bird quilts…

I finished the rest tonight. It took from 5 minutes (bird 2) to 16 minutes (bird 8) to trim the Wonder Under…about an hour and 45 minutes total today. My goal is to iron some onto fabric this weekend, but I really wanted to have the big quilt ironed together before I did that, and I don’t think I can do that as quickly as I’d like. The birds so far have taken from 22 minutes (bird 1) to 46 minutes (bird 8) to number, trace onto Wonder Under, and then cut out of the Wonder Under. Bird 8 has more pieces and is larger. The smaller birds are 1-6. Anyway. It’s progress. Progress is good. I put each bird into a tupperware or rubbermaid container (let’s hope we don’t have many leftovers in the near future) for the next step. It’s not a lot different from what I do now with 100 pieces in a bin, except this isn’t very many pieces, honestly.

The next renovation step has a lot of wait time in between the separate tasks, so hopefully I can stay focused and finish the damn quilt things…I’m starting to panic. I really feel like I’m getting nothing of substance done, and I know it’s because each thing I’m doing is so huge and time-consuming that you can’t see the finish line for all the chaos in front of it…like the living room getting done or this big quilt being finished. Even the birds…they’re small, but I’m crazy and decided to do 10 instead of 1 or 2. It’s really because I couldn’t decide…and there’s some argument that it’s more efficient this way. We’ll see if that’s true.

So yeah, I hiked tonight after…well, my last long hike was Memorial Day weekend…I never blogged about it for some reason (end of school brain death). I did a short flat hike in mid-June, with minor knee pain…but otherwise, oh yeah, there was one dog hike. That’s it. So I had been planning to do something this week and just couldn’t commit. Honestly, I was really worried my knee would act up…so I finally picked one that was strenuous but shorter than what I normally do, and in the evening, and that had at least one person I knew on it, just in case. And I packed my poles, in case the knee got really bad.

And then I hiked. And it was good. And the knee behaved, zero pain. And yes. Hallelujah. I felt good about that. So I will try to keep doing at least one night hike a week. I’ve persuaded boychild and my ex to hike tomorrow night to see fireworks (girlchild is in Anaheim and will be at Disneyland for that…scary!).

My success with the hike was enough to push me into ironing tonight…also I wasn’t as freakin’ tired as I have been the rest of this week…maybe because I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night (unlike tonight, right?). Sleep has not been good. I’m worried about upcoming stuff, lots of stuff. And worry is not good for sleep. Neither is being an old lady, but I can’t do anything about that.

So I finished up the pelvic area…some scars and cracks…

And then moved on into the ribcage above it, which is really fucking complicated (goddamned designer is just making it hard on me).

She has two hands in front of her that I haven’t ironed yet (obviously), and she’s holding her uterus (like you do). And there’s a snake that is somehow behind her and in her…so that’s the yellow/green stuff in her middle area. I’m mostly through the 900s. So halfway. Aargh. It felt like so much more, but if you think about it, there’s half the body left, including the face, which is incredibly complicated, plus a bird and an eyeball and a wolf and I don’t even know what else…and those damn tentacles. So I really shouldn’t be surprised. I’m at 12 hours and 38 minutes and I need to start spending more than an hour or two a day on this. So I should assume another 12 hours, at least. If I start now, I’ll be done before lunchtime.

Yeah. I’m a slavedriver. But I know what I need to get done this summer, and I know what challenges I will face in the new school year, so trying to get stuff done AND get my head straight would be a good thing. Damn head…keeps twisting around and trying to figure shit out. It just needs to accept that other people’s shit is not its problem. Sometimes I really hate days like today when I get so close to good feelings all around, not happy, but not shit, and then one thing throws me. I need more resilience. More padding. More protection. I’m imagining this…

Yup. That, except around my brain. Plus smiling. Yeah.

I miss this…

Because she’s gone for days…Key Club convention. Her male counterpart is around…he got his new college computer (grad present from his parental units) and is thrilled to have a computer that will run more than one application at a time. I feel that pain. We have three old and decrepit computers that need updating…so that’s one down. I’m not replacing all three…mine first, because it’s the oldest and makes the most inappropriate noises, despite my earlier fixes of the year. By then, girlchild will need her own super-speedy laptop for college. So maybe that’s how I solve that problem. Just spend thousands of dollars to send them to college instead of fixing the house computers.

Here he is with his last National Piano Guild certificate…a Superior rank.

Kind of cool…I remember taking him to the first one a million years ago. He was shorter than me then and had a shaved head. Things change. I bet if I go to bed, things will change again. Like maybe I won’t feel so crappy. Look how much stuff I did today! Brain! Pay attention! Yeah. OK. Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you. OK, I’ll turn the light out before I go. Closing the door. Sorry. Whispering now. Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the…OK OK. I’m shutting up now. Geez. Brain has no sense of humor.

