Saving One Possum

I’m too tired to post tonight. Got started on everything too late. Busy day. Saved a baby possum. Will write this up in the morning. Am typing this now to remind myself to write the rest in the morning. Right now, a pillow calls my name.

Sleep is a troubled thing at the moment…it really only works for me when it’s like the sleep of the dead. There are so many times when I go to sleep after 1 AM and then STILL wake up around 4 or 5, wide awake. This is not good for me…I know it…but it seems to continue.

Yesterday. Sigh. I didn’t manage it well, and yet there were things about it that clued me in to what makes me feel better…like, apparently, saving baby animals. Doesn’t everyone feel better after saving a baby animal? Yesterday morning, I looked out and saw something swimming in the pool…

Yes, it looks like a drowned ~~rat~~ possum. Because it is.

Yes, I know they bite and carry disease (hell, so do humans), but I’ve never had an issue with them. I did find its sibling in the pool last week, though, and it was not a good thing. So I left it out there for a little while to see if mom was around somewhere. And then I went out and dried it off, because it was shivering and not moving. And then I put it up in the bushes, so it was away from the pool and hidden from the hawks who hang out here. And I waited some more. And my mom hormones kicked in (are they hormones?) and I went out and it hadn’t moved in 20 minutes and it was still shivering.

Dammit. I need to go to school and Project Wildlife doesn’t open until 9.

So he (she?) went to school with me. In a cat carrier. See? He looks much better dry.

I fed him apple and gave him water and eventually he recovered enough to poop all over the towel and bare his teeth at us when we would check up on him. Yes, I think possums are adorable (I know, I’m weird). I don’t have issues with rats or snakes either, but spiders? Yeek. I’m fascinated by them, but inordinately creeped out as well.

Around 8th period, my two kids showed up (because I texted them and told them they had to) and took him to Project Wildlife, where hopefully they will get him ready for release back into the wild. They come to my pool to drink and fall in. I used to have a fountain that helped a little with that, but the fountain doesn’t work any more…and you can’t leave standing water out with West Nile and the mosquitoes around here. Anyway. It was my good deed for the day, and the interesting thing is that it made me feel better.

So maybe I need to fit some volunteer work in this summer (except some will die or need to be euthanized and then I will be sad, OR I will bring a huge number of homeless animals home with me.). Things to consider. I know if I start fostering animals, my SIL will come slap me with wet noodles…she already thinks I have animal hoarder tendencies (I’m down to 3.5 animals…not bad!).

I did finally make it to the gym and meditated and all that. And then started ironing late again. I really wasn’t very focused last night. I was tired and unmotivated. I know it’s OK to be both of those things, but it just seems like such a waste of time sometimes. I need to be productive or I feel more awful than normal. I know some of that is being a workaholic, but I think being productive holds the depression off a bit as well…counteracts the hormones that are zigzagging through my system. At the end of the day, if I can say, “I accomplished THIS,” and THIS is not just eating three meals and not killing anyone, then I’m doing OK. I need to be doing OK.

Anyway. I didn’t iron much, that’s for sure. I quit the night before because I had to make a decision about her hair: gray or white. She’s definitely menopausal, aging, so what direction do I go with that? I finally decided on white with black, mostly because I think of this quilt as directly autobiographical, and I’m going white, not gray. Plus I liked the idea of the two lighter fabrics having words and computer code in them…it’s supremely relevant.

If I ever have to explain this quilt at an exhibit, I will probably lose it. Or someone else will have to read the statement while I stand there crying. Good stuff! Or more likely at the moment, it won’t get in anywhere.

Another shot of the in-process fabrics. I tried to straighten them up last night because they were getting out of control.

I finished the lungs too. I think I’m officially done with the main figure and moving into all the crap floating around her now.

I have a parent meeting this morning, so I need to leave…but here’s another pitiful picture of the possum…

Yeah, there was no way I could just leave him out there like that. I saved ONE baby yesterday. That was my accomplishment.

The Environment in Which I’m Sat…

I spend a lot of my life mediating…with students, with my kids, honestly, with my own brain. It’s not always pretty. I think of mediating as trying to see both (or many) sides and to come to some place in between where everyone is probably not happy but not completely unhappy either. I haven’t found mediation all that successful in my relationships, mostly I think because some people are incapable of seeing the other side…they’re so convinced that they’re right that they can’t see a solution that doesn’t include their rightness. That’s kinda where I’m at with the girlchild at the moment…she’s so sure she’s right and I’m not (and her dad’s not and the counselor’s not and the world’s not) that she can’t see straight. And there’s really nothing I can do about that except to keep saying the same calm and reasonable things over and over again, and occasionally tell her I still love her (even though she’s still screaming at me for the slightest things). She’ll come around. It might be 2020 before she does, but she will.

I realized today that I have been lax again with my meditation (not mediation) (too much need to get to the fabric-choosing part of the evening), and I think that is part of my problem. It helps to center me, stabilize the emotions. It’s not that I don’t feel when I’m meditating…on the contrary, I think I cried through the whole damn thing tonight, mostly because it was talking about seeing the things you needed to get rid of, the things that were troubling you most, seeing them almost as black smoke drifting around you, and then having it waft away and be replaced with an increasing sense of happiness and relaxation. I can’t quite get there, though…I see the black smoke and I get lost in it. But I’m hopeful that I will get there if I’m a good little meditator (so close to mediator) and keep practicing the visualization.

One of the things Mr. Meditation says that I like is he talks about sensing “the environment in which you’re sat.” Such a British turn of phrase…like I’ve been placed here. It’s true…this IS the environment in which I’m sat. I think at some point I’ll be able to just get up and walk away from that environment, if I choose to (and I will), but for now, I was sat here. I have no choice. There were very few seats available and this is where I was put. When it’s time to leave, I will choose to get up and go and sit myself elsewhere, or perhaps not sit at all. I’m not good at sitting still as it is. Maybe I’ll just start running and you won’t be able to catch me.

Meditation lets me be very metaphorical, philosophical, in my head but not in a bad way.

