Kicking It Back…

So yeah, I’m back. I’ve actually been here all along, but as I’m sure you realize, that whole holiday-with-family thing kind of eats up your free time. So I sleep even less. And at 1:30 AM, I’m not willing to START writing a blogpost. And mornings have been fraught. So here’s what happened.

On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is for a theme of Women at War, with interpretation pretty open as to what that meant. I’ve felt like other people have been coming after my uterus and everything within and around for quite a while, despite some nice-guy misogynists telling me I was imagining it. I mean, what the fuck do you know as a privileged rich white man? Best thing you can do as a man? Admit that you mostly don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a woman. You might have an inkling, but otherwise: Not inside, biologically, with periods and pregnancy and mood swings and menopause; not outside, trying to walk somewhere in public, dating, safety, being perceived as an object, wearing the wrong thing, whether you’re showing stuff off or not, it’s always wrong. Not breastfeeding, not being the mom, not with society’s expectations. I’m not saying being a man doesn’t have similar issues; I just think there are more “acceptable” options for men (in terms of what society believes). And I full-on admit I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. Some men have some of a clue, but mostly it seems not. The better men are understanding even when they don’t understand.

So the drawing was full of all these stereotypes and yet she stands tall on a pile of men. Because every man came from a woman, y’all.

Anyway, my rampant feminism aside, I need to get the quilt done in the next…um…5 weeks. Yup. So speedy mode. Midnight? Not helping…

Licking my elbow does not help me. This might even have been the night before. It looks awfully dark. It is! It’s Tuesday night. I sit on the couch and watch all the stuff I have saved on Tivo…

If girlchild is still awake, I have to watch her stuff. Some of her stuff is also my stuff…top box is pieces, bottom box is trash…in case I drop pieces in it (which I often do).

In the late afternoon (because I had to run a thousand errands), I managed to finish cutting and sort them all into bins by 100s. This is a smaller quilt, so there’s only 8 bins! A miracle.

Of course, I also did the two birds that need to be done in December, so that was two more bins.

And then because this time of year isn’t crazy enough, girlchild and I hiked Iron Mountain in the dark with the group I often hike with.

She wanted to show she had conquered the mountain.

That night, I realized I would need to clean the office up a bit to be able to cut fabrics out. I hadn’t put everything away from last time (and honestly, it’s a disaster area in here anyway, because all my school stuff lives in here too). So I had drawers open that cats had slept in and fabric piled everywhere…

I like a fresh start. Plus I need that table cleared off because that’s where I put the Wonder Under pieces.

And one section of the floor, I think the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff down (they get a bit rambunctious sometimes), so I needed to clean that up. Finding floor space in here has been a priority this last month. Two feet at a time, people. Two square feet is all I ask.

I had a ton of fabric to put away, both from the last quilt and from Houston, so I started by stacking by color, because everything in here is stored by color, except for the ones where I can’t figure out what color it is.

That was about halfway through. There were some issues with storage. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I use…it is not enough.

And I found this from a million years ago, from an Ellen Anne Eddy class.

Hand-dyed silk velvet plus thread-painted fetus. You know, like you do. That may still be in here when I die.

So at that point, it was Thursday, and although girlchild does most of the cooking, that means I get stuck with the cleaning (and then she complains that she can’t find anything because I moved it…from the couch to her bedroom), and I also cook a few things and I constantly try to clean up in the kitchen, which drives her nuts, but I can’t stand having to do it all at once.

So this picture is about 10 minutes before dinner is served. She’s making gravy. The fire extinguisher is out because she spilled turkey juices on the stovetop and it got in the box where the controller things are (technical term) and short-circuited something, and for a few minutes, we had loud popping noises and big sparks and electrical fire smoke. So yeah. A typical Thanksgiving…

The wine? Well. Obvious. See fire extinguisher. Especially after loud pops and sparks. And no, it’s not fixed yet. It’s actually not top on my list at the moment. The rest of it works, I got everything cleared off of there because of the fire danger, and I have other things that are more pressing. No really, the sink is completely clogged and getting fixed this afternoon, so I can finally do all the dishes. THEN I will deal with the stove.