Three Peaks in Cuyamaca

Two weeks ago, I signed up for a hike I didn’t think I could finish. I had done 12.5 miles the week before, and it felt like my limit. I was significantly tired the next day, and sore too…so when I signed up for the three peaks hike (Middle, Cuyamaca, and Stonewall), I figured I would just skip the last one…the leader had set the hike up so we didn’t have to do all three.

I mapped the hike out using Map My Hike, but it did add some mileage to it…so it’s probably not exact. The leader had it at 14.4 miles, and this one is over 15…

We started at the parking spot near Milk Ranch Road, heading up the switchbacks on the fire road to Middle Peak. From the parking area, here’s Stonewall Peak…

And Cuyamaca in the distance…

Here’s the fire road…it was a warm day…

There were some flowers I hadn’t seen on previous hikes…

Middle Peak used to be covered with big trees, but the Cedar Fire in 2003 swept through this area in a pretty devastating way. Lots of undergrowth is coming back, but most of the trees are dead…

It wasn’t an easy climb, and this group hiked really fast…

Here’s Stonewall again from higher up the peak…you can just see our cars parked in the turn in the road.

And Stonewall again, through the burned trees. There was a good breeze all day, which was good…

More flowers…there were LOTS of these.

And dead trees…

A big fire road…

You can imagine what this might have looked like when the trees were alive. I actually hiked this area the weekend before the Cedar Fire, and then went back about two weeks after the fires…it was hard to see.

And yet, the dead trees have a fascinating presence…stark though it might be.

This is looking off towards Stonewall again, but closer to the top of Middle Peak.

There is no actual trail to this peak…you can bushwhack it if you like…

More flowers…they flourish in the full sun without trees shading them.

We reached the highest point of the trail, and then headed around the western side of Middle Peak…

This is the view to the west, which wouldn’t have been visible prior to October 2003…

Another view…

We headed south towards Cuyamaca Peak, following the Conejo Trail for most of it…

This is looking toward the east…

The trail was rocky now, and sometimes there were trees (some significantly large ones) over the trail…

But new trees were growing by the trail…

Not sure what direction this is…maybe north?

The wildflowers were everywhere on this section of trail, truly beautiful riotous color…

And long vistas of blue sky…

Even more pine trees lining the trail, close enough that you had to edge through them at times…makes you wonder what will happen to the trail as they get bigger…

It’s nice to see them growing…

This is the view of the slope looking north…once covered with trees…

Some berries?

This is one of the smaller trees I climbed over…some required assistance, but this one was on my own…it attacked my pants…had to sew that hole up…

Pretty flowers…

This was where the Conejo Trail meets the Cuyamaca Peak fire road to the peak itself.

Looking up the fire road…

There are still some trees alive on Cuyamaca…

Here we are at the top of Cuyamaca Peak, at 6512′, the second tallest peak in San Diego County.

I was last here in November, with snow…

We sat and ate lunch and communed with the iridescent green beatles…

This was over where the antennas are…looks like they’re building new ones.

Flowers and butterflies live at the top…

We then took the fire road down…

Down, down, down…

There’s Stonewall in the distance…the third peak on our challenge…

Still lots of dead trees…

So we got to the Paso Picacho Campground at the base of Cuyamaca and Stonewall peaks, and we rested a bit (bathrooms! with black widows!)…and it was then I had to make a decision about the last peak. Hell. I was still moving. It was hot…but it seemed lame to stop there. Some people wanted a longer rest, but I just wanted to get UP the last peak…so a few of us headed out…below you can see Cuyamaca Peak from the trail going up Stonewall, with Paso Picacho down across the road.

There’s Stonewall from below…

The hardest parts were tired legs and the heat…it was about 85 degrees at this point. I needed almost all of my 3 liters on this hike.

This is the view to the south…you can see the highway on the right side…

More dead trees…these creaked in the wind.

This trail is really hot and dry.

But beautiful flowers lined the trail…I last hiked this one in November as well…

Here’s Cuyamaca from the west trail on Stonewall…

And here’s Middle from Stonewall…

And there’s the peak I’m heading for…

These trees creaked in a very scary way…

Trees hung over the trail even up here…

Here’s the view from the top…there are steps going up to the peak and info maps up there to show you what you’re looking at…

I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the way down…we went down the back way and across some meadows with trails that were barely clear…pulling foxtails out of our shoes and socks became a regular stopping point…

At some point on a hike this long you are just trying to get done…although the meadows were very pretty…

That’s the Trout Pond in the distance (notice the electrical poles…must be approaching “civilization”…

It was a long tiring hike. It was a challenge, though, and it felt good finishing the whole thing. I think it took about 7 hours total…we stopped for maybe 40 minutes total…once at the top of Cuyamaca, once in the campground, and once at the top of Stonewall. No ticks, no blisters…just sore muscles and tired body. Definitely worth the trip.