I came home to tree parts everywhere…nine trees on my property were being trimmed. Some were dangerously large or overweighted on certain branches that were over the house. Some are just in need of a serious pruning every 5-8 years or so…ah, the eucalypts and their tendency to drop crap (or themselves). Anyway, it’s a different look now…more light and air, although probably more sun as well (not so good for summer). Now I can move on to the next step of replanting the trees that were taken out for the septic and then replanting the grass area, except I’m not doing grass this time…something more native, meadowy. Nice to look at. I don’t have little kids any more, so the grass isn’t needed. I’m sure my neighbors will be glad to have me do anything in the yard. There are only so many hours in the day. When I get home from school, I have very little energy…it comes back later at night, but too late to do yardwork (in the dark). Replacing the trees is high on my list, though, because I tend to dress in front of that window and it’s a bit exposed at the moment, which I keep forgetting about (damn, now all the voyeurs will be trying to figure out what window I mean…get away!). I just want my private yard back and now I can have it.

So I mediated today. And I meditated tonight. And about 10 minutes of a Hoarders episode during cooking dinner persuaded me to clean out a huge pile of stuff and toss it into trash and recycling. I’m trying to do a little every day. Get the house under control. Maybe.

I then had to persuade Babygirl to get off the ironing board…boychild helped.

There was talking and petting. And then toe-cleaning. Very important, the toe-cleaning aspect.

I am still ironing all the non-fleshy bits and pieces that make up the main figure.

Today I did heart and veins (cool, huh?), a couple of tattoo-things on the arms, plus eyeballs and other random bits. I just have the lungs to do in the body, and then I have the hairy bits. I think there’s about 20 pieces in the 1100s at the moment, and then I’ve got most of the 1300s. It seems to be going pretty slowly. I don’t know why.

The box is getting fuller…this is the second box with pieces in it, too.

Most of what I did today was fussy little piecing. There’s a lot of mental action going on when I do this. I have to evaluate each section and the pieces within that section with how they relate to the whole piece and the coloring I’ve done so far.

It really is one of the places my brain is the calmest, the most peaceful. I’m hoping one day it hits happy again.

Content is the closest it will consider at the moment.

Here’s the fabrics in progress from the other side. It really is a large, chaotic pile.

At some point, I got tired again. Weird how that happens. I couldn’t figure the lungs out, so I quit. I think I still have 4 or 5 hours left…I have 16 hours and 18 minutes in at the moment. This alternate life I have, the other job, it’s not nothing. It’s a significant part of my life. It’s huge.

The other thing I tortured myself with tonight was trying to figure out the financial aid appeal for Cornell. I had to take out a loan to pay for the septic, but they want this complicated calculation of all my expenses and income as part of the appeal. I swear they do this shit to persuade us NOT to apply for more aid, because this is in fact a giant pain in the ass, where I have to figure out the monthly average of a wide variety of expenses, including gas and car insurance (we spend a TON on gas) and utilities. I think I prefer not to know these exact details. I have a general idea of my finances…I don’t want to know how many thousands of dollars it takes to keep the lights and the heat on.

This is what part of my calculations look like…

Holy Hell. Shoot me now. I’m not done. I promised myself I’d start, but I didn’t have to finish.

That’s kinda how I feel about everything at the moment: make a start. You don’t have to finish. You may not be able to finish. You’re going to do your best. Sometimes your best will suck and you’ll just take a deep breath and let the tears roll down your cheeks, and then you’ll try again, dammit. Just start, though. That’s all I ask. For now.

Overfeeling

Hey. So. The girlchild is on a rampage. I think she has screamed at me for extended periods of time every day since Thursday. I am so removed from my own emotions at the moment, at least in terms of being angry/irritated with her, that I can do nothing but teacher voice. Calm. Reasonable. Repeating the same thing over and over again. Offering two choices. Calm. Yeah. So I know I wasn’t the easiest teenager in the world (ask my mom; she’ll tell you), but mom actually said she was sorry to me tonight, it was that bad. And it’s stupid stuff. Time home. Driving places. Communicating. Planning ahead. Cleaning up her crap. Not taking responsibility.

All normal parent stuff. The stuff we all do. All the time.

Problem is, at the end of it, I’m pretty much empty of the ability to deal with my own shit. It just takes it out of me. I can’t deal at all. I can’t even think straight. I just used up all my strength on not screaming at her (I was not so successful Friday night, when she really pushed too far and I went off.). It’s OK. This is how she pushes away. This is how she can leave and go far away to college. This makes it easier for her. Not so much for me, but hey…I’m the fucked-up overfeeling one anyway. It’s not about me.

I will survive it. I have to. I don’t have a choice.

I hiked this morning…more on that later. It was pretty good, a little short. The weather here has cooled down a bit, but it was still in the mid-80s…a little on the warm side for serious hiking.

I managed ironing eventually, later than I had wanted…

It’s always later than what I want. My own fault. I don’t remember what I was doing. I’m sure it was crucial. Oh yeah, it was. I made apple crisp (fuck you, I deserve it after the three-day-long screamfest of Mom Knows Diddly Squat) and I meditated and I cleaned house a little (a very little…don’t hyperventilate). I did some computer stuff for school.

Anyway, I didn’t get much ironed…a uterus and related parts, a spider and its web, some nipples, and lips. Exciting stuff. I got tired. There are lots of pieces. Plus the cat really really wanted to sit on the ironing board, and when I kicked her back onto the chair she normally prefers, she jumped up in front of the computer and glared Kitty Glares at me until I was done and she could climb back up there again.

It’s funny, because I’ve been ironing for days and she’s shown no interest in being on the ironing board until today.

But there she is, sending me her best Fuck You looks.

I really am tired tonight. Something about Saturday nights makes me want to stay up way too late, and unfortunately, I still had to be up this morning.

The pile of fabrics I’m using grows higher…

Maybe taking over the room.

OK, I’m falling asleep sitting here. Brain is sending a pretty strong message to go to bed and sleep it off. You were trying to come up with one single positive thing about today…OK, girlchild makes awesome penne with vodka sauce and there are lots of leftovers (do not imagine the boychild at this time. Yes, he is capable of inhaling the whole batch of leftovers without any effort at all, but with any luck, you’ll beat him to it tomorrow morning because you will be getting up before him). See, I can be positive. Penne Positive.

I forgot to post this panorama of the Kitchen Creek Falls area from a few weeks back…

OK. Brain to bed. Rest of me too. Maybe I’ll have more energy tomorrow. Right now I’m too tired to even focus my eyes on the letters.