Thanksgiving was small this year…just my parents, me, the girlchild, and the ex…

Guess he has decided Brits can celebrate that holiday…food was good, of course…

She makes a mess in the kitchen, tries to set the house on fire, but it always tastes good.

And yes, we’re still eating it. Ex came over last night and took away two platefuls of food. Sent a bunch home with my parents as well. And then we realized girlchild wouldn’t be around next year to cook.

Shit. I think we’re going out. I do cook. I just don’t want to spend that much time cooking for so few people.

Or dogs. I don’t feed dogs people food. Dogs LIKE people food.

Oh yeah. Pie and pi. All good.

Once the food was all eaten and I had cleaned up as much as I could with a nonworking sink, I finished cleaning up the studio (ah, much better)…

Hung the new drawing where I could see it, assumed the background fabric I had would work, and started the next fabric-picking adventure…

I don’t know what YOU do when chock full of tryptophan. I told you I was a bit crazy.

I picked all the stuff on the bottom…

And then started thinking about the fleshy issues…a pile of 7 or 8 bodies that I need to be able to distinguish from each other? Need at least two sets of flesh runs…

Luckily, they’re pretty simple bodies, so I don’t need the usual run of 7 fabrics or so. Although on the right, that’s the run for the main female figure, I think. The stuff on the left was the first of the male bodies.

Friday morning dawned nice and clear, and soccer was first on the agenda…of course.

Girlchild decided to play for another team, because hers didn’t get into the tournament they wanted. Luckily, it’s local, because we have a game a day.

I graded papers (ah, back to reality) and watched her run around and score one goal…

They beat an Alaskan team 5-1. I’m sure that team was a little hampered by the over-80-degree weather. Then I came home and helped dad do some yard things and went and bought two trees with him to block off that big open space that has been there since April? March? Don’t even remember how long. I need to go out there today and dig holes and trim off dead stuff and be a responsible homeowner (my neighbors will be thrilled). And I went to the gym. See, this is where time goes. But at the gym, I wrote…yes, I’m still writing. The story’s still not done. And I finished my book (the one I was reading). And these were good things. And then I traced some more Wonder Under for another piece, a small one that’s been lying around for a good long while…

Of course, technically it has nudity in it, so it can’t go into any of the shows coming up that need smaller pieces. I’m tired of making things FOR something, though, even though I don’t mind the themes that I’ve been in…sometimes you just have to make the stuff you WANT to make. I’m getting a wave of that feeling coming on…strong. I traced this also because I was watching something on Netflix that I couldn’t watch in my studio and I wanted to finish the episode.

Anyway, then back to the studio…where I kept going on the pile of flesh…

Which is taking significantly more time than I usually take, mostly because it’s complicated to figure out what is overlapping where, and to make sure I have all the pieces for that body, and that the fabrics don’t overlap in the wrong way.

After 4 hours of ironing, I am barely in the 200s. The plus is I should finish the pile of bodies today, so it will go faster after that. I think. I hope. Because remember how I said I wanted to be done with the ironing by the time school starts again? And there are two more soccer games? Plus I have to plan for school, because hey, we do have to go back there, despite the scary adrenaline rush I get when I think about it? I calculated grades yesterday from the stuff I had graded so far after break. It’s possible I should just quit teaching right now. I’m an absolute failure.

Sigh. So. And on top of all this, I slammed my finger in the door and I keep reopening the wound (bandaids forever!), a Golden Retriever is currently trying to play ball with me, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it, and the fish at school has probably died because I keep forgetting to go over there and feed it. Girlchild has applied to her first college, boychild got food poisoning on Thanksgiving from something (he did not have turkey dinner), and I’ve been living on deviled eggs for three days (I’m not sure that’s a bad thing).

This time of year just kicks my ass. So I’m going to kick it back by making lots of art. Yup. You can’t stop me.

