Hopefully

I’m having a hard time focusing this morning. I know I have this huge to-do list that encompasses the house, the yard, school stuff, sending boychild to college stuff, and art stuff. It’s a stuff tsunami swirling around in my head. So I just sat here staring at the computer for a while, because I did a lot of stuff yesterday, but some of it was just soul-fixing stuff that needed to happen and some of it was family stuff that needed to happen (girlchild turned 17 yesterday), and my head was still whirling around last night, even though I did finally get to that magical place…I finished quilting that damn beast of a quilt…

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It took 18 hours and 36 minutes. I had estimated 20 hours, so that wasn’t a bad estimate. The quilting became a pain in the butt on Friday, which is partially why I didn’t write Friday night (that and being totally exhausted from lack of sleep). The thread kept breaking over and over again and I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do (saying prayers to the Goddess of Thread, wafting burning sage throughout the house, dancing the Dance of the Strong Thread) and nothing was working. I finally gave up around midnight, because I knew I had to be up super early on Saturday morning to hike (yes! I hiked! I’ll post that later) and I was just getting frustrated.

I hiked in the morning on Saturday, and some time in the afternoon, after napping (because that’s what lack of sleep and a strenuous hike does to your body), I sat down to finish quilting…except I had to be somewhere later…

But the damn thread was still being cranky. Its’ so irritating to deal with thread sometimes. I mean, you’re already changing bobbins way too often because they’re not very big and don’t hold much thread, but then every time it breaks, you have to tie off and start over again, and it just wears on you. But at that point, I could see the end. I had gotten about 2/3 of the way around the outside edge. I was almost there.

And then I had to stop! It was OK. I went to the Visions Art Museum opening. They currently have Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s 30 Quilts for 30 Years, which yes, was at Houston, but is still nice to see again. That’s not why I went. I went because of Deidre Adams’ Tracings, six pieces that she made just for the exhibit, but also because I was hoping to meet her after only knowing her online via her blog and comments she made when I sent photos in for SAQA shows. So that was really nice, not only to see her work up close…this combines paper and her fabric technique of layering color and marks on the piece…but also to see her face to face. You should go read her blogposts about making these pieces if you go…interesting insights into how we sometimes have to work even if our brains aren’t ready for it (I don’t know ANYTHING about that state, right?). I also wanted to see Arline Fisch’s Hanging Garden of California, which was a treat with the artist standing in the middle dressed to match. I’m a bit annoyed that no photos are allowed at all…I can see the point when the pieces are in a book that you can buy, but I think a picture of the art with artist standing by is really cool, and we weren’t allowed to do that. I guess they might find it easier to have the same no-photo policy for all shows, but I think it would be good advertising to let people take photos at shows where publications aren’t available.

So after that, it was the girlchild’s birthday dinner, which was nice, good food and she seemed happy with her gifts (we are supporting her dream of a trip to Paris next summer…scary stuff to think of sending her off, but she’ll be 18 in a year and then off to college).

When I got home, it wasn’t that late, and yes, I was tired again, but the quilt told me that it only needed another hour or so. And it was right. And this time, it didn’t break thread a million times, so I stitched like the wind…

And finished 44 minutes later. Yes, I use an app to keep track of time. My brain isn’t capable.

It was early, so I thought about trying to trim it, but I think this one might be difficult to trim…it’s not particularly straight (my fault…being lazy, stubborn, stupid, I don’t know what) and I’m debating making it not a rectangle. So I thought it would be better to make that decision when I’m fully awake (whenever that might be, because I have half a cup of tea in me and it’s most definitely morning and I actually had almost 9 hours of sleep last night for the first time in like a month, and I am nowhere near fully awake). Soon. Get the rest of the tea in me, finish this post, clear the floor, lay it out, let the brain wander in to a decision.

Shut the negative crap up. Because that voice is going ballistic in there…it’s referencing past failures, berating me for not being more careful when I ironed this together (there’s only so much I can do about my own mental state), it’s listing all the things I need to get done and yelling at me for sleeping too long, for hiking because it took up valuable time, but then also for not going to the gym this morning. So make up your fucking mind…either you want me to exercise and be healthy or you don’t. Seriously. I have to weigh every decision. I went to bed early without meditating because I was exhausted. I would have fallen asleep in meditation, so I just skipped that step and went to bed. Somewhere in my head, I know it was the right decision, but that stupid judgy part of the brain is questioning every single thing I do, every thing I say, every thing that I’ve done in the last 10 years, maybe more.

Shut the fuck up. We all have those voices. They’re just damn annoying. So I need it to get further away before I lay this thing on the floor and decide the damage. The next step. Then I can work my way through the shit on the post-it note in front of my computer, where I tried to corral all the crap that needs to happen today. I can feel inspired by seeing the art last night and the successful hike and the girlchild’s existence and even the fact that my ex and son cleaned the kitchen yesterday before I got home (apparently the girlchild had left a larger disaster than usual, which is what I had been expecting to come home to, so that was a truly wonderful surprise). I want to be invited to do a solo show at Visions, dammit. Don’t know if that will ever happen. My work is a bit more in-your-face than the work of those to whom they usually offer such opportunities. That nasty part of my brain is now telling me to make pretty landscapes. It’s telling me I’ll never get a solo show anywhere. It’s reminding me of all the rejections I’ve gotten in the last 8 months and asking me why I made art at all. Sigh. Making pretty landscapes wouldn’t work either. I need an exorcism. That part of the brain needs to wander off and get hit by a train.