Done with the Flesh…

Done with the flesh. It only took about 4 hours to find and iron all the pieces for the main figure. I think I’m at 14 1/2 hours into this ironing of fabric…

Not a small amount. More than the Celebrating Silver quilt, but less than the Earth Stories quilt…which I can start writing about this week, I think. I had to stop in the middle, right after finishing this fabric, actually, because girlchild called because her hives were back and she had no Benadryl at her dad’s house, so I got to drive over there and deal with some screaming. Apparently I am no longer the most irritating of the two parents. Oh joy. I have to say it is incredibly difficult to deal with being the mom of a typical hurricane (aka teenager) without a spouse around to commiserate with, but at least my ex and I can joke about it. While drinking wine. Because I think that’s the only way to survive certain types of teenagers.

The bin now has all the flesh for the main figure in it…

I will probably get around to cutting all these out not this week but next. I think I still have about 400 pieces to iron on this thing, so that’s at least 4 nights. I haven’t done the lungs, heart, eyeballs, all that stuff that clutters the human body…those pieces are all here…

With some other stuff mixed in. I think there’s a cloud in there with a giant face. You know, like you see all the time. Sometimes I really wonder where my brain comes up with this stuff. I draw sober, people. Stone cold sober. Oh heck, it’s not really a cloud, it’s one of those thought clouds you see in comics. Except there’s no words. This entire quilt is word-free. That is a bit strange for me.

So tomorrow night, maybe, I will have the patience to deal with organs, with parts. With hair. I already know she has gray hair. It’s a quilt about menopause. I guess she could have white hair. I’ve done that before. Certainly mine is going white, not gray. Is she me? Fuck yeah, she is. Hence the cracks.

Nothing feels right. Can’t just stop being depressed. Can’t find myself. Whoops! That’s where my brain was post-gym. It’s still kinda there, but I tried to squash all the boring depressoid crap with fabric. And Brussels sprouts. Slight addiction with those. Seriously. If it weren’t so hot, I would have tossed some apple crisp into the mix. Had a craving. Tend to listen to those these days. No reason not to, and if apples and cinnamon make my world a better place, then so be it. I mean, really…it’s not going to kill me and I’m having a hard enough time as it is. Why be mean about apples?

The boychild’s piano recital went well…I have video, but haven’t processed it yet. He made no mistakes (Chopin) and it brought tears to my eyes because it’s his last one. I’m such a mopey beast. They gave him a graduation trophy and then a bunch of total strangers congratulated him (and us) after because he got into Cornell. That’s weird. I think. I mean, the kid worked hard enough to get in. Yes, I guess we raised him to think he could, but…I still think it’s his thing, not mine. I’m just glad he’s happy about it. And he is. Should I be feeling better about my own life because my boy got into Cornell? It’s his life. Mine’s a fucked-up mess. His should be better, simply because I’m not in charge of it. Move on, kid…do it better than your momma. Please.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…two sets of flesh fabrics…

I really tried to be efficient today, to get stuff done, to get that feeling of achievement, of purpose. I did finish some things. I am trying to be positive. I updated the website for one of the groups I manage, I sent my website photos in for another group I’m in, I wrote the appeal for the tax board thing, I submitted for the next SAQA portfolio, I went to the gym, I graded a bit, I prepped almost everything for school next week. I have a plan for tomorrow, groceries and hike etc. I cooked dinner. I finished two books (both of which are books I need to review, so those will be separate posts). There are about a million things I didn’t do, but there aren’t enough hours in the day. But doing all that doesn’t make me feel good.

I miss going to the movies on Saturday nights. I miss those hours of mental space and relaxation that I had. I can’t seem to replicate that on my own. Hiking is the closest I get, and that’s still not the same. Movies provide a visual/emotional outlet that hiking doesn’t always give me. I could just go to the movies on Saturday nights by myself, but I’ve found that is a dangerous place to let my brain be, so I just don’t. I really miss it. I miss lots of things, though, and that just makes everything worse. That’s what’s behind the statement above, that nothing feels right. Because it doesn’t. It isn’t just about missing the movies. It’s about missing my life. I don’t feel like me. I don’t know who or how I am. This is where I am, and I don’t like it. It’s like I’m trying to break out of my own skin. I did not ask for this.

The counselor says I need to just keep turning things around to the positive. But she says things that seem crazy to me. Things I don’t want to do. I’m sure normal people could tell themselves those things and not have an issue with it, but my brain doesn’t work like that. I do tell myself, hey! because of all the shit you’ve been through, now you get to hike all the time. You get to make more art. You get to…sigh. That’s about where it stops. There are some things I don’t have to deal with any more, and I’m relieved about that, but there are so many yucks that I have to deal with instead that it doesn’t feel like a plus. I like to hike, yes…but I feel a bit obsessive about it, like I’ll go crazy if I don’t. I’m not sure that’s healthy.

Hey, here’s the new video…actually, the video is nonexistent. It’s all about the song.

Harvey Danger, Why I’m Lonely…I wonder sometimes who in this world will put up with my weirdness in drawing, art, music, hiking. I think, from experience, the answer is No One.

I’m not sick, but I’m not well…

Tomorrow morning’s hike should help. Clear my brain. Maybe I’ll scream a little. Stomp a little. Cry a little. Maybe I’ll run the whole thing. Maybe I’ll eat Skittles and be on a crazy diabetic sugar high (bad plan). Maybe I’ll just hike fast and hard and bring my brain back some wildflowers. Whatever. It’s got to be better than being alone in my head.

In My Head, There Are Wobbles

I’m reading a book that is a lot like many other books I have read. There is a person who wants one thing and is forced to follow what’s expected of him, until they try to kill him, and then he becomes something larger or better. I can’t decide whether or not I like the book because the plot is so standard, and yet it’s not, because of the specifics of the story. I want to keep reading, because I’m interested, but I already think I know the gist of what will happen.

This is like the opposite of my life. I don’t know what will happen. My story is pretty typical (OK, except for the part where I stay up all night and make art while y’all cuddle with your pillows and mammalian bedfellows), and maybe I’m the character with the crippled hand or the one sold to slavery by her uncle. Where I’ve left the characters now is huddled in a tiny, hot, dark room, waiting for the command to rush out and vengefully kill everyone who wronged them, to somehow right all the wrongs with violence and death.