No Fit…

I’ve never been good at fitting in. I have a lot of different interests and that seems like it should make it easier, but it doesn’t always. I suspect part of it is my fault…I see all the differences, as well as the similarities, and the differences feel like they push me away. I’m not even sure I want to fit in most of the time…maybe it’s that I want to feel accepted even when I don’t fit well. Maybe I will never fit well. That’s not true. There have been times when my core existence was a good fit, or at least I thought it was, and it made it easier to feel like I fit in elsewhere. Or that it mattered less. Right now, I can’t even find my core…I’m floating around in this weird mental space that doesn’t feel right, I don’t feel right, and maybe that’s the issue. It’s not that I don’t fit in with any particular group. I can handle that. I’m OK with that. It’s that I don’t feel like I fit in with myself.

It’s hard to explain. It’s like wearing a shoe that’s not quite comfortable. There’s a rock in there. You pull the shoe off, readjust the sock, find the rock, put the shoe back on, walk for a while. Nope. Still doesn’t feel right. It’s just uncomfortable. It’s wrong. You stomp your feet a bit to try to make them conform to the shoe or vice versa. No luck. No fit.

I have conversations with my counselor pretty regularly about how this feels and what to do about it. It’s part of what feeds the depression, feeling out of place, unsettled, like I don’t know who I am. I do the stuff she suggests, sometimes I’m already doing it, because I do know how to make a life. I’ve had to remake my life before. I remember. It wasn’t this bad last time though. This time, it’s like going from a scorched landscape…like the hike we did on Saturday, where the fire was a year ago…where baby plants are just now popping up, and here we are stepping on them, feeling bad about it. A fire goes through, it can take 10 years or more to get back to something approximating normal. So maybe I am the fire-scorched landscape, and it hasn’t even been a year, and I have baby plants, but they’re not strong enough, big enough, and they’re getting stepped on. I’m betting those hillsides don’t feel normal yet. They certainly don’t look it.

So why do I hike? Being outside in nature helps with the depression. Being outside doing something physical, sometimes even challenging, it helps. (Saturday was a challenge, between elevation and my knee acting up…not a good thing…it was a challenge. Not a significant challenge, like the previous week, which hopefully I’ll post later today, but still…) Forcing myself to be with people for at least part of the days when I would normally be alone, in dead silence, it’s probably a good thing. I do OK when the people are around most days…it isn’t until I’m on my own, driving home or wherever, that I have an issue. Out of the group, into the pit.

I’m working on all of this. I’m aware of it. I’m trying to find my trail through all of it. There are marked trails, but I’m not good at following those…I’m out bushwhacking my own trail. It may take me a while. It most definitely will take me a while.

So this weekend, I tried a few social events. I did OK. I haven’t found a balance between trying to be with people and getting my introverted and artistic needs met. I have to sacrifice one to the other, it seems, and that’s not ideal. It’s not what I want. But it is what it is right now. I went to a work thing. I went hiking. Then I went camping with people from work (well, one people from work, because the others bailed). In the moment, it was fine. I did OK. I like hiking. I like camping. The crap feelings I have on either side are what I need to work through. And I am.

So after I hiked about 10 miles off of Sunrise Highway, I drove out to William Heise County Park near Julian, where a friend from work and a bunch of her family and friends were camping. Here was my setup…

We had four campsites all clustered together under the oaks, with a nice wide area in the middle for the ten kids to race around and throw things at each other (you know, like kids do…).

We hung out and chatted and ate and sat by the campfire…

It was nice. I was tired, but it was OK. I even walked around and took pictures of flowers…

These are the oaks that were above my tent…

Here was my breakfast (very exciting…I did not challenge myself on the cooking. I bought a burrito for dinner and heated it up on the fire).

I read. I drew. I made tea (shocking, for those who know me). It was nice. This drawing has been in my head in pieces for months. It’s not done.

I’m not even sure I like it, but if it’s in my head, it needs to get out.

This one I did Sunday morning while drinking tea…

It’s also not done. I like it better than the other one, but I’m not sure it needs to become a quilt. Maybe.

Sometimes I just draw and I don’t worry about the purpose of the drawing or the final product. It is enough to draw. I haven’t been drawing much lately. You need time to draw, and my time has been limited. That is one of the issues of doing all the hiking and social stuff…it takes away from my art time, from the actual space I need in my head to draw. I hate that. It’s a nasty balance. I don’t seem to be able to work it out right. I was better at it before, but that was a different me. She’s gone. This other me is a lot more needy.

I only camped for about 22 hours (yes, I counted). I had stuff I had to do yesterday, including groceries and getting the boychild a tux for prom. Yes, he’s going…with a group of friends, which is the best way to go anyway. So we stood around in a tux rental place yesterday and tried to get him to make decisions (amusing!). And I was uber-tired yesterday night after very little sleep two nights running, so I fell asleep while trying to grade tests (I am so far behind…) and finally gave up and went to sleep. No amount of caffeine was going to help. I slept over 9 hours last night, almost straight through, so that tells you how exhausted I was. Good thing I had today off. Today? Gotta be efficient. This week? Gotta be on top of my game. Whether or not I fit is irrelevant this week. I just have to get through.