Here’s Aug(de)mented Reality 2…for some post-turkey amusement…

Yeah, it’s goofy. Goofy’s OK sometimes.

Ever-Changing Mood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also traced two more birds that were on order…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not know how to explain the dog.

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

It’s not even that cold tonight.

But I had both of them for a while…

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

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

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

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

Vacation…More Time to Work

So. I’m officially on vacation. I traced Wonder Under Friday night for a little while, but I was exhausted and went to bed early, because I had a long hike early Saturday morning. I get up earlier for hikes than I do for school. It’s a little crazy. But it was a good hike (post later) and we went out to eat afterwards, which I almost never do, because you lose the whole day. But I could afford to lose the whole day because I have a whole week of them off. Anyway. It was good. And I came home and tried to function, but the body and brain were old and tired. Eventually, after the second or third cup of tea and some reading of the book club selection that I had to be done with by today (there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute), I got up and started tracing Wonder Under again…

The fun part (wait, put “fun” in quotes) about tracing this section is that it’s a pile of bodies that are all overlapping, and although I might have tried to be logical about numbering them in the first place, that logic has now left the building, and I am often staring at the pile, trying to find the next piece in number order. Piece 225 took like 10 minutes to find. I don’t know what I was thinking. So the almost-200 pieces in the pile took forever to trace. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it done, so that when I came back to tracing today, it would be straightforward and relatively easy.

The thing is, that pile is gonna kick my ass when I have to pick fabrics out, because overlapping and random behind spaces and I don’t even know what parts go with what body in half of it. Yeah. Way to fuck with yourself, Kathryn. I guess I like a good challenge.

So I’m 4 hours into the tracing and only at piece 287 or so. Like I said, it was a bitch. I have about 5 hours left, I’m guessing, and I’d like to be done today. No really. I would. That might not be realistic though because I still have to go grocery shopping and to book club and to dinner at my parents’ house. Hmn. Are there 5 hours LEFT after all that? So much for vacations, right? That’s why you’re supposed to GO somewhere, so you can relax and stop doing all that other stuff. Then again, I don’t really do anything else right…why start with doing vacations right? It’s a stay-at-home vacation because I can’t afford anything else. I would have loved to have taken the girlchild to NYC, met the boychild there, hung out, got an AirBnB apartment, checked out the city. It would have been cool. It would have been $1500 I don’t have right now. Especially with college apps coming up again.

So we’re here in lovely San Diego, soccer tournament, practices, a couple of hikes, dinner with the close family on Tday. And lots of artmaking. So my plan is to have all the Wonder Under ironed to fabric in a week. Because then school starts back up again and that 3-week stretch notoriously kicks my butt. And then I have vacation again, but only about a week and a half before this next quilt has to be done. So yeah. I need to work hard. Like usual. Like what the fuck is new about that? This is my life. It’s a continuous hard-work endeavor. I’m not always entirely sure what I get out of that. People tell me the art is cool, amazing, etc., but then I just make more of it. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, except that I’m incredibly unhappy when I don’t make it. And there’s enough of that feeling in my life…I don’t need to make more of it. There must be a better balance though.

I did take time out to finish the book for book club. It must have been cold last night because (1) I was wearing polar fleece in the house (lots of windows behind the light table) and (2) the bitchy old-lady cat was in the living room, curled up tight next to me.

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Which was fine. Notice the pile of dirty clothes on the floor? Girlchild has some cleaning to do. I’m tired of the slob factor. That’s one goal for this vacation…get the mess under control, at least enough to get me through December.

I wanted to show you where I normally write…

Yup. The computer. The computer desk is a mess. The chair has been scratched all to hell by bitchy cat, who often is sitting on the chair (you can see the top of her head in the picture). Right now, she’s not, but that’s because morning winter sun is over THERE on the table, so she’s curled up over there. Thank god. I can actually sit properly. I’m over 42,000 words on the novel, and I will easily hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and get to the end, whatever that is, by the end of the year or earlier. I’ve already decided no sequel. So I’m writing it that way. I guess I always knew I would. I do have another book started in my head though. Different story, different characters, different location. Still sci-fi though. Not sure what’s up with that.