I don’t know why my brain is focusing on this now…in my head, there are wobbles. Hazy areas that I travel through where the brain just sort of wanders off and explores weird ideas (yes, art comes from this). It’s hard to let it wander freely, though, because I have a counselor who tells me that those wanders are often what pulls me back into the serious bit of depression that I seem to be having a hard time shaking. That part of my brain tends toward the negative, the depressoid, the hopeless. Unless I’m outside hiking. Or staring at my sketchbook. Then it can still be unhappy or dissatisfied, but the clean fresh outdoor air pulls that black smoke out of my head and it disperses in the sky. I can almost watch it. If you hike with me, you’ll hear it…you’ll hear me take a few giant breaths, great big sighs, like it’s a relief to finally be in this place (because it is). I can’t explain that.

The drawing, the sketchbook…hell, I just draw the damn wobbles. I draw the negative. I draw the pain. I draw it and then it is less in my chest. It’s less in my heart (my heart, so small, so broken).

While I’m waiting in this tiny, hot, dark room, looking for vengeance? I don’t want that. I just want an explanation. I want answers. I want it all to make sense, and the fact is, it probably doesn’t make sense. It’s someone else’s messed-up brain that caused all my pain, someone else’s delusions. And you can’t do anything about what someone else’s brain is thinking if they won’t listen to you. If they aren’t paying attention. That’s their deal. These are the wobbles.

It’s been really hot here this week, up to 100 degrees. I can handle the heat, but it makes it hard to hike. We joke in my hiking group about going earlier and earlier (I think in August that means we hike at night and not during the day…I do have a headlamp!). I have a hike for tomorrow, when it’s supposed to cool down to 83 (wow)…and I’m a little concerned, but will take plenty of water. It’s a big group tomorrow, which I’m not thrilled about, but my regular group is all training for Mt. Whitney, so they’re up in Idyllwild doing San Jacinto…and I’m not. I’ll still be on the PCT tomorrow, though. And yes, I still have two hikes to report about, but this weekend really has a huge pile of to-do messing up its pretty, so who knows if I’ll get to that.

Yesterday I was tired, so I didn’t post. I survived work by being a little on the crazy side. I’m leaning more and more that way as we get to the end of the year. Keeps the kids on their toes. Keeps me from crying in class. After counseling I had told myself I had to go test drive cars. I need to make a decision, and my parents are helping because I am significantly poor (ask UC System…they said I was) and can’t afford to fix the old car, let alone buy something that won’t die tomorrow. So I drove. I, who hates dealing with salespeople, went to three different dealers and told them what I wanted to drive, and did that, and then they all tried to double-team me and force me to buy TODAY TODAY TODAY and I did the tough old lady thing and gave them all fake phone numbers (OK, I didn’t actually do that, but I thought about it) and walked away. So we have a plan and Dad is helping me because I basically said I couldn’t deal. I had too much other crap to deal with, so he’s looking and he’ll be my filter. I need that. I need someone to be my secretary, my assistant, my aid. Too bad he can only do the car stuff.

By the time I got home, it was after 6. I graded, I cooked, I exercised, and the girlchild finally came home and that was explosive. I get tired of people not listening to what I’m saying, not respecting anything I’m saying. It was too close to all the shit that’s in my head about the last year, about not being respected, not being a part of the conversation. Except she’s 16 and that’s normal for the mom/teen girl relationship. So I walked out.

And came in here and then went in the kitchen and washed all the dishes and the boychild came in and confirmed that I wasn’t crazy. Thanks kid. Who’s gonna do that when you’re gone?

So then I ironed…

Oh wait! You know what’s funny? I didn’t iron anything. I’m still trying to find all the flesh pieces on the main figure, so I spent 48 minutes sorting and trying to place them by color value…you can see above that fabrics 1 and 2 in the flesh range are where all the big pieces are (the one on the top left is cracks…the fabric for all the cracks; flesh 1 is actually the second from the left on the top row). I have all of the body picked out and sorted…now I just need to do the face and THEN, only THEN can I start ironing. That’s my goal for tonight. And when I actually start ironing, it will probably take me two hours just to do that, so I might need to budget my time carefully. (MIGHT?)

Today is not a free day. It has things poking into it that have to be done. I can be lackadaisical about school planning because I’ve taught this stuff for 12 years now and although I tweak stuff, I’m not starting from scratch. I do still have to deal with a bunch of college and tax stuff, though, and then there’s grocery shopping and the gym.

But I will finish ironing that damn body today if it kills me (it might).

The funny thing is that I’m not done picking all the bits INSIDE the body: the lungs, heart, weird tattoos, the uterus, all the details I stuff into the body shape…

Because they will be all different colors, so I just put them aside until the main figure is done. Because there isn’t room on the damn ironing board for all that right now anyway. All those pieces? They’re all waiting for me to finish ironing the body. The body has pieces from the 700s-1300s. I’m finally in the 1200 bin, searching for flesh pieces, but it was midnight last night and my brain was tired and I knew I would have to get up at a reasonable hour this morning and deal with piano recital. So I decided to embrace sleep for once.

But then I had to cover the ironing board so the cat couldn’t jump up on it. I’m super paranoid that she’s going to knock the whole thing down at the moment…

This is probably the biggest reason I want to get the flesh done today.

I don’t know what occupies YOUR brain when you are trying to wake up on a Saturday morning or go to sleep on a Friday night, but this is what mine does. I know you’re jealous.

I forgot to post this picture of my daughter’s Christmas stocking that I started before she was born (yes, she is now 16), just to keep documenting the Incredibly Slow Progress I’m making at my monthly stitching meeting.

Yup. That’s a lot of cream colored thread. I’m amazed by how slow this is. Maybe I should stitch the damn leaves first and then stitch around them with the cream? Fuck. I’ll think about it NEXT month.

More progress next post…fewer wobbles maybe. Or maybe the wobbles will be let out onto paper or into the sky. Need more of that. Certainly I will have finished the book where the once and future king with the crippled hand is in the dark hot room, waiting to kill his uncle…and then maybe I’ll know how my own story will go.

Drained

Tears, Santa Ana winds, headaches, heat, should have felt connected, weepy instead. I think that’s my Goodreads summary of the novel of Yesterday. Not in that order. It was a flummoxy day. It was a day of heat and dry and that pressure that the Santa Anas ride into my skull, whipping about and causing upset. These days, my hormones and the weather, the lack or addition of exercise, the time or not for meditation, these are the things that help me balance the teeter totter or fall to the ground, trip into a hole. I feel the wind catch and drop. The artist’s brain is fascinated, grabs the sketchbook, travels me here and there to the places on my schedule, puts me in the right places, but not the right moods. I talk, I pretend to be normal like you, try to chat and small talk.