So here’s the science teacher brain at work. One of my coworker’s daughters pointed out these bugs while we were setting up my tent (it required two people…it was a bizarre shape…kinda buglike, actually). There were some on the ground near the tent, and then she found them on the tree. These are the adults, I think, with the wings…

Then these are the larva, no wings, look kinda like bees with the stripes.

There were husks of the larva on the tree, attached to it, so like a cocoon, but not. The legs are still there. Like they stick to the tree for a while.

Then as I was taking the tent down, I saw this one, probably newly emerged, because the wings aren’t entirely unfurled, and it still had a really pink, new-looking body.

And this one, also on the tent, looked full grown.

We were concerned that these were the gold-spotted oak borers that have attacked many of the trees up in the Cuyamacas, including in this park, but those are much smaller, and the larva are worms, not crawly beetle things. So I don’t know what they are. But it was interesting seeing all the stages around (most of them on my tent).

Anyway. Today? Not trying to fit. Just trying to cope. But see, I’m back with my kids in my house doing the stuff I need to do as a mom and teacher. So that’s not where I have the problems. I have issues when it’s just me on my own…and that’s going to get worse over the next two years as the kids go off to college, so that’s my goal…figure out my head before they both leave. Have a comfortable space where I feel like I fit, even if it’s just me by myself, and be OK with that. Be able to go out and do this more social stuff and come home and feel content, not empty and lost. It sucks to be in my late 40s and trying to figure all this stuff out yet again, but there’s nothing I can do about that except try to do a better job from here on out. Find my fit.

Power Struggles

Apparently there’s some sort of power struggle going on in my head between the depressed part of my brain and the part that is just tired of the depressed part. I have to admit that the tired part is not winning. Neither is the depressed part, so I guess that’s a good thing…imagine a big tug-of-war rope with two weaklings pulling on each side, falling down at times, rope burns on the hands, but no one lets go. Oh wait, sometimes the tired side lets go and the depressed part wins for a while, but because she’s depressed, she eventually lets go of the rope and wanders off, only to start tugging again when tired rises up and tries to take control again.

It’s exhausting to watch. Hard to muster any sort of energy on either side of the fight. No one wants depression to win, but sometimes it’s so hard to even consider who you’d have to turn into in order to have the other side win. I don’t know who I am at the moment, but I do know a lot about who I’m not. I guess that helps.

I came into counseling angry today, for decent reasons, and we parsed out why, and delved deep into where it came from, but didn’t find the healthy outlet for it. I spend a lot of time saying “but that’s not who I am” to explain why I don’t take the easy way out. I guess that’s good. I don’t know. I do know I understand better than most why I do things, what I feel, how I’m thinking. Yes, it probably means I spend too much time in my head, but at least I’m not just reacting to life. I don’t want to just make random decisions without thinking clearly about all the parts that go with it. There are so many decisions right now that my head is basically spinning. I think that’s why I’m hiking so much…I can’t possibly decide anything on a hike. All I can do is put one foot in front of another. Over and over again. Until I’m done. You can’t beat that. That’s the decision…walk or stop. Walking is the only thing that makes sense.

I have a plan for the three-day weekend. I probably won’t make it through all the things I’ve planned, but I’ve tried to set myself up for both control and success. I could fail miserably, but hopefully not. I really am hoping for three days of no power struggles (um, yes…I AM aware that I live with teenagers, but I have faith…in something).

I have a quilt that’s been in pieces for a while now, since early April. It’s only got about 365 pieces in it, so it wouldn’t take long to iron…so tonight, I sorted the pieces to that end…

I’m hoping to have some time on Sunday to get them ironed together. Or even Monday. I’m trying to ignore the 160 journals in my classroom that need grading, as well as the two periods’ worth of tests I still haven’t graded. Grrr. Ignore. Yes, this quilt only has FOUR boxes of pieces, instead of TWENTY-ONE. It’s not complicated…on purpose. Apparently I also need to make another smallish quilt with no nudity or violence (um. hmn. ok…)…apparently soonish. Whatever that means. We’ll see how that goes. Summer looms. I’m apparently not teaching summer school (they rejected most of us, so I don’t feel bad)…so maybe I’m going to get a seasonal job at Home Depot. We’ll see.

Then I spent a little time cutting pieces out…

Still forever away from finishing…

Honestly, I have an early hike tomorrow, plus I’m camping, so I had to pack a bunch of stuff for that, and I really should get my butt in bed. Like now. But because I SHOULD, my brain is balking and wanting to stay up late, like the immature little brat it can be. Anyway. I think I can persuade it that sleep is a better choice than trolling the internet…although trying to persuade it that it’s not OK to stay up all night making art is a little bit more difficult. It’s a recalcitrant beast.