Anyway. Hopefully by tonight, I’ll have it trimmed and the binding machine-stitched on so I can do the handwork. Hopefully I’ll have a bunch of things crossed off this post-it. Hopefully that negative brain piece will have duct tape wrapped tightly around its mouth. I do spend a lot of time hoping.

Hiking Iron Mountain for the Full Moon

Last week there was a full moon and a huge hike planned for Iron Mountain, which is just north of here. The last time I hiked Iron Mountain was more than 10 years ago, also at night, so I thought it would be good to try it again…a further test of the knee as well. The hike was cross-posted with three groups, so about 70 people were supposed to be going up together, and that doesn’t count all the people who do this on a regular basis. There’s a huge parking lot at the bottom of the mountain because lots of people do this hike, especially after work or on the weekends…in fact, this is what we started with…

with Iron Mountain rising up on the right side. Wait a minute. That’s where I’m going? We had dogs and kids and lots of food…potluck at the top.

The hike started at about 6:30 PM, so it was still warm, in the 80s. That’s the hard part about hiking in San Diego in the summer…it’s hot. Night hikes really are the only way to go, unless you start at 6 in the morning. I’m not a fan of 6 in the morning.

With so many people on the hike, my goal was to get out in front and not have to follow anyone who was walking too slowly. I’m not the fastest hiker in the world, but this group was slow-moving.

This isn’t a horribly hard hike. It’s about 5.8 miles round trip, with some steep bits. It is a mountain, you know. You will have to climb it.

But as the sun went down, it started to cool off and it was like a good sweaty workout at the gym.

In nature…

The views of San Diego from this hike are great…you can see why we have so many hiking trails…there are so many hills to climb.

The sun was only in my eyes for a short part of this hike, unlike the Cowles Mountain hike a week or so ago, where you were squinting for a good portion of the trail.

However hard you might think the trail is yourself, there’s a mom and three kids all beating me up the mountain. I was OK with that.

Another view on the way up. The evening before had been cloudy and I wondered if it would even be worth going…but it cleared up beautifully.

At the top, you can get 360 degrees of views of the county…to the west and the ocean…

As we were up there, the sun started to set…

And we set food out, as you do…everyone pulling this or that from their packs, from olives to homemade salsa to wine to chips to avocados and crackers.

There were two tables set up like this…rumor is there’s a third table up there, but I never saw it (I am actually in that picture).

This is the view to the south…

More to the southwest…

And the southeast…

We got up there in about 55 minutes (I slowed down my hiking partner, who usually does it in 48 minutes…sigh). Then we watched the sun set, talked, ate, and drank.

It was gorgeous.

Vast expanses of pretty-colored sky. Someone asked me (because I’m a science teacher) why the colors, and I was able to tell them…because I teach that.

Then we moved over to the other side of the mountain for the real reason we were there (well, the REAL reason is exercise, right?), moonrise in the east.

The moon was really big. I realize it doesn’t look like that in these photos, but what can I say?

Maybe it was just big in my head. It was a beautiful and peaceful experience watching it rise.

I kept my eyes open for animals on this hike…I had heard the scorpions would glow in the dark and someone was carrying a black light. I never saw them myself, but stole this picture from someone who did…

They’re not very big, but they look pissed off. Reason why you should wear real shoes up there (one guy was hiking in flipflops with no water).

We headed down around 8:30 or so…and for part of the downhill, didn’t use anything but the light of the moon (my depth perception can’t do that on rocks, but flat surfaces are fine). The actual hiking was about an hour and 40 minutes…plus an hour or so at the top. It was very cool…and a good hiking temperature for most of it. Not so cold that you needed a jacket (though some had them), but not so hot that you were dying. Definitely worth doing again.

Never Feel Bad Anymore*

So Friday night, I was going to iron more birds, but I like to watch things while ironing (it keeps the bad/sad parts of my brain occupied so they don’t make me cry) and the kids were hogging Netflix. So I decided to stitch stuff down instead, because I’ve got plenty of that to do, and I listen to music while I’m doing that, but it doesn’t do a very good job of occupying the bad/sad brain. In fact, I think it brings it out more, which is not necessarily a good thing. That said, this part of the quilting needs to get done and I’m just going to need to suck it up and stitch…and let’s be honest here, I cry while stitching. I try not to. I try to distract myself with stuff in my head, I try to pseudo-write the story I’m working on, I try a lot of fucking things that don’t fucking work at all, so maybe I should just accept that this is the crying stage. And just make sure I am well-hydrated.