Here’s Luana Rubin’s review of the two SAQA exhibits at Houston this year…she mentions my piece.

Someday I’ll meet her in person and tell her how to pronounce my name. Or maybe you could do that for me.

Some Kind of Crazy

Some kind of crazy happened yesterday. I mean, there’s the regular crazy of my job, but then I came home right after work and sat down with a cup of tea and finished the drawing (it took 13 minutes to finish it, by the way, but probably 6 hours to decide how to finish it in 13 minutes). My car tire was having inflation issues again, so I knew I needed to get it some air, but I went to the copy place first and enlarged the drawing, then filled the car with air and gas, then went home and started taping the drawing together. I realized it needed more space below as well as above (I knew about above…there were some leaf-fitting issues…nothing major), so I taped more paper above and below. Girlchild came home and left with the dog. I seriously only see her (girlchild) for like 10-minute sessions, and then she’s gone again. Or I’m gone. Or we’re both gone. And I sort of realized that if I was going to get to quilt class on time, I wasn’t going to be able to finish drawing at the house. So I packed up all the stuff to trace Wonder Under, and I even dropped off my library book on the way there, and I got there and drew the bottom, which I didn’t even know was going to happen until it happened. This is how life is when you let the creative brain have free rein (or is that reign? I could argue both at the moment)…it just does stuff and doesn’t tell you about it. Wow. Just like my relationships. Ha!

Anyway. On track, Kathryn. So then I started numbering, and because of the bizarre penis pileup I have going on in the bottom, it took for-freakin-ever to number that section…

(OK, it’s just a pile of men, not penises) I was trying to be logical about it, but it turns out, you can’t be particularly logical about chaos. I had about 280 pieces numbered when I finished the pile, so I asked the other quilters at my meeting to hazard a guess as to my total pieces. Susan came in at 1500, Jean at 957, Mary at 1267, and Barbara at 850 (mostly because I kept saying it better NOT be over a thousand, but by then, she could see I was up to 400 and something and she was estimating beyond that. So maybe she had insider information by sitting next to me).

So I ended up getting to 749 (oh thank god…I might actually be able to finish it in time)…

But then when I got home (because it took me two hours to finish drawing and then number the piece, speaking of not being particularly efficient), I realized I hadn’t numbered the bullet thingie on her chest, which surely has a real name. Let me ask The Google. Holy crap! It IS a bandolier. I thought it was, and then I thought NOOO. That’s like something fancier than that, like something you wear when you dance or something. Yeah. Anyway. I numbered that and got to 768. Totally doable (crazy ass bitch. Are you NUTS?).

Meanwhile, I did write once I got back. I really wanted to start tracing Wonder Under, but I’m being really good about writing every day, so I did that first. I’m over 38,000 words. I will finish Thanksgiving Day (with the 50,000…probably not with the book) at this rate, which is kinda cool. It’s nice to know I can do it if I have to. I got stymied by some DNA testing terminology, so I just flagged it for future research. Googling stuff like “What’s that thing called when the DNA gets spread out and makes pretty pictures” is not particularly useful when you’re already tired. And it’s not worth spending hours trying to figure out right now.

Then finally…finally I was allowed to go back to the drawing…

Which turned out being bigger than I had planned…as usual. But I think it’ll be OK. It’s longer, but not wider, and wide is the issue in a small gallery. It’s 27″ wide by 45″ high, which is smaller than anything I’ve done for a while. Which is good. Because I only have 6 weeks. I think. Don’t think about it.

Those flying hearts showed up again…

I like them. At the moment. Don’t know why. A metaphor for where I’m at? Who knows. And DNA hand is back.

I didn’t trace a lot or for super long, because it was getting late, but I’m starting! So I think I’m ahead of where I planned to be. Or maybe I’m right where I planned to be. Hard to say.

Yes. It DOES Sound Crazy.