PCT: Desert View Picnic Area to Kitchen Creek Road

I seem to regularly be about two weeks behind in posting this (Must Get Caught Up)…It’s not the end of the world, although it may be the end of my disk space for photos. This was the next section of the PCT we hiked, from Desert View Picnic area south to Kitchen Creek Road, where we ended a few weeks ago. Here we are at the start of the hike…it was a little chilly at the start, but warmed up…

Here’s the view of the desert from the start…

This was my first trip with the new camera, PLUS I was carrying poles, so I didn’t take as many pictures. It’s hard to hold a camera and poles; in fact, I had a long conversation about the future of things like photographs (think Google Glass) and how technology would be even more integrated into our lives. I don’t have a problem with that.

The hike started out in mostly mountain pines…

As we were hiking, we saw all these pink ties on the the bushes, trees, and PCT markers…is it Breast Cancer Day? What the heck?

We stopped here to divest ourselves of all the extra layers of clothing…it doesn’t take long to warm up when you’re hiking.

There were beautiful long vistas of the surrounding mountains as we hiked.

And then we found out what the markers were for…apparently this was the weekend of the PCT 50 mile trail run…25 miles up and back from the Boulder Oaks area, basically through all of what we were hiking today (and more). So any time you think I’m crazy for the hiking I do, just think about running the trail for 50 miles in one day.

It ended up being kind of a pain in the ass, because we (were nice and) had to get off the trail for the runners. So that seemed to slow us down (except it didn’t…it just meant we didn’t stop much to rest). There were at least 168 runners (we know that because we saw number 1 and number 168)…we applauded them, encouraged them. But it made for a very choppy hike for this section of it. Eventually we got past them all…or they got past us…or something.

Like I said, beautiful mountain trail…this is past the Burnt Rancheria section I think. According to our fearless leader, this is an area of the forest with a beautiful landscape of trees and wildflowers. From here, we passed through Horse Meadows and down to Long Canyon, where we hiked through another shady area lined with trees and passed by Long Canyon Creek. Then we descended around Fred Canyon and down to the Kitchen Creek Road endpoint. I wish I could tell you from my photos where all that happened (I am not remembering a creek…sorry), but I can’t. But I think this is the trees and wildflowers part.

This part of the Lagunas doesn’t have a lot of fire damage, which is nice.

Apparently I’m not in the mood to raise my arm…

This was not a physically difficult hike in terms of ups and downs. I had the poles (and I’m glad I did), because it was supposed to be a loss of 2540 feet and a gain of only 553 feet, so first of all, that’s why we went north to south (more downhill) and second of all, I thought the poles would help with the downhills. In reality, none of the downhills were really difficult, but the length of the hike meant that at about the 9-mile mark, the poles helped because the downhills were really rocky and you were already tired and not picking up your feet well, so they gave you some stability. Basically, it meant I didn’t fall down. That’s probably a good thing.

I didn’t take a lot of flower photos…poles, new camera…long hike. It took my legs a while to wake up and remember how to hike.

Oh hey…this might have been Long Canyon. We stopped somewhere in here to eat lunch…we didn’t take long, though, because we knew those runners would be coming BACK, and they’d be behind us, and it would just be a pain in the butt again.

More long vistas of mountains…

The hike gets a little more desertlike out here…lots of low bushes, trees gone. Luckily, it wasn’t too hot and we had plenty of water…plus the race had fueling stations with Gatorade and water, so we could have gotten more. We didn’t see a lot of thru hikers today…they were probably trying to avoid the race.

I think that brown stripe on the mountain is Sunrise Highway? Maybe not. Can’t remember. That’s the problem with writing about it two weeks later.

This last section of the hike was a narrow trail on the side of a mountain…this would have been a bad place to intersect with runners.

The trail is still pretty rocky at this point. I was tired on this hike.

A long view to the east, where you can see Interstate 8 heading for the desert.

More narrow trail views to the west…

You could almost see to the ocean from here…

We stopped at this rock for photos (none of which are on the site, so I can’t pull any of them…sorry)…as we were standing there, we saw the number 1 runner go by, going back towards Boulder Oaks. That motivated us to get our butts in gear, because we knew at least 167 more were coming and we didn’t know how far ahead he was…and that trail was too damn narrow to be getting over all the time, especially with runners coming from behind.