Instead, I buy socks. I can’t listen to a talk on water filtration. I’m so far away from being able to be competent enough to hike far enough to need water filtration. What I need are socks. What I buy (with my 16% fucking discount) are socks. Socks for me. Socks for the boychild. And a doggie water bowl for Calli, so she doesn’t give me that sad-eyed look again when I try to persuade her to drink water from a plastic bag. Look, Calli…Jake does it. Jake is a desperate water slut. Yes, these are dogs of which I speak. Soon I will post the other two hikes from last Saturday. Maybe when the burying stops.

Last night was a clusterfuck. I did the normal social stuff. I did everything I was supposed to do. I am always doing the things I am supposed to do. I do them and they do no good, and I became unraveled on the way home. To be truthful, I was unraveling on the way out, and it was only the stifling presence of other people who kept all my brain parts from unwinding on the pavement in the wind. I waited until the drive home and then wept out all the pieces on Interstate 8, leaving them writhing on the asphalt between the lanes. Home was no better, and found girlchild sitting on the couch with me and the dog, trying to put me back together again.

I flailed. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I did what any normal depressoid would do…I crawled into bed with my pain and my tears and I let them whale upon themselves while I dreamed fitfully, while the wind continued to thrash the trees above my head, to drop eucalypt leaves all over my yard, more crap for me to clear. More for my neighbors to decry. My pool guy. Hey, I pulled the damn dead baby possum out. You can’t bitch me out now.

Morning comes and it’s bright and the wind is still here and did I mention bright? Mornings are sometimes a shock to my system. I prefer to live in the dark, in the cool whisper of night.

Tonight there is another meeting, but the winds have died down. The traffic pulls at me though, as I sit in it, inching along towards friends who don’t ask too many questions. It’s better that way. Questions tend to stab at my eyeballs and I shut down or burst into tears. Wow. What a choice. I cried from Santee, no maybe La Mesa…all the way to Mira Mesa. Stopped it in the parking lot. Made it stop before I went in. Dragged my mopped-up self in and bought tea. Sat with friends and dropped it all on the table: stupid financial aid forms, goddamned State Franchise Tax Board, fucking asexual hammerhead sharks, the pile of crap that is literally wrapped around my neck right now, squeezing tight as I try to figure out how to handle each thing, one chunk at a time. Lots of chunks.

I swear. There is no peace.

There must be peace. I’ve seen it in a mountain meadow, wind rushing through and lighting the grass with dusky noise. I’ve seen it on the top of a rounded-rock peak, standing up tall and feeling the sky support me and birds swoop below my feet. I’ve seen it in my sketchbook. I’ve seen it in a pile of fabric, random prints slammed together by my brain. I’ve seen it in a good book, words reach up and wrap around like an author’s warm hug, a reminder of where my head could be.

Sigh. Some days it is So Bad. I try. I really do. I joke around, I tell stories, I goof off with my students, I interact with my kids, I make people laugh, I even make myself laugh. It is not enough. I get into the quiet space that is alone and all that protection, that distraction, it just sloughs off and I stand there, wrinkled, old, and lost…and that is what I cannot escape. That is the reality that is always underneath…and on days like yesterday and today, it weighs on you. It does not matter how smart I am, how long I ruminate on causes and hope and the past and the present and the future and the very moment that is right now. The mood right now…it is deep down low and slimy and rusty and held down by heavy rocks and choking me with that bad sulfur smell.

It is not a good mood.

Tonight I resolve to do better than last night, because it’s OK to have a bad night and realize it and try to revise it, revoke it, revolt it. I eat, I exercise, I meditate. I iron…

I lay fabrics out for the flesh tones, as if that will save the world. As if that will save me. As if it is not like lining up the fucking chairs on a sinking Titanic deck. I iron the damn things because it is all I know how to do at the moment. It is my life vest, my survival plan, my way out…

I’d like to say that ironing for 12 hours so far, and being up into the 900s, more than halfway through, almost to 1000…that it was enough to pull me through, and maybe it is…because I am still getting out of bed in the morning and taking showers (thank you, I know) and eating and exercising and attempting to look like a normal person. But it doesn’t feel like enough.

The frustrating part is that I don’t know how much of the moody crap is depression and how much is thyroid or iron levels or goddamned fucking blood sugar. It feels like I am a puppet being controlled by someone else…I can’t exert enough control on my self to feel like I can hold on to some level of content or even sanity. Some days it is like my brain is floating in space like a balloon and I keep trying to grab onto that fucking string, to pull it down, to fasten it to my head so it can’t escape, can’t wander off.

Useless. Tilting at windmills.

Which brings me to the music video featured on today’s post (making it sound like I am always featuring music videos, which is absolute bullshit). If you have made it this far through my crazyass poetic turbulence, then you have to watch this video, Dangerous by Big Data…

Because it made me laugh. Now that might make you worry even more, but this thing is so out there, it reminds me of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill and the like. Yes, it’s an acquired taste, but sweetheart, I am a fucking acquired taste, so you should be able to deal. Plus you don’t have to like it.

Stop and Let Me Be

Having a full-time job and being a single mom and being an artist means I never feel like I’m caught up with anything. My ex made some snotty comment about the state of my house yesterday…he doesn’t bring his job home with him, that’s for sure, and I deal with most of the kid stuff. Plus he actually cleans house on the weekends or at night, and I obviously don’t. I’m doing art instead. I keep meaning to schedule 30 minutes every other day or so to pick up, or even 10 minutes each day to focus on one small area of the house, but then reality kicks in and I don’t get to it. Time gets sucked up by stuff like making tonight’s dinner last night or dealing with some stupid tax thing or yet another college thing or an expired prescription.

This is why I can’t pick a new camera, even though I have birthday money to pay for it. This is why I can’t figure out the car situation. This is why the house is not clean. Because I have a brain that would rather be picking fabric or drawing or even reading a book than straightening up the house. I solve so many problems during the day that at some point, I run out of problem-solving ability. Literally, my brain just stops working on that stuff…it’s like a puppy who doesn’t want to walk any further. It pushes its feet into the ground and no amount of pushing, prodding, cajoling will budge it.

The only thing it wants to do is wander off into that calm arena of artmaking.

So I let it. Maybe that’s not the best thing to do; certainly it doesn’t get the house clean. I have a plan for the damn car. I don’t have a plan for the damn camera. And I think some of this looming depressive cloud that is settling over me this week is summer coming. I’ve never been depressed about summer coming. But it’s just another unstructured break that reminds me of badness. Yesterday was sad day. I thought maybe part of it was lack of sleep, so I made an attempt to go to bed earlier last night…which is why this post is happening NOW rather than last night.