Well, one thing I’ve got going for me right now is that there is no shortage of projects I’m supposed to be working on. In fact, there are four due within the next 2 1/2 months. Luckily, three of them are tiny, compared to what I normally do, and even the larger one can’t be TOO large. And it’s been in my head for a couple of months, so I actually think I can get it out fairly quickly. I did know that I would have to fit it all on one page. I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but it’s been hard for me to fit anything on a single page. Even those drawings that are mostly on one page seem to need something added once I enlarge it…which isn’t a problem. But when I know I need to make what is for me a smaller piece because the show has a lot of people and the gallery isn’t very big, it means I have to THINK about size. I don’t usually think about size.

So before I could even deal with the drawing last night, though, I had to get my hair cut, mostly because I couldn’t get a comb through the ends. I wanted to do it in October, but financially, October was a major issue. Timewise as well, so I finally got there yesterday. It’s silly, because I guess I could have chopped it all off myself, but Rebecca does a much better job (duh. She is trained.). I have learned over the years that there are I things I CAN do (like my own quilt photography), but it’s stupid when others can do it better and I can pay them a reasonable amount to do so. My photographer also…I gladly let him do what he’s good at, so I can do more of the stuff that I’m good at. And it’s remarkably silly how nice a good haircut feels. I don’t get a lot of the good feels.

By the time I finally got home (had to pick up ex-husband because his car is in the shop again), I was tired, but I forced myself to the gym. I wrote the novel on the bike; got about 450 words written in 25 minutes (so that’s 18 words a minute), which means I’ve spent over 55 hours writing this book so far. No wonder I don’t sleep. That’s not 55 hours this month…I started in June, but it is 30 hours so far this month, which is about an hour and 3/4 each day. Wow. Really? Someone check my math. I’m not meditating at the moment by the way. I often write, though, while I’m doing something else. But still, wow. I work full time as a teacher, I exercise, I cook real food, I apparently sleep, and I write almost 2 hours a day. Plus art.

So after all that and eating dinner, I wrote…see above…over 34,000 words and a step closer to the violence. It’s 1:15 PM in the afternoon of the day when all the shit hits the fan. Some shit just hit, but we don’t really know what it means yet, and when I say “we,” yes, I’m including me, because my brain hasn’t written that part yet. It will tonight. Seriously. I rarely know where I’m going with this story until I get there. I’m hoping it all holds together, but I realized last night that I had one character bifurcating in the story (no, she really can’t be in two places at once…it’s sci fi, but not THAT sci fi.), so I’m sure editing will need to tighten up some details.

Then I ironed the new quilt for the photographer and dehaired it and prepped it…

I have to cover it so it doesn’t get more cat hair, but also because my car has dog hair in it from Calli riding in there, so I usually make a plastic bag covering. Yes, some people buy bags especially for this, but I’m not like that. Plus I spent all my money on my haircut (not really…but teenagers are really expensive). This morning I decided to roll it with the front out, because I know it will sit in the car all day, and I don’t want it to get wrinkled. I’ll drive it to him after school, he’ll take great pictures and charge me not very much at all, and I’ll happily go back and get it when he’s done. It’s like magic!

And then I’ll spend the next two weeks trying to come up with a name for it, because it needs a fucking name and the one I came up with yesterday really does reference the Adam and Eve thing, and I don’t actually want to reference that…because that’s not what it’s about. It’s interesting that there is a reference to that story, but it’s not about that story.

And then at maybe 11:30 PM, I finally sat down in the living room (it took 10 minutes to find my sketchbook, which in itself is sad) and started drawing. I have to admit that I was tired at that point, and I kept trying to Google images that would help my brain, like “woman standing with gun belt” and “arms akimbo.” Seriously. That was a thing. I finally gave up (my internet was cranky) and just started drawing.

I have to admit that I did a rough pencil sketch first of where things needed to go because they needed to fit on the page, and that’s one of my issues: fitting things on the page. And I’m not sure about either hand. But I can always redo those parts. And no, I didn’t get very far. I was tired. I actually went to bed at a reasonable hour. No, not really. But reasonable for me.