There were lots of interesting rock formations on this side of the mountains…definitely some metamorphic and volcanic action going on here…

Light on pictures this time…we did beat all the other runners back to the finish at Kitchen Creek Road (they kept going, which explains all the runners we’d seen two weeks earlier on the section from Lake Morena to Kitchen Creek…they were practicing). Number 2 came by while we were standing around at the end. We did 12.5 miles in about 5 hours. I really felt it the next day and thought, OK, there’s your limit…12.5 miles. Ha! I was wrong. But there are days when you’re tired and days when you can walk forever. This was not one of those days. It was a nice hike…although I preferred the first part of it. And as a thru hiker, going the other direction is probably kind of tiring…lots of minor climbing that you probably don’t notice until your legs start complaining. At some point, I’ll count up how many miles of the PCT I’ve done so far (not many)…

Kinda Stuck

I spent a lot of time in my head yesterday, partially because I was on a LONG kick-your-butt hike where I was hiking by myself for a goodly amount of time (not fast enough to be with the front group and not slow enough to be with the back group), and also because it’s Saturday and I usually spend long swathes of time by myself on Saturdays these days. Some people tell me to fix that, because yes, I do find it depressing to be in my head that much, I should go out with friends to dinner or movies or just to hang out, and I do have those options, but you know what? I’m an introvert. Yes. I teach middle-school kids all day and I’m an introvert. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people…I do OK with them most of the time, although you have to be the right kind of person for me to get really close to you, but I can talk to just about anyone (as evidenced on these hikes). What it means is that too much interaction with people and I need to recharge. I need quiet mental space with a book or music or my art and I need it on a regular basis, like every day, and sometimes for many hours. I can handle my kids and close family, but more than that and I feel like I’m exerting energy I don’t even have any more. It’s exhausting. Because yes, the depression steals some of my ability to cope in social situations. It gets used up faster.

So I actually need those evenings/afternoons/mornings where I’m not expected to be a certain way or put out a certain amount of interaction…but because of how my life is at the moment, most of those moments are now alone moments and my brain reacts to those badly.

I’m a fairly self-reflective person (not with mirrors all over me…that would be funny…oh shit, that’s the THIRD drawing that’s popped into my head in the last 24 hours. That was a plus of all the hiking alone time yesterday. I did a whole drawing in my head…now to get it on paper), so I spend a lot of time (possibly too much) thinking about what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and how to make it better. Yesterday’s notes to myself: When depressed, don’t watch movies where babies die unexpectedly. Also grocery stores on Saturday night are depressing. Always. Knock it off. Go another day. I don’t care how convenient it is because you have nothing else to do. I don’t care if you feel you HAVE to go Saturday because Sunday is a clusterfuck schedulewise. Find some other chore that needs doing so you’re not perusing the vegetables at 7 PM on Saturday when all you can think of is what you would have been doing then a year ago. A year ago doesn’t exist any more. Move on.

Yeah. Brain and I are not getting along at the moment. I think some of it is because there are still a couple of really high-stress things in my life that need to get handled this week, and they are overwhelming me, so I’m not handling the rest of life well.

Anyway. So I hiked yesterday, a really long hike, and my body is complaining today, but I managed yesterday to NOT have to take a nap (good). And yes, I went to the store (bad). But then I needed to do some cutting out of fabric, because I was too tired Friday night to do that after searching for about an hour for the title on my old car, which needs to be sold. So that now requires a DMV trip, which would be fine if they’d let me make an appointment, but they won’t at the local one, and I can’t get to the nonlocal one in time after school. Bastards.

I have the bins all set up on the couch…

I’m still working on using my new camera well…it’s fussy. There is a black cat in the back of that photo, but you can’t see her at all. The bin on my lap (which you can’t see) has all the trimmed-off trash pieces in it. The bigger bin to the right of me has all the pieces I need to cut out, and then the bin just past it has all the cut-out pieces. Usually there’s a cat somewhere in there too…eventually she moved to the couch behind my head (where she likes to be, because I reach back and pet her occasionally). I use an app (Task Measure) on my phone to record how long I spend each day on each part of making the quilt.

I cut stuff out for a couple of hours, putting me up to 7+ hours on this part of the quilt.

This is the stuff I still haven’t cut out…so the pile is getting smaller, but it’s still pretty big.

I get frustrated with some of the pieces because they’re so tiny (see all the skeleton bones, long skinny pieces?)…some I don’t cut out until later, so I don’t lose them, but these are big enough. These are all the pieces I’ve cut out so far.

So I’m getting there…both with the quilt pieces and with my life, although the latter does seem stalled in place at the moment. There’s some step I need to take but can’t. I know what I want but can’t deal with what I’ll have to do to get there. Don’t have the mental energy, the desire even to go there. So I will be stuck with the quiet Saturday nights for a long while, I think…I can’t really financially afford to be going out and doing stuff anyway, so that doesn’t help. I think sometimes you just have to accept where you’re at and that at some point in the future you might be able to make a change. I don’t like that waiting stuff, though, but until my brain figures out how to come out of the cave/pit/hole/whatever the hell it is that it lives in right now and stay OUT, I’m kinda stuck.

Eagle Rock on the PCT

A couple of weekends ago, I did another small section of the PCT, this time with the purpose of seeing Eagle Rock. It was a warmish day…

But the first part of the hike, which leaves near the Warner Springs fire station, is mostly under big oak trees, running next to a stream.