I started with the mammogram quilt because it’s got fewer pieces and will take less time, and my plan was to get it done and sandwiched before the carpet guys come Wednesday, so I could quilt Wednesday if I wanted to. Not that I’ll be done with everything else, probably, but it’s good to have plans…

I got about halfway done before I got tired. It was late at night, almost midnight when I quit.

I fold it up on the machine, because otherwise I will find a cat laying upon it at the first opportune moment, and then I will have to remove all that cat hair. It will take about another hour to finish this, so hopefully I will get to that today. I’m sitting here, only sort of awake (sleep is a real bitch at the moment…can’t fall asleep, then nightmares wake me up, then can’t fall asleep again until early morning. HATE IT), trying to persuade myself to go to the gym, and the quilt brain is like, “Don’t go to the gym. Stay here. Sew. You know you want to.”

It’s true. I want to finish that one and then do all 10 birds. But I need to go to the gym as well. Grr.

So yeah, I finished ironing birds yesterday…Number 6 was a strange one…

but its shape appealed to me…

In the actual drawing, there’s a face next to it. That drawing does not exist as a quilt. Then I did number 7, which is actually on the Mammogram quilt that I’m stitching down at the moment…

I think this one has the fewest pieces…

Number 8 has the most pieces, with 61, and is also kind of the weirdest one…

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I liked the feathers though. Making these little quilts is really about my messing around with pieces of my work, which I don’t usually do, but someone liked a bird and thought they might like a small bird quilt. So I figured it was worth a try.

I don’t really know whether I like this process or not…it’s quick, but it’s like Quilting Lite to me. No depth to it. I’ve always had that problem with smaller quilts.

I think that’s why I don’t make very many of them.

They’re too easy and I don’t engage in the process.

That might be why I made 10 of them…it makes it a large enough project for me to have to pay some level of attention. And I think it’s funny that one of the most complicated birds is the one that’s getting the most attention…

First owl I’ve ever done was this one on the Celebrating Silver quilt. I looked at a bunch of owl pictures to draw this…and decided there’s definitely a Harry Potter feel to it as well…

Anyway, the next step is to stitch them down, hopefully today. These will all be for sale, and some people are already in line for choosing one, but I’m not allowing any of that until they’re finished and priced, because I know that might be an issue. I do value my time and although these are small, so far the smallest ones have taken almost an hour to do (not bad, but only about halfway through, if that) and the largest ones have taken almost three hours to do. So I’m trying to be fair to myself and keep track of the time so I don’t rip myself off.

Anyway, more of that today.

On Friday, we also did a lot of moving stuff out of the living room area, prepping for the last bad day before the carpet guys come. We needed the entryway clear (which is why it would be a good time to get that quilt done and sandwiched, because that’s where I do that), so we moved all the boxes and books out of there into my bedroom mostly. Then we moved anything smallish or that would fit in my bedroom or the hallway, plus the piles of stuff we had stored in the little living room as we cleared out the dining area for painting. I am glad to announce that I could in fact have a full Hoarders house, complete with really skinny hallways full of crap.

Seriously, I get totally claustrophobic walking through this…

I could not be a serious hoarder. I would go crazy. My bedroom at the moment is like some sort of junk cave…

The cat is freaked out by it and so am I. That’s the view back down the hallway toward the more open part of the house. I will be so glad when all this is done and I can move everything back and put it away. It will be a pain in the butt, I’m sure, but I am going nuts living like this. No earthquakes please.

I hiked last night, which was nice (will post it later)…still no knee pain, so that’s good. But I didn’t get home until after 10, and then I showered and meditated (trying to be better about that), and then I had no energy for anything after that really, so I came in here and stared at the computer, and the story in my head knocked at the door. So I started to write. And I kept trying to stop, because I was tired, my neck hurt, my fingers were still going, but I mentally was done, but apparently I wasn’t, because I wrote almost 4000 words before I could stop. I seriously tried stopping in 5 different places, and my fingers would keep going. I guess that’s a good thing. I’m hoping to do some more tomorrow, because I wasn’t really trying to tell my brain how to write this thing and it went off on a tangent, which is good, because I didn’t really know where the story was going next, and now I do. Well, sort of. I have a vague idea of what’s next, but it’s turning into something scarier than I started out with. I’m at 12,000 words. Not great, but not bad. A good solid start.

Then I went to bed and read for a while with the heating pad under my tweaked neck…same place as before, dammit. Might have to call the chiropractor again for another emergency appointment. I had to read because my brain wouldn’t shut down.

For the post title, I was looking for a song I knew I had heard lately about “can’t control my brain” and this one popped up. And the video is sweet, all puppies and kittens and wild animal babies, and it’s a nice sentiment. To never feel bad anymore. Weezer: Islands in the Sun…

I think I was originally thinking of a different song, though…not the Ramones, I Wanna Be Sedated (although there is that sentiment), but there’s another one…tickling around in my brain somewhere, but these two are crowding it out. That’s probably a good thing…

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)…