Oh yeah, and the total for the Quilt That Has No Name Yet was 101 hours and 33 minutes (yikes!). Not a small or easy beast, but a nice beast nonetheless.

Tonight? Finish the drawing, rush over to Fed Ex before they close so I can enlarge it, and come back number it, so I can start tracing at class tomorrow. Yes. It DOES sound crazy. Why do you ask?

Finis

Hey. Shhh. Over here. C’mere. Hey. (It’s done. The quilt. I finished it. Really. I did.)

Sigh. Started numbered the drawing September 6. That’s the first official time I take usually; sometimes I keep track of the taping, if it seems bad, but this one got taped and then drawn on the full-size, and I don’t keep track of drawing time. Finished November 17. I guess you could argue finished November 18, because it was after midnight, but I don’t consider it the next day until I’ve gone to sleep and woken up again. Completely arbitrary? Well yeah. I got a late start on the binding yesterday, because I had to meet the girlchild at the sports store to buy her soccer gear after school. I got home (completely exhausted by then) and decided (because I was braindead with exhaustion) that I should paint right away. Something about the paint drying before I started sewing and having more brain power then than later, for some quantity of “MORE”.

The real problem with the painting is that I have a ton of fabric paints, but most of them have dried up, being old, and I really should open every jar and toss anything that’s unusable. But if I had done that, I wouldn’t have been able to paint last night…so I didn’t.

I managed to mix something very close to the lighter color of the briefcase. Took me a while to get it, but I did.

I never took a picture of the bleed through, which is too bad, because it was pretty bad there. Less so in other places. (Must train self to wash with Retayne) Just trust me…there was a swath of blue across the light brown…

And now there isn’t. What a relief.

I used colored pencils and a little bit of paint on a couple other bits that had issues…

But otherwise, I left it there to dry while I moved money and calculated college costs, then cooked dinner and texted the boychild back and forth for an hour. He has snow on and off and ice and cold and rain and cold. Frozen hair (he has a lot of hair). I send him videos of his cat being a brat and he sends pictures of puppies and kittens and long dense sentences out of his essays that I then have to try to make sense of out of context.

Then I wrote a few thousand words where my main character communes with her bad plant self.

And then I sewed binding, poking holes in my fingers again. I don’t do well with thimbles. Put them on and then avoid that finger. It’s like my brain thinks there’s something wrong with the thimbled finger and tries to protect it, so it uses another finger. I debated whether I could finish last night…I had one whole short side, most of a long side, and then two sleeves.

I had one of my trusty companions.

There was another one, but she kept licking the stitching hand, so she got pushed off. I sewed for almost two hours and it was done. Please don’t ask when I went to sleep. It was entirely too late. It probably shows in my face today. But I’m done. Deep breath. I’ll have to total the hours later, because I have a parent meeting this morning. But the trimming and binding was almost 8 hours total and there was about an hour of painting and coloring. Not a small number of hours…and basically I did it in a little over 2 months. During the school year. Yup. Crazy. My hand is sore this morning from the sewing.

The next one? I only have 6 weeks. Ha! But I also have 3 weeks of vacation in that time, so I’m hoping that helps. And it needs to be smaller. So I should probably draw fewer pieces. I’m already at war in my head with this one (ironic, since it’s for a show about women and war). Drawing tonight hopefully. Also need to dehair and pack quilt for photographer…see, if you set up the photo appointment, then you HAVE to finish it. Minor issue: it has no name. I had one pop into my head just now, but I don’t know if I like it. And the boychild would argue it only deals with the traditional genders, which is true. I wasn’t having trans v cis issues, just the standard man v woman in society issues. There are two blogposts on this that I’ve been writing on and off for months. Maybe they will surface in the next week, along with my report from Houston. Maybe.

Philosophy on a Monday Morning…

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

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

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

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

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

Philosophy on a Monday morning…always an issue.

Official Title #3764

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently Adam and Eve…

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

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

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

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

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

I promised a photo of the skateboarding skellies…

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

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

Call Yourself What You Like…

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

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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