It was quite pretty on this section…

We were not a huge group, but that’s because there was some race going on that blocked traffic from North County making it to Ramona, so we were missing a bunch of people who were supposed to go.

There were these great big meadows of grasses that stretched out under the warm sun…

This reminds me of the area near Sacramento, where I spent the first 7 or so years of my life (obviously imprinted on me).

Of course, that’s because things here turn brown very early…we haven’t had much rain this year.

There is a section that is more desert-like after the trees…

You can see mountains surrounding the valley…

We were blessed with a decent breeze for most of the hike…

Lots of far-off vistas and beautiful blue skies…there were many through-hikers of the PCT on this section…apparently Warner Springs has good pancakes and omelets, so they were motivated to get up and move.

This was not a difficult hike, about 6.5 miles, with no real climbing.

It is out and back…and I’m sure it’s very hot during the summer, so lots of water…

More of those grassy meadows stretching for miles.

There were lots of wildflowers around too…not that I took many pictures of those…this was the last hike my old camera made it on. To get it to take photos, half the time I had to remove and replace the battery. So yeah. That’s what finally motivated me to get a new one.

Not a lot of trees in this section…

Oh yeah, and it’s not a hike in Southern California without some cactus…seriously, this stuff grows everywhere.

All the while, I’m keeping my eyes open for something big enough to be called Eagle Rock…

More flowers…notice how dry the ground is? These won’t last long…

It’s not a wide trail…

Rocks? In the distance?

These were actually west of the formation itself (which is not on my PCT map at all)…

And there we are…you can’t see this from the PCT…you see the back end. It looks like someone did some selective chipping to the beak area, but otherwise, that’s an eagle all right…

It’s big enough to stand on. No group photo this time…not enough motivation for that, I guess. This is looking south towards the PCT. Someday I’ll do this section…it’s supposed to be nice.

More southerly looking…

Giant flowers…seriously, bigger than your hand, just growing right out of the rock.

A view to the west…

And back towards the south…there was a steady stream of through-hikers on that section.

Thistles…

Rocks…in case you’ve never seen one.

People eating lunch on rocks…we actually hiked this really fast, so it was more like brunch on the rocks.

Bird…refused to turn around and pose.

I think this is a blue-belly (despite the lack of actual blue belly showing)…I had a lizard expert helping me stalk these around the rocks…we heard a rattlesnake under one of the rocks too, but we never saw him.

More sitting upon the rocks…

A spiny granite lizard…there were a bunch of these, but they were photo-shy. This one did push-ups for me.

No photos please…

After a short stop, we hiked back the way we came…

It always looks a little different on the way back…

One of those big flowers ready to bloom…notice the lavender tint.

And those big old beautiful oaks…

More flowers, even on cactus…

Back through the desert wash area…

And into the meadows and trees again…

I could live out here…except for all the hikers. And the summer heat. And the fire danger.

We made it back quicker than it took to get out there…

‘

Here’s the sign for food at the Warner Springs stop for the hikers…they must be good for business.

Like I said, it was hot and dry…over 80 degrees, but a nice breeze kept it bearable…

This would be a great hike with kids old enough to make the distance…just be careful of snakes, especially around the rocks. Oh yeah, and if you just want to see the rock, you can drive up very close and do a super short hike to see it (wimps!). It took us about 3 hours, I think, to do the whole thing…it took longer to get OUT there and park, because yes, it’s in the boonies if you’re coming from San Diego proper…but definitely worth it. Crossing it off the list and trying to figure out how to hike the section south of it next…

Better Moments…

Happy Mothers Day to the moms…and the moms of moms…etc. This day has always been bittersweet to me, at least a little, because I never have my kids on Sunday mornings, or at least not since they were 4 or 5 years old. I don’t think I ever had the breakfast in bed or the kids doing something special in the morning. I always had a kid-free morning. Of course, most of my friends with kids are insanely jealous, because all they’ve ever wanted is that kid-free morning, no noise, no clean up after the breakfast, no crazy activities. I get it. I really do. But every Sunday morning is kid-free for me, and it gets kinda old…and TOO quiet. It’s been over 12 hours since I talked to any human in person. I talked to two on the phone briefly, my SIL and my ex, both last night. That’s my life right now. I didn’t want to go out and do stuff. I needed to grade and I did iron last night, but the quiet starts to get to me. The being alone part…the part my SIL and friends crave…it gets old.

I spend too much time in my head as it is.

I did manage to finish the tax board appeal yesterday, except for getting it notarized. I’m waiting on approval. I also did LOTS of really painful math (this is why I had to call the ex…financial forms confuse the fuck out of me, and I needed another brain to bounce the confusing words off of, just to try to figure out what they REALLY wanted); this was for the financial aid appeal. All I do is appeal these days. That one is done and ready to be mailed. I even graded papers for a while.