I did make a decision about the main figure in quilt…she’s flesh, not gray. She’s still alive. Barely. So I stayed in sorta grayed-out flesh tones…nothing bright.

The other two figures are more on the pink side of flesh, and I’ll use those fabrics for the two hands grabbing her thighs. Need contrast.

The biggest problem with picking fabrics for this section is that there is no way I can pick the whole body out in one night, and I don’t want to iron a bunch of flesh fabrics and then have to re-iron those fabrics with the next batch of flesh fabrics every night. I need to see the WHOLE thing. Usually I lay out the whole body and then iron for hours. Like I would budget a weekend day (in reality, I would have done this during break). Not happening this time. So I started laying them out…

And I realized that I could do all the bone pieces and some other things on the leg, like a stitched scar. I have to cover everything during the day, because I have cats who like to sit on fabric and get things all messed up, so I didn’t want to lay out too much flesh last night. I think I did about an hours’ worth, and I know I’m in the 900s now, but I still have a bunch of random 800 pieces to do, like the eyeball on the leg (you know, because legs have eyeballs) and the grabby hands…oh yeah, and pubic hair, which means I have to decide what color hair she’s going to have.

More pieces…the big ones are all leg bones and pelvis…

It’s really hard sometimes to explain to people what I do in the middle of the night, when they ask how much I sleep or how I stay up so late, while they are obviously thinking how fucking crazy I am. When I’m ironing, I’m not tired any more. I’m not stuck in a bad place in my head where some 6-second Vine of derision and uselessness runs over and over again, berating me for my mistakes. I’m in a place of peace. So it makes sense that I would want to stay there for as long as possible, to make that feeling the largest part of my brain, especially as I get ready for sleep; having that be the prevailing thought as I fall asleep helps me stay asleep, helps me have good dreams instead of bad. Helps me wake up in an OK mood instead of the other kind.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get the good sleep last night, despite the early bedtime (“early”…make that 1 AM instead of 2 AM). I have been reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak…

It’s a beautiful book. The words, how Zusak writes a phrase, the visuals of the sky and souls, are absolutely wonderful to read. Yes, it’s a WWII book about Germany and Nazis…but it’s really not. But it is. Death is the narrator, and it’s surprising how human death seems…more human than some people I know. I was reading it at the gym and came to the last 50 pages and started to get very emotional…now have I cried at the gym? Heck yeah. Regularly. Sad, really, but it happens. Too much brain time. Proof that this is a significant depression, because the serotonin levels from exercise should be helping with mood, and they don’t. Not really.

Anyway. I chose to stop reading, because I figured the last 50 pages would be pretty sad. And I was already in sad mode. So I came home and cooked tonight’s dinner AND last night’s dinner (god I hate all that cooking) and ironed for a while and thought I would put off reading the end until another day. Except I couldn’t. So I sat in bed at 1 AM and I finished the book (I read fast). And I cried during the whole last 50 pages. So I guess it’s a good thing I waited until I got home. It’s a good book. Don’t care about the movie.

Anyway. So I’m not really starting off today in the right mood, and it’s kind of a crazy day. I wish I could regulate my mood better, but despite taking all my meds and trying to eat and sleep right, best I can, and exercising every day, my moods have a mind of their own. I’m standing off over here watching them fight and piss and moan, wondering when they will just stop and let me be. Deep sigh.

Tied Up in Knots

You know how when you wash quilt fabric, the edges, the loose threads, they get all tied up in knots? When I iron pieces onto the fabric, I try to cut off as many of those knots as possible, mostly because they take up room in my fabric containers (space is at a premium), but also because they alternately annoy and fascinate me. I’m fascinated by the colors of the threads and the shape of the knots they make. I’m annoyed by how they get in the way, ruin the line of the fabric, waste space.

I’ve got some knots in me that need trimming. They need to go. They’re wasted space.

I spend hours when picking fabrics just unfolding, cutting knotted threads, and refolding the fabrics. It’s a meditative process. There’s a right way to fold them. The folds only go one way. If I cut really big pieces out of the fabric, then I might need to rethink the fold so everything stays in a nice square-ish packet, but usually they just get refolded over and over into the same shape.

I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours on this piece at this point and I’m up to piece 630. My original ironing estimate was at least 20 hours…I think it will be more than that. Part of that is because I’m only doing an hour or two a day, so it takes me longer to get my brain back into it. The transition times are more frequent. One of the reasons I try to cut out all of a section of the quilt at a time is because there’s less of that down time…but I can’t always stay up really late and blow everything off (much as I’d like to) to make it work.

Tonight, I was working on this little thing…really, it IS little…

It’s about 8″ square…there’s not even that many colors in it. I managed to get all of it done except for the monitor head and the broken chains. I got tired. I only ironed about 110 pieces tonight. That’s been my average for these school nights. And they were all small pieces…

So it doesn’t look like much. Yes, that’s 110 pieces right there. All the other pieces are in another box. I had an art group meeting today, so I took the pieces with me to cut…I got a bunch done…

about two hours’ worth. Not bad. I actually made art for 3 1/2 hours today…more than most weekends, but that’s because I never just sit through a meeting…I’m always doing something.

This is probably what I’ll be ironing tomorrow night, assuming I get grades done and I finish the monitor head…

Not even halfway through at this point. Haven’t even started the main figure yet. Will have to revise my flesh-colored fabrics for that. The ones I’ve used so far for the two smaller figures won’t work. I don’t have big-enough pieces. Besides, I like the main figure to stand out by being different shades of flesh. Hence the need for 500 different flesh colors? Yeah, I don’t know. And yes, there probably are that many here. I have more flesh colors (including the pink range) and green fabrics than any other colors. The least? Yellow. Then orange and red. Weird, huh? I keep trying to get more reds, because I do so many hearts and arteries and veins, but it’s hard to find good reds. I don’t need a lot of orange apparently. Yellow? I use it often enough, but…I really don’t know why I have so few. I know I use the same ones over and over again from quilt to quilt. I don’t have much gray either (by “not much” I mean you know, maybe 100 fabrics…yes, I know how crazy that sounds).

I now have 4 returned quilts in my entryway, and two more coming home in two weeks. I started making a list of new shows to enter in the next few months. I have new work that’s never been in a show. There was a lot of talk of working to a theme at the meeting today…of putting together exhibit proposals with themes in mind. That’s harder for me to do, unless the theme is wildly vague. We’ll have to see how that goes. I also don’t really want to make a quilt for an exhibit with a theme when I don’t know if I’ll get in or not. I have enough pieces that I want to make that fit no theme, and still have one where I chose how I would fit into the theme (and I know they will show the quilt). It seems like I am far enough into the mature artist realm that I don’t need to go backwards.

That said, the work needs to get out of the house and on to a gallery wall. So you have to figure out how to make that happen. Magic!

My whole life would be different with magic, eh? Magic would make it so I could stay up for the next three hours ironing and maybe not have to go to work tomorrow? Magic would erase all the foggy depression that clouds my mind. Magic would clean the house and do all the errands. Magic would fold my laundry and find me happiness…deliver it in a small plastic Easter egg. Open it up and a cloud of happiness spills out.

I might be delirious at the moment. Speaking of delirious, girlchild stopped taking her Benadryl yesterday because it made her tired, and sure enough, those damn hives came back with a vengeance. She texted me from Lancaster…wish she would listen to the doc and her mom occasionally. She did better tonight. Asked me to wake her up at 10:30 (she was tired) to give her the next dose. The screeching I did this morning on the phone must have had an effect…she put the epi-pen in her school bag as well…not sure she can take it there without a note, but I’ll write one just in case. Yeah, I know…teenagers know everything. Moms know nothing. Sigh.

Maybe magic should put me to sleep as well.

It’s Not the End of the World…

I have this way of dealing with life at the moment. I just divide it up into these blocks. There are the blocks that are mindless, things I have to do and can almost do in my sleep (strangely, school is one of these blocks). There are the blocks that are sleep; they’re short. There’s the blocks that are art…I try to fit one in a day. There’s exercise and meditation and a hike a week. There’s the grocery store. I divide each day up again. The block that gets me up and out the door for school. The block that deals with the time right after school. Blocks that aren’t already filled or designated, I make sure there’s a plan for those, because it’s the fucking down time that messes with me. There are some blocks I used to have that I don’t have any more. They’re the hardest to fill…and they need to be filled. It’s kind of ironic, because it’s not like I have time to add groups of new friends or activities, but I almost have to in order to make sure there’s no down time for the brain to sink lower. I need to keep it occupied.

That said, those of you who are parents (or just empathetic to parents) know that you can plan all you like, but life is gonna bitchslap you some days. Tuesday the girlchild had some things that looked like bug bites. She showed them to me, they were itchy, there were like three of them. Wednesday, there were more, but they were moving around and we talked about washing her sheets this weekend (except Tuesday night, she wasn’t at my house), still thinking bug bites. Thursday, they were somewhat worse, and I decided they were hives. We talked about stress (she is still making up work from her surgery AND AP tests start next week…good enough reasons to BE stressed, but she said she wasn’t). We talked about food and soap and lotion and all that good stuff. Nothing new. Apparently Thursday night (again at her dad’s) was bad, but eventually they went away and she went to sleep. When I texted her during the day on Friday and suggested the doctor, she said no way, it was fine, she was better. I got home Friday, she was not home yet, she slammed in the door about 15 minutes later yelling for me, lifted her shirt, and holy shit. Hives everywhere. Solid. Yeouch. I called the nurse, who asked 17 questions, then sent us to Urgent Care. Meanwhile, the kids have been watching way too much House (and I’ve already seen them all), so we were diagnosing her. (Lupus…no, not really). We took her in…you know it’s bad when the staff at Urgent Care gasp when they see it. Anyway, a couple of tests later and we still know nothing, but she has Benadryl in her and they’re prescribing an epi-pen. Sure enough, she was asleep (love Benadryl) by the time she got home, pretty much, and the hives were gone by midnight. Hopefully, whatever freakish thing that caused it is gone, out of her system. Impressive bumpiness, though.

So that was not a block of time that I had planned. It never is, when you’re a parent. I do think that most parents (the ones who pay attention) are much better at dealing with life because of shit like that. You have your afternoon/evening planned, and hives just fucks it all to hell and back. Seriously. It happens all the time, so often, that you always have a contingency plan. It’s how I survive. The back of my brain is always trying to budget time here or there to deal with bumps in the road like that. Like What Will You Do if the House Floods with Human Waste? And you already have a plan for that…and the zombie apocalypse…and random visitors.

So I dealt. Ordered dinner instead of cooking it. Did a little grading, but not a lot. Blew off the exercise in favor of meditation. Made it to bed at a reasonable hour because I knew I had a hike…a hike that might get moved due to weather issues. No problem. I can adapt. I just roll with it. I’m not always happy with the adjustment, but in the end, and I don’t know again if this is the depression or the meditative practices talking, I just need to go with the flow. It’s not the end of the world. There will be another day for ironing fabric. One day of missing exercise will not end my life. So we joked with the doctor about how she needed to send her staff over to check BOTH houses for mold and drugs, and girlchild was probably lying about sex or drugs, because they always do, and when would they start random medication? Yeah. We do watch too much House.

So no art last night. I did hike this morning…interesting story. I’m now three hikes behind on the blog! Aack! It’s OK, one is a repeat…the morning hike did not turn out to be strenuous enough to count for exercise, so I dragged the boychild and the two dogs (girlchild and ex are in Lancaster for National Cup, which no, she is not playing in…just supporting her team) out on a long, bitchy hike…

Because I’m nice like that. Jake on the left, Calli on the right. This is Mt. McGinty, take 2. I think I can do it by myself now. Maybe. More on that hike later. Whenever later is (did I mention grades are due on Tuesday and I’m not done with them? Whatever. They’ll get done. It’s not the end of the world.). The dogs were extremely tired by then and were apparently huddling together for support.

Then we came home and I managed the depressoid hour of grocery shopping (Saturday night just sucks bigtime. The only plus is that it’s quiet and there are no lines). Drove to Sonic for dinner, because there was no way I was cooking. Plus I am feeling down and out and overwhelmed by shit that I can’t control, so I have not been eating great the last few days. But I got time with the boychild, and he’s moving away to college in a few months, and he won’t call, text, or email when he’s gone, so I’m kinda saving these moments up with just him for later. For when he’s gone. Makes me sad to think of it, but he’s an adult now and this is what he needs to do. I’ll be OK. I’m not a child. I can handle him leaving. I’m just sad about it. It’s OK for me to be sad about things. It better be OK, because I feel it a lot. It’s OK to not be happy when things don’t feel happy. It’s not abnormal. It’s not broken.