Then I ironed. This was last night. I was really tired though. I hiked in the morning, long hike, I think I’m finding my limits. I went to the opening at Visions Art Museum…more about that later.

I only ironed the bird, the hawk. I actually pulled some photos of a red-tailed hawk up on my phone and used them as a reference for picking colors…

It may be the only thing in the quilt that is colored realistically…OK, maybe the humans. Sort of the wolf.

I do this sometimes, drop an almost-real animal in there with all the fantasy stuff…in Disrupted, I was watching lots of Big Cat Diary and really loved how strong and even vicious female lions are, especially when they are protecting their young…so that’s why there’s a lioness in that quilt…she’s the ultimate protecting female.

She’s the one you want around. She’ll kick anyone’s ass. A lot of the animals in my quilts are protectors. The birds aren’t and neither are the snakes. The birds are the talkers, the storytellers, or they are a sign of something, of bad or evil or death. The snakes are just evil, bad, the sign of badness in other people. They lie, they carry poison, they are inside all of us, coiled around each of us.

Some tiny birdwing pieces…

Of course, the next crazy step is to cut all those suckers out.

It’s not a small pile of pieces. I added some different browns to help make the hawk colors.

I do try to reuse colors throughout the piece, to repeat fabrics in other places so there’s a connection between all the bits. So I used some of the browns I’d already used (there’s a lot of brown in this quilt) and then added a few more.

Today…I managed to only cry a bit. I still do that, you know. Cry every day. I think it just is the new me. Part of it was feeling very alone this morning. Part of it was feeling like I missed out on something this morning. Yes, we went out to dinner for Mother’s Day and they bought me a really awesome gift (will show tomorrow), but I bought my own flowers and got into an argument with the girlchild and didn’t feel like anything good. I guess that’s the REAL mom existence, isn’t it? My SIL said something about needing a Teflon coating as a mom, so the really bad stuff, the stuff that makes you wonder if loving your kids makes any sense at all, because they are driving you so batshit crazy that you want to run away (we’ve all been there), the Teflon can just make it bounce off. And she doesn’t even have teenagers yet.

I’m back to not being allowed to talk. It’s kinda been a theme for the last two years of my life. You will not talk. You will not use this word or that word. What you say is bad, it’s evil, it should be stopped. There will be consequences for your daring to speak. You will not like them.

It’s so tiring to feel that way all the time.

So I wasn’t going to iron tonight, because I had grades to do and I’m physically tired from yesterday’s hike…but I really thought my brain needed it. I’ve been feeling depressed (for years) for days…I guess worse than before.

First, though…I picked up the last quilts from a show that recently closed, so I finally dealt with 4 boxes, a tube, and a plastic-wrapped roll of all the quilts that have come home in the last month…

I got rid of all the boxes and other stuff and put them in my bedroom to be rolled up with the others. It’s depressing to have so many come home, sure, but then I remember that they went out there in the world and hung up in front of people…that’s why they were gone…and that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will happen again (but I actually have to ENTER something for that to happen).

I cut out the dog and the giant eyeball with the skull in it.

I’m down to the last 100 or so pieces, and they’re all part of the octopus…so I just need to decide what color he wants to be…

I was going to do it tonight…was considering that purple by the scissors (I spent some time straightening up the fabrics…the mess was driving me bonkers)…but I’m just not sure. So I will let it sit overnight and see what I think. I will be done tomorrow though…that’s good. I think.

I finished this book today, Hyperion by Dan Simmons…

I had a hard time getting into it; the first 50 pages were dense with world-building and strange vocabulary, organisms from multiple planets and lots of unknowns. Eventually, though, when he settles down into the story-telling portion of the book, I was really fascinated. The book is an outer story with 6 inner stories by major characters, explaining their reasons for going on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, where they expect to meet the Lord of Pain, aka the Shrike. My favorite story was that of the detective, Brawne Lamia. She was also the only major female character, so that’s an interesting coincidence. She’s a tough but interesting character. The Shrike character is pictured on the front of the book I was reading…that is so not how I pictured it. I didn’t really connect the figure on the front with the description in the book until I was near the end. I will definitely go on and read the next one, as soon as I finish all the library books that have recently appeared. It did take me a while to get through this one, about a week…which is a lot, considering it’s not so long (but the font was so freakin’ tiny!). Anyway. It was a good read.

I meant to post this video of hail on the hike in Julian…

I was standing by myself at this point, up against the rocks, but listening to the rain and the wind (and then the hail) going through these oak trees perched on the edge of the trail. It was a beautifully meditative moment. I seem to be pretty good at pulling those moments out of the hikes I’m on. I guess that’s a good thing.

Moving on. I still have to be a mom tomorrow, but this time with no celebration, no card, no cheesecake (she did make cheesecake…definitely good stuff). It’s harder, but you know it will all turn out OK in the long run. I probably have a lot more crying to do, but hopefully that will get balanced out with better moments. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.