OK, I AM broken, but not because I am sad. I am sad because I am broken. Or I am sad AND I am broken. Hard to say.

Then I graded for a while, trying to get all the loose ends tied up, or at least enough of them to make a difference. Or something. I still need to input everything, but I’ll deal with that. It’s not the end of the world.

I feel like I already survived the end of the world. Like three or four times. Godzilla wasn’t there. No one was. Just me.

So then I started ironing, awfully late. Later than I had originally planned for today, but today’s plans came apart at the seams at about 5:20 this morning, or maybe even last night, and so I just two-stepped it and dealt. I’m good at that.

I’m through the 400s…into the 500s. I could have started ironing the 500s, but didn’t feel like starting it. Depressing subject matter. Couldn’t look at it. Need some distance from it. Maybe tomorrow night. I just ironed all the leftover bits from the body…the heart and the nipples and the eyeballs and the hair and the eye she’s holding onto, or is she trying to catch it? Who knows.

Tomorrow is gym and a meeting and chaos and grading and exercise and meditation and maybe ironing. Hopefully ironing. A little bit of progress a day makes it better…

It does. This is the pile of fabrics used so far…I’m not even a third of the way through, so there will be lots more.

There is a lot on my plate at the moment. I’m trying to divide it up into doable chunks, things I can handle. There are a couple of things I can’t deal with at all. So I’m not. It’s not the most mature way of living my life, but it’s what I can do at the moment. Really, there should be times in your life when everything is smooth sailing and then times when you are challenged to even get through the next 10 minutes, but that challenge…that’s probably what makes you who you are. Not how you deal when it’s easy…but how you deal when there’s too much and you have no help and stupidity reigns around you. That’s when it’s important. And if you’re a selfish asshole when that’s going on, then you suck. I’d like to believe karma will kick your ass, but I have no evidence of that.

So yeah. I’m ironing. I’m making art. What more do you need to know.

Hello Cornell…

Last week, the boychild and I visited Cornell University so he could make a decision about college for next year. He had said all along that he didn’t need to visit a college to decide, but hey, when reality is staring you in the face and it’s a few thousand miles away, then apparently you change your mind.

So I scheduled a last-minute trip during his (and my) Spring Break and their Cornell Days. I watched the weather and was a little freaked out about snow being forecast, especially since we were flying into Syracuse and driving to Ithaca (cheaper). We got into Syracuse (and Ithaca) pretty late. Luckily, I’ve realized that all college towns in the East have the same pizza place that delivers (yes, even to hotel rooms) late at night.

The next day, we ventured out into the rain to the registration area and a class and an info session and lunch and the bookstore, but it was nasty wet rain (I actually bought an umbrella, it was so bad…I know. I’m from Southern California and my old umbrella had BROKEN way back in January or February and I hadn’t replaced it because I DIDN’T NEED TO. I realize my entitlement). I took zero pictures during the rain, mostly because it was so wet and then it got cold, dropping about 40 degrees from the morning to the late afternoon. So ALL of these are from the next day. Well, except this lovely photo, taken from the (crappy) hotel room window when I realized it was SNOWING. Yes, I don’t get out much.

It’s not even sticking at that point. We actually went out in that to find a local brewpub for dinner.

The boychild doesn’t like to write his name…in fact, I have no problems posting this online, because you can’t even read it (OK, not really).

He did wear this, but under his jacket. OK, wait, I lied. I did take pictures at Buttermilk Falls State Park, where we went before dinner, just to get a walk in. It was bloody freezing and snowing and absolutely different from what he’s used to here at home, and gorgeous.

I’m not sure you can argue with any of that. Certainly, visits to see him at college will be fun. Although I might avoid some of the snowier months.

To many of my readers, this style of house and yard is probably very familiar, but San Diego doesn’t do it this way.

The next morning, we headed back out to campus to wander around in NON-rainy weather. This I believe is one of the cooperative houses on campus…there were a few of them. At this point, there were some brief snow flurries, but mostly it was just a pretty (and bloody freezing) day. I managed to keep my nose from freezing off my face, but only barely.

Boychild acknowledged that he might need gloves and better shoes for next year. He wore short sleeves the entire time we were there, but the jacket I bought him for Christmas was entirely the right move.

There’s a lake on campus (it’s not very big, but it’s cute) and a bridge going over the river that exits the lake…

The falls were very impressive in the morning…

He was kind of amazed by the color of the water and the walls of the ravine on each side.

I was kind of amazed by the ice…

And the tree icicles.

Towards the bridge we walked over in the rain yesterday.

I know. Not much snow.

This time, we just wandered around to get a feel for the place when water wasn’t sluicing into your eyes.

He likes it. He says it’s pretty.

And it has its own art museum.

Lots of old buildings that remind me of going to school in Wales.

With Spring just around the corner.

We ate in there the day before…the bathrooms looked like something out of Hogwart’s, and there was a library with lots of soft chairs and tables, a really old library, that I was too lame to take pictures of…

Part of the student housing is down this big hill…so I made him walk down it…

Looking back up at the main campus…

So he could then experience walking back UP that hill. Definitely a good exercise option if you have to do that a few times a day.

The weather stayed nice (but still freezing!) the whole time we walked around.

When we were done exploring (he had decided…he needed no more exploring), we headed off for Syracuse…driving the Bob Nida (my dad) way: If there is a two-line road running parallel to the main highway, then you should be on it, because it is more interesting than the main highway.

Plus, it has more cemeteries (I warned the boy that I like these…he has experienced my cemetery habit before)…

And the trees and blue skies with the snow made it quite lovely…

Meanwhile, back in San Diego, it was SO HOT (per the girlchild)…

It was in the 80s.

Certainly a temperature difference.

We had some time when we got to Syracuse, so we went to a local lake…

Where fish were dropping from the sky…

And geese were squawking…

and trees were falling in the lake…

More icicles (things I NEVER see).

Anyway, the goal was to help him decide and it worked, and now I know where he’ll be for probably the next 4 years, so that helps me be less freaked out by it. Besides, I figure he’ll WANT to come back to Southern California after 4 years of freezing his butt off…and it gives me a good excuse to go out there and hike some new